I was listening to some Ewynn Forest music while doing some chores around the house (don’t judge me), and it really dawned on me just how much I miss a lot of old zones.
Now obviously, Classic exists and you can play through those zones to your heart’s content, but it got me thinking:
What if there was something to make those old zones relevant at high levels, even briefly?
Now this is just me spitballing, so feel free to plug your own ideas, or even just help refine ideas that others pitch in.
My thinking is; what if a few select zones (maybe one in each continent?) each day are marked as experiencing a “Crisis”. Flying would be disabled for that zone (and maybe the surrounding zones as well).
Maybe the skybox would be darkened and foreboding, and the flightpath is the only “safe” location. There, you would have a Bounty Board, where you and your party would select one of three missions to tackle. The moment you leave the safety of town, you become phased from everyone else (except your party), and enemies will slowly but consistently spawn to attack you.
The more time you spend outside the safety of town, the more quickly enemies will spawn, eventually spawning in elites.
Your goal being to try and achieve the bounty you took, and then make your way BACK to town, without dying. You die, you respawn back in town and have to start over.
My thinking is, this helps build the world up a bit more, that even in low level areas we all subconsciously consider to be “safe”, still have potential dangers that aren’t so easily eliminated.
For example, when Elwynn Forest is a “Crisis zone”, you find that Gnolls and Kobolds are working together, with Gnolls constantly spawning to attack anyone that leaves the safety of Goldshire (and maybe a temporary encampment the Horde could use?). Most of your bounties would involve pushing into the various mines to stop the Kobolds from doing “something bad”, maybe rarely seeing bounties like the Defias having taken control of Northshire Abbey, or maybe rescuing local NPC’s that ventured out and haven’t returned (which might feel a little more “heroic”).
Big thing is, I would try to keep this all decidedly “evergreen”, not expansion-specific. That means no Void stuff, though you could have ambiguous wording like “someone seems to be orchestrating these emerging threats all across Azeroth, perhaps to further divide the forces of the Horde and the Alliance”.
To that effect, I would also lean towards keeping the general atmosphere of each zone intact. I wouldn’t do anything too crazy with changing the music or things like that, unless you wanted to just take the time to create bespoke skyboxes for older zones, or maybe offering remixed versions of the zone music (since part of the appeal, to me, is having a “trip down memory lane”).
Bonus points for including more secluded, unless common locations as possible destinations for different bounties.
One thing that WOULD add some flavor, though, would maybe be taking whatever weather effects are native to each zone and dial them up to 11. So maybe Elwynn Forest has an intense storm that obscures your view when Rising Threats are active, sandstorms in Tanaris, maybe darkened skies for other zones, a blanket of fog you can barely see in.
Obviously, there’s no way you could create these kinds of “Crisis zones” for EVERY zone in the game, and certainly not initially. Maybe you could just start with a couple of fan-favorite zones throughout WoW, and gradually add new zones to the pool over time, assuming the feature was well received?
Maybe each zone is classified as having a Threat level, so Low Threat zones would be appropriate for players with early raid gear, where Medium Threat would be suited to Normal-Heroic level players, and High Threat zones would be only suited to those venturing into Mythic or higher M+ keys.
Like I said, I mainly think it would be cool having a system to have players revisit various places in the world. Maybe “Crisis” is a bit too modern sounding, maybe call them “Imperiled” zones?
Anyways, that’s my own thought. Curious if anyone else has ideas how to make the whole world fee a little more relevant?