I think that saying the Cash Shop is the issue, is a cop-out. The issues with the game are many and varied, but compared to games like FFXIV; Blizzard’s cash-shop is benign by comparison and I’m glad the Developers have kept it so small. Yes hell has probably frozen over, I just gave Blizzard a compliment.
But honestly? It’s one that is long overdue, and well deserved.
Personally, the issues that I see myself, and would work to solve if I were chatting with the Developers over a beer; are the following. It’ll be a semi long list but I’ll try to keep it from being a wall of text.
1.) Retail must appear to be the top priority.
We need the Developers first and foremost to take the bull by the horns and put the Classic Crowd that constantly talks about how “Retail dies in X days” in their place. We got to where we are in retail from years of refinement, and that shouldn’t be thrown away. While mistakes were made, they CAN be corrected.
I would change the name in the Version Tab of Battle-Net, from World of Warcraft to World of Warcraft: Retail, and then place it above WoW: Classic on the Launcher as part of enforcing this fact.
Oh yes, I am sure that there will be people who take offense to it when inevitably some Youtube “shock-jock”, tells them to be angry about it. No doubt they will also screech like flock of well trained birds when they are told to screech, but really. What did they expect from Classic? More raids? New content?
2.) Lets fix the Game-World / Leveling Experience:
I don’t speak of the length of time it takes to make the level cap. I’m talking about the disjointed and fractured nature of the story itself. Players jump back and forth through time entirely too much, and it makes a new player have a very hard time in understanding the reasons for the story and the lore.
Remember. The youngest players of WoW at this point are probably 10-15 years old. That means also that they were in diapers, or non-existent when Classic came out. If you were a newcomer to the franchise, and weren’t here for all of the stories from then to now, would YOU understand the story?
I highly doubt it.
I think the Classic Game World needs to be re-added to retail (with zones like Naxx and Zul’gerub being inaccessible since they are in Northrend and Cataclysm now). Ideally if you were a first time player, you would start in the Classic Game world and level up to 60 as has always been the case. Events progress, you go to Outland, (or Northrend).
Once both of these zones are complete, a small event / questline akin to the Battle for Lordaeron plays out where you see the fall of the Lich King, and then the Shattering occur which unlocks access to the Cataclysm zones.
Since it is not current content, you would then have another small questline which allowed you to see the defeat of Deathwing. Then you could also access Pandaria zones. The game then progresses to Warlords of Draenor, Legion, and finally Battle for Azeroth.
The point here is that there would be a defined flow to the story and events. Players would not be locked into this of course. To solve the quandary of "new characters", I would suggest a new game + setting where you can “pick what era your character starts in.”
If you picked “Post Shattering” at character creation, then your story would start in the Cataclysm Revamped world, and once you get to 60, your contacted by agents of the Bronze Flight who “send you back in time” to Outland, Northrend, etc. to ensure time flows as it must.
This would be a difficult task, but a worthwhile one IMHO. For players who want to travel between pre-Shattering Azeroth, and post Shattering Azeroth, there would be a simple Bronze Dragon NPC, who transferred you back and forth between the two iterations of Azeroth (and a third down the road if another World Revamp ever occurs.)
3.) Alternate Leveling Methods:
Create several “Events” in Zones, that cycle so that after one ends, another starts in a different area of the zone. The events would grant experience and be short term world quests much like Incursions. They could even require in some kills that you get help from other players.
Maybe Elwynn is under attack by Hogger (Hogger needs a raid to beat?) Maybe you fend off a force of Blackrock Orcs in Redridge, while in Durotar you are protecting Darkspear Trolls from the Kul’Tirans and keeping shipping lanes open?
These would be ways people tired of the usual questing means could do interactive stuff. Since each zone would have a few of these, it’d allow them to shake it up which would be very welcome to people who have leveled 12+ toons!
4.) More Aesthetics:
We need more options for the races, and honestly each race needs new glyphs. It frustrates many players when they see Mages and Druid constantly given new toys, but nothing new for their class. The whole thing needs a big revamp.
Warlocks for an example (since I’ve played this very one since Classic), should be able to enslave Old God Minions, summon them, and change the color of their spells to Twilight / shadow / blood Etc. Likewise Priests should be able to change their Shadow Spells / Voidform to Holy spells if they like. Taliesin and Evitel were spot on about the fact that a Lightforged Shadow Priest makes very little sense.
This system could work for all classes, and serve to blur the lines of spell effects. In doing this, Blizzard would be freer to make sure every class was a different experience in playstyle, and would be able to focus on that much more heavily.
5.) Classes and Their Perks.
This tied directly into what I said about aesthetics above. Lets say we have a Dark Iron Warrior who uses Fire Based attacks etc. You also have a Dark Iron Paladin who uses his own version of fire-based holy attacks.
So the question becomes now this: What makes the Warrior in Arms Spec different than a Retribution Paladin? How does he approach a fight, how does he “feel” in terms of game-play when compared to the Paladin? If he feels the same, then they are the same class with a similar paint-job.
What does he excel at, which the Paladin might not? What does he fail at which the Paladin might be more skilled in? This was something that existed in Classic, and which I think would be a good thing to consider. Sure both Dwarves use a 2h weapon, but what is their differences?
Making it possible for both to contribute in PVP and Raids to a near equal point, but having places where they shine seems like the best way to solve this. Mind you, I realize you’d have to be careful to ensure we didn’t have raid-groups stacking X Class as the Meta; but I think this could be solved if you offered talents that allowed the Class to do what the other lacked in.
Maybe you have 2 Warlocks etc. One Warlock has a talent that lets him do X which is helpful in heavy DoT fights. The other maybe has a special curse that makes single target stronger. Together both synergize with each-other, to overcome the raid as a collective whole. That feels like what your reaching for here, and I think you’ll reach a good point with trial and error.
One thing though I would avoid doing and would reverse course on though?
6.) Avoid Excessive Redesigns
Avoid redesigning Classes once you have their play-style down. Case and point. Although this Warlock is one of my original Classic Toons, I moved to Shadow Priest in late-Wrath to try it out, and I fell in love with Shadow Orbs.
Priest became my mainstay until Legion added the Insanity Mechanic and obliterated the old playstyle. I felt like my character was taken from me, deleted, and replaced with a new toon. Progress and change is one thing, but I submit no person should ever have to deal with that.
7.) Sharding / CRZ:
I understand why it was added, but players do not like it. WoW was billed as a game that was a complete game world, and all debates and past issues with the CRZ mess aside; nothing is worse than crossing a zone line chasing Alliance only to see them poof. If Classic is going to get freedom from CRZ with new tech such as Layering, so too should retail.
CRZ was a bad system and remains a bad system. Accepting that, owning up to the mistake, and then removing it / replacing it with something else that was better and achieved the purpose of reducing Server congestion would go far to restoring player confidence in Blizzard as a whole.
Closing:
I had other suggestions, but their not coming to me right now, so I’ll add to them as I remember them. Ultimately? We all I think want the same thing here. To see WoW succeed. But to get there, we need to take the steps needed to make it happen, and sometimes it’s alright to do something players didn’t like (Nazjatar for example), if you can improve on it.
I get that many hated Vashj’ir, but Nazjatar ‘should’ of been under the water guys. One zone being underwater, could of been solved a million ways that sated the naysayers and made the experience palatable to them. Right now the Zone unfortunately feels like it was a cop-out, and that a path of least resistance was taken. Having seen your work in the past, I know Blizzard is capable of much, much better; and that’s why I expect such excellence from the company.
Your the best at what you do. Don’t settle for less chaps.