2: If there is to be borrowed power make a special talent row that changes every expansion . Make the row xpac specific and when the xpac ends all talents are replaced by talents for the next xpac
2.1: Above would give new talents each xpac like people without the bloat of the past
2.2 : If the talents are to be rep based ,make them earnable while leveling and if additional power is part of them then let ranks be earned while earning rep with the factions.
3: Make the story, quests, raids , dungeons and even pvp more of the focus of content and less on things like artifact power, azerite etcetera as the focus.
4: Maye do more frequent smaller patches that add some kind of content every so often . (Doesnât have to be a large raid tier patch , maybe a little side patch that sends us to find information to lead us to the next raid patch.)
Just a few ideas .They might not be the best but they are ideas.
Remove faction barrier - but require grinding faction with each individual race to be able to enter their city.
Go back to 1 level of dungeon and raid.
Get rid of the platform mechanics in the world/dungeons and raids - act like an MMORPG and not Super Marion Bros.
Make raiding like it used to be 72 man like EQ or the dumbed down 40 man like WoW but actually only need like 15 to 25 players who know what they are doing. Make the guild / group boss the toughest boss.
GO back to schools of magic and resists.
Have prepping before a battle more important than line dancing during a battle.
GO back to simple rotations - I am fine with shadow bolt spam.
Make mana management a required skill again.
Same with ago management on DPS part.
Just a few off the top of my head.
Most important, go back to Vanilla style maps that have one level. Not these new maps that are 10 wide by 10 levels tall.
âYou are now loathed with Stormwind. Access to city, but no benefits beyond Rest Zone experience. You are now neutral with Stormwind. Shopkeepers now interact with you, and you may use portals, but good luck getting to revered because you ran out of quests.â
LOL I have no problem getting revered with an opposing faction if they wanna do an insane style grind. Why would I?
It doesnât have to come from quests, just mobs that are the main antagonists of each race in their starting areas / leveling path. I.E. Kill Dark Iron dwarves around / inside Blackrock Mountain to get friendly with DwarvesâŚ
EDIt - I would say you canât come inside at loathed, you would be Kill On Sight just like now. You would have to work your way up to be let in. I have to admit I miss EQs faction system. Especially if you say were able to go in to the city and everything was fine, till you ran into the paladins on a different faction system and they outright slaughtered you
Bleed the stuck pig till itâs dry! There is gonna be some stiff competition from Riot and Ashes of Creation in a few years so no real changes unless we start to lose money.
I wouldnât change a thing with the developers or artists, the game isnât broken. The demands of some players are simply unrealistic.
I would hire a number of GMs to hang out in servers 24 / 7 to handle things in real time, bots, idiots in trade, you know the things.
And I would give them permission to drop a mythic raid boss in a random city or town from time to time, that dropped current loot, just to make things interesting.
For me what made the game a success initially (outside of the Blizzard and Warcraft name) was its accessibility. I see the hardcores frothing at the mouth already over this comment, but its just the truth.
I hardcore raided in Everquest. While I enjoyed the game it was blatantly apparent to me that requiring no life to progress and cutting out 90% of the playerbase was a major problem for the genre.
Along comes WoW and suddenly you can have a life and actually play a mmo and get somewhere. It was amazing. They also made a tiny portion of the game for the tryhards which I do agree with as it does give all of us something to aim for. But it was a tiny portion.
Here is the problem. There are a large group of vocal people in this game now that are convinced the game is more accessible now than it was in Vanilla. I disagree big time. As a casual player in Vanilla yes it took me a while to level, but I could do it. I could also do regular dungeons (the hardest difficulty level) no problem without addons.
I even did a few Molten Core bosses on again the hardest difficulty level in a mish mash guild.
There is no way I am going any of the hardest content now. I am basically completely locked out of it. I get to tour raids and dungeons on walk through difficulty, but I have no real progression path in this game outside of just waiting for world quests to catch me up. Not only that, I found I had to play MORE to barely keep up as a casual with daily chores, not less.
I donât see this changing. Too many vocal hardcore players will kick and scream about making the game more skill based, more exclusive, more catered towards them being the answer. When it happens and subs drop, they will throw up their arms and blame the game for being too accessible, and the answer is to make it even more hardcore. The casual player wonât say too much they will just move on so Blizzard gets no feedback.
There is only one thing I would do and which is impacting the game right now.
If you squash characters YOU bloody well make sure that those characters can solo old freaking content that has NO baring on the current expansion; if for no other reason than to keep players in the game and enjoying what THEY determine to be FUN. NOT the developer!
I mean the game changed. I also played EQ back then. I raided a bit but nothing insane. But the game wasnât focused on the endgame content until PoP came out from then onward the game was a lot about, but that was after Brad had left and you could see that EQ was shifting toward âhardcoreâ content and away from casual leveling grouping content.
Honestly WoW will be fine in terms of itâs numbers. Itâs the largest, and most polished Western MMORPG around. The only thing I see is the game shows itâs age with a severe lack of any type of matchmaking, content thatâs not meant to be done in the blink of an eye, and essentially taking the idea of a MMORPG and making it match the eye-hand speeds of League, Overwatch, and CS:GO.
Every player is different but I think in order to make the game more fun and accessible and entice players to play more often Iâd add Ranked Dungeon Finder, Player Housing, and some kind of explorer mode. Not sure what that last one would look like, but I think for any type of MMORPG of the next generation there needs to be a reward and system in place for an ever changing mode to just explore. Torg is kinda that, but not really because itâs too closely tied to iLvl and doesnât offer any rewards.
Uhhâyou ever Q in overwatch ranked? That. That same idea. Game takes your skills, assigns you a score, you play with other players in your bracket and if you want more rewards then you improve.
I left before PoP. I did some content in Luclin but was pretty much done by then. I would say early EQ the game had a fair bit of focus on hardcore, the player base was extremely casual. I remember sitting in group waiting for spawns teaching each other our languages for RP purposes. I miss those types of mmoRPG players.
It still amazes me every time someone tried to pound their chest about how hardcore WoW is. My entire SWG guild of RL friends went EQ2 because it was for hardcore gamers with high end rigs and WoW was the kiddie game with cartoon graphics - (basically Hello Kitty). It wasnât just my friends either. I came to WoW because I could rather easily level solo (but I am too lazy to do it now in Classic)
I guess that pretty much sums it up. Most players left EQ or other games to play WoW because it was easy. WoW got easier and we liked it enough till Wrath. WoW then tried to go hardcore in Cata and itâs been downhill ever since. They Brough back Classic in itâs simple hardcore (in relation to EQ) and many people I know prefer the Classic game, just want the easier leveling so they stay in the easier leveling game of Retail
Its very easily fixable. Dont fix things that arent broken.
Focus on the new content.
Get rid of all the stat squish and level squish .
Give people choices on everything
Let hardcore have a choice hardcore like WM or easy mode for some and easier mode for rest.
Stop trying to design around Raids.
Stop making separate power schemes. Give more talents and let people decide what they want.
Make everything SIMPLE. Get rid of convoluted systems.
Get rid of timers in m+.
Its ok for people to get LOOT. Its not a NOBEL prize in PHYSICS that only certain people deserve.
