Speculating on Expansion Seven Features

While WoW has still been fundamentally the same game since Vanilla - you do quests and dungeons to get experience and loot that lets you advance in power - the game has gone through some pretty radical mechanical revamps. In recent expansions, we've also had features added that aren't necessarily intended to extend beyond the life of the current expansion, with elements of those features that people like carrying over in new forms.

So what new stuff might we see in the next expansion?

This is very tricky, as it requires us to extrapolate a lot from what we've got now. But we can make some guesses and certainly imagine what carries over.

New Thing: Ships?

The Vindicaar has functioned as a mobile town on Argus, allowing us to have a home base in each zone. Now, the funny thing is that technically, I'd imagine that each zone simply has the Vindicaar in it, as you'll never be in a zone on Argus where the Vindicaar is not. But it gives the impression that you're flying to each of the different areas of interest on Argus.

A similar thing could work with an island-hopping expansion, having you park your ship off the coast of each zone, and using the ship to travel between the zones.

Having a ship that you could build up and customize would also be a way to take the Garrison/Order Hall concept in a new direction.

New Thing: Alternate Character Advancement:

Artifact weapons gave us a way to keep "leveling up" after hitting the level cap. I hope that they'd tread carefully here, as while I think the talent-tree-like initial trait system was interesting, the grind for more Concordance of the Legionfall is not terribly interesting (and the Netherlight Crucible aspect is frustratingly RNG-dependent. Frankly, I think that WoW could stand to back away from RNG significantly - I miss the Cataclysm Justice/Valor point system for getting gear.) Having a system somewhat like artifacts, but different, could allow players a little more customization. Actually, if you wanted me to pick a model I like, I'd point to the Honor Talent system, which allows you to get several talent "slots" filled out early on, but then increases your options for each of those slots as you go.

Recurring Thing: Level-Scaling Zones and Dungeons:

While it did make it hard to have a single plot throughline for the Broken Isles (though Order Hall campaigns and the Light's Heart stuff provided that,) I think the level-scaling on the Broken Isles was a fantastic feature, and allowed every zone to feel relevant at endgame (though the Broken Shore and now Argus have kind of dimmed their significance.) I have to imagine this is going to be an evergreen feature going forward. The question, then, is if they'd consider doing this retroactively to older zones.

Recurring Thing: Mission Tables:

Frankly, I would not mind losing the whole Mission Table thing. Even though Legion has been much better about forcing you to go out and do stuff if you want to really advance your character, I feel like losing the Mission Table stuff would not hurt the game very much. Bodyguard followers/champions are fun and something I'd like to keep, but if we're going to have followers, I'd rather have them acting as buffs in certain zones or something than having to send them on missions constantly. That being said, we've had them two expansions in a row, so they'll probably keep the system around.

Recurring Thing: World Quests:

World quests are, I think, a pretty good evolution of the daily quest system, and again, give old areas relevance at the level cap. Keep 'em!

Recurring Thing: Class Orders:

I really like that there was a bunch of class-specific content in Legion, and would love to see them continue to to that. Having new portals and such to the order halls established in Legion would be cool. The question is whether they could stay relevant. While the flavor of the order halls is essentially timeless, many of its features are pretty clearly Legion-specific - artifact forges, command boards, troop recruitment NPCs, etc. I suspect we'll be saying goodbye to these places, which is a shame.

Recurring Thing: Selected Artifact Traits:

While I think our weapons are going bye-bye in 8.0, some of their features would be welcome additions to their respective specs. I don't know how these would be worked in (maybe just as talents) but I hope that some of the cooler and less weapon-specific things could be kept.