If you could take features from modern WoW and put them into classic, or vice versa, what would they be? What’s your perfect WoW blend?
For me, I’d add all of the new lands, dungeons, and battlegrounds we’ve gotten over the years. I’d add flying but only at max level after completing loremaster. I’d keep the talent trees the same, but grow them larger for the new abilities we’ve gotten over the years until my screen is teeming with buttons to press.
Achievements and Pet Battles I’d be interested in having, as well as mythic and mythic plus dungeons, but no cross-realm anything. I would also have every currently available race and class, all starting at level 1. Everything else would work the same as classic.
Edit: I don’t mean changing classic, I want that to stay as it is. Just talking about your idealized version of the game.
I like Classic just being Classic. Now if I could pick a perfect mmo, I’d take wows story, Ultima Onlines play style (skills instead of Classes), FFXIV style housing, and New Worlds graphics. It would be like a super wow… wow2!
Cata Dungeon Difficulty
WotLK Leveling (in terms of pace) with a tune up in difficulty
Modern Visuals and Music
MoP Class design, but with Talent Trees
WoD Raid Design
My perfect version of this game is to have the expansions without changing the content or difficulty level of the past versions. Don’t make it meaningless.
This means that the journey to 120 would take a super ridiculous amount of time because the older content wasn’t nerfed.
This means that the cataclysm does not affect you until you’ve played through the WofLK content (which means no Cataclysm lower dungeon changes.)
This means maintaining the same level of difficulty through every stage of the game. No rare upgrades. No getting epic loot at level 20.
You keep the Classic difficulty level and required level of communication through the entire game!
In-game flying is limited to zones and circumstance. There should be no flying mounts used in Kalimdor nor the Eastern Kingdoms. Create logical quest lines for areas that might need them later. HOWEVER, you CAN use them in TBC and WotLK because they played integral roles in those expansions. It would be very simple to create storyline rationale for these situations.
This is all fantasy and completely undoable, but it’s what I would love most. It broke my heart seeing Northrend abandoned when I was leveling in BfA. My curiosity for the endgame content was the only thing that kept me going.
Mythic+ dungeons which reward caches with consumable/trade materials/non +ilvl rewards. Do a +15 SM get a cache that has 3 arcane crystals, some Large brilliant shards, a couple mongoose pots etc.
Voice acting and storytelling for the major classic lorepoints (I just completed the Tirion Fordring questline… Tealan was a boss!!! Getting out of Hearthglen still far more epic than most of modern wow).
Balance the consumable system like in TBC, should only be allowed 1 flask or 2 elixirs, 1 scroll, 1 misc juju/roid/firewater etc buff… pot cool down 1 minute.
Disable world buffs in instances (tribute, dragonslayer, warchiefs blessing etc), are fine for open world but should not be allowed in dungeons/raids/bgs.
Harder tuned “Mythic” raid content which rewards the same gear but skewed in favour of the better itemised drops (more bindings, more weapons, trinkets and tier pieces).
BC is perfect. Only things I’d change is the new badge gear introduced with Zul’Aman (remove some or most of it) and update the graphics
Honorable mention: Flying. I think flying was fine in BC, but I’d be okay if it was gone. I think a better option is to make it a 3-5 second cast so it’s still available for the content that requires it, but isn’t a free escape from WPvP
Others: Give Ret the talent where Judgement restores mana, remove the deadzone for Hunters, and nerf Warrior mace stun
I think that making the raids of classic more mechanically challenging and harder would be an improvement. Same for dungeons. Just don’t want them to do something absolutely horrible like adding different difficulties or things like that.
I’m a pretty strict no-changer/“mah slippery slope” kind of guy, so I don’t want to see any of this in reality (except the first one I guess); but if I got to design my own game, it’d be just what we have now, with:
Fix warlock/hunter/warrior bugs.
All instances 2 - 3x harder so that even the starter dungeons like RFC and Deadmines take hours, require a varied mix of classes, careful pulls, CC, constant resting, etc.
Disallow all addons and macros.
Preemptively: Please don’t bother raging at the last parts. I’m not asking for or saying it ought to be done. This is just my own personal idealized game.
There are other things in the game that IMO encourage bad behavior (ninja looting, tagging mobs, “stealing” nodes and chests in the open world, Redridge as a “contested zone”…). I’m not fond of the way some people approach these things, or that the design kind of compels and rewards jerks; but I still wouldn’t implement the fixes Blizzard applied, because I feel like they dumbed it down too much.
My idealized WoW would have the lore and RP elements of classic, but with more mechanics and interesting raid and dungeon fights from modern WoW. I’d like to see more BG and large scale PVP with objectives and sacking of cities etc. I’d like to see a versatile crafting system which sends people all over the world. I’d like to see all content in the world remain relevant. I’d like cool progression systems like in Legion sans RNG. The reason to play should not be gear, but rather, fun experiences. Dungeons should have a large pool of random boss abilities and wonky alternate paths to make the game seem more fresh. There should also be some sort of player created content like a WoW dungeon editor.