With Archaeology being abandoned in Shadowlands and likely cancelled in Dragonflight, the minor profession seems to have lost its purpose. That being said, I think there are a few ideological and actual changes that would make it more interesting content to pursue.
- Account-Wide Achievements
- Bind-on-Account Restored Artifact Crates
Over the years of WoW, many players have changed mains, and even more players have started to play alts in addition to their main. So, even if they have learned Archaeology on all of their characters, there is no benefit in stopping by a dig site on an alt. The achievements are character specific. Also, if one of the alts receives Restored Artifact Crates, these items still do nothing for the player’s overall progress.
So, my first two recommendations would be to make Archaeology achievements account-wide and make Restored Artifact Crates bind-on-account. This way, regardless of which character the player is playing, they can still make progress toward an achievement or at the very least funnel Restored Artifact Crates to one character.
The gameplay in WoW (as with many MMOs) has a lot of waiting - such as waiting for the guild to sign on for a raid, a long DPS queue, a Horde BG queue, or the like. Moments like these and while leveling is when most people tend to participate in Archaeology. However, there is absolutely no incentive for the player to start Archaeology on another character if all of their Restored Artifacts Crates are reburied in the alt bank.
- Restored Artifact Crates from All Expansions
As of now, a player can only receive Restored Artifact Crates from dig sites in MoP, WoD, Legion, and BfA. This is a currency that allows you - through the successful completion of a solved artifacts - to have some degree of overall progression even though that item may have been the 30th ancient vase you completed. In this scenario, the Restored Artifact Crate functions great as it gives a player a 2nd expedited chance at whatever they are chasing after through a collection of failed attempts. It just needs to apply to Vanilla, BC, Wrath, and Cataclysm zones as well!
- Dig Sites, Open-World Puzzles, Treasure Troves, Portal Rooms
Archaeology is 1-dimensional as far as gameplay, where a player flies for a while, lands at a location, triangulates the dig site six or seven times, and takes off to the next location. If things get really exciting, they might even have to fight a mob for some more fragments. For the simplicity of the content, I would say this is fine, but why stop here? Why not take the Ley-lines puzzles from Nazjatar and Zereth Mortis and apply them to some dig sites by having the player physically untangle the lines, revealing the treasure? Or perhaps, literally allow them to actively dig up the opening to a small vault that contains a treasure chest unlockable via a puzzle.
In short, going from dig site to dig site is 100% reasonable for Archaeology, but adding various means of uncovering these fragments could break up the monotony of the gameplay for the player base.
- Rare Solves Should Be Exciting / Useful Every Time
Now, if you have enough fragments and Restored Artifact Crates, then comes the epitome of a bittersweet moment as you finally get a rare solve! Maybe bittersweet is exaggerating, because it is only sweet the first time you get it. It’s all bitter after that. The 6th time you get the Fossilized Raptor is genuinely frustrating not only because the mount takes up bag space or has to be deleted, but also because you spent a ton of fragments to solve for it.
Rare solves should still be exciting, because they are rare! Maybe instead of simply deleting the 20th rare item a player solves, allow them to get a Restored Artifact Crate of equal rare quality that would allow them more progression in their future solves. So, a blue quality pet could be returned for a blue quality Restored Artifact Crate. Having the fortune and luck should at least give the player a positive feeling regardless of how many times it repeats itself.
- Story Relevance Is Not Necessary
As far as the root reason why Archaeology stopped in Shadowlands with little plans for Dragonflight, there seems to be general lack of clarity. However, at one point, it sounded like Archaeology may been designed to give a little bit more insight behind major stories. Or at the very least, give some support lore for what is ongoing with each expansion’s story. This absolutely not necessary.
Instead, why not just let each random piece found or dug up simply have its own story – or no story at all. I am sure there are a ton of stories that would love to be told, but they just don’t fit well with the main storyline. What about random mentions of items from the books, cinematics, and other media that players could dig up? What about some of the old quest items that have been removed from the game in Cataclysm, but allow players to dig them up? Shadowlands would have been amazing for this. Maybe a player digs up a Maw-infused Ashbringer, and there is mystery in solving how it got there. Perhaps, a fallen hero took a weapon with them to the Shadowlands, but shattered in battle. I am sure there are random pieces of transmogs that didn’t make the cut for Sanctum of Domination, but they could have their own story.
The takeaway here is that most players participating in Archaeology appreciate a story or information surrounding what they are solving, but their driving force in gameplay is the tangible reward in the form of a mount, pet, transmogs, or achievements. Even more than that, it is the existence and gameplay of the content that is most important. So, there is little reason to let the story or lack of story inhibit developing content within the game.
- Archaeology in Old Raids and Dungeons
Next, when we participate in Archaeology, it is flying from zone to zone to zone. Rinse and repeat until you finally have what you are chasing after. This makes perfect sense as Archaeology is all about discovery. However, dungeons and raids remain a untouched potential treasure trove of spoils left behind and hidden by defeated foes. For example, going back to the Maw-Infused Ashbringer, what if we need to dig in Molten Core and AQ-40 in order to discover the mystery in how this weapon found its way into the Maw? Perhaps, if we dig around the Sunken temple, we can uncover some of the gear that has been once removed from the game (from fallen heroes). Maybe with the giant sword in Silithus, AQ-40 was massively disturbed and we find random artifacts and a really rare pet still alive and impowered from the old god defeated long ago.
- Archaeology-Only Consumable Buffs from Digging
Finally, when we go about digging for long lost fragments, it is a straight-forward mount up, flying to location, triangulate, dig, and repeat. Perhaps, something that could be fun and encourage continued activity would be finding random ancient magic items that are so fragile that they have little purpose but to be consumed and enhance your treasure-hunting adventures. For example, if someone is digging up some artifacts, they could find an items that gives them 20% movement speed for 30 minutes. Maybe another item would increase fragments collected by 20% for 30 minutes. Another item could pull you into the realm of the dead for 45 seconds, where you dig up as much as you can in that time. Yet another item teleports you to the nearest dig site. Also, I think tying the frequency of the drop rate relative to the level of the profession would provide some incentive to level Archaeology (though not too much as that would negate the reason for BoA Restored Artifact Crates).
- More Items from the Vendor
Archaeology centers around a good bit of RNG as well as consistency. However, I think having a few specific rewards purchasable from a vendor (at the cost of Restored Artifact Crates) could be a great incremental goal to work toward. Maybe being able to purchase some of the buffs we talked about earlier would be a good option here. Maybe a moderate and high end rewards (like pets or mounts) could be a thing as well.
Perhaps, building from the previous suggestions of rare and epic Restore Artifact Crates (from duplicate rare / epic solves), perhaps 20 of them can be used to purchase amount. Just brainstorming, here. It could be 5 or 50 epic Restored Artifact Crates - this is more about the concept than the actual number.
All-in-all Archaeology may not be edge-of-your-seat content, but there is a portion of the player base that enjoys it. If given a bit more attention, Archaeology could be a great way randomly include items within the World of Warcraft universe that doesn’t directly have anything to do with any of the in-game story lines. Just simply content filled with items with or without their own story that players can chase after with their main or their alt and still feel like with are progressing with the profession!