World of Warcraft was once the most popular online game of all time. However, with the more recent expansions it’s really begun to fall off. It no longer holds that title of success. Every expansion comes with a small glimmer of hope. Hope that Wow can return to it’s former glory. However, if they really wanted to bring back their community, and escalate past what they’ve ever reached they need to make some changes. Today I will discuss 10 ways Blizzard can make World of Warcraft awesome again. Whether they listen to us, is on them.
1) Legacy Vanilla Servers
Original login screen image from Vanilla WoW
Back in the days of Vanilla content (original game release) players had to work hard when leveling and raiding. It’s become so easy to do most things with later expansions, that a lot of players start missing the old days. There’s nothing like reminiscing and feeling homesick for what you had. Millions of people describe this as the best time in their World of Warcraft History.
If there was a legacy vanilla server available for WoW players than I think that would bring a lot of the old members back to the game, and really increase the hype for WoW. Many players would like to play the current updated game version, and then also the Vanilla version.
Even though many guilds create “Vanilla Twink Guilds” to stick to the older 60 content, it isn’t the same. Classes have changed making some fights extremely difficult (almost impossible), or content has been taken out that was really popular back then (like Naxxramus).
Blizzard, please add in legacy vanilla servers. If you do, it will really help your company.
2) Old Content Needs Reworked
All of the old maps are basically worthless now. They are completely empty and rarely used. The only times they are visited, are when there is a rare boss spawn, pet battle daily, or a raid entrance is there. Even if a raid entrance is there, the only time people go do them is when they want to farm a transmog, or certain material. There is currently no long term reason to go back to the countless maps from previous content.
Icecrown Citadel, from the Wrath of The Lich King Expansion
There are a couple different routes we could go to make use of the old maps and content. There could be exciting dailies with good rewards on these maps. The dailies could make you interact with the map. There could be instanced zones on these maps for only max level characters where daily or weekly events could be scheduled there. Maybe even have a end level scaled queue system for those raids and dungeons 24/7.
3) Mass, or Cheaper, Character Transfers
Move from one realm to the other, but at a pricey cost.
In World of Warcraft we constantly make new friends, or have real life friends come play. Those friends can end up on different servers, making it harder to fully play with them. We can’t join peoples guilds because of the server difference. So what do we have to do? Buy an expensive single character transfer and leave all our other characters behind, just so we can play with specific people.
The reason why leaving our other characters behind sucks is because now we can’t join the guild on those characters, or make use of their crafting on the transferred avatar. There is no mailing stuff from character to character either when you are on different realms (unless its a bind on account item). Most WoW players use multiple characters on purpose, and forcing us to shell out more cash just to have our preferred play style sucks.
Besides the whole social friend aspect, some of the servers become dead. By this I mean there is no one basically playing on that server. Chat is dead, the Auction House is out of whack, and the cities are empty. Being a part of that can really be demotivating. You then hear about a nice medium or high population server and want to move there instead. However, again, they are expensive.
People say that Blizzard keeps them expensive and singular because they don’t want people to just switch servers whenever. I think we all understand that, but with the current systems in place, it’s actually hindering their company more because people will quit before staying on a low population server.
How do they fix this though? They could implement a discounted price to transfer all characters at once, or even lower the price by $10 to $15 (currently $25) dollars for single character transfers. Let the people play how they want (for the most part) and your game will be more successful.
4) Fix Low Pop Servers with More Realm Merges
As we talked about previously, so many servers are stuck with low population. This is because the most recent patch Warlords of Draenor has gotten a surplus of negative reviews. With Legion on the way there will be a small increase in activity, but the damage has been done. World of Warcraft will have a hard time reaching its past glory if they don’t make some changes.
Example look at the realm server list and population levels.
Until WoW gains back its following, there is no reason for this many servers. They are spreading out the player base way too thin, which leaves countless servers empty. As discussed, transferring from that dead server is not encouraged by Blizzard, and is therefore too expensive for the players to realistically do (majority of them at least).
This is where we are at. Blizzard needs to either start merging more realms to create more realm clusters (where multiple realms are on the same server), temporarily close all extremely low population servers and offer all players a free transfer out of there, or somehow get a huge influx of players and have them join these low population realms. Blizzard needs to maintain these issues more if they want more people to play (happily), and have WoW be more awesome.
5) Better LFG Party Experience
Although the LFG function isn’t terrible, it could be reworked. We will discuss a couple different options that WoW could implement that would definitely take some stress away during the party experience.
Kicking: There are countless times where you get into a party and there has to be that one afk, or one flaming jerk, or loot stealer. The rest of your group decides we need to kick this person, and it won’t let you. Why won’t it let you? Because you are in combat. Ok, so you all get out of combat and try again. Nope. You need to wait something like an entire 3 minutes to finally do a votekick. So now you are having to waste your own time just to kick that afk person.
Now, I understand being able to kick in combat could be terrible for loot reasons. What would stop people from kicking the out numbered players during the middle of a boss fight so they can’t loot? Well what if we could kick during combat, but not during bosses? Also, instead of typing in the reason why you are kicking someone, have it be a drop down menu. You could list a bunch of potential reasons, and that way it’s more precise. Also, let the kicked player see the reason for being kicked. That way they can work on not doing it again. Either way, being stuck in a group with someone who would be kicked makes the experience frustrating.
Looting: You should never be able to “need roll” on a piece of gear you can’t even wear. This leads to so many people being screwed out of gear. As someone who has experienced this so many times in WoW (and other games) I can atest to this being a really annoying and frustrating process. There are sections in WoW that won’t allow you to need roll on specific things, but not everywhere. Then when it comes to master looting, there’s a touchy subject. They make you roll in chat or through the system, and even though you win the roll, they give it to their friend. There needs to be more accountable system for Master Looting. Blizzard offers to look into your claims, but they almost never amount to anything.
Example of a loot roll window from World of Warcraft.
Queues: Queue times are probably the worst part of looking for a group. They are long, and you normally have to go through the accept process multiple times since someone is always afk. If you aren’t a tank or healer, expect to wait anywhere from 2 to 40 minutes for a simple dungeon queue while leveling. So you finally get into your dungeon, after a good 18 minute wait, and your healer leaves. Now what do you do? You have to sit and wait for another healer to join, which means re-queueing.
What Blizzard could do to shorten times, is add in another mode for dungeons queues. This mode wouldn’t require a healer or tank, so 5 dps could get put together. The bosses and mobs could be easier, and at the same time give less experience and/or loot. You may get less experience for killing weaker mobs, but at least you are doing something instead of sitting and waiting for a queue when leveling. If you really don’t want to be placed with 4 other dps, you can always opt to wait for a normal dungeon with a staple healer and tank. This new dungeon mode could also be restricted to only characters who aren’t eligible for end game content (meaning not applied to max level).
This is just one unique way that we could combat the long looking for group queue system for levelers.
6) PVP Battles over Rare Bosses
Example of an Open World Boss that could be implemented and fought over.
One thing Blizzard really fails in is making use of the factions outside of pvp battlegrounds and ashran. It’s basically like they don’t exist. What would really liven up maps, pvp, and player involvement is open world rare bosses that gave incentive to be fought over. Like raid bosses out in the open world. They would have something like 12 hour + cooldown timers, respawn with server restarts, and drop some of the best craftable materials or objects in the game. You can’t make it something that no one would want.
This would lead to massive pvp over this boss, alliances being formed, and a competitive market for these items. You will need to pve and pvp at the same time. If you don’t wipe the enemy, they might get the kill on the boss. If you don’t attack the boss you may not get the kill, and therefore the epic loot. So much strategy and teamwork would need to take place to win.
If open world doesn’t seem ideal, they could even add dungeons where you pve and pvp. You have actual pve objectives (killing bosses, collecting something, etc) but at the same time an enemy team is in there trying to do the same thing. Maybe both teams could avoid each other, but maybe not. In the end, Blizzard needs to add more use out of the faction system.
7) More Incentive to Open World PVP/ Raid Cities
This works a little like my previous idea about Raid Bosses being pvp’d over. There is no reason to go out and open world pvp or raid cities. Because there is no incentive, there are rarely ever any groups forming to do it. If a group does try, they spam chat for a couple hours and ultimately fail. If Blizzard added a reason to go raid cities, pillage towns, and fight….I really do believe that WoW would be a more exciting game to be a part of.
A raid on Stormwind City from many years ago...
Possible ways to increase incentive is to make more exciting and rewardable achievements, dailies, or questlines. Maybe a small reputation faction can be accepted and in order to level up in this faction you need to conquer towns, kill enemy guards, and kill the head honcho in the capital cities. Maybe you can also get ranked up in these reputable factions. There are a lot of options available, they just need to implement one.
8) More Guild Oriented Events
To be quite frank, there is no need to be in a guild. A guild used to be a second family. A group of people you spent all day with, and never got bored. Other games have Guild vs. Guild battles, Guild alliances, guild specific pvp, or even pve events. WoW has none of that. The only bonus to being in a guild is guild repairs, and the achievements you can unlock for some cool rewards. The players try to make guilds run how they use to, but WoW has become such a soloable game. This has taken the entire social aspect of the game down.
Example Guild Invitation...though you’d be lucky if it wasn’t a bot spam invitation.
They could add a guild home/garrison you could visit and do things to help the guild. They could add in a guild que system, where you get a small taste of some GVG action. An event could be added every week where each guild has to complete a mission or goal, and whomever does it the fastest wins some materials or an exciting reward. It can rank the guilds on the server, help pay for their guild houses, or give them land ownership if Blizzard wouldn’t mind going that way.
9) Account Wide Reputation
Farming reputation blows. You do it the first time because, well, it’s the first time. If you work hard, you can get it done and then be done with it for good. Reputation is definitely a grind, and a not so fun one at that. WoW has done well with having a lot of reputation to farm, however no one wants to have to do it again on another character.
This idea may seem very casual, but let's be fair much of World of Warcraft's playerbase is casual. Basically, if Blizzard allowed the reputation to be account bound, than there would actually be more incentive to go farm reputation. Not everyone stays on the first character they made. People switch classes constantly. Having to go back through and level up your reputation again is so painful. I think WoW would earn a lot of appreciation from the players, and even boost the player base with this small, easily done, adjustment.
Example of how many reputations there are, and how low you can start out at.
10) Better/Increased PVP Rewards
How does PVP vs Raiding hold up in your point of view?
World of Warcraft has always been known for it’s PVE Raiding. Hands down, when you talk to someone about raiding, they started in WoW. I’ve never heard people say I made it big in WoW through PVP. But, why not? For one, their pvp is really lacking and limited. However, were not going to discuss the need for more diverse pvp options. Were going to discuss the weak rewards given out for pvping in comparison to pve.
When you raid (pve) you have a chance at epic mounts, pets, weapons, and armor. I’m not even listing all the quest lines that have you collect objects for legendary equipment. On the other hand, pvp gets small amounts of pvp currency, and some boxes that drop mediocre beginner gear. Do you see the difference? For those who love to pvp, they have to either spam battlegrounds to get enough currency to buy a piece, or not even bother and switch to pve. The rewards for participating in player vs environment functions is much higher than player vs player.
All I suggest is that they up the reward scaling for pvp, making it a much larger force in the industry. This way they aren't only marketing to the pve players in the online gaming world, but also to the pvp players. No longer would WoW be solely known for its raiding, but for it’s pvp content as well.
Those are my top 10 things Blizzard could do to make World of Warcraft Awesome. I still think WoW is a mmorpg for the hall of fame, but I would love it if it didn't die out on us. Blizzard return to your roots that first made WoW such a star, and take a little advice from other mmorpg’s out there. Above all, listen to your player/fan base. Were the ones living in the world of Azeroth, so we’ll know how to improve it.
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