Incoming longer post. I’ll try to break it up nicely and summarize at the bottom.
Shadowlands is close around the corner, but my friends and I have been thinking much further beyond that. The squish has many of us wondering what the future of WoW will be like. We have an idea of what we would like to see.
Use Chromie Time as a template and the Shadowlands squish as the new norm.
Imagine that from here on, every new expansion means we regress to level 50, with all new content being contained within 51-60. Shadowlands could set the state for never having to do a large, jarring change like this one. It continued to be necessary, and reverting every future expansion to this model means it becomes the expected. All previous expansions would exist in the 1-50 area.
Open world levels are something to be discussed, considering every future expansion would essentially add more content to a set number of levels. Even when 10.0 becomes a thing, we would need to make room for Shadowlands. Any suggestions on this part would be welcomed. The focus for this is on something else.
If you remember people doing the Ironman Challenges, you remember the sort of rule set that put these characters apart from others. It was a fun concept. Imagine making a different ruleset for “Championed” characters. Essentially, when making a new toon, you could choose to champion them to a specific expansion. You go into Chromie Time. But because you chose to be a champion, you lock your max level at 50. This character doesn’t go beyond into the new content.
My friends and I all have varying thoughts on what to do with championed characters. My idea is to leave it open ended. Instead of championing to one expansion, the character just lives in a Chromie Time Bubble where all previous expansions cap to level 50. Meaning you could go around to your favorite raids of old and gear the character with all of your favorite sets and pieces.
I would think this would leave caution to the wind and not bother with tuning or balancing. It’s old content and these characters would solely exist in the time bubble with only others who have decided this fate. People could run around and show off their favorite sets or play as they see fit, with the idea being that you have the features of playing the most recent expansion (BfA currently). Things like Allied Races and all of that would be available, but you could make a championed Zandalari Druid who you deck out in T5 and N’zoth trinkets! Whatever you want.
PvP might be a bit of an issue. I’m not entirely sure how to deal with that other than the fact that people would find whatever they could to be overpowered. As long as there’s no real ranking system, it could be entirely for the fun of it. No rewards. Just joining up because you enjoy that part of the game. Feel free to iterate as you see fit here though.
On the flip side, one of my friends suggests that by picking and expansion, you would lock that character to that expansions gear. You would still be a lvl 50 champion, but you wouldn’t be able to mix and match. You could interact with players in other expansions, as you would all exist in the time bubble together. You just couldn’t equip pieces from any runs you might do in an expansion that’s not part of the one you picked.
It’s nowhere near what it would be like to have an actual TBC or Wrath Classic server. The idea is to instead give players some fun with retail that lives in it’s own little world. Class changes and such would all be a part of this, to avoid Blizzard having a complicated mess of timing and balancing. Class changes to the current expansion could continue to add to the large pot of things that would influence time bubble builds. This could possibly give life to retail all on its own. It’s meant to give players a simple place to enjoy previous expansions without certain limits. A way to let players experience all of the crazy power systems over and over, without legacy servers.
TL;DR : Friends and I would like to see a Chromie Time bubble of existence to leave characters at level 50 to experience old content without legacy servers.
Now I wish I would have put one in there!