I’ve recently gotten hooked on the popular idea of the next expansion possibly being dragon based and taking place on the Dragon Isles, and that got me thinking of a neat feature that could be part of that. What if they took the Artifact Weapon system, and turned it into a mount?
Here’s the breakdown: you start off the expansion with an intro quest line that rewards you with a dragon mount at the end of it. Unlike the Artifact Weapons, this isn’t necessarily the only mount you can use in the expansion, but there could be a number of features exclusive to the mount that encourage you to use it over your other ones (but without making the features too good, to the point where players feel forced to use it). This mount could act as one of your main companions throughout the Dragon Isles, maybe give it dialogue like the Monk mount from Legion.
Now comes the next, and arguably most important part of this feature, also stealing from the Artifact Weapon idea: customization. As you play through the expansion, you can unlock different skins amd other customization options for your mount, exactly like you could earn skins for the Artifact Weapons: through dungeons, quests, raids, PvP, exploration, the works. This would allow players the ability to still gain unique vanity items and show off your hard work in the form of what your mount looks like. This could also be a great way to bring back the Mage Tower from Legion, which I know a lot of people have been requesting. Have certain skins be locked behind the Tower, and that gives players the incentive.
What I think is the best part of this idea is having an expansion “system”, like the Artifact Weapons or the Heart of Azeroth/Azerite Armor, that is NOT tied to player power. You don’t have to look up a guide on which weapon to use, or which armor to wear, or in this case, which mount skin to use, in order to min max your DPS in PvE and PvP. The entire system would be based on cosmetics; maybe you could even further incentivize gathering skins by having transmogs, titles, or pets locked behind some skins as a further reward, as well as some additional features of the mount like I mentioned earlier. All of this would allow a central system to still be present in the expansion, but having it only be cosmetic would mean players won’t feel forced to catch up on it, and feel behind if they don’t.
TL,DR: Give us an Artifact Weapon system, but with a mount/other vanity items instead of something tied to player power. This gives players more cosmetics, as well as something to always be working towards, without worrying about how it’s going to positively or negatively impact their DPS.
