I hate to say it, because even in spite of what it has become, i still love WoW, but i think Blizzard lost everyone that made their games awesome and special. The modern WoW team has no vision for their game that isn’t aimed at just sending every player on an endless treadmill of grinding, except now without the beauty of epicness, discovery, society, and exploration that WoW of yesteryear had. I don’t think there is any hope for Blizzard to break free from their Activision masters and actually make a decent change to WoW, much like Squaresoft hasn’t made a decent game since Enix bought them. Still, 15 years of a sub MMO is nothing to sniff at. That’s a lot of good memories in my book, even though the writing is pretty much on the wall that the game is on its last legs. I wish it weren’t so but all good things must end eventually.
The next expansion? No. The next expansion is almost certainly well into the design phase already, if not actual programming and pre-alpha.
The one after? Possibly, if Classic does really well and holds a constant population well beyond Blizzard’s expectations.
The thing is, there’s only so much that can be added back from Vanilla WoW into the current game. Group finder isn’t going away, and Class quests for abilities aren’t coming back. Neither are Reagents like Soul Shards or Rogue poisons, or Hunter ammo.
I’m not sure what’s left after that. Maybe dungeon design? But every time Blizzard makes dungeons require anything more than pulling an entire room and AoEing everything down, the forums go ballistic and Blizzard ends up nerfing everything.
So while Classic might do well enough for Blizzard to look at ways to implement some of its design philosophy into the expansion after next, I’m not sure there’s any space for them to do so.
Probably somewhat
As you said they went too far, but when ever they say stuff like that they move the goal post for went too far onto a different field, instead of stretching it.
God, i miss glyphs and LK Inscription so much. That was my first profession on my first real WoW character and glyphs added so much to the game AND made Inscription actually feel useful. But no, we can’t have players take ownership of expanding their available class moves and utility on their own, lets give them crappy barren talent trees instead.
I think it’d be obvious to Blizzard to understand that certain aspects of classic are still very much “good”, such as the old talent trees and less homogenized classes.
I don’t think LFR or LFD, among other things, will ever be removed.
However, I think there needs to be something put in to greatly distinguish a casual LFR player from a dedicated Heroic/Mythic player in retail - since currently there isn’t. Everyone blends in, and a large portion of your time investment doesn’t feel rewarding, not to mention the cash shop of full of awesome looking mounts that could’ve been relatively unobtainable to the masses from a hard-to-achieve feat.
Legendary’s need to be legendary.
Talent tree’s need to be less boring.
Classes need to bring their own unique utility to the table again.
PvP needs to be rewarding again, since all rewards were removed from PvP and arena teams also being removed from the game. Whoever decided this - you are the bane of my existence.
PvP currency needs to be re added as well for honor rewards as an arena “prerequisite” and justify’s any PvP grind.
WPvP you say? Zones such as WG and TB no longer being made makes me ill.
I think daily zones can feel more rewarding if some of the exalted rewards were BiS until Mythic progression.
Professions need their unique perks back, along with being able to make 1 or 2 BiS items until Mythic progression.
Meta helmet sockets need to be revived, along with gem slots period instead of just being this illusive weird thing.
I could go on about what GOOD ideas Blizzard has put into the game and then turned around and removed them.
Honestly, I’d like to see them to do more content in vanilla. We have Uldum in tanaris that can be expanded… Hyjal was never introduced fully. Theres more land opportunity instead of going through the dark portal. I’m sure we can pull on some of the lore a bit to really keep Classic going… Imagine what you can create out of northern EPL? Can even look further into Twilight portals from the dragons.
Would be interesting to say the least.
Honestly, I do not see a retail expansion being influenced too much by Classic.
Retail has far too much stuff for it to ever return to a more classic system. It’ll probably keep going the way it’s going until it becomes unprofitable to keep the retail dev team making new content.
It’d be far easier to cater to the classic+ community through classic, than retail. The people who end up playing classic would be the fanbase that generally likes the older systems, the ones who enjoy retail are more than likely happyish with the way it’s going or they would have quit already.
So yes, I could see a Classic+ type of server(s) coming out eventually, perhaps it’s just TBC, perhaps it’s Classic+. Either way it’d be based from the classic side and not the retail side I think.
God one can only hope. All the free gear from everywhere has watered down the loot to the point where nothing feels rewarding to do in the game anymore. The last thing I felt rewarded about was operation mechagon and I made a post about how much fun it was and how it could be harder and reward better loot and I’d still be okay with it.
Yeah, the old glyph system made things feel special when you got that glyph. It wasn’t a cosmetic only feature, it fundamentally altered how you approached the game.
One of the things I am hopeful for in Retail is that, if 9.0 is a trip to the Shadowlands, or N’yalotha, or some other world, that Blizzard uses that as a way to tie in some major changes for 10.0, both in game systems and the game world. How many of the problems in WoW could be solved if the world content was actually DIFFICULT again? Perhaps a Void Invasion or whatever could be used to ‘reset’ the world into something more akin to the feel of Classic.
I definitely remember how awesome it felt to be a bear tank and have the glyph to make my Maul cleave. Man, that felt good. I love what the expansions have added as far as territory, new races, raids, and most of the dungeons. I dislike most of the changes to classes (although i do really like the new classes) since early LK. I feel like even as late as LK, i was cobbling my mage’s, druid’s, and DK’s movesets and talents together to forge my own combat style. The game has lost this entirely and suffered immensely for it, in my opinion. The art, music, and story presentation (sadly, most times, not the story itself) have largely remained great or improved with each expansion but the game has lost the social soul. What happened to meaningful, challenging, and useful professions, to the playground pickup game feel of finding a dungeon group, to actual RPG mechanics in class roles and combat? I want those back.
Next expansion would have to fix so much.
I believe current WoW is almost dead not by another game but by its developers.