There were some good ideas in the past. Class order Halls made in core cities or moved there and continuously used and updated would have been fun.

It is definitely time for the WoW 2.0 engine.

My only issue with wow is for a casual like myself it’s sooo complicated and bloated. Too many currencies and reputations and every zone you go to has so many quests it becomes overwhelming. Then trying to raid or group with people if you don’t have addons you get kicked it’s just too much

The fact the interviewer did not know Metzen voiced Thrall is not good lol

Wish they had this same thought process for the Warcraft movie. Only reason i think it didnt work is cause you told a 3 movie story in 1.

The story really expresses it self in 3x100$ parts the best.

Was really hoping this trilogy was the conclusion to wow so we could move on to wow 2…

At 35:16...it is not bad that you have to find another player to engage in the world of Warcraft. Thats what made it WOW. Its bad when you have try hards gate your gear progression because they deem you unworthy... whether that be from your GS score or otherwise.

with how long these games actually end up running sometimes, it makes sense to spread out your story between several expansions instead of do a standalone story each xpac. We've long complained about power creep in the lore, how things keep having to get reset back to 0, etc. if you spread things out it gives more time to do shit before you've exhausted most of the interesting parts of your world and story, which they can't really afford not to do as much as possible with how briskly they've sped through several major threats in the story.

"MCU Style Expensions" sounds so bad, holy shit the gaming journalism is dead

A good mystery is incredibly underrated. I loved that Asmon mentioned Ungoliant and Tom Bombadil. Perfect examples. No one knows (and will éver know) where they come from or what they even really are. And that is exactly why reading the Silmarillion and all that extra Bombadil stuff and the Old Forest etc in Tolkien's work is so facinating and cool.

So true about the social aspects needing to be a necessity. I just tried classic hardcore for the first time this weekend, got to a cave, almost died with 15 hp, somehow survived. Saw a bro, invited him and we completed the deadly cave, then gamed together for 3 hours and added btags. I would never do this in retail, exception being LFG pvp for arena, unless it was with a friend IRL.

10:56 ummmm did she just admit that they’ve not been planning “multiple expansions ahead” like ion has said every time

I am considering coming back to this game. Seeing Chris on stage again and giving so much emotion ,something that has felt missing from blizzcon for many many years. Hopefully this is a changing of the tides for blizzard and the community. Time will tell I guess.

Another added benefit of hard content that requires a group is that it gives a fun challenge to solo as well if you pull it off. Kind of like the Hardcore add-on quest achievements.

Asmon was absolutely cooking there at the end talking about the social aspect. There should absolutely be solo content like mage tower, story quests, rep farms etc, but solo content shouldn't come at the expense of group content like solo shuffle canibalising arenas

Pre-Endgame, the MCU movies ranged from great to just okay. Starting with Captain Marvel, the movies have gone seriously downhill to the point they are worse plot wise than most of the 80s and 90s superhero films. They just survive now because people are in the habit of watching them, regardless of quality ... this translates to so many things now. In general, seems like people are just unwilling to go without something and would rather get pizza that tastes like crap and cardboard than no pizza at all.

I agree questing needs to be harder, but I feel like anytime they have added a quest that actually requires mutliple people everyone just skips it so they stopped. Aside from dungeon quests of course.

When can my character retire or like go somewhere and rest like I’ve been in the same armor for 20 years with zero shower.

ideally they make a full real classic plus and develope it like osrs. Alongside that have occasional seasons that go through wrath, tbc, other expansions etc. While cleaning up retail, balancing fixing systems etc. Which blizzcon basically said theyre moving to that direction.

I hate that having an actual narrative is now considered 'doing an MCU' Believe it or not, many things that arent marvel have done an overarching narrative for literally ever.

Always thought it would have been an awesome idea for future expansions to give you the means to grow crops for cooking etc at your farm in MoP, as just one means to keep the farm ever relevant. I'm actually very optimistic for the Worldsoul Saga, if they keep more and more things evergreen from expansion to expansion. Just the fact both Midnight and Last Titan are going to be set in revamped old world locations instead of another brand new continent rising out of the ocean has me excited; not to mention is a plotline crossing multiple expansions as too often they used up huge lore and plot points for minor gains. (N'zoth was just an end of expansion patch, wtf?).

I think when devs eventually stop using the terms like: "super excited" when actually that's far from reality, things might go back to normal. Seems like there is a bright future for WoW, for now at least. Not having great expectations, but I'm very glad to see them try and experiment. What comes out of it, we'll see.

Asmon makes a good point. The ability to plan 3 expansions or systems that may build and compliment each other is huge. Wow taking their seasonal systems and never using them again is exactly like PoE never sending their league mechanics to core. Hollow and without depth.

it will be more ffxiv style then mcu, MCU they showed diffeerent movies that tied in at the end, in ffxiv it was a continuation of the same story in different expansions.

I’m happy and excited that the enthusiasm is back for WoW. Simultaneously, I don’t feel compelled to play and the reason for that is that there is too much to keep track of… and I played from 2005 right up until mid-BfA, so I have plenty of understanding. The game really needs to scale back and bring back the elemental nature of the core systems perfected from Vanilla - Wrath/Cata.

Something Eq does most every year, which may be too frequent, is they release progression servers. Content expansion patches pre-scheduled every 8 weeks or so. Would be dope if the Wow dev team took this idea for themselves. Give players the ability to re-live the old 'glory days' of Wow expansion releases. Just a thought

I think that making an anime and hiring very sucessful experienced writers who have a proven track record of writing compelling stories would add a whole new layer to the franchise. It would bring in so many people that would have never considered playing the game, and it would provide a way for fans to show the franchise to their friends and get excited about it.

It sounds to me like Metzen has played some FFXIV and decided that a cohesive story could actually benefit WoW and I can't say I disagree.

I can't believe people enjoy the Marvel stories..

Imagine if instead of changing the gear every expansion / patch, if you could have the ability to have 1 single gear that you just upgrade and modify as you lvl up and as new expansions get released. - runes for the gear that can be swapped - individual runes placed when your a specific spec saved for that spec - you swap spec from tank to healer ( for example ) - the runes swap as well. - upgrades for the gear - iLVL increasing buffs - upgrades for the gear - Rarity upgrades - ability to swap the gear stats around - agility - stam - crit - haste - mastery - etc... ( make this somewhat limited - cost wise ) - again, same like runes,they get saved to specific specs - Glyphs for each gear position that again change something about it. - these also can be swapped around - and also get saved for each spec. This will allow all the players to be able to customize their gear as they please. You no longer have to gear up again and again from one expansion to another. Bossed no longer drop gear, but they drop the runes / glyps / transmutes / iLvl increases ( and you can make it decimal increases instead of full bloan + 1 ILvL -- not sure why . but .. -- ). This could give Blizzard the option to reintroduce all the weapon modifiers from all the expansions back in. Because the options above would be the "Basic stats - basic customization", and you can have things like artifact power back in the game, new ways to customize... You can introduce upgrades / new mechanics for all gear slots that can either change a spell animation, the way you walk, the way you dance, add position of negative buffs for professions and what knot . @AsmonTV Would be great if you could make a video and talk with your mates about what I suggested above. What do you all think about it.

Just a note, server costs for WoW have gone down. Before they had to build them all, now they use cloud providers without having to create their own infrastructure. So I think it makes sense that the sub cost has stayed the same if you take into account inflation.

I hate how every expansion is based around this world ending threat. Ive always liked the smaller scale conflicts between two groups where both sides are relateable and the good guys and bad guys arnt so clear. I know we still get some of that through small quest lines but i would like them to go more into detail with these types of stories.

I really want a hard reset, whether that's classic+ or wow 2

brawler's guild was a great idea, pleasant memories and experience

I’m 100% down for a WoW anime. However I still believe they could really make an “Arthas” show work really well. Start it with him as a young child, follow the story of the book, have us adventure through his life, showing us Lorderon, mixing in some new side stories, have it go all the way to him becoming the Lich King. Hell, you could even continue it until his downfall in ICC. I think your average person, even someone who has 0 idea about Warcraft would still be able to relate to and understand the story of a prince destined for greatness, but fell to become the thing he sought to destroy. Then you could introduce other story lines about other characters once people are introduced to them in a proper way. For a non WoW player, it would be real hard to grasp the orcs and the story of their corruption presented in the Warcraft movie.

Will be the same has Dragon flight wimp of a story, with 4 new zones and 40 new currencies! even in my they added tons of curruncies to lv up items

Diablo Immortal. It would be nice if we could get an additional mode like castle defense. For example, it could look like this: We would defend the positions (platforms) leading to the top of the hill. Each position would have a flag, which would slow the advance of the hordes (demons). If the position falls into their hands, they plant their flag. They would march in several separate columns. One team would be in charge of each column. Players could help neighboring (less successful) teams push back the hordes and regain lost ground (replant their flag). The platforms at the foot of the hill would be spacious, and separate from those to the left and right of them. Platforms to higher positions could have gates that would further slow down the hordes and connect players with neighboring teams (on both sides). Four players are enough for each team. Each team would defend the north, south, east and west sides of the hill. 4 teams x 4 players = 16 for the game. The lowest level (ground) would have 4x4 platforms (in a circle). Then the higher (second) level 4x3. Third 4x2. The highest level would have 4x1. At the first level, players would not be able to pass to neighboring teams. Teams on opposite sides can be connected by teleport portals. They would come to the surface from the underground (hell). In different time intervals, each of the columns would advance (push) with different intensity, which would require cooperation between teams (players). They can announce their actions by blowing a horn. All players should monitor the situation on the map. It is recommended to place ordinary soldiers (defenders) on the platforms instead of barricades. At the top of the hill there would be a huge round flat platform where all 16 players would be at the end. With the last double flag in the center. That central platform could be connected by massive (wide) bridges across the water to the four adjacent platforms. All “Las Vegas” effects should be toned down a bit, especially when it comes to elite monsters, to make the game look more serious. The wizard’s crystal is unnecessarily large on the platform. All skill effects should be made a little more discrete for better overall visibility (optional). The blue graphic for placing the skills could be more transparent (optional). Necromancers corpse should not be visible until the skill that uses them is equipped. Barbarian could ride a tiger, and Wizard could ride a polar bear or/and a unicorn (skills). Smaller demons could ride on larger ones (drum-beating demon leader)…

18:40 The fact they didn't continue on with class order halls is one of their biggest mistakes imo. Order halls were SOOOO cool. So many good times just interacting with other people under Lights Hope Chapel. They could have easily continued the concept but chose not to even tho people loved them.

Final Fantasy XI was hardcore difficult. You could level solo til level 10, then you had to go to the Valkurn Dunes and wait for leveling parties. And, there were roaming goblins that could wipe out your entire party if you didn't see it coming. Before SE patched it out, if you ran for the zone line to get away from the goblin, it would walk back to its patrol route killing every player along the way that it finds. Good times.

The biggest problem with the Warcraft lore, as it has been shaped by wow over the years, is that it has been largely directionless and in many areas poorly written. You can't expect people to get excited for a story when you have bad writers, switch writers or, worse yet, do writing by committee. It's not that the Warcraft story is hard to get into, it's that the payoff for doing so is meager at best.

This is actually a good change to see. My main complaint with WoW is how little overarching story there is currently, which feels like a full reset each exp in all ways. Having a game where there is a longer thread through expansions and multiple areas or character arcs is something the game needed badly.

Nobody gonna notice how anduin held his sword like the lich king?

Tbh if they made a show with this new anduin that sounds pretty good to me even, that trailer looked insanely good

So ironic that Riot plans to do the exact opposite.

I’ve been out since early BfA but hearing that Metzen is back and that they have a connected roadmap ahead is definitely enough to bring back this Warcraft fan.

An anime in the style of those BFA story shorts (of course, with due adaptations) would be amazing

I want a movie or series for Warcraft 3’s story in the style of the WoW cinematics (the big fancy ones like the saurfang stories)

Sounds like the End Game... in more ways than one, which gives me hope for WoW II.

Vanilla through Lich King was actually the same thing. It was the story we all knew and built up over a long time

the best way to make it is make it soloable but you will have massively easier and more fun time with a group example rs3 has a group boss called solak is 1-7 people the mechanics are the same just hp and less amount of some mobs, so you are pretty much still have difficult fight solo but easier with a group

World of Warcraft Classic is good at social infrastructure because of two things... 1. Not everything was solo friendly. 2. Your pool of people to assist you was limited. You had to meet people and build relationships; you couldn't just grab someone from another server and never meet them again.

They just wanted to squeeze 1 expansion into 3 to collect money for each part.

Am I the only one who thinks that the new dlc names don't sound like WoW dlc names?

I saw one of the biggest differences in social experience between classic wow release and SoM. While I love SoM to death, the fact that they increased questing, but not mob xp (so dungeons were a waste of time) and added a levelling feature, that incentivized isolation (hardcore), it made levelling in SoM faster, but tons less enjoyable and fully isolated. The biggest problem is the way quests chains are designed, you may have 30 players in a zone, but everyone is at a different stage and so even if they wanted to group up, it's usually not possible to do quests together. There should be some way to increase quest sharing, where you can get the quest xp for helping someone else out.

JUST making thins harder is just gonna push people away. Adding ways for people to come together and THEN having to interact is key. What's the hardest part of doing a Mythic+? Usually getting a group. If they made that simpler, not automated, but adding more tools, they'd see less friction in the system. Imagine if there also was a page where solo people could list themselves to be picked up by a group leader? And give people more precise ways to filter, like by class, spec, ilvl, let allow people to inspect each other INSIDE the group finder pane.

Bet $10,000 they will try and use the pander stone

*MCU movies are dying* "Hey! Let's do that!" - Blizzard

I think the idea behind "wrapping up stories" is a major contributing factor, why MMO stories quickly grow in scope and at one point inevitable out of touch with its old "mundane" lore. With every expansion there needs to be a more powerful, more ancient, more all-encompassing evil to defeat - because the lesser evils are already dealt with and "finished".

i really think the problem of missing context is well handled by having quest npcs with buttons to play old cinematics for context, but i've been here for like 15 years now so idk what a brand new player who isn't well versed in lore overall would think

Yeah because MCU is doing so well

Yeah I would come back to wow in a heart beat if they reset it, in whatever form that is. As someone that hasn’t played retail since cata I’d just feel way to out of the loop.

I'm hoping that they will then just make Expansions cheaper since i'm sure they won't add much gameplay features between the expansions since they will come out quicker.. if it's mainly the story being added, they shouldn't charge too much. Wishful thinking i know.

I like your take on game difficulty at the end and forcing players to socialize, I agree with it 100%. in Retail, I could probably beat most leveling content with auto-attacks and never feel pressured. Things have gotta change.

Is the multi-expansion framework / announce purely a Blizzard / Metzen thing? Or do we think Microsoft has some hand in this? Would such a structure lend itself more toward Gamepass?

Genuine question, I've never played WoW, and a main reason is plot/story is really important to me and they keep deleting/changing the plot over the expansions, so it never seemed like a good time to join. Is it honestly a good time to start? I've played most other MMOs in the market.

I think what they mean by doing something risky between expansions to continue the story is either a Series on Netflix or a movie or something to that effect

9:35 I agree with that. I played some WC3 and joined WoW back in TBC, so I knew some bits and pieces about the Warcraft story, but not too much. I liked how Tauren were always talking about the Earthmother and that Elune was some sort of celestial being for the night elves. It was obvious that they had some spiritual connection to these entities, I thought that was cool, so I enjoyed playing Druids and Shamans. Don't need to know more about it. Some things become demystified very quickly by trying to give them more context and explanation. It's sometimes better to simply leave it to the players' imagination as to what they might see in it

People not understanding what an "idea fairy" is. She is being self depricating. It's a military term that refers to people who will pop up over your shoulder with "an idea" when most everything has already been figured out. Passionate but disruptive. She isn't referring to fairies.

Garrisons were a good idea, but just didn't do it correctly. Why can't they make a zone in the major cities, IF, SW, Org and TB where you have houses? No one goes into their separate zone in like garrisons, instead everyone can see everyone's house. Someone else probably has a better idea on how to handle this than I do, but I would think that is something they could look into.

The example I always go to with things that are better unexplained is Star Wars before the prequels came out, the idea we had in our heads about what the clone wars were was completely different to what they ended up being.

I don't understand how there isn't a WoW animated show that looks as good as all of the cinematics, or movies made at the quality of those cinematics

Blizzard now mixs anime games with disney style in to WoW to become "new WoW" and sell us 90$ each parts of one expansion 😂😂😂😂

They should do this with Classic expansions in the sense of restarting everything and writing a cohesive story. 3 part TBC, 3 part FT, Etc

it makes sense that theyre making expansions come more frequently because to me they are like battle passes in other games, if expansions come cheaper and more frequently i really dont mind payin the fee... of course as long as they can keep up with the game being halway decent n interesting but they havent let me down for a majority of the time ive played the game.

I'm wondeting how they will keep the levelling setup. Will War within be the new 10-70 once midnight comes out? Then after that will the 2nd expansion be the 10-80 for the 3rd expansion? I agree I do think people need to be able to digest everything cohesively

they could have done 1 expansion which is long for 4 or 5 years and tell the story, big patches with new lands etc... they just wanna sell more stuff in shorter emount of time.

Imagine unironically soyfacing over Marvel in 2023

The Elder Scrolls Online released their Part 1 of multi chapters this year with Necrom ready for their 10 year anniversary next year and Im so happy to hear WOW is also now doing this

they have already found other ways to make more money. Adding wow tokens, A whole shop, Even just added wow tokens to wrath. I dont see them charging full expansion price for each one of these 3 expansions but i wouldnt be surprised

I don't want to play Marvel, I want to play Warcraft.

We'll be paying full price for patches, not expansions.

I don't understand why solo and group content is pitted against each other so much. Have routes to take that you can go solo, and have routes to take where grouping up is important and allow people to choose for themselves which route they want to take. FFXIV does this well with the implementation of the trust system or whatever it's called, where you can run dungeons solo with AI help, then you can rerun them with real people if that's something that interests you, and maybe there can be different but equivalent rewards for both.

Top things I'd like to see in the future; - Player Housing (like WOD, but that it keeps getting updates forever) - Disallow addons / wa from automating communication (example; auto marking and then have the addon automatically tell you which mark you need to interrupt). This will force communication is high-end content. Going in a +24 key through LFG & the only message being sent is "hi" should not be possible. - If seasonal features are introduced like corruption it should be buyable from a vendor using currencies that drop from all content, not specific mini-games like island

Asmon is right about them needing to reset the game in some way after this epic trilogy is done with. The only way I can see it actually being that way and still within the same game is if they build an entirely new world literally a new world and every time you go there it has its own leveling system and its own everything. What if in this other world all players lose all of their magic and all of their memories and they have to level up from one to 60 and it's a completely different world with completely different magic systems. Basically an entire other game that you can go through a portal to get to.

This does not bode well. The MCU is the biggest flop since Endgame cause it went into the Wokey'verse. And whoever goes woke... will inevitably... get no loot.

Wizards of the Coast also announced not one year in advance what Magic the Gathering sets are coming but the sets of the next up to 2026! I see alot in common with those companies who used to fuck up their flagships in the last years

i think blizzard just need to remake the stories into the game to be more synthetized

Crazy to me that when Steve was leading the story we had an entire arc surrounding Sylvannas and basically made her this god amongst men completely skipping the perfect continuation that was the sword, and then Chris comes back and all of a sudden we focus on sword again? It's almost like BFA, Shadowlands and parts of Dragonflight are gonna feel retconned.

I don't think it's ok to build two expansions at the same time because the creators might have different views. Just look at what happened to star wars 7, 8, 9. they used different teams and they made a mess.

yo i never thought about how blizzard has never increased sub cost.. thats actually wild with how much ive seen my streaming subs rise the last year alone.

Anduin looks like he just got back from the island and is ready to fight crime with a bow and arrow.

Chris Metzen came into the office and was like "Have you all played FFXIV? We could totally steal that story for like 3 expacs at least and not have to put any effort in!" Mangement - "FUCK YEAH LET'S DO IT! Hear, FEEL, PROFIT!!!!"

I didn't watch this all. But I can imagine Blizzard going to sell patches in the future. So no more Expansion -> Patch 10.1 -> 10.1.5 -> 10.2 -> 10.2.5 etc. they gonna do it like this: Expansion 1/3 (50+ bucks) -> patch 11.0.5 -> Expansion 2/3 (50+ bucks again) -> patch 11.1.5 -> Expansion 3/3 (50+ bucks again) -> last patch 11.2.5 ---> next "SAGA", another 3 "expansions". rinse and repeat. And yes, I do not think this will take 6 years, more like 3 years.

A good way to reset it would be to have Azeroth completely ravished by some massive foe, and after defeating it the world leaders are able to use it's power to move spacetime into the passed PERMANENTLY, and that would allow the developers to forget Azeroth all entirely and move into something new, an ancient world with entirely new continents, "plate tectonics". I would do it that way. That would also allow for all characters to "vanish" because in that ancient time, other characters, cities and civilizations existed, maybe there wasn't humans, different kinds of elves and dwarves and gnomes and proto humans, etc... Orcs would exist, trolls and taurens would have more importance

I hope they make WoW into an Offline Game, after The Last Titan. Charge $100 and sell all Vanilla + all Expansions as 1 game. Use NPC characters in-game to populate cities. AI companions in raids. Then run WoW 2 with a Subscription as Retail.

They need to make a TV show that looks JUST like the War Within cinematic, Anduin's look im sure will go down in video game cinematic and maybe even cinematic in general, History.

I hope they will do the new animated series. They are soooo cuuuuuuuul

Asmon said the sub few had not gone up in 15 years but it went up not long ago for us aussies at least from 15 to 20

soo... i kinda love warcraft rumble. they did it right. it's fast, simple, easy to learn mini rts with card game tower defense mechanics. it's really fun and i think I like it more because it's flavored as Warcraft so the rts feel really work. also it's vertical which is means it's a superior mobile game.