BellularGaming

Michael · @BellularGaming

18th Jul 2017 from TwitLonger

My condensed thoughts on making the next xpack story / leveling good.


I think Legion had a weak story, especially during the levelling. Why? Well we were sent there to collect 4 McGuffins that were related only in flavour text. This meant we had no character arcs that spanned our journey on the Broken Isles, and generally had rather disconnected experience. Thinking back to Wrath, we similarly had a lot of zones that would play just fine in any order. Now I happen to think Wrath worked excellently. Why? Well almost every zone felt like it’s own place, but had a scourge element. So as we explored the looming threat of the Lich King was developed more and more. This was a strong unifying theme that worked really well.

So, I thought, what would wrath look like in today’s system? Because I think that would be pretty damn great, especially with modern quest design. So if wrath were done today, ICC and Stormheim would be max level only zones like Suramar. This means that the zones which are the culmination of all the threats we’ve been exposed to still have their importance preserved, and in a way that doesn’t make the levelling process take a lot of time. The rest of the Wrath zones would work in any order just fine when you think about it, so that’d be good as long as we had a strong introduction to the continent. Great! So what do I want a new expansion to look like? Well that plus characters, which would be easy.

Have our initial cast of characters be together in the opening of the expansion, and then be scattered across the zones, before coming together in the endgame only zone or two. Then just ensure that there are strong thematic ties between zones. Those, plus the characters, should make it all feel quite interconnected and cohesive, while still giving us a really cool finale to the story at max level.

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