Personal context: I have been a casual player since late vanilla. I have done a variety of activities including some raiding, arenas, and auction house play. I have been in guilds, started guilds, and made many friends in WoW who no longer play. I buy every expansion on release (and have maintained about an 80% subscription rate)- but would like to propose the following developer checklist before the next expansion is released:
People play wow because they want adventure and to feel heroic. You MUST have a primary villain for each expansion. No one cares if we have to save the world every time. Itās corny and heroic. Yay.
Go back to specialized gear drops that are unique to dungeons and bosses. It helps us to set goals, man. It promotes team coordination.
When you invent new races- a) they need to be available immediately upon expansion launch and b) feel free to gate them behind reputation grinds for those who prepurchase the expansion early and want to try them out prior to launch release.
Professions that generate gear (eg. blacksmithing) need to have a capacity to create gear across levelsā¦ not just the opening experience levels and the endgame.
Professions like engineering need to have a new player-built mount with every expansion. No exceptions. Tailors should always have new vanity costumes for each expansion. Alchemists should have wacky āappearance changeā potions every expansion.
Slow down leveling for the new expansion levels. However, keep it easier for everything that precedes the expansion experience levels. Give everyone within the expansion itself a longer, more achievement-oriented experience.
Increase the thrill for treasure hunters: Never allow treasure chests to show on minimap āradarāā¦ a glowing outline in the mainview is enough. Make them glow green, blue, purpleā¦ see what I did there?
Can we please stop killing level 100+ rodents, crabs, deer and the like in starter zones? Come up with something more sinister. Please.
Make endgame worldquests easier. They are dailies after all.
Go back to making the green, blue, and purple gear progression mean something (harder). Since WOtLK, the higher end gear has been too easy to obtain. Save that for nonsense Diablo.
Get rid of heirlooms. They are wrong. Instead, allow high level adventurers the ability to find rare potions of exp buffs. Keep it valuable. Use heirlooms for interesting transmogs only.
LFRs are broken. Reduce the value of LFR gear more (lower the ilvl). Keep the experience as a ātour of endgame art and storylineā that it was meant to beā¦ better yet, save LFR for the final six months prior to the next expansion to allow players to āseeā everything. Or better yet, if you really wanting to make LFR raid āpreviewsā accessibleā¦ just make them 5-man-able six months before the next expansion.
No more pretty Nagrand biomes in expansions. We have had enough of Fields of Green.
Keep all zones accessible without load screensā¦ having to go through a load screen to get between BFA continents ruins immersion, disrupts size and scope, and feels very segmented/restricted on the opposite faction starter zones.
New things:
Create guild halls (that have connecting player vanity homes). The halls can be a village, a mountainside cavern system, a lava pool cavern, a city in the cloudsā¦ etc. Make one of the rooms an āinter-guildā hub.
Allow players to choose whether to work with the simple skill tree you have now, or the old more customizable trees. That way you will appeal to newer players and veterans alike.
Allow players to āturn offā the transmog view for everyone they see in the world.
Allow players to generate a āhoming beacon hearthstoneā that connects to a particular location anywhere in the open world. To avoid abuse, have it set for a daily or weekly cooldown.
For those of us who love to solo old raids, leave the old raids alone. Only fix things that are truly broken.
Provide all black gear pleaseā¦ deep horrifying black gear (and provide shiny glistening white silver gear, and rainbow color cycling gear for the faint of heart).
Allow flight to be āearnableā from the beginning of the expansion. Make the grind as horrible as you like. Make it brutal and take monthsā¦ fine.
The AI on island expeditions is goodā¦ and pvp is good. So, why not combine these things to āwarm people upā to pvp by giving them arenas or islands to āpracticeā against AI opponents. You do this in your other gamesā¦
Give me an āincoming mailā marker on each character from the character selection menu (so I that donāt need to log into each one separately).
Expansion ideas: a) delving ever deeper into dungeons and caverns, b) touring through the body internals of an old god, c) Moon biomes, d) more mysterious swamps, please, e) much larger sprawling cities, f) more castles, g) add races like- the lion dudes in WoD, playable monsters, etc.
Create a playerbase Advisory Board. Include hardcore, casual, and other long term players for regular discussions and input.
Ok thanks for reading. Please add your own checklist items or flame away. Happy casualling. -Blizzard, I will work for you for free for one month every summer until you get this right.