If you're a regular reader of mine, you know that I tend to focus on the story and the feel of the game rather than the nitty-gritty of the mechanics (except, perhaps, my ongoing crusade against Vengeance.) I'm a story-driven guy, generally speaking, and to me, the whole point of an RPG is to get invested in the lore, as it makes every fight that much more exciting.
But to give things a little twist, I thought I'd talk about what we're likely to see in the next expansion in terms of structure and gameplay.
1. Blizzard is going to have to decide how to fit dungeons and scenarios together.
Scenarios have the great appeal of not requiring any healers or tanks, but dungeons are the meat and potatoes of WoW. New tanks and healers need 5-man dungeons to learn how to do what they do before they head into raids.
Ghostcrawler has actually said he wishes they had put more 5-man dungeons into later Mists, so I expect that next time around, we're going to be seeing those coming either with each raid tier or on the in-between patches.
Heroic scenarios could become something like Challenge Modes - tough, small-group content that is aimed more at the hardcore players, while dungeons could make up the main PvE alternative to raiding. Either that, or the other way around.
2. We're going to continue to see "story" in-between patches.
Even though theoretically it brought very little to the game, 5.1 was very well received. Because of the great speed with which it arrived, no one felt cheated out of a raid tier. Instead, we all simply got to enjoy additional story development and a daily quest grind that was far more enjoyable and rewarded better gear. Obviously, 5.3 has yet to come out, but given that it seems to be adding outdoor stuff as well as some new story-based scenarios, and Throne of Thunder is still relatively new (though shockingly I'm pretty close to being fully LFR-ToT-geared on my main) I doubt people are going to complain about it much (except that the Alliance is once again being marginalized.)
Blizzard is very happy with the pacing of Mists so far, and the story patches allow them to put out content faster while still taking the time to perfect their grand raids (seriously, I know some people will complain about anything they're currently doing, but look at Throne of Thunder and tell me that's not an awesome raid.)
3. We might get something resembling player housing.
You want to know a secret? We already have player housing. It's called Sunsong Ranch. Sure, we can't really "customize" it so much as we can upgrade it by befriending various members of the Tillers, but it's not only a place all to ourselves, but also a functional area that makes gathering resources for professions far easier. Now if only I had more stuff to make with engineering...
The only step I think you need to take with player housing is some sort of "trophy" system, where things symbolizing your greatest achievements get to sit there and look pretty. An idea that my friend had that I would love is if your alts could chill out there as NPCs when you're not playing them. I'd love to see Oterro and Ardten sharing a drink - or really, I'd like it if any of my toons could actually interact with each other without using mail. Actually, this would be a great thing for alt inventory management, if you could dig around in an alt's bags and move things back and forth (other than soulbound stuff, of course.)
4. There could be some sort of re-think regarding raid difficulties.
LFR is clearly working well to get people to see the raids, and even though getting a bag of gold (which is pretty worthless now given how inflationary the massive number of gold sources have been) instead of precious loot is pretty frustrating, the new loot system is a massive improvement over the old Need+ system, where guild groups would all need on a piece to give to one of their friends, or someone would need a piece they already had and then hold it ransom for something else they might want.
Anyway, the thing I don't know is how many people, proportionally, are completing normal-mode raiding. The way I see it is that Normal modes should be for just about everyone who's in a guild. Sure, it's a challenge and you shouldn't be able to knock out the whole tier in a single night, but it should be accessible. Not having the numbers in front of me, I can't really say whether Mists' raiding scene is working out well on normal-mode, but from my limited, subjective perspective, it seems a little too tightly tuned.
5. Another shot at Path of the Titans
We never really knew what the hell Path of the Titans was going to actually look like or how it was going to work. The only thing that we knew was it was somehow going to be a way to increase player power in a manner that did not involve leveling or gear (of course, leveling always becomes irrelevant once you hit the cap.)
It's an idea that Blizzard representatives have always talked about as something they want to revisit, but I don't know why it wasn't working or how it could work.
6. A slight talent reshuffling.
Overall I think the new talent system is working well. Sure, there are some "right" choices (don't know if anyone takes Light's Prism. Is that a Holy thing?) but a decent number of them really do feel like personal style choices.
Still, with a level cap rising to either 95 or 100 (if we're facing down the Burning Legion, I could see them doing another 10-level expansion so that we do that at 100) it means that they'll need to switch things up a bit if they want us to choose another talent at the new level cap.
We can also expect, of course, the usual rebalancing, adding and cutting of stuff.
7. Some sort of "new toon incentive."
Every expansion has given us a reason to roll up a new character. BC gave us two new races (each capable of being the class that was previously limited to the other faction,) Wrath gave us the first new class (and as a Hero class, you got a serious head start on leveling, not to mention a million other "cool-factor" things like the voice or the glowing blue eyes.) Cataclysm not only gave us new races, but also a ton of new race-class combinations, plus a totally-redone 1-58 questing experience that encouraged creating a whole fleet of alts to explore them. Mists then brought us a new race (the first race available to both sides) and a whole new class.
So there's a precedent. I said before that they might avoid doing a new race in order to focus on new models for the Vanilla and BC races, but given that we just got three new races in the past two expansions, I think the art team could afford to take their time on these.
I'd love a new class, of course (cough, Demon Hunter as a Hero class, cough, mine would be a Worgen, cough) though I could imagine them being afraid of throwing yet another class into the mix, especially this soon after the Monk. Then again, they seem to have been far more successful in balancing Monks with the established classes than they were when Death Knights were first introduced.
So far, those have really been the only ways to incentivize a new character. The class really defines how the character plays.
One possibility could be adding a 4th spec to each class (except Druids,) though this would probably do more to encourage people to simply switch specs on existing characters.
One of the problems of the "new toon incentive" is that there's an ever-growing barrier to getting that new character up to speed. Sure, they can cut the required XP per level (at some point, you'll be heading off to Outland after finishing Westfall) but there's also Professions to think of, and all the other little things you have to do with your character.
8. Probably not any more primary professions.
As cool as woodworking would be, I don't really see any more primary professions getting thrown into the mix. Hell, this time around we didn't even get a secondary profession, though Pet Battles sort of filled that slot of non-central gameplay.
I could imagine us getting access to a third profession though. Blizzard seems to not like people to feel they need to roll alts just to cover their professional bases (and also doesn't like that that kills the server economy system.)
I do think that they will come up with something to fill that gap, though, like they did with Pet Battles.
9. More solo scenarios.
Scenarios are a perhaps more elegant solution than phasing to have huge moments play out without worrying about affecting the whole world. Sure, in some places phasing worked tremendously (if, for some insane reason, you haven't ever rolled a Death Knight, play through that starting area at least. Best use of phasing ever,) but for things like the lost lamented Battle of Undercity, a Scenario is a far more ideal format.
When Wrath had just come out, doing the Battle of Undercity was a fantastic, epic adventure, where you and a huge number of fellow players charged through the place, tearing up the traitorous Varimathras' forces. The problem was that on characters who got to the party late, some of the "boss" fights there would take ages. On the Alliance side of things, you, Varian and Jaina attacked through the Sewer entrance (the old favorite from the days of city-wide raids.) After descending the sewer, you'd face off against a giant burrower worm. The worm would pick a player at random and swallow them, preventing any action for something like 30 seconds. You didn't die, because Jaina's healing buff would keep you up, but it did mean you couldn't do much. After the worm spit you out, it would choose another player and swallow them. The problem was that when you were the only player doing the battle, it would always choose you, so you'd have to rely on that one DoT you stuck on the thing and the damage done by friendly NPCs to kill it.
It was balanced around having a lot of players, as it would when most people took their mains through, but for latecomers, it was horrendous.
The other reason why something like this would have been great as a scenario is that you wouldn't have to get rid of it if you did some kind of alteration to the zone itself. Sure, Undercity looks pretty much identical to how it did back then, but in fact a lot of gaps have been sealed up, and the overall structure of the zone is very different. While Scenarios do take locations from the open world, they are truly instanced versions of them, and so if the Battle had been a scenario, it would probably still be playable now.
10. A revamp of the Charm system.
Love them or hate them, the Charm system in Mists has had a big impact on the game. Not only does it change how likely you are to get loot you want, but it also allows fighting the same raid boss multiple times in a week to still be potentially profitable.
However, a quick glance reveals that the Charms have the same problem that Emblems did in Wrath. Every tier has a new type of Charm, and pretty soon we're going to have a million lines on our currency page.
The solution is easy - just do what they did with Emblems/Badges in Cataclysm - make an "old Charm" and "new Charm" version of each. Sure, they've kind of abandoned Justice Points in Mists (though this does mean that picking up old JP rewards for transmog purposes is far easier) but I think they're going to have to simplify this system before we find ourselves juggling Elder Charms of Good Fortune, Mogu Runes of Fate, Siegey Charms of Sieging Orgrimmar, or whatever comes next.
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