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[Column] General: 5 Things We Want from WoWs Legion Expansion
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Warlords of Draenor has not been a successful expansion for World of Warcraft. It started out with a huge amount of hype and lots of potential, but all of that quickly faded once the honeymoon period wore off. After the fresh coat of paint on the surface rubbed away, players were left with repetitive garrison missions and a neverending grind. The story was interesting, but that only lasts for a short while.
Read more of David Jagneaux's The List: 5 Things We Want from WoW's Legion Expansion.
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Comments
Five expansions are proof enough that expansion number 6 will be more of the same.
They only people who seem to think things are different are those who want to believe they are different. You call it rose colored glasses for the nostalgia types... well those who think they are actually getting something new are just as blind. A dungeon is a dungeon whether it has a new coat of paint or not. You clear trash and you kill a boss and loot a reward. Nothing will ever change with that. Having 1 or 100 dungeons in an expansion doesn't make any difference. People seem to think that killing 10 rats is repetitive but killing 10 naga in a dungeon in order to get to the boss is not. Wake up.
WoW isn't magically going to become something different than it has been for the past 10+ years overnight just because you wish for it. You either like repetition or you don't. Games are repetitive by nature... whether you choose to repeat them is a choice.
5) fewer quest hubs, more auto quest completes.
4) Open world pvp daily quests, like rifts system.
3) Hard as hell areas, not just at cap, where you need to group.
2) Horizontal progression
1) NO garrisons and less lobby game play. Get us out of the cities and exploring.
"Its better to look ugly and win than pretty and lose"
WoW's underlying design (steep vertical progression, dungeons, raids etc) only works when you have a very high population. This is because vertical progression segments the community based on their level of progression, i.e. you can only do raid x if you have gear y.
The older WoW gets and the more the community shrinks, the more important it is going to be for WoW to rethink these core design principles.
That's because the experience of WoD from 90 to 100 was and still is a great time. It's when that is all over that it becomes the typical WoW raid heavy endgame that only a small percentage of players actually enjoy. The old bait and switch again that has plagued the game since launch, great leveling game that turns into something completely different at cap and only appeals to a niche type of player. Like the above article mentions, horizontal progression is how you solve that dilemma in this genre and Blizzard has never learned that...yet. Artifact weapons and the pvp system seems like they might be turning in the right direction.
You forgot, two other things.
1: Dehomogenization of class specs especially for classes like the Rogue and Hunter.
2: To fullfill the lifelong request by Beast Master hunters everywhere for a Tank Spec. (and no you didn't need to create a whole new class for one.)
A more in-depth character customization system like what was in the original game as the current system is pathetic.
Yeah WoD was a really good expac at first.
The problem, imo, is that Blizz really went full hog on the raid or die mentality and PvP was, as usual, lopsided in balancing and almost impossible to compete once the 24/7 players got their gear. They, amusingly, forgot about the casuals. LFR was gutted, it was a joke to play and the rewards were useless. They wanted to force everyone into "real raiding" and use the group finder tool. Yeah great, but that only lasts for a while before it becomes apparent at how much of a pain it is to use and the time spent waiting. And forget wiping and learning, at least in MoP's version of LFR people could just hop in and out and you could just keep attempting. In group finder you will lose a good tank or your healers and then you're sitting there looking for another for 30 minutes just to try again only to wipe and have those that joined immediately leave. It was good at first, but quickly ended up taking much much longer to do anything than even I had patience or time for.
Legion needs to bring back MoP style LFR. Who cares if the hardcore raiders complain about "having" to run it because their guild makes them. That's their problem. LFR is fun and let's people get almost Tier quality gear without the hassle of sitting around listening to a bunch of senior guild members discuss how some top guild did it on youtube - bleh.
PvP had the same "if you're not playing a Blizz favored class, gtfo" sense about it, along with huge gear gaps.
And yeah Garrisons got a little boring after a while, but raiding and PvP being more hardcore focused than ever really was the downfall. Everything in WoD was excellent except for those two activities, which make up most of the end game progression. It looks like they're changing up the PvP reward system, which is good, but they really need to restore LFR and let us filthy casuals have fun.
5 things Legion needs to do (IMO) to bring players back:
1. Revamp 1-100 leveling experience. Greatly increased XP gain, highlighting key, relevant stories/zones and quest chains
-tell the overview of the story, best-of zones/quest lines, etc.
-skip the dozens of side-chains and previous-expansion focused stories
-all that old content available in zones after you complete main storyline for achievement/lore hunters
2. Revamp talent system - now that PvP specific talents are getting their own talent pane, do the same on the PvE side with the current 3 choices every 15 levels thing, but then also include a point-per-level system for upping your characters stats starting at level 10. Progresses past level 110. Call it Path of the Titans or something
-current talent setup is boring
-good to have some points to spend/measurable interaction for each level up
-Give secondary stats meaning again, better differentiate characters
3. Revamp professions
-useful, interesting craftables for level 1-110
-not terribly grind-heavy
-quest-based progression at key milestones
-shared resource nodes ala GW2
4. New open world PvE activities
-about time WoW jumped on the public event bandwagon
-more world bosses and mini-bosses (MoP had some of these, was cool but ultimately pointless)
-open world mega-dungeons - large zones dedicated to ad-hoc and structured group enemy bashing
5. Discounts/deals for long-time players on subscriptions
-13.99 for players who have subbed 12-23 months total
-12.99 for 24-35
-11.99 for 36-47
-10.99 for 48-59
-9.99 for 60-71
-8.99 for 72-83
-7.99 for 74-95
-6.99 for 96+
Boobs are LIFE, Boobs are LOVE, Boobs are JUSTICE, Boobs are mankind's HOPES and DREAMS. People who complain about boobs have lost their humanity.
And you my friend are the reason wow became a piece of stinky shit. Because the devs listened to you actually and made this wonderful game a casual friendly facebook game. I bet you didnt like shared horde alliance quest zones where ganking was frequent too...right? Well you got your wish. Go play WoD now.
hehe, funny how you started with points that wont happen
5) has already been said, the garrison was a draenor thing and will have no value in the comming addons
4) gl with that, what i saw in the vid so far were demon models i already knew in new colours ^^
3-1 can only be hoped for, got no infos on that beside the fact that demon hunters are the 2nd hero class and will start at 90 or 95
"I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"
They need a huge change. WoW was such a big success in the beginning (and many years after) due to the open world PvP (imho). It gradually lost interest by many who merged over to PvE servers and I think a huge part of the excitement of the game died.
No more expansions, what is needed is a third faction, with new races, classes and a restructured world where RvR matters. Use the lore, content, and everything that WoW has to offer mean something again, by offering realm rewards for winners, and big penalties for losers. Also, how about a more robust death penalty system that actually penalizes you with item loss! What am I saying...I will go back to sleep now. -
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, Death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
My 5 Legion Top Picks / Wants / I Was Promised A Pony:
1/ Flight. Yes. Flight. From launch. There, got it out of the way.
2/ Guild Halls. Class Order Halls will do for now. I suppose a guild leader could invite guildees to a garrison, but it's not the same thing.
3/ Give the players a reason to socialize in faction cities other than the capital hubs. MoP Shrine was the closest they got to in recent times, but Ironforge hanging out is missed. The capitals other than SW and Org are ghost towns with tumbleweed rolling around at the moment. What a waste.
4/ Kill all the things. Demons, I mean. Demon Hunters look good, the Elf only requirement raised an eyebrow but wasn't too much of a shock. I'm ok with this new Hero class but wouldn't mind a Bard class in the future expacs.
5/ If it's going to be a theme park, make it wonderful. I hope the Broken Isles look amazing, I love to immerse. I hope Legion catches that ambience.
Can't bring myself to play as it's just daily apex questions, Garrison repetition and I can't stand raiding just to get a piece of gear that the next expansion will give me for completing a quest.
The game really needs to catch up with 2015 people - rinse and repeat is rather tedious now.
Here's my list.
1. A complete professions revamp in a way that feels meaningful, rewarding but not monotonous. As an example, they could introducing things like partially random generated item stats. As your skills improves so too will the random stats increase with each item created.
Another example is to introduce step processes to crafting. Such steps for example could be folding steel, sharpening and polishing for weapons/armour. Have it so that one step might have an x/hr cooldown period before progressing to the next step. If it takes a day rather than 5 seconds to create certain types of items it becomes more meaningful.
The auction house used to be a great way for players to interact through trade. Many times in the past I had whispered or been whispered to by players wanting to discuss items on the AH. As players became more self-sufficient with garrisons the need for players to use the AH reduced. Making crafting meaningful again will increase interaction between players.
2. Give players the choice to level from 1-100 in Azeroth alone rather than go through the dead areas of old expansions if they don’t wish to. In other words rescale the zones of Azeroth. The more people running around the continent the more alive it feels.
If the world feels empty people will lose interest.
3. Once crafting is improved bring back random world drops of recipies as well as epic items so that levelling/questing/exploration has that element of excitement when something unexpected drops.
4. Re-introduce socialization. Garrisons, though a very decent concept failed. It further removed players from having to interact with fellow gamers as it became a player’s one-stop shop so to speak. The introduction of the class specific halls may turn out to be a good idea though I don’t feel this will be the solution to improving socialization.
If they could change the garrison from an individual player’s area to a guild area this could vastly improve the feeling of player mateship. When a player collects herbs, ores etc. have it go directly into the guild bank. Create guild group daily quests again where all rewards go to the guild for GM distribution. Don’t have too much to do here though as we will see the same problems arise with people staying in the guild garrison. Make it a meeting point before commencing raiding etc.
5. Bring back difficulty across the board. Have levelling in a new expansion take several months for the average player not days. If everyone’s aware they can reach max level within a few days they will try to do so. If they’re aware it will likely take several months they’ll more likely slow down and group with friend to enjoy the levelling experience.
If you’re going to keep increasing new items levels with patches introduce harder world PvE creatures or increase current ones to keep the open world challenging/exciting. It gets boring pulling 5 mobs the same level as you only to AOE them in seconds.
TLDR - Introduce open world aspects that promote socialization and make the world feel more challenging.
Honestly I do not want another WoW expansion. I have done enough of them now and they bring/offer less and less with each one. I bet it will take less than 3 weeks game play to max out all these new weps. It will take less than 3 weeks to level cap. This last one had content for about 30 days till you ran into a brick wall. I was able to level 4 characters from 90 to 100 in less than 2 months. After that all there was to do was raid or garrison. Not sure what Blizz is thinking but if the goal was to have me subscribe for less and less time every expansion they have succeeded. I am down to 2 months and most likely passing on this next one.
Now what would get me come back for more than a fly by, pay a premium for, would be a roll back time locked server like EQ and now EQ2 has done that brings the original game back with no expansions with the old leveling curve, but it would also need the class structure and trees as they were. That I would come back for and they would most likely get at least 12 - 15 months from me if it was really the launch version of the game. I think they would find an enormous player base that would come back and sub for more than 60 days for this. It also would save millions on development costs.
I do not want any more new content, what I want is what WoW once was, not what is has become.
An interesting list, limited to only 5 things. I'll respond to the five and then give further comment.
#5 Improved Garrison
It befuddled me, and clearly a lot of people, why Blizzard didn't choose to make Garrisons a Guild function within the expansion. They could have made it that the Guild did things to improve the Garrison which in turn offered members bonuses. For example, take the crafting buildings. The members donate resources to unlock recipes for members to purchase. This would have encouraged people to go out into the world to gather goods rather than simply using the mine and herb garden. Progressing in these would then unlock other buildings like the Trading Post etc., which themselves would require contributions to further open up their own options. Monuments and Trophies (purely cosmetic changes to the Garrison) could then be tied to Guild Progress in the expansion. The amount of contributions could have been tied to the size of the Guild to ensure smaller Guilds were not discriminated against, and that relative contributions remained equitable. People who were playing the game solo could still have accessed these things via the auction house. I believe this could then be a system that could carry over and be expanded upon in future expansions. The Class Halls would be something that ran concurrently with the Guild Garrison, given we're going back to Azeroth, a new Garrison could be established in one of the capital cities, or to simply choice Ogrimmar or Stormwind.
#4 Fewer Recycled Assets
I would have liked to see that dungeons and raids not only gave interesting fights, but also gave us a deeper insight into our enemy supplying us with new information about our enemies. A principal of war is to know your enemy. Have we learned actually anything new about The Burning Legion, The [Iron] Horde and Draenei (and other inhabitants of Draenor), or indeed conversely have we learned new information on how this shapes our factions? While we have been through much in this journey from Vanilla and before, should we think that we know everything? Where is the intrigue? I remember, as probably do many, the Wraith Gate event - it was a prime example of something meaningful that widened our knowledge of our enemy and of ourselves. The Horde and Alliance at times can be entirely two dimensional. If you read the books you know both Alliance and Horde have serious internal politics, aside form external manipulations. It shouldn't take a Garrosh Hellscream for us to realise that within our factions, and the sub-factions within them, there are internal conflicts all the time - that is the nature of government and political organisations. Certainly the same would be for our enemies. There have been some since WoTLK, but they don't leave me marvelling at the complexity of this amazing universe, especially when you have read the books. I'm not saying they don't exist, they are peppered throughout, and Pandaria gave us for example insights into the Pandas world, but it seemed all Pandas are united, which is really bizarre, because that is rarely the case in life.
#3 Continuation of improved levelling
I'd like to see more of levelling experience tied not only to the progress of our factions but a real feeling that our sub-factions (the individual races, as well as those we've come across in previous expansions like the Cenarion Circle etc) own goals, which may not always be aligned with the factions overall, while at other times would be complementary. For example, if I were Forsaken, I would like to see quest-lines entirely for the Forsaken which might pursue matters which would deal with not only stopping any repeat of rebellion, but also advance the cause of sovereign rights within The Horde over growing their number, access to new territories etc. Going from #4 Spy missions within our faction could be interesting, meaningful, and a place for both serious and comedic encounters. It could also tie back to previous expansions sub-factions. Paladins furthering the Argent Crusade and it's appendages; Mages for Dalaran etc. Sometimes it feels like previous sub-factions have ceased to exist until major plots unfold, but there is no good reason why they wouldn't be constantly advancing their causes. It's not like within the 2 year cycle there isn't ample space for filler material.
#2 Horizontal Progression
The decision to simplify the skill trees was the wrong one I believe. I really do think they should have looked at things like Rift or TSW etc and gone for more meaningful complexity rather than less. You still would have found cookie cutter builds, but it would have established that these were those without the time or know-how to be adventurous, not that they spec you must have. Horizontal progression I think can be done well when it adds flavour and ties in with the lore of the world, in particular with previous expansions. That last bit is something I would like to see more of. That the class sub-factions of an expansion offer new advancements based upon their own advancement within a previous expansion. So WoTLK undead lore and cold environment based abilities unlocked during the beginnings of Cataclysm; Draconic lore and environmental healing abilities unlocked during the beginning of Pandaland, and during the beginning of this expansion some type of Sha purification abilities unlocked.
#1 Balance between Quest and non-Quest content
I hope the above comments have actually given some way of actually fleshing out this item. But I agree with the author of this column - it is really important they work on this. I feel there should be so much diversified and staggered content that a completionist junkie would still be going for a little into the next expansion. I know people are content locusts, and that is why I think staggering the content release is important. It's not as if Blizzard hasn't made enough profit that they couldn't do this. Instead when my Guild and I raided on the weekend I observed "Well this is all we have to do for the next 10-12 months, which is kind of depressing, given how much time, little alone money we have sunk into the game. They could build a separate team to do no-core adventuring, so as to help make the world more complex, more fuller, than the main task at hand.
O.k. Here's some other things -
Flying: I like that flying is tied to achievements, but it has to make some kind of sense. The way flying has been done in the past didn't make a lot of sense. Why are the airways of Pandaland different to Stranglethorn? Why is flying over Winterspring's cold climate different to flying over Northerend's cold climate? What is it that I'm trying to master here? A little added interaction during and after the achievement progress regarding flying would help I think. You know a goblin saying "Well commander after the brave sacrifice of a dozen wyverns you provided and the auspicious use of many featherfalls our flying school mages can definitely rule out flying at 30,000 feet in this area. Our insurance agents aren't so happy though. So now the question remains of......"
Server-based factional achievements progressing over-arching story via dailies: Again relative to the population size getting the whole faction (those willing and interested anyway) to engage dailies in a more meaningful and visceral fashion. Dailies that contribute to the war cause in a way that makes sense as to why we are dong the same thing over and over and over again. Resource gathering, intel gathering, new trade negotiations, etc. Things that in life tak time and the efforts of large groups "Commander we need 1 million tonnes of stone to repair Orgrimmar's walls, and a small glade's worth of trees to rebuild houses after Deathwing's last overpass. All heroes are called to help. Rough stone, Draenic Stone, we don't care, just bring it and bring it fast! So that hundred pieces of stone you have there equals about a quarter of a tonne. Just out of interest boss, how did you get your mount to even move with all that stone?" Dailies are really horrible without them having some sense of an end-date, and meaningfulness. You could also make if the server-based faction doesn't meet the goal by a certain time then a different group of dailies occurs, dealing with that consequence. Perhaps this goes a little of the way to making belonging to a server something special.
Phasing certainly could help with minor graphical updates like the above example, or with intel gathering, subtle changes to the world. Slaughter a gazillion mobs should at some point see that area depleted of those mobs and an increase in other types of mobs (no wolves in area anymore watch the prey boom & the Cenarion Circle become concerned with them overeating the area and starving), and therefore the end of that bunch of related dailies. A new series of events brings a new set of server-based faction relevant dailies. Going back to the previous point about making previous-expansion sub-factions relevant seems also another place for meaningful dailies.
PvP: Completely separate PvE and PvP mechanics. I'm not sure how much computational draw this would take to switch on-the-fly and behind the scenes, but hopefully not that much with the amount of processing power computers have these days. I think what they plan in The Legion is finally heading in that direction. We'll see if it makes PvP'ers and PvE'ers and those people who do both satisfied within reason.
Crafting: I'd like to see previous expansion mats be used to add flavour to current crafting pieces. Gold may be a Vanilla (is that right?) ore, but it's still gold. It's valuable and the prime currency, but it still has excellent values in conducting electricity which could be used to flavour shaman gear and weapons etc. I'd make it actually more complex than that.
I'd also like to se crafting profession rely on each other more than I supply raw materials to you and you make me 'x' piece. Perhaps this could come in the rare and epic gear where the difficulty of producing something requires the work of a few different professions, maybe with legendary requiring every profession, as well as normal gathering of 'unique' materials from raids and dungeons. It shouldn't be too hard to balance out so everyone has something to contribute, and might even stimulate the economy more. Going to such effort, also helps define some of the difference between greens and, blues and, purples.
"Superfluous" zones: In WoD the Devs mentioned they had another zone which they were going to add but that it didn't feature because it didn't tie into the over-arching story. So what they could have had three more 'non-core' zones and I would have explored theme eventually! It sounded really interesting, and why must a whole world simply be about defeating x, y, z enemies. Having the rides in a theme park solely about one thing is actually far less fun than mixing things up. The Vanilla world is a classic example of this, and why I found levelling my alts through it actually less 'poke-my-eyes-out-with-chop-sticks' than actually getting all my toons through the latest expansion. I don't want my 9 toons all doing the exact same thing all the time. I have no issue with 70% repetition maybe but I do want the other 30% able to cater for the fact the game allows for that many alts.
2 year cycle - I don't want them to lessen the time between expansions, I want them to fill it up with much more stuff. They can afford it, and perhaps that would increase sub sustainability.
This is all off the top of my head, so apologies in advance for any glaring errors.