New WoW expansion to be announced at Gamescom

Chooch

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/19841681/new-world-of-warcraft-expansion-unveiling-at-gamescom-2015-live-stream-august-6-7-29-2015

Thrax

I guess everyone was right. Warlords of Draenor was the most expensive and shortest-lived expansion in WoW history! Great job, Blizzard!

Q: What happens when you lose paying subscribers?
A: You shift your revenue focus to guaranteed boxed sales, and increase boxed sale opportunities with more frequent expansions!

primesuspect

Can't wait to see where this one takes us

Thrax

So, we're about 48 hours away from this announcement. What do you want to see from the next expansion? I have some ideas:

1. Blizzard should change the internal data structures of their content (e.g. encryption), which would render it impossible to datamine. We've spoilered ourselves out of WoW's mystique by knowing everything before we experience it personally.
2. More randomness in loot tables. Blizzard was on the right path with escalating iLvls, bonus attributes, warforging, etc. I would like to see this expanded and combined with much wider loot tables that reward kooky or class-specific items. Why does every weapon need to have the same speed on it?
3. Mythic dungeons on day one. I want to be able to progress to ~heroic raiding ilvls through 5-man content of escalating difficulty (norm->hero->mythic).
4. Give me flying before I've finished leveling, and tune your late leveling zones around an aerial experience. Icecrown!
5. Neutral capital city, incorporating Aldor/Scryer mechanism from Shattrath, or Horde/Alliance areas a la Dalaran.
6. No more demons. No more fucking orcs. Stop it. Emerald Dream would be nice, and would round off nicely with some of WoW's earliest content (e.g. Green Dragon raids and Wailing Caverns).
7. this might sound crazy, but... 10-man dungeons? One of the drawbacks of 5-man content is that Blizzard cannot rely on the correct combination of classes to mitigate certain more interesting mechanics. This could largely be solved by permitting 10 people to enter a dungeon.
8. Lunarfall sinks into the fucking ocean, taking everyone's garrison with it.
9. A new class would be nice. Hunter is the lone ranged physical DPS, for example. Could add a crowd control class (e.g. EverQuest Enchanter). Battlemage (Mage+War) is an unexplored hybrid concept. An EverQuest Bard-style hybrid would be amazing. Demon Hunter is another possibility, hybridizing Warrior or Rogue with Mage or Warlock. But I fear Demonhunter's flavor has already been consumed by Warlock or DK. An expansion on Monk melee healing could also be an incredibly fun playstyle that is largely unexplored.
10. New races. Ogre, Drakonid, Furbolg, Arakkoa and Ethereal are all strong contenders with unique architecture and established lore suitable for expansion into a playable race.
11. Seasonality and temporality. EverQuest was unique for its time in that the in-game time of day had a large influence on what mobs were available, sometimes turning harmless zones into extremely deadly zones. Take it a step further and add seasonality to WoW at a 4:1 ratio with real life, so certain things would spawn when it's the right season 4x a year.

Thrax

12. No more time travel bullshit. It's the biggest trope for people running out of ideas. EQ did it when it was getting stale, and now WoW is doing it too. There's so much unexplored content that is temporally linear with the Azeroth we knew before this new wibbly wobbly timey wimey Dark Portal.
13. Open-world 5 man content. One of the coolest things about EQ was "camp breaking," or progressing very deep into a dangerous zone with a group and busting up the spawn cycle to take control of a lucrative (items/gold) area. There were multiple high-level zones that could accommodate dozens of groups each. I admit that this would be hard to shoehorn into WoW's playstyle.
14. The value of reaching exalted with a faction has slowly dwindled over time. In MoP it used to reward items that were on par with the current tier of raiding. In WoD the rewards are purely cosmetic. Please bring back item rewards? And if I've already gone through the misery of reaching exalted, please don't make it an exorbitant cost.
15. Wrath was good in that there were two zones to choose from at each leveling breakpoint. This was a good model.
16. Bosses no longer drop tier gear. They drop tier tokens for any class, redeemable for any piece of armor.
17. Stop balancing classes and races around PvP and PvE simultaneously. Please just finally acknowledge that these are totally different games with minimal cross-pollination and behave accordingly.
18. Delete LFR. WoW used to be dungeons -> heroic dungeons -> normal raids. The dungeons step has largely been replaced by LFR, which is a soul-sucking clusterfuck of incompetency. Get people out into the world by returning dungeons to form, and tack legendary questline progression into the mythic dungeons.

primesuspect

I'd LOVE to see Arakkoa explored as a playable race. I absolutely adore the sun powers. Imagine ranged physical DPS with chakrams, physical spellcasting, high mobility (short bursts of flight?), SUN LASERS, burst empowerment/buffs, disorients, tons of CC. It would be awesome to have a new "support" paradigm that wasn't strictly heals. This is one of the reasons I love shadow priest utility stuff. Chances of any of this happening? 1-3%.

I'm really expecting that this will be a South Seas expansion with Azshara/Naga lore or an Emerald Dream/Dragon lore expansion.

Lorewise, I'm also pretty burned out on orcs and demons.

Thrax

More ideas:
1. Class quests for spec-specific armor transmogs or effects (e.g. Warlock green fire).
2. Expand Tanaan or Timeless-style rares & treasures throughout an entire continent.
3. Bring reforging back. It could salvage crappy items into something more desirable.
4. Let's admit that versatility was largely a failure as a stat.
5. Tabard bank.
6. BoA rep rewards.
7. Several classes are in need of a revamp.
8. Speaking of revamp, perhaps an "alternate advancement" system where players can earn points to specialize their class on a system like Path of Exile. An extension of the talent system?
9. If they are to keep instanced housing, let us then make it instanced for the guild vs. the person. Would keep things feeling a little social...
10. Revamped tradeskills with more extremely rare recipe drops in the world, less prohibitive upfront costs and a reset of the market saturation on crafting mats.
11. Items with "clicky effects." Rare items in EQ often had useful or desirable right click abilities that could be activated from inventory. This added a new dimension to class/character customization.

Thrax

Another idea:

Rare or "heroic" quests. One of the biggest sources of player speculation in WoW came from questlines that appeared to dead end, or were hinted at in NPC dialogs. If only the playerbase found the right start/continue conditions! Ashbringer was a fountain of speculation like this with wild player theories.

I would go gaga over a mountain of quests that unlocked based on certain player criteria, e.g.:

• Showing up at the right place or time
• Saying the correct keywords in /say to an NPC
• Maybe you can suddenly trade items with certain NPCs (items refunded if not correct)
• If the player has the right achievements or reputations
• If the player has killed the right bosses, or a hidden X quantity of NPC

Tons of secret/hidden triggers with a quest chain that requires some serious puzzling to resolve.

Chooch

http://www.polygon.com/2015/8/4/9097485/world-of-warcraft-subscriber-numbers-nine-year-low-blizzard-5-million

Myrmidon

Continue.

Thrax

Also bring back Valor systems where people can dungeon to earn a raid-ready piece of gear every 1-2 weeks. Apexis just didn't get there.

Bring in a legion of valuable world epics with scaling ilvls. Make it worthwhile to find an epic at any point in the xpac. Make them only drop from open world, BOE. Alternatively, gear with it's own XP pools to level up and scale with use.

Item sets with bonuses that aren't tied to a raid tier.

Bring in weapon procs to add diversity to weapons.

More AQ gates world unlock efforts.

More world bosses.

Make raid gear BoA? Drastic improvement to alt management...

Cultural crafting. Xmog gear based on the architecture and visual cues of the creator's race.

Gated zones that unlock as you complete quest chains and challenges with friends. Higher zones have tougher challenges with better rewards.

Zones scale with your level? Loot tables and difficulty change, making every zone a viable one at the cap. Potential phasing nightmare, though.

Gems with procs as unique loot?

Thrax

Also: u ever make an expansion so bad you lose 40% of your paying customers in under a year? Blizz jus' did.

Thrax

Another idea:

Now that WoW is back to Vanilla population levels, it's time the servers do the same. It's time to activate server wholesale server mergers to keep world pop up.

primesuspect

A lot of great ideas, @Thrax.

I really love the idea of class-specific quests and gated content based on world exploration. I LOVED attunements, I LOVED doing the Shaman quest, I LOVED finding the Druid forms, etc. Even getting the poisons as a Rogue was cool.

Myrmidon

@Thrax MOAAAAAR

I too enjoyed being a hunter and having to do work to get your first hunter pet, running all over the blood elf home forest to select my stuff. And when I was leveling a blood elf paladin, having to do specific quests just to get 'imbued with the light' was pretty fun... though I can see why that might get irritating after the third alt.

Chooch

@primesuspect said:
A lot of great ideas, Thrax.

I really love the idea of class-specific quests and gated content based on world exploration.

In Vanilla there were epic class-specific quests that you could get in MC and I also believe in DM. I miss those times.

Thrax

• I also want outdoor dungeons. Sprawling labyrinths beneath zones, like Silithus catacombs, that don't come with maps. Great loot, difficult navigation, secret doors, challenges for 5-man groups, etc.
• More timed spawns in the world a la Poundfist with interesting vanity item drops. Get people out into the world with friends.
• WoW could borrow Wildstar's "path" system of alternate advancement, which has unique quests and rewards independent of class/race.
• Class quest weapon xmogs

This is all I can think of. What ideas do you guys have?

Myrmidon

@Thrax said:

This is all I can think of. What ideas do you guys have?

NO.

CONTINUE.

Hydrar

Underwater Raids! I kid, I kid...

primesuspect

TODAY IS THE DAY

@Thrax you just designed your own MMO

Sazbean

@primesuspect said:
I'd LOVE to see Arakkoa explored as a playable race. I absolutely adore the sun powers. Imagine ranged physical DPS with chakrams, physical spellcasting, high mobility (short bursts of flight?), SUN LASERS, burst empowerment/buffs, disorients, tons of CC. It would be awesome to have a new "support" paradigm that wasn't strictly heals. This is one of the reasons I love shadow priest utility stuff. Chances of any of this happening? 1-3%.

I'm really expecting that this will be a South Seas expansion with Azshara/Naga lore or an Emerald Dream/Dragon lore expansion.

Lorewise, I'm also pretty burned out on orcs and demons.

Especially if you had a cool down with that awesome building crescendo music like Iskar.

TiberiusLazarus

@primesuspect said:
TODAY IS THE DAY

Thrax you just designed your own MMO

Oh man, if they just announced WoW 2 instead of trying to add a bunch of features into WoW...

Sazbean

I'd also like to see transmog tied to my spec instead of my gear - with dual specs sharing gear, you either have two sets that look the same, or one awesome set and one yard-sale one -- see my pally. Or you have to farm enough equip to have completely different pieces of equip which just isn't going to happen at raid level equip.

And I want triple-spec on my pally and Druid so I can heal, dps, or tank - and I wouldn't mind gearing them all up.

Need a better way to handle storage of gear for off-spec -- can get pretty busy in the bags.

Would also like them to remove from bags quest items and any "currency" type of items (like stuff from collection quests).

They were going to remove toys from bags but I still have a ton that technically should go in the toy box but take up bag space instead.

If we're not going to share garrisons by guild (that would be really cool), I want to at least share them across my account. Doing those jobs & quests over and over is annoying.

Susurro

I'd enjoy a dragon or dragonkin playable race. Semi-druid-like with form changes, but more dragon-y.

I'd also love some sort of physical healer class. Similar to the bounty hunter healing class in SWTOR. It's fun to shoot people to heal them.

primesuspect

primesuspect

@Susurro said:

I'd also love some sort of physical healer class. Similar to the bounty hunter healing class in SWTOR. It's fun to shoot people to heal them.

That's called disc priest

Susurro

If they Tron'd it up a bit and made it real discs I'd be happier.

Susurro

I'm unsure so far with this. But the artifact weapons seem interesting.

Chooch