It has been announced that Shadowlands will have a Season 4, with added power levels of gear for PvP, M+, and raiding. This could be a great way to revamp old content and keep hardcore players interested in the game while the next expansion is being developed, but the failed experiment of Shadowlands has proven beyond a “shadow” of a doubt that an MMO’s playerbase will dwindle rapidly if developers refuse to offer power progression to casual and solo players.
If Season 4 is to be a success in terms of sub numbers (not just a few praises from hardcore players on Twitter), it will need to offer significant power progression (up to item level 278 / 285 to accommodate for the jump in power with the new gearing season) for casual, unrated, queueable, solo, and open world gameplay to keep the more typical and average MMO players invested in the content.
Here are some suggestions that would greatly improve the success of Season 4 for a wider audience, while also making use of pre-existing assets to avoid exorbitant development costs:
(1) PvP
—Do away with rating requirements to upgrade Conquest gear, and the Honor grind to upgrade Honor gear. The new Honor and Conquest gear would both be earned through unrated PvP. Rated PvP would offer faster gains in Honor and Conquest, but would mainly be for the challenge, prestige, and cosmetic unlocks rather than the gear.
(2) Dungeons
—Make the new M+0 and lower level M+ dungeons queueable.
—Add a Valor bonus to random daily Heroic dungeon queues, and add a Valor vendor for Normal (278/285 item level) gear.
—Make every week timewalking event week to rotate through each expansion’s timewalking dungeons, and let the weekly caches provide Normal (278/285 item level) gear.
(3) Raids
—Make the Normal (278/285 item level) rescaled versions of the CN, SoD, and SoFO raids queueable (but also realistically tuned).
—Make the currently developed timewalking raids available every week for Normal (278/285 item level) gear, and make them queueable.
(4) Open World
—Allow upgrades of Zereth Mortis gear up to 278/285 item level using Cosmic Flux.
—Allow covenant callings to count for an M+2 completion or a Normal boss kill in the Great Vault for Normal (278/285 item level) gear.
(5) Torghast
—Add a weekly 278 item level gear drop to the boss of each currently available Torghast wing, and a weekly 285 item level gear drop to the Adamant Vaults boss of each currently available wing. (Layer 16 could be 278/285, with lower layers offering progressively lower rewards.)
If developers continue their Shadowlands gear elitism philosophy of leaving the majority of their playerbase in the dust with low item level gear sets from LFR, unrated PvP, and Zereth Mortis, it would not only spell doom for Season 4, but also the game as a whole.
In order for WoW to be as big as it was in the past, it is going to need to provide accessible gearing progression again. The developers need to move on from the Shadowlands elitist gearing mentality and show us that they can develop an actual MMO, not a lobby for niche gameplay instances!