I feel like they could have done better from Vanilla to TBC to Wrath…
I know a lot will bring up that the old writers are gone…see the slop we have now in Midnight to make the point that the new writers seem not to care about the lore of previous expansions. But a hard reset would clear the way for writers to have the freedom to do better content while respecting the lore established before and then.
I feel like there are not a lot of options we have moving forward after defeating Disorder, Death, Void, and soon Order….
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The problem is people suffer from the Rose Tinted Glasses affect. The writers never cared about the lore or being consistent. They always operated with a Rule of Cool mindset, especially back then
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Short answer: Yes.
I don’t play Classic. If you want to go backwards, go play Classic.
And let’s be honest, all you are really suggesting here is ‘delete retail WoW’ and hope the next thing released is good. Basically, all the people interesting in Vanilla are playing Classic. Effectively getting rid of retail would just make most all retail players stop. It would be the end of WoW.
I don’t agree. I think some of that ‘no where to go’ narrative is a consequence of power creep expectations. We don’t actually have to keep fighting more and more powerful threats to have good stories. The next story after Last Titan could be a very down to earth threat.
There is really no upside to just deleting two decades of content.
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Nah I’m pretty easy going and just enjoy WoW for mostly what it is. I get pissed about the lack of balancing and PvP involvement from Blizz but when it comes down to it I really don’t care too much.
If they reset wow I’d simply continue playing. Heck they could reset everything including achievements and characters and I’d still play.
When people say they want a hard reset, or to go back to Classic without actually hopping on the Classic servers, its a short hand to bringing the story back a more grounded level where threats and issues where tangible, more material.
What set Classic apart from other expansions, and then TBC and Wrath, even Cata to a certain extent, is the stories that were more grounded in the world around us rather than some nebulous cosmic force. Its much easier to get into the setting when the largest issue you face is instability - raiders, bandits, breakaway kingdoms, Hogger, etc. You’re forced to engage in the world around you rather than this exterior force we have no real connection to.
So if there is a ‘reset’ of sorts, Im sure a lot of folks will still play. Hell, if they just bring the big bad back to some dragon doing coups and a cult hiding away in the cave under the city after the worlds been thoroughly smacked around and the factions cant retain control of all their traditional holdings then Im all game.
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I’d very much continue, yes.
I much preferred the initial feel of the game for story, setting, and perhaps most especially as Imfermal just stated, the threat level of our enemies and our place in the world.
It’s hard to avoid ramping those threats up over time to make the next one even MORE threatening than the last, but it just gets ridiculous. WoW’s gameplay has gotten even better in a lot of ways (certainly not all) and I’d be hard put to play the game without Transmog or some other things I’ve grown not just accustomed to but help motivate my play, but I would be thrilled if the setting went back to square one and it stayed more grounded (which does NOT mean less complex in terms of storylines!) and more where we’re a small part of a much larger world and its interaction, rather than what’s effectively become the reverse where the world is just a damsel for our demigods to save.
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I don’t think a hard reset would solve the underlying problem. Warcraft still has more than enough unused material in its existing races, kingdoms, and regions.
Blizzard just rarely follows through on it before moving to the next cosmic threat.
I’d rather see them scale the story back toward Azeroth and rebuild cultural and political depth than erase decades of lore only to risk repeating the same writing habits.
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WoW needs a writers room reset, not a setting reset. Though rewinding to a post Legion state wouldn’t hurt, I suppose.
Going all the way back to the vanilla world state it a tad too far.
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Or the bronze / infinite dragon flight just take us to alternate timeline. Free of titan influence And talk to chromie to experience the old timeline problem solved
It needs both along with a quest designer reset, to be honest.
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Cassic was fairly consistent. Later questlines built on earlier ones rather than contradicting them. Elements of the lore were reflected in the gameplay mechanics. And even the RPG source material was largely respected as well.
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Well yeah
id be same people writing and working on design/systems and all
So if dont like current stuff WHY would anyoen ever think same people suddnely would be totally different witha reset in their style?
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If i dont lose my transmogs and mounts no
Depends on their prirotities, I’d guess. There are mainly story complaints about tone, consistency and general writing quality, you are very unlikely to change the general quality without changing the team, sure. And while they might try to change the tone, we’re not getting early to mid 2000s culture and its (lack of) filters back in 2026. But pure consistency is another matter.
We’ve had 22 years of wildly meandering stories full of inconsistencies and soft and hard retcons. Characters don’t really fit their older iterations anymore, the cosmic lore was basically reinvented a decade into the game, stories that were planned and foreshadowed landed on the cutting room floor when the release schedule knocked, and we’re at a point where even interested and well-informed scholars of canon would have a hard time giving a new player a satisfying throughline of anything but the newest happenings.
And that’s where a lore cleanup and reset could help for some, and make it much easier to have a well-ordered story with well.ordered world-building in the future.
Probably much too little, way too late, but I can see some attraction there. A lack of faction conflict would be way less jarring in a world, where we didn’t start nukung cities, some cosmic masterplan would feel much more consistent if the writers actually build it in closer to the start, and so on. And then there is an element of “what story is there to lose right now?” as well.
Whatever, not happening anyways.
IT wouldnt
thast the thing
not with current writers
THEY CANT Keep consistency in 1expansion let alone patch
IF they COULD and yknow CARED abotu consistency and good writing theyd be doing it already
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I think a lot of people would be sore at losing their Blood Elves and Space goats.
Personally I don’t buy this whole theory of “warcraft was more grounded” back then. Warcraft was still based on cosmic interplanetary demons and magic - from Azshara and the Sundering through to the Orcs coming to Azeroth. This was the lore before World of Warcraft was released. The franchise didn’t suddenly become cosmic. We just experienced more and more of the universe as time went on.
It would be stupid to be playing for twenty years and not be known by others in the game. To be so inconsequential. As if we would be dealing with teenage curfews and the thefts of piglets for ever.
At least Sylvanas would seem to recognize us and our feats - especially Loyalists. There is continuity there that I enjoy.
I suppose this is mostly a lore discussion, but gameplay stuff is waaaay better than Vanilla. Warbound/Account wide progress, the Queue system, cross realm and cross faction play, the removal of weapon skills.
I am not one of those people who wants to redo Vanlilla. Would I keep playing… most likely. Leveling weapon skills was annoying and the epitome of a grind. Vanilla’s Gameplay is more of a turn off than anything with this idea.
Why would they, though? After 22 years with of changing faces within the company, the lore is an inconsistent mess, which makes keeping score at that point a kind of ridiculous proposition. I don’t think I’d care in their place.
But in the hypothetical (and impossible) scenario where I’m asked to help rebuild mit from the ground up, now that sounds like a much less ridiculous undertaking.
I’m not saying that we can’t say anything about the quality of the current crop of writers, but I am saying that under these conditions, there is very little reason to think we’ve seen their best, either.
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The difference is between engaging in the material consequences of intangible and mysterious cosmic forces and engaging the forces themselves, it is the scale. Magic, demons, undeath, nature, light, all of it existed but we weren’t going around smacking around the gods of death, fel, void, and the light.
The most cosmic we get from really Classic to about MoP, even WoD, were underlings. Powerful underlings, of course, but underlings nonetheless. Onyxia was just a dragon that knew subtly picking on an a very weakened kingdom. The Loa, even Hakkar, are often just one of many who’s strength is abstract. C’thun was the largest ‘cosmic’ issue we faced, but it was already an existing issue on Azeroth that was dealt with previously, as were all Old Gods. We interacted with the singular being, not the Void as an entire entity as we did with Dimensius or now Xal that’s sucked up all his juice, or the entire Pantheon + an extra entire world soul, or the entire realm of death and then the realm beyond cosmic realms.
The two are not nearly the same.
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Losing Void Elves, Monks, delves and other solo content? Yes, I would quit.
I dont really trust the modern WoW team. I would love a reset to vanilla but with visual and quality of life improvements. With the intent of retelling the story in a more linear and cinematic way.
But I do not trust their ability to pull it off. They would need to bring in some of the writers from Larian or something.
That’s an idea. Imagine a Baldur’s Gate or Divinity style Warcraft RPG. Blending that RPG from WoW and the top-down view reminiscent of the old RTS games. Tbh, that is probably what Warcraft really needs. A more narrative-friendly game genre. The MMO forces them to jump the shark with new raids and dungeons with big-stakes.
Give me a story-focused single player RPG.
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