So, in two days we're going to get the official announcement of the next expansion for World of Warcraft: the big 10.0. This is the expansion that will, in theory, take us through to 2024, meaning it will mark the 20th anniversary of the game (though the subsequent expansion would be the real "anniversary" expansion, much as Warlord of Draenor was - hopefully it'll be better).
At this point, it seems almost impossible for the expansion to be anything other than "Dragonflight," given that this name was discovered in Blizzard's own website. There's also been a kind of collective assumption that the next expansion would focus on the dragons and possibly the fabled Dragon Isles, which were initially going to be a part of the original vanilla release of WoW.
So, I'll mention here that I have not played WoW in months. I'm given to understand that the final patch of Shadowlands has improved a lot of the issues that the expansion has had (though honestly, the top thing I feel is just that there is some content) but I've sort of decided that I don't want to play purely to avoid fear of missing out, and have been happy to take a WoW vacation to the Lands Between in Elden Ring.
Still, WoW's important to me, and I'm hopeful that it'll do well.
So, what do we want to see in 10.0?
One thing that has been heartening about the things we've seen in recent Shadowlands patches has been a kind of acknowledgement that players actually have some good ideas. WoW has often had caps on things like reputation gains and such that are intended to make it feel like a player doesn't need to play eight hours a day, but the implementation of these caps has often made it so that a player will need to log in every day and play for an hour, when many players (such as those who have 9-5, 5-day a week jobs) prefer to play for several hours on the weekend. Such players get left behind in the old systems, but we've seen how in Zereth Mortis, there have been some adjustments to that to make it so that players can catch up without being pressured to do it all the week 9.2 dropped.
So, a general philosophy shift would be good.
I will also say that I'd like them to pull back a bit on "borrowed power." This became a major thing in Legion, which was my favorite expansion, but ultimately, I think it would be nice to see a bit of a "back to basics" shift to making gear the main arbiter of player power. I'm not sure how confident I am that they would do this - we've had some kind of borrowed power for the last three expansions, and it seems to be a dial they like to have to adjust.
Cross-faction Grouping: Well, this is basically coming in 9.2.5, so maybe we don't need to worry about it. I think with the shrinking playerbase (something that, to be fair, ebbs and flows) and plenty of in-world justification for members of the opposing factions to team up, this should be gradually phased in as a standard thing in the game, if you ask me.
More Self-Contained Expansion Story: Starting with Mists of Pandaria, there's been this idea that every expansion's story needs to lead directly into the next. I don't know that that's been great for the game. The problem is that by doing so, every expansion feels like it's just a preview for the next one. When we finished Wrath of the Lich King (and we'll just set aside Ruby Sanctum for the time being) it felt like this really exciting, cathartic moment to see Arthas lying, defeated, only now seeming to understand the depths to which he had sunk. Yes, we knew Deathwing was on his way by then (thanks to the Blizzcon announcement) but Arthas got his time in the spotlight and a proper curtain call.
But in the past several expansions, there's always been a kind of cliffhanger, and that's sort of meant that we never get to take the deep breath and feel like we've finished a story before we move on to the next. We didn't have time to even consider that we had met the Pantheon and sealed away Sargeras before we were like "oh crap, we gotta deal with that giant sword."
A Full Slate of Content: So, we have to account for Covid, of course. But after Warlords of Draenor gave us only three raids, I figured Blizzard would never again give us a shortened expansion. Yet here we are, with only three Shadowlands raids.
A New Class: I get that adding a new class means a permanent addition to the complexity of the game. But I also think that when you go for too long in WoW without giving players a reason to roll up a new alt they're going to be excited about, the game starts to feel a bit stale. Maybe you could accomplish this with class skins or some other compromise, but I think you're really best off making a new class.
Anyway, we'll be getting more details on Tuesday, and we'll see how this turns out.
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