Making the World Feel Expansive

Community General Discussion
1

In light of the recent Blue Post regarding the removal of certain portals, I wanted to discuss something that’s been bothering me and many others since the beginning of BFA.

This is what the blue post stated:
Originally posted by Blizzard (View Original)[Collapse](javascript::wink:

I understand that changes can throw people off a bit at first, but I also think they help keep the world of Azeroth feeling alive. When there are fewer portals, does the world feel a bit bigger to you? Do you like that? How difficult is it to get to the locations you mentioned without a direct portal (talking to everybody who isn’t a mage here :wink: ) ?

So, this begs the question, why doesn’t the world feel bigger? And the real answer is that Blizzard chose to confine most of the action to the two new islands.

This expansion is supposed to be a giant all out war between the Horde and the Alliance, but everything happens in the new zones. Not only does this not make the world feel small but it does not feel like a war between the factions. It just feels like we’re skirmishing over two islands.

And there is one simple solution that is already a feature of the expansion that would have been a simple and total fix. Incursions should not be fought in the new zones. Incursions should be fought in the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor.

Both sides have lost a foothold on a continent. Doesn’t it make sense that the Alliance would want to take the next step and sack Silvermoon? DOesn’t it make sense that the Horde would want a new foothold in Eastern Kingdoms? So, why not set incursions in Eversong Woods or the Ghostlands as the Allaince push to Silvermoon? Now that Undercity has fallen, wouldn’t the Gilneans want to secure Silverpine Forest and Hillsbrad? Wouldn’t the Alliance want to re-establish Theramore? Or cut Orgrimmar off from Thunderbluff by trying to take the Barrens.

Making these zones relevant again with Incursions would definitely make the world feel bigger, the same way it did in the pre-Legion invasion events. It would have made the irrelevant, relevant again. It would have made it feel like an actual war was occurring. It would be more impactful having the zones where we leveled and have nostalgia for be threatened by the enemy.

Yes, Warfronts sort of address this, but not in any impactful way. Once every few weeks you go into a scenario that is set in an old zone for a few minutes, get your gear and then you’re done. Now after the Warfront is over and you have a few days to do quests in that zone, what does Blizz do?

THEY GIVE YOU A PORTAL TO THE ZONE. Which is the exact opposite thing they should do if they want the world to feel bigger!!!

THE REAL ISSUE is this: every expansion releases a new set of zones and the way Blizzard seems to develop the expansion is that they focus everything on the new areas. They even force you to explore everything about the new zones by gating flying behind Pathfinder (which is fine in my opinion).

But, if they want the world to feel expansive, then they need to develop expansions in a manner that includes developing aspects that still involve old zones in conjunction with new zones.

((As far as the portal removal, I agree with Blizz. I’m fine with it. In fact I think all portals should be removed except the teleporter to Argus. I think only mages should have portals. But that is another post))

3 Likes
2

personally i’m just jaded over how much stuff has been removed, and dismayed on how they think removing even more things will un-dismay me

1 Like
3

They should have revamped all this old zones, like they did with arathi and darkshore, just to lvl max character. The content should be something like the incursions, but not only wq, but events that could bring some changes for the zone.

With the revamp kalimdor could be horde only, EK alliance, except for the bf and draenei areas. This incursions events could be invasions from the opposite faction to take back this zone, if the player didn’t participate on this the zone swap to the other faction and he should go ther to take it back.

It would make the world more alive because if the player couldn’t play for some days he would see some changes to the world and would’ve to go that zone to dominate that zone to you faction

1 Like
4

The stupid table missions that you can do on your mobile device while you’re sitting on the toilet, or watching Netflix – that’s how they cover what happens in the old world during a new expansion.

If you take the time to actually read the mission descriptions, they all take place in EK or Kalimdor. Where apparently there’s an abundance of AP and gold to be found, that somehow as a player character engaging such content, you never find yourself.

5

Making older content more time intensive doesn’t in any way make the old world feel alive. It only makes you realize as your are taking a long flight point to a distant location how truly vacant and boring it has become.

2 Likes
6

Pretty much this.

They’ve forced us to tiny islands with three zones. Forced us into one old city when there’s several. They keep lowering the number of zones we have to quest in. They take away means of travel which doesn’t make the world feel larger, it just means people won’t go to those places anymore.

When you take out a train system in the real world and tell people, “just drive there now,” that doesn’t make them travel more and think “oh, look at the scenery I’ve missed!”

Assaults won’t fix this either. Because regardless, they just funnel us into one city, one little island.

Not to mention the amount of work that would have to go into mob scaling in old zones just during these events and having max level players flooding these low level zones.

7

I agree, I’ve been hoping to see a commitment to making the old world useful again for a long time. They have flashes of interest first with orderhalls and professions in legion then again in bfa with the island loot quests, but never seems to go further.

After they made the scaling changes to leveling I was hoping that was going to translate all the way to max level and have some world quest stuff come in. Idk, maybe in 9.0.

But yes, I also agree only mages should have portals. Shamans should have short hearths etc. All this quick travel has done great harm to this game. For as bad as flying is, portals to every other zone are worse.

The world COULD be more interesting, but it’s silly to say that it’s not already interesting. You were using the portal to go somewhere, so obviously there was a reason to be in or traveling through the zone already.

The world is MASSIVE. We don’t need psychological tricks to get people to think it’s bigger or more important than it is.

The tried and true method would work today if everyone was on the ground, with no portals.

Ride through zones, gank a leveled, leveler gets help, sponateous action ensues.
Would be even more likely they expanded warmode functions to old stuff. Dunno why they haven’t. Imagine seeing an assassin in the barrens. I’m tempted to fly out there now just to defend the crossroads.

But ya, hopefully they will find a way to make the other 100 plus levels matter at some point, because if not they need to stop adding new levels to the game and reconsider how levels and said zones work in the first place.

8

They could have put “invasion” quests all over the map rather than just the 2 islands. That alone would have helped with the scale of the war issue.

I generally agree with the sentiment though. For me it starts with the lack of care they have taken in keeping a real narrative through the leveling experience. Its a time hopping mess. Fixing that would be a huge chunk of how immersion gets broken in the world for me.