My guess would be the Trading Post. That seems to be their go-to for bringing back time-limited cosmetics. But they also have this obsession with artificially inflating the value of things by removing them from the game and then telling new players - “Well, sucks that you weren’t playing when it was available.” So… who knows.
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yeah, they at least have an incentive not to be as transparent about it as they could be. it’s too bad, GW2’s Astral Vault has a whole tab where you can buy previous season cosmetics for more currency than they were released, so there’s no fear of missing out of anything. the benefit of not being a sub based game, i guess
Blizzard is weaning the completionists off their addiction.
if something isn’t interesting, don’t do it…
don’t begrudge others their fun…
“Sensationalist events”
Sensationalist post.
Horizontal progression doesn’t work for a game this large wanting to make money and consistently churn out content. Guild Wars 2 is the shining example and they almost failed twice to keep people’s attention without new shiny things. In a perfect world yeah, gear would just be more to tailor for yourself but let’s be real here: People like the numbers and stats. It’s kind of why they play WoW over other MMOs IMO.
I don’t think small side-games a few engineers and programmers are working on will detract from the multi-hundred developer teams working on the expansions or large patches lol.
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This is honestly a pretty good point. I personally still prefer WoW over GW2 and even FFXIV specifically because I enjoy the gearing and ‘competing’ to improve in PvP seasons. I’ll give my idea some more thought, but I suppose what I’ve been trying to advocate for with it is finding ways to keep expansions content relevant, get players out into the world and engage in more dynamic content and social activities. I suppose I’ll have to rethink what solutions would better work for that 
There are a few ways to do it honestly. The MoP remix is literally one of those ways to reinvigorate and get people to at least… Y’know, TRY old things for a bit. Even if it’s in a OP powerleveling trip for a little while.
They could do with some more world events LIKE guild wars 2 though. Give people a reason to go out to certain zones where a huge event is happening. Gold, currency, transmog and other things that a max level would want y’know. But let non-max level players enjoy it too. The Legion invasions had a TON of people going around doing those events.
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Again, good points. My problem, though, with the MoP remix as opposed to the Legion invasions is that releasing new game modes and clients separate from the main game (classics) each divide and fragment the community. I still enjoy WoW for the same reasons I used to in the past, but the only difference is I’ve lost my guild and friends to do things with during WoD (with a few exceptions of people who return every once in a year or two for a couple of weeks). My opinion is that creating better incentivization and keeping everyone in the same client would have been far better and the game could have felt much more alive as a result. It always seems like Blizz looks for the quick nostalgic fix rather than trying long term fixes to the main game. I think the fragmentation is silly, because through something like horizontal content all expansions could be enjoyed as ‘evergreen’ within the main world.
I don’t disagree, but with MoP remix: They had to section it off to let you become OP and do OP things. They don’t want you going to other zones to do it - and anyone who WANTS to be this gets plastered an ad when they start up WoW in the character select to create a timewarped character.
THAT SAID.
They should figure out a way to just… Let you USE an existing character if they are going to use the existing world and let you flip a switch that auto-puts you in that mode and all the gear you had with it. I just think the tech isn’t there, so they kinda had to do it this way. I’m sure at some point they may advance the engine enough so that you can just use a retail character in this adjacent gamemodes.
FWIW: They could probably let you use a retail character, but imagine having to manually switch over in a very clunky fashion to re-equip the cloak and also the other exclusive gear. Sure you can create a gear set but I’m sure a good chunk of players don’t even USE that now because of transmog and spec transmogs.
Plunderstorm is different though, since it’s just a repeatable battle royale map. All the stuff you get is either usable there or on retail, so anything you earn is already rewarded. They could handle this stuff better though - but I honestly LIKE they’re at least trying these weird and quirky stuff when there is down-time from retail patches. FFXIV does it with their events and I’ve yet to see anyone complain ANYWHERE NEAR the same as WoW players do about these two things lol.
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OP, i agree, but let’s hope they’re actually putting a ton of energy into TWW as well.
Shadowlands was content, just because the wow crybase did not like it, does not mean it was not content 
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I liked Shadowlands. I thought the story was cool, the characters are pretty neat, and the worlds are beautiful.
I get that it’s an unpopular opinion, though 
I’ve been called a liar and delusional for actually liking it.
It was content, but unfortunately time gated content that forced you to just wait around to do things. No way to accelerate it, not much to do after you did your weekly chores - there are dailies (world quests) but once you’ve gotten enough rep or what you need out of the covenant you were waiting just for weekly things. And Torghast was just there to get better legendaries from the currency, otherwise it was just transmog. Maw and ZM had neat little upgrades and pathways but they did the same thing even if you were late to it - wait, wait, wait, wait.
They could’ve handled Shadowland’s content in a better way, and still have had very similar systems. The dev team have a really horrible track record of ‘presentation’ for these new things, and then they just ditched 'em lol. Like BfA and the necklace being really cool, but they botched the armor in the first place and haphazaradly kitbashed the necklace over two major patches to get it right.
I mostly agree op, but i also don’t know how to fix wow. The one thing that makes me excited is if they decide to do this for other expansions. Like what if they did a legion version where you can do the mage tower again but with alternative colors (so they’re not shafting the og achieve)? Or heck did it for shadowlands so we can earn the mogs at an accelerated rate? My head math has it at hundreds of hours to complete all the different armor transmog for a single armor class (you have to almost completely build your covenant hall and then the sets themselves total over 100k anima i believe or close to it, for a single covenant)
It has the potential to be a great catch up mechanic for people who missed an expansion.
That’s very much what this is (to some extent). You get achievements, you get to go through the quests, you get a ton of transmog to use that normally newbies or super casuals never go and get because of the weekly lockouts, etc. etc.
It’s a really great way to get people to conglomerate and do an expansion’s content for a few months. We’ll see how everyone likes it though. I’m hopeful - I played some of it and it already felt nice to play. But I’m not max level yet, so I can’t CONFIDENTLY say it’s great.
/sigh
These are experiments on ideas for what to implement into the main game in the future, not gimmicks.
And they are being offered as bonus, not in place of, content.
Would you prefer nothing? Because that was the other option.
You would? Fine then, don’t play the modes as they are completely optional with inessential rewards.
You realize that there are several teams within Blizzard and specifically the Warcraft IP working on different projects? The team working on Plunderstorm is a different team than the one working on Pandaria Remix, which is different from the team working on Classic, that also has different teams working on SoD and Cata classic.
I think you may be out of touch on this matter. You state that they are doing this rather than building for sustainability. The game has been going for 20 years. 20 YEARS! It is the most sustainable MMO and has been. It has had ups and downs, but 20 years of being a popular and profitable MMO which has stood the test of time.
Or… now hear me out… They are finding ways to reuse old content and assets (Plunderstorm and Pandaria Remix) In order to create short term seasonal game modes, to give their players activities and new gameplay experiences, to add value to their subscription, and bridge the gap between content droughts. New game modes that are inexpensive, require significantly less development time and resources, and are designed to be short term experiences that aside from cosmetics, do not impact the live game.
In short, these modes are giving a lot of players what they have been asking for, but doing it in a different way as to not muddle up or cause issues with the retail experience. In short building a sustainable content pipeline for the long run health of the Warcraft IP and games.
And if you think that the solution to what you want is to pull the teams working on all of these projects and solely create more Dungeons, Raids, BGs Arenas, Zones… ect, then you are sadly mistaken. This is because so many people play WoW differently. Therefore any time they add something to the game, they upset the other 3/4 of the players, who dont do that specific content.
Add world events and world questing content? M+, Raiders, PvPers are all up in arms because they are catering to the casual world content players.
Add new dungeons and modes to M+? Raiders, PvPers, and World content players are upset that they are catering to the M+ community.
Add new Arena? The M+, World Content, Raider and BG PvPers are all upset.
It is a viscous cycle, where the there is this toxic cycle of people being unhappy all the time. And there is no way to win. So I am glad that they are just trying things out and developing new modes and seasonal things outside of Live versions. Because there is no winning in the live version for the forum folks.
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Then you would be complaining about Blizzard not trying something new.
A sure sign someone is in the End of Expansion doldrums: they get bored enough to start leveling archaeology
Even routine casual content is now designed to be temporary, do it for a couple of weeks and if enough people don’t stop doing it and moving back to mythic+, make it impossible to complete so casuals will have no choice. Content that can’t be completed after a few weeks is just there for show.
Removing heroic dungeon difficulty because elites find it too easy was another way to remove content from casuals.
BGs. Really? Do you think there have been plenty of new BGs over the past decade? Do you think Zaralek Caverns is at this time better content than Argus?