The Next World of Warcraft Expansion

[SomeBritishDude]

Nice ideas!

My guild master thinks that next expansion will add Panderans to The Alliance.

Sorry, but read below.

But Blizzard are never going to do Pandaren for legal reasons. The Chinese Government don't want 11 million people beating the shit out fo their national animal.

That seems like a very odd reason. Then again, the Chinese are pretty damn touchy about this sort of thing.

 

[Vanguard_Ex]

Nice ideas!

My guild master thinks that next expansion will add Panderans to The Alliance.

Sorry, but read below.

But Blizzard are never going to do Pandaren for legal reasons. The Chinese Government don't want 11 million people beating the shit out fo their national animal.

That seems like a very odd reason. Then again, the Chinese are pretty damn touchy about this sort of thing.

That's a ridiculous reason. In that case, look at the Tauren; why aren't Indians complaining about people beating up cows? As if it's going to encourage panda genocide...

 

[The Great JT]

All of this is stupid.

All of it.

 

[Jupsto]

I'd rather they added more classes/races and expanded/improved on the actual game instead of just raising the level cap each time. the previous expansions made the game worse.

 

[Chipperz]

OK, my predictions...

With Keristrasa woke to fight Malygos, it started corrupting the Emerald Dream, which will be the main battleground in WoW : Rise of the Fallen Bunnies. Main enemies will be corrupted Furbolg, demonic nature spirits and psychotic Druids. There'll be another incarnation of the Emerald Circle, much like the Argent Crusade in WotLK.

I think there'll be new Races. Uncorrupted Furbolg will join the Alliance on Azuremyst Isle and Goblins will join the Horde in Durotar. I don't think they'll get new starting areas.

The Demonhunter will show it's face as a combination of Warlock and Rogue, combining dual-wielded swords/glaives and shadow-based magic, and (if Blizzard have ANY sense) there will be a limit of one of ANY Hero Class per server. Teeth will be gnashed and the population will drop a BIT, but more people will join because of the shiney. Most people who ragequit will skulk back withing six months and hope noone notices.

The level cap will be raised to 90. The expansion after that will raise it to 100 and then more focus will be put on new content for the mid/low levels.

 

[Mray3460]

Races -

Furbolgs racial bonuses are really weak, slightly more money and faster leveling would mean little to nothing at level cap. As far as a "casual" race would go I guess it would be nice, but eventually most people still hit level cap.

Those centaur racials are pretty similar to how taurens were early on in developement, they had the plainsrunning ability that was the equivalent of mounts because there were no mounts they could ride, they also have massive draw backs because they don't have any solid pve or pvp racials.

Pandarens sound like a fun race, but since being drunk almost entirely hinders actual gameplay, that's why it sounds more of a joke race than a real race. A real racial would be something like "Drunken Panda Rage: Increases movement speed by 30% for 10 seconds" or "Increases damage done by 10% for 15 seconds" and you would have the drunken effect for the time.

Again, Goblin racials suck. Slight boost in random money and the human reputation increase. Nothing solid for either pve or pvp.

Murlocs unlimited breath sounds worthless to me, possibly because I play undead and can already breathe underwater for 10 minutes. Ive never found myself underwater for that long anyway to warrent an entire racial based around it. Plus healing in water has very limited use unless they added a ton of water raids/dungeons and whatnot.

All in all the races seem too weak and I doubt many people would play them besides just to toy with, they probably wouldn't ever really catch on because they're ultra gimp.

Classes - Too vague to really comment, and adding even one new class as said before can change the game completely in pvp, which would create some serious balancing issues.

I'll agree with you that the races are pretty much useless in combat, but that's by design. What mainly started me thinking about this was when I attempted to transfer a rare item through the neutral auction house from a character on one side to the other (for those who don't know, this entails a complicated process, along with a second account on standby (as you cant bid on your own auctions), in this case provided by a guildmate), the item was priced at 1 copper to allow for easy transfer at minimum cost, but was snatched by someone else. So I lost the item.

Even before then I'd been trying to establish a reliable form of cross-faction communication and trade, but had been met with nothing but dissapointment. Thus, this idea was formed.

The reason that the races/classes are relatively weak in combat is that they are designed for cross-faction trading and communication, not for normal gameplay such as PvP of PvE. They're meant to functiona as a kind of universal Bank-alt, that can move and trade where normal characters cannot, and in ways that they cannot.

The furbolg bonuses were born out of a frustration that I'd had with the professions on my many characters, mainly that A. It was not conducive to my pocketbook to have a crafting profession, even if I wanted the coolest stuff without paying a fortune, B. that two gathering professions (herbalism and mining) while fine in fiscal theory, prove to be frustrating and difficult to manage, as instead of a "Find Resourses" you have "Find Minerals" and "Find Herbs," which cannot be used at once, and C. That a new character's professions were ultimately hindered by their inability to level up (level requirements to up the skill cap stopped me in my tracks after learning "Journeyman" most of the time). Thus, I settled on the first neutral race that came to mind, and set up the abilities: 1. Always being rested for easy leveling to help pass level requirements quickly 2. Simultaneous find node abiliies to allow for multiple gathering proffesions and 3. to allow me to have a crafting proffesion and still have plenty of money.

I began thinking of the rest of the races when I realized that having only one race for a new faction seemed...stupid. So I thought of what else would be nice for a purely economic and commuicative standpoint. Hense, the centaurs for speed, quick manuverability between nodes, from mob to mob, or simply from the bank, mailbox, or auction house. The goblins, I will agree with you, are useless for combat, but having no auction house fees, early discounts, and fast reputation to gain further discounts would be save a lot of money in the economic long term, and it fit the characterization of the race.

After that, I ran out of ideas concerning races, as I'm not too knowlegable concerning warcraft lore. So, I jumped on Wowwiki and read about the Pandarens. They were popular with the fans, had a great story, were comedic gold, clearly deffinable racial traits, and offered me the idea of a new profession, perfect. Then I spent quite a few hours looking for something else to join the new faction. Gnolls were too primitive, the alliance would never tollerate Satyr, and I didn't really see the appeal of Kobolds. Then I glanced at abanner add, and I realized that murlocs fit the same bill as the Pandaran, they had a cult following, high potencial to be developed as characters, were comedic gold, and their racial traits were easily definable.

As for the classes, they came about in much the same way. The courier was born out of similar desires that spawned the centaur, namely, speed and efficiancy. Nothing makes me more frustrated than running out of bag space in the middle of a gathering session, or the seemingly endless trecks of wasted time between highly concentrated areas of nodes, or simply getting aggroed when you're just trying to make some money. Hense, more bag space, lots of speed buffs, and lots of stuns to get out of combat quickly by running away.

The bard was born out of a continuation of the idea of Cross-faction communication, the ability to learn languages other than your own. Add to it the pet-master style of play with humanoid servants/companions/partners, and a play off of the runic-power system for death nights, and I was pleased with the class.

The trader was another consideration of what qualities would be good in a character designed to be economically oriented, and the idea struck me of a portable, player-controled vendor. It would be incredably useful in long instances by allowing other players to restock their supplies (potions, food, drink, and bandages) and to empty their bags without wasting their items by simply throwing them away.

Finally, the Mercenary was designed as an appeal to combat and pvp enthusiests. The idea of additional honor, money, and marks seemed to make sense to me, and, since the warrior, I've heard, is increadably useful at high levels, it seemed to be the perfect model for the neutral combat class.

Why can the Centaur sprout wings and fly...? That makes no sense at all.
I wouldn't mind having Furbolgs as a playable race. Hell, I could take them more seriously than say, GNOMES.
Your Goblin racial traits make sense, giving that Goblins were basically a bartering race.


Husbandry...yeah, ok. Combining pets to form rarer ones? No. It doesn't work like that. Trying to combine pets does not make rarer ones, it makes them angry.

The wings and flying are to make up for the fact that they can have no flying mount.

And...yeah, I'll give that one to ya on the Husbandry profession, I though that up on the spot just before posting, because it seemed like simply having brewing (a single profession) without a couterpart, seemed one-sided.

While I admire your creativity, I have to say that those ideas are really silly.

Except the one with including Goblin race. I was sure they're gonna be the race for Horde in Burning Crusade (BTW I guessed Dreanei )
To avoid the "it's easier to criticize than come up with something yourself" comment I'll think of some possible class now...

*I took a 5 min break here*

Ok this is harder than I thought.
How about Corsair, an agility-based, cloth-wearing class that relies on building combos using both ranged and melee weapons with "spells" that would in fact be different chants boosting morale of allies or providing some crowd-control similiar to Taunt, but taking off the aggro.

Nah, stupid idea, he would get pwned in PvP and it would be hard to justify a pirate's existance in deep dungeos.

A Witch Doctor would be too much like Druid and Shaman. A Brawler/Berserker would be too much like PvP Warrior minus armor. Hmmm...

I know!
What about some funky spellcasting class that relied on some crazy mana system (like getting mana points for casting spells. w00t?) with spells that would do weird things like illusions of oneself, exchanging DPS with the spell victims, making mobs attack themselves etc.
Call it a Trickster and make it avaliable for Trolls (there was a mob like that in WC3), NE, BE and Gnomes. Sound good to me.

I'm crazy, I know.

Actually...that last class isn't a half-bad idea, call it a Mindslayer or Illusionist.

Also, could you be a little more specific on the problems you see in each idea, I'd appreciate it if I could have critisism that was a little more constructive. Thank you.

 

[Biek]

threads like these get closed immediatly in the wow forums. and for good reason.

 

[George Palmer]

Bring back the Defias! Or Kobolds. Which ever

 

[Roflpotamus]

Pandaren are out, china does not allow blizzard to add them - we would've seen them already otherwise.

For classes, Demon Hunter, Steam Warrior and Runemaster are the best bets as far as I know.

As for a setting, it will either be purging the Emerald Dream, or something to do with the Maelstrom/South Seas (South Seas would be very heavily goblin-based, and both of them would focus heavily around water, which would warrant a use for the new underwater mount, possibly?)

And bard was the 2008 April Fools joke class

 

[Meado]

I'd like to see a class that has low health and armor, but phenominally high magic resistance and parry skill.
Also, give me scythes or give me death.

 

[Thyunda]

*SNIP*

How exactly do you plan to canonically explain centaurs sprouting wings? Maybe you could come up with some kind of magical backpack that could maybe sprout wings on its own...or even make some kind of steampunk jetpack.

 

[timmytom1]

Warcraft 4,i`m through with this MMORPG shit

 

[UltimatheChosen]

I think they should add "neutral" races, that can be part of either faction. Pandaren and Goblin fit the bill nicely.

 

[Zobers]

Does any of this even fit in with the lore of the game?

And I agree, WoW needs to end. I want Warcraft 4 or Starcraft 2 soon.

 

[Rednog]

Centaurs wouldn't work because the Horde slaughtered a great deal of them and are still "at war" with them through the Tauren.
Other races would be tricky since the Humans of the alliance are racist bastards who pretty much hate everyone who isn't close to being a human.

 

[Mray3460]

*SNIP*

How exactly do you plan to canonically explain centaurs sprouting wings? Maybe you could come up with some kind of magical backpack that could maybe sprout wings on its own...or even make some kind of steampunk jetpack.

I was thinking more along the lines of tapping into druidic or shamanistic power or something like that. It was just that I had the idea for the centaur and was trying to figure out what I could do for mounts, ended up deciding to just give them a special racial ability and move on.

 

[Panzer_God]

A screen that flashes every hour saying 'take a break'