World of Warcraft: Current Year

Runnen said:

I think the horizontal content stems from the max level being and announced as remaining at 60 permanently. However, a level 60 with ilvl 250 gear isn't going to play in the same ballpark as a level 60 with ilvl 60 gear. At some point they're going to create new content that requires better items to tackle it realistically. You won't be coming back after years of not playing and suddenly be useful in a post-Naxxramas raid if you stopped around Molten Core. Jimmy Tryhard isn't going to want to invest 50 hours a week into the game (and whale away at the cash shop) if they stay at the same level of power as Joe McWeekends.

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I'm actually curious if they are going to do this with zones too. Perhaps they will add more level 60 zones with more dangerous mobs as player power progresses?

Runnen said:

I think the horizontal content stems from the max level being and announced as remaining at 60 permanently. However, a level 60 with ilvl 250 gear isn't going to play in the same ballpark as a level 60 with ilvl 60 gear. At some point they're going to create new content that requires better items to tackle it realistically. You won't be coming back after years of not playing and suddenly be useful in a post-Naxxramas raid if you stopped around Molten Core. Jimmy Tryhard isn't going to want to invest 50 hours a week into the game (and whale away at the cash shop) if they stay at the same level of power as Joe McWeekends.

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It was already that way. You couldn't do Naxx without AQ gear. You couldn't do AQ without BWL gear. All of that was lvl 60 content.

Runnen said:

Correct, which is why I said this idealized untouched WoW isn't going to last. You're already seeing it with the $30 cloud elves, cosmetic-only items being added to Forever. They're adding transmogrification to sell you cosmetic items, and soon they'll probably make a Forever version of housing so they can sell you "classic-looking" decor items.

There's a reason Retail became something you despise.

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Literally a feature in WoW Forever to turn off TRANSmog shit.

Lodi said:

I'm actually curious if they are going to do this with zones too. Perhaps they will add more level 60 zones with more dangerous mobs as player power progresses?

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I'm not even sure which zones they could add at this point. They already kept Quel'thalas out of the game because 1) it's the focus of the current Retail expansion and 2) it was originally TBC content and they probably wanted to emphasize on the Classic aspect of things.

The way they worded it, they said "we aren't quite ready to go to Quel'thalas yet" so it seems to be in their plans, probably once Midnight is fully over. But it was a big part of the Warcraft 1 to 3 story so it's a bit jarring.

Now this is an alternate timeline where the portal to Outland is never reopened by Lord Kazzak, Northrend is never explored again after Arthas returns and kills King Terenas, the Cataclysm never happens, Pandaria never discovered, etc etc... so where do you go? You can't add the Azuremyst/Bloodmyst isles, you can't have any new landmasses or planets or dimensions.

They've been tinkering with "Heroic World Tier" in Legion Remix and in the next Midnight patch (plus the Val/Naigtal sub-zones in current Midnight), so perhaps they'll add a toggable Heroic difficulty to outdoors content so players at max power with raid gear can go to a place and not steamroll everything.

That's the limits of this concept I guess. They said they want to fill in the blanks on the Classic maps but after they added those two new zones, there's not much left right out the door (except Quel'thalas).

Penance said:

I tend to agree with this statement broadly. However there is a nano spec of hope that wow forever is/could be wow2 and they just gradually upgrade the engine.

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Theyve been gradually upgrading the engine since the game launched, so they're already doing this

I wouldnt be shocked if they do a stat squish down the line if content starts scaling too much.

Hoping the addon community gets things coded soon. Some QoL stuff still to come that feels bad not having like we did in SoD and Ascension.

Animosity said:

I wouldnt be shocked if they do a stat squish down the line if content starts scaling too much.

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Weekend Warrior is gonna log on some time in 2031 after an extended break and find himself at level 15 with Sulfuras equipped.

Animosity said:

I wouldnt be shocked if they do a stat squish down the line if content starts scaling too much.

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You guys are so uncreative. Preach has a great answer for this and there is already items in Forever that are going down this path.