Pffff five years big whoop!
~ laughs in impossibly dumb immortal Draenei lifespan ~
I mean, swapping some NPCs around and adding some new dialogue isn’t that hard …
Playing up the long-term ecological damage of the wars, one after the other and using more and more exotic and dangerous weaponry no less, has done massive damage and with the populations depleted, the resources all but expended, global trade annihilated and everyone’s economies absolutely gutted … the whole ‘we built this city in a fortnight’ glory days are over.
Wouldn’t mind seeing a lot of the NPCs in the Drag swapped out for Forsaken, with Deathguard patrolling Orgrimmar alongside the Longwalkers, Grunts and Head-Hunters. Maybe some more Forsaken scattered amongst Silvermoon as well, specifically focused on either erasing the Dread Scar or trying to coax the free-willed Undead to join them specifically.
Wouldn’t mind seeing the Gilneans occupying a lot of Old Town, and the Kaldorei split between the green, natural areas of Stormwind and the docks, with Sentinels and Prowlers aiding the Stormwind Guard. Would also adore seeing both the Worgen and Kaldorei spreading out to Duskwood, Redridge and Westfall and bringing their unique gifts and abilities to those regions to settle there.
Dialogue between patrolling guards, NPCs hawking their wares and even ‘Stay awhile and listen’ commentary is not hard to implement. The hardest and most time consuming part is going to be making sure everything lines up, lore-wise and story-wise, and then giving the OK for the actual process.
Leaving Lordaeron and Gilneas as still partially destroyed gives up a 10.1 or 10.2 plot-hook where we’re finally able to mass produce a counter-agent to the Blight, ironically called ‘Blessing’, which is distilled from the breath-weapons and blood of the Five Flights and trace elements of Azerite, Titanic alchemy and Wild God essence, that can restore the land.
It’s incredibly difficult to create, only Alexstraza knows the formula, and naturally will not share it because of what we’ve done, and can only be applied over a small area at the time. We have to earn every vial of the stuff from her via reputation and weekly quests, and in turn we get to decide who needs the stuff more.
Giving it to the Forsaken/Worgen pushes a bar forward towards the slow restoration of their respective homelands, which increases morale, reduces food consumption amongst the populace as more of the refugees can go home, and lowers the chance of riots amongst these populations.
Giving it to Orgrimmar/Stormwind restores the damaged farmlands of these nations, which increases food production, erases some pollution and lowers the chance of riots from the Orcs/Humans over food and space in their capitals.
Give it to Silvermoon/Azure Isles to restore the ecological damage there and help these beleaguered peoples. In exchange for the vials, Silvermoon/Azure Isles provides magical artifice and expertise, which provides various boons and QoL improvements for a week to both the player and their respective factions, but there’s no food production increase and the potential for riots increase due to this.
This could be the source of a PvP scenario, where the Horde and Alliance have to work together to fight against rebels/mercenaries/cultists (other Horde/Alliance players) who stole a shipment for themselves and plan to use it selfishly/sell it to the highest bidder/twist the properties of the Blessing, and need to be stopped.
It could also be used for scenarios to show-case the rebuilding of other zones and Blizzard could use their Phasing Technology to allow players to go back and forth between these states, which could also be used to increase the levels of these zones, as well as change up the enemy types and show slow progress, such as grass slowly growing across the Dread Scar, but will never fully heal it, or Gilneas losing the Blight-Mist that covers it and some areas of the region becoming brighter and less haunted-looking as a result.
We’re not expecting Cataclysm-levels of change after, what, the shortest production time of a Expansion in WoW history right on the heels of the worst expansion released in MMO history, let alone WoW itself, but slow, small, easily accessible evidence that the world really is healing and the factions are finally clawing back some ground, and some hope, would be well received at this point.
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Ohhhhhhhh. Sorry, proposed was clearly not the right word.
English isn’t my first language, believe it or not, and every now and then I choose an odd word 
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Here’s where we’re at so far this morning:
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Because I know absolutely nothing about actually building and running a computer game, I used to think they didn’t add anything ‘Gilnean’ to SW, was because it may have been built in such a way all those years ago that they couldn’t. (akin to the ‘we can’t enlarge the backpack because it would destroy the universe’ comments that turned out to be BS)
Considering we got an enormous waste of space monument to King Chin and they added that little place up in the hills above SW that no one ever goes to, I have changed my mind and put this in the lazy column.
There is zero reason they can’t turn some of the hills around SW into a little Gilnean alcove. The assets already exist in the game files. Just do it ffs.
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All good 
I love that. Any attention is good attention when you’ve been abused.
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Over the years, I’ve learned that anytime Blizz says they can’t do x or they will never do y, it turns out to be “we just don’t want to do it”. I’m positive they have to wait for a while so they can claim it was their own idea in the first place.
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If they build a Gilnean quarter in SW before they build a bridge in the Barrens, we will riot.
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You know this is a conundrum… as a worgen player who loves everything Gilneas this would be a tough decision.
A Gilnean district in Stormwind would be cool, and is more likely to get more detail and attention because its on a smaller scale.
On the other hand a fully revamped Gilneas would be AMAZING. Imagining a whole new questing zone there would be aweosme, maybe some WQs there as well, and a functioning city with vendors, and npcs walking around. I would love this but I imagine this is a lot less likely.
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Their reasoning for not rebuilding Gilneas is hysterical.
“We really want that to be done in-game and not off-screen. We can’t give you the content, you see, because we want to give you the content that we won’t give you.”
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I feel like this type of scenario would be the only way I’d accept Stormwind/Orgrimmar being the only gameplay Alliance/Horde city: If they were constantly updated per expansion and sometimes per patch to show the effects of the current expansion on the factions.
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Sadly considering the dumb things that they say, I would not be surprised to learn this is the exact phrasing that was used.
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- There will be a digital short story about “one particularly joyous occasion”.
Obviously, I’m personally going to take it this means we’re getting the Gnome Fro.
- The resettlement of Gilneas is specifically mentioned as something we will experience in-game ourselves at some point.
“at some point” clearly being the same time they give us the dance studio.
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Flynn and Shaw wedding, guaranteed
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Have they addressed how new Forsaken are going to be made now or are they just going to die out as a race? No new forsaken in 3+ years and after the events of Shadowblands you would think their numbers have dwindled.
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The only reason I am putting faith in us seeing a resettled Gilneas is that they intentionally had Calia write to Genn saying she wanted to give it back to the Worgen. If Blizzard had no intention of giving Gilneas back they would have left that out in my opinion. And then the fact that they mention it again in this post by Danuser? It tells me they have some plans to do something with Gilneas.
My guess? I think we see a patch later in DF, maybe even a .5 patch, where players go to Gilneas to “resettle”. And then next expansion, which I believe will be the “Light” expansion, we will get an updated Gilneas, Quel’thalas, and Lordaeron.
Gilneas will be the Alliance hub and Silvermoon will be the Horde hub while we fight Light zealots all throughout northern Eastern Kingdom.
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Yeah, that’s true. Blizzard never says one thing and does another.
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wannaseeadeadbody.jpg
I’m hoping that there’s a ‘gift’ from the surviving Spirit Healers/Val’kyr that basically turns Forsaken into a less-powerful version of whatever the hell Nathanos got turned into.
Bang, Forsaken are now quasi-undead quasi-living and can have offspring now. They can’t interbreed with the living but they are a now stable race of their own, with their own future. Just give us Human and Sin’dorei models with the new Dark Ranger ‘skin’ and we’re golden.
That, or the Forsaken are literally a doomed race and are just going to be offering ‘life after death’ like what Voss was doing in the Battle for Azeroth to try and keep their numbers up.
Or they’re going to go on the mother of all recruitment drives through the Scourge pockets and any sentient Undead that isn’t actively evil, or isn’t an actual Rot-Brain, gets brought into the fold.
I will admit, I’m a fan of the whole “So Pelagos gave us this half-living, half-undead form out of apology for the rigidity and unflinching reliance on dogma of the Bastion faction, so now we can have children and heal naturally, but we have to live with the outraged shrieking coming from Gilneas, and across the ocean, and honestly we’re not sure this is an improvement.” angle of the Forsaken. Just give them the option of an Human model with Forsaken skins on it and call it a day already.
1 Like