You’ve just been named lead game designer

Community General Discussion
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theoretical: its 2024, SL was a failure. Subs are at an all time low

You’ve just been named WoWs lead game designer, the big wigs desperate need a list of changes you’d make to turn the game around.

What’s your new expansion called?
Brief storyline?
What are the core mechanics of the game?
Are there any returning/disappearing features?

What can you do to reclaim the glory days?

Azeroths fate is in your hands, champion
Heal her woonz

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To the MOOOOOON.

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Remove LFR.

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Theoretical?

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I’d probably just announce Wrath of the Lich King Classic and hit cruise control for a couple years.

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That long?

Time for WoW 2.
Void Lords and the Naaru clashed and destroyed the main universe.
We’re all in AU Azeroth now.

Plenty of opportunities to remake the game and change storylines.
Give Orcs/Draenei a new excuse to leave Draenor, maybe a Void invasion or whatever.

Main point: Make the devs engage with the community

End the stupid faction divide, everyone chooses their race and allegiance.
Anyone can group with anyone, anyone can kill anyone in war mode.
That’s real WARCRAFT, and that’s how a true RPG should work, with freedom of choices. Make bounty systems for PvP/PvE. Random events in the world.

Battlegrounds are fought between two distinct mercenary groups.
No class/race restrictions.

Copy everything good from other MMOs, especially professions and only needing one char for all classes from FF14 and some sort of Rift system.

Kill anything and everything CRZ. At most, keep sharding for heavily populated areas. Everything must happen in your own realm.
Bring LFG channel back. Leave LFD in realm.
Make LFR a true “see the story” mode.
Either players deal with queue times or quit, but the community would stay.

Elves and everything else become a single race, with multiple subraces.
Make more races playable: Ogre, Jinyu, Sethrak (sic), etc.

Revert PvE gearing to WotLK design and PvP gearing to WoD design.
Shift item power with item prestige at higher difficulties.
At the end of a gearing cycle (75% of a patch’s life), everyone must be able to be at the same item level, with higher difficulties allowing you to reach that plateau much sooner and giving unique looks.

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Assuming a “we screwed up and are going to redo the game” like FFXIV is off the table, first thing I’d do is say we want to make the game closer to the older style based on how popular classic was.

  1. Remove M+, possible turn them back to challenge modes without tying it to power. Include leaderboards and such per battlegroup to allow for the spirit of competition. M0 can stay potentially but not the d3 greater rifts style bs. MDI I’d like to remove but could stay only as special realms like arena for competition purposes. Bring back badges for all content to give a reason to keep running dungeons, possibly with some scaling magic to normalize gear so you never outgear them.

  2. Remove mythic raids (needs more work, possible a raid challenge mode?), have actual raid progression where earlier bosses are easier and later bosses are harder. Pay no attention to the top 20 or so guilds since they are so far off the curve as to be insignificant. This also helps to reduce the ilevel gap between tiers.

2a) new tiers do not invalidate previous ones at first. Maybe if there’s a third tier then the first one becomes irrelevant, or possibly that’s when the old tier gets nerfed but not obsoleted.

  1. LFR stays but gets tweaked to encourage playing not trying to afk (needs more work).

  2. merge servers into only battlegroups, remove CRZ (I guess technically it would be there but the battlegroup is like one giant server). LFG stays but is now battlegroup only. Idea being with battlegroup servers you’ll see these people frequently so it brings back some community but keeps the ease of LFG.

  3. no more borrowed power. Design goes back to mop style, maybe go back to talent trees at a later date but not at first (too jarring to switch, this would be something to look at for 11.0)

  4. implement a system like FFXIV has for dungeons, if someone is new there’s a bonus, have a commendation system to reward good players. Possibly scale dungeons to basically have permanent time walking to encourage running older dungeons and helping newer players.

  5. design encounters to be more visual and audible to eventually minimize/remove the need for add-ons like DBM.

Now expansion? I’d do the time jump to have a basically clean slate and pitch the game as what is basically WoW 2 but you keep your characters. Redo old azeroth again and set the whole xpac there.

That’s all I can think of for now.

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delete retail

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You’re fired already.

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Yep and give everyone their money back let em play the game for free till they make a decent Xpac I say.

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I update all character models and present several variations of them to the community for them to vote.
I update all the faction cities, taking Gnomeregan and Gilneas to current times, Hyjal for the Night Elves, updating Silvermoon (with flight) and cleansing Undercity. Plus a new city to be born in the end, constructed by both factions as a place to pvp with mixed groups, talk cross faction, and a raid there that allows you to do it with the opposite faction. Would be like a Dalaran, but made by both factions and ruled by one Horde leader and one Alliance leader (NOT HUMANS AND ORCS).

I make racial glyphs that works through some classes. Void Elves and Forsaken get to turn their fire mage spells to fpurple or void like. Night Elves get to turn their light spells to silver, among others.

Update Nightborne and add their Suramar version as well.

Paladin available to Night Elves and Forsaken or Orcs.
Faction related sets that are not “hey, the faction is humans or orcs!” More like class sets. And more heritage.

Storyline: There is tension in the Alliance with Anduin’s absence. Turalyon started an expansive mission to get more territory for the faction. The Horde, followed by it’s council, is divided in meeting the Alliance’s effort with the same aggression or trying to find a way to avoid a full war.

Join your race and discover a hidden plot as your race finds it’s own issues regarding the situation at hand and also trying to either solidify their military power or keep the balance of your faction.

Like class hall, each race will get it’s own storyline, that at some point will converge with the others. Discover what made Turalyon take his decision, witness Vol’jin’s rise as Loa of the Darkspear or Zandalari or both, see Baine having to man up and stand for his people, protect the Sunwell from the shadows it masks below alongside Lorthemar, bla bla bla. It’s early morning and I am not a writter.

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I’m liking it! When can I play?

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Name me lead dev :wink:

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I make an expansion that is similar to WOTLK. That expansion was perfect.

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Star craft MMO

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You wake up in your home city. You were hit by a falling rock during the Cataclysm and everything after that has just been a bad dream.

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If I were elected Lead Game Designer, I would take us back home and make Azeroth relevant again!

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World of Warcraft: The Drunken Crusade

“Champion! Azeroth …hic! needs ya! The women are all lacking beards and you must…” Wake up in a random bar across Azeroth and realize that the past since the defeat of the Lich King was all a terrible dream. You stumble out of the bar back to your next exclamation marker ! near by and get your next assignment killing boars.

  • Travel to amazing dungeons and 25 man raids both regular and heroic.
  • Level up as the world around you doesn’t level with you. That way you can pwn the heck out of that one annoying mob who always harassed you when you started for spites sake.
  • Real character progression that follows you in to the next expansion with an actual talent tree that expands with each new level cap unlocked in future expansions.
  • Flying unlocked per character by gold or through optional path finder for account.
  • Revamp of all items to allow for dying.
  • Revamp of professions so you build things up and make use of things.
  • Beards for all the ladies.
  • Balanced PvP? Eh maybe… we’ll see since this started out as a mostly PvE game with a PvP option. I’ll see if Scotty can do something with it. One things for sure there will be merchants and currencies.
  • No more AP based reward systems. You get loot, may be junk, may be useful, who knows but at least it’s something more tangible then blue kool-aid.

Please note that development and delivery time will be based on my blood alcohol content…hic!

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Another thing I would do is try to apply the FFXIV approach o how LFR is. Basically in FFXIV the Duty Finder (dungeon/raid finder) is positioned as the default way of doing content, and the higher end stuff (EX/Savage I think?) is optional for those who wan an organized challenge. This would be the equivalent of having LFR be he normal way of doing a raid and then Normal/Heroic (i’d remove Mythic remember) is the 100% optional “if you want higher challenge with a dedicated group of friends” difficulty.

In fact I think LFR should have been delayed until MoP and positioned that way rather than thrown in at the end of Cata and pitched as being an easy mode raid.

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YOU’VE JUST BEEN NAMED LEAD GAME DESIGNER

And all of the people on the forum hate you for no other reason than you don’t do what they want even if they even have a clue on how to create games.

3 Likes