Or we’d just get grey hair plus some cool eyepatches and scars to represent all that downtime. And a lot of stress lines from being this unreasonably angry for this long.
Personally, and probability aside, I’m hoping for a 3-10 year timeskip: enough to break up Azeroth’s “world-ending threat every single year”, but not enough to kill off many/most characters by old age.
Updated cities – and especially an update to Silvermoon/Eversong/Ghostlands and Exodar/Azuremyst/Bloodmyst – would be lovely. But since they, and most other areas, are already several years behind the canon present, we don’t need to timeskip to update them.
New homes for the Forsaken and Kaldorei would be an exception if not for the fact that the timeline already has a major war every single year. Compared to that, it wouldn’t be that weird for them to quickly resettle.
I want a world update. I don’t need a timeskip for that. The world already exists like ten years in the past. It will feel like a timeskip if we just acknowledge what is presently happening in the Barrens, or Gilneas, or Silvermoon, or wherever.
So much of the world exists in time capsule netherrealm form that you don’t need to tell me “20 years have passed suddenly!” to make me believe that things could have changed radically.
but anyway the REAL reason we need a revamp is to apply fancy new hairstyles and stuff to all the old NPCs. Topper McNabb is gonna look even more like a stupid loser when everyone else shows up with a mega sharp new coiffure and he’s still rocking “hair style number 11” like its november 2004
I don’t see them revamping the old world simply because now we’re getting to choose our own adventures. It’d be like revamping Outland or Northrend at this point.
I think they’re just going to let outdated questing areas become increasingly more and more outdated. Or, more likely, they’re going to use various Vanilla zones as the set pieces for future expansions. So the story can progress going forward with minimal world design efforts.
That’s not a knock on Blizz either. It’s cost effective and since so much Vanilla content is out of date, it makes sense to reuse existing areas.
I wonder if it is possible to avoid it.
The new lands we’ve been visiting have been getting more and more contrived since Pandaria. We spent a whole expansion in a time travel alternate universe. With Kul Tiras and Zandalar knocked out in BfA there are no more known major landmasses to visit on Azeroth, so now we’re going to heaven for a while. Where will we go after that?
The Chromie “choose your leveling path” thing doesn’t seem to me like its proof they’ll never update the world–rather, it just says they’ll never delete the world like they did in Cata. You’ll always be able to choose Cataclysm Azeroth, or WotLK Northrend… but maybe there will be other options for those same landmasses.
And I think it would be a mistake to just continue going to more and more contrived settings of alternate dimensions, spiritual realms, and huge continents that we just happened to not notice until now when there are so many stories you could tell on the Azeroth we know.
A return to Northrend is a fun idea.
Always has been, really. Functionally Stormwind and Orgrimmar have really always served as the main Alliance and Horde capitals, respectively.
I agree that an intro for each specific race would be much better though - or if they must do Stormwind, they need to actually remodel Stormwind (and Orgrimmar) to be more culturally diverse. Put a lot of effort in, make full on racial districts. If it’s to be an alliance/horde capital, give EVERY Alliance/Horde race representation.
I’m hopeful the Dragon Isles are relevant in some way, but I would really like to see Azeroth updated again. I don’t know where the story from the end of Shadowlands will take us, but I could see something about Azeroth (the titan) finally being born and with her exit from the planet, a bunch of changes happen.
Actually, in Vanilla the principle Alliance city was Ironforge since it was centrally located to the bulk of Endgame content at the time. Same way the Horde’s principle city in Vanilla was the Undercity.
rebrand the Alliance to be “dwarfs and friends” and create promotional images featuring night elves wearing ironforge tabards NOW
moira baby for high king
I’d come back Alliance just for that.
Honestly? I miss the lead into BC event where Doomguard attacked the major cities. Logging into Ironforge, seeing the mound of skeletons and corpses, wondering what’s going on - why am I lagging so hard - OH GOD GIANT DEMON IN THE DOORWAY! TO ARMS! TO ARMS!
I’ve got fond memories of Ironforge, right from my days of youth happily turning over crafting materials I could have sold on the AH for Mount Money to help in the AQ war effort.
It makes me sad to go to Ironforge now-a-days, with how empty it is.
Maybe “always” is a strong word, but a lot of new infrastructure, from wrath onwards at least, was always added to the capitals. Transportation to Northrend (and an entire harbor for Stormwind). The Cata-Portals. The Pandaria portal. And now, most recently, the embassies and portal rooms. I feel like the intent has been, for most of the game’s history, that Stormwind and Orgrimmar are in some way central hubs.
That said, most of the game’s history has revolved around orcs and humans an awful lot.
I don’t know that anything is gonna match the AQ war effort for me. Unlike leveling alts during the Legion Invasion (and missing out on half the other prepatch events) and unlike the max level only content that was the isle of thunder, the AQ war effort was one of the only times I, as a lowly, leveling new player, got to participate in an EPIC and WORLDSPANNING event.
And realistically, the legion invasion was a lot more in your face, approachable and rewarding in it’s design, but it didn’t add up to anything. You just kind of did them as they showed up… Whereas the war effort was a big as bar and by god despite being level twenty did I turn over some miscellaneous leather to feel like I did my part.
That sort of sense of world seems so far lost, not to be melodramatic.
Indeed. I remember the “shuttles” to the Gates Opening event. Max Levels of both factions forming a protective chain across Kalimdor and Silithus to let Low Levels be present when the gates opened. It was a real sense of community and world building that’s been sadly scraped away as the years have gone by.
I am very skeptical right now. I just saw the stuff with the new datamined voice lines from Shaw… Again we don’t know the other half of the conversation, but it sounds like Genn may be king of Stormwind while Anduin is away. I also found out that in Before the Storm Anduin made Genn heir to the Stormwind thrown if he were to ever die.
I just can’t. Why is Blizzard hell bent on taking away the Gilnean identity? I don’t want to be absorbed and sucked into the boring Stormwind Human culture. The Gilneans and their culture and story are way more interesting.
Because it’s easier to write for a smaller team as WoW continues to age until the inevitable time comes when the servers get put into “Maintenance Mode”.
Everything gets homogenized so you don’t have to worry as a small team justifying server costs when the player base gets upset because Developer X forgot to take into account Race Z when penning Storyline Y.
seems the first night warrior was a dude and, more importantly, explicitly has a husband
as minor as it is, i hope this is a first step toward finally seeing prominent LGBT characters in the story
Having an LGBT couple represented in-game very clearly and not left up to assumption is a good step. It makes me happy to see this.
