WoWlite
Hello! Recently Blizzard showed a trailer for World of WarCraft housing and it’s a really fun trailer but it brought back a thought I often have; the trailers don’t reflect the gameplay, not just WoW but in general it happens to a lot of games. The trailer shows the more fun side of WoW and Blizzard cinematics overall. It shows a Blood Elf rogue fighting a group of mobs, disappearing and reappearing behind a mob and although it is very cool, I’m fairly certain rogues don’t actually do that (I don’t play them so I’m not 100% sure on that). The combat in modern WoW is just kind of boring. It hasn’t changed much in the 20+ years and I feel like it really needs to be updated.
As a mainly spell caster player, standing still and casting isn’t very fun or engaging anymore, feels bad. My friends and I have been playing Apex Legends a little bit again and I kind of want WoW to be more like that. Like, they can’t obviously change the whole game like this so I don’t know if they would make a separate WoW type, a “WoWlite.” Like, god I have so many thoughts going I don’t know how to explain. So the way I’m thinking of it is like how in Marvel, for example, you have your “street” level heroes and then you have the big hitters that take on cosmic villians and world ending events. For so long now we have been the latter and we keep being the latter because what else are we going to do? We can’t keep going back to killing vermin in the gardens after defeating a literal god so we have to keep fighting gods and world ending threats. So maybe with this different style game we go back to being “street” level and do these smaller quest types and normal dungeons. I think the way the WoW team is now they can do it. Between the more casual content of the regular dungeons and now delves I think they could make a game revolve around those things specifically and keep making quality content for it. Maybe that's why vanilla WoW feels so good is because we're just average people in this world and not a "champion."
I’d almost like this game to be able to use a controller as well as mouse and keyboard. Games are starting to add too many actions that I can’t keep track of all of them on a keyboard. Even with the controllers they’ve got presses, holds, this button plus that one, like relax. The reason I'd like to use a controller is because of the movement, an analog stick is much better than WASD, I think. Well, I think Apex is the only FPS I play with a controller, again there’s just too many buttons. I know more high end players, I don’t want to say “pro” but those types set their keyboards up differently for WoW and don’t use WASD for movement or map them differently but I’m not them. I’m just casual boy wanting casual fun. And with a controller it would force us to only have a handful of spells and get rid of a lot of the bloat in my opinion. I’m not a fan of buffs I have to click on that are almost a necessity to have. Like you get into the game, you have to press like three or four spells for yourself, why? Just have them on all the time. I’d like them to be like WarCraft 3 auras. Shaman have spell haste aura, priest have stamina aura, mages have intellect aura. Similar to Apex where each character class has a special thing like controllers get 25 more armor while being in the ring, not completely unfair because if it were people would only pick a specific class. If it wouldn’t make much difference then why have it you may ask? Just because okay. For flavor. Cause it’s neat. Because you can pretend you’re contributing something extra to your team without actually doing anything. Something I AM a fan of are passives though so anything that doesn’t have to be a button is great. As a shaman maybe there’s a certain percent chance to spawn a fire elemental whenever you cast a spell. That’d be okay with me.
So with an Xbox controller in mind as a spell caster (and again I’m using Apex as the base so I’m trying to merge the control schemes and this is the way I use a controller in Apxe so it might not be the same as yours! There is way too much nuance here!) right trigger could be your main spell so I’ll just use shaman spells and say lightning bolt, right bumper could be a ping, left bumper could be a jump if we need a jump in this game, A could be flame shock, B could be wind shear, X could be frost shock and Y could be lava burst or for some reason just changes RT to lava burst like changing guns? You could have an ultimate so for DPS shaman it could be bloodlust by pressing RB + A. Running and sliding of Apex could be fun, run and slide behind a rock as a boss does his telegraphed attack. There could be different styles of play and depending on how you do your talents it changes the spells on your face buttons. As an elemental shaman you could build towards lightning, fire/lava or the elemental triangle of frost, fire and nature. But you get the general idea yeah? Like I kind of would like if the buttons corresponded across all classes or the same type of class so even if you switch classes it’s still familiar so RT is always your main casting spell and one of the other buttons is going to be an AOE spell. The problem I have in Apex with some characters is I have their ability on A so if I’m playing Bangalore and I’m trying to put smoke down I have to take my thumb off the left stick for a sec to use the right stick to try to put the smoke where I want it, bumper jumper issues. So some things like that. When I play Conduit and use her ability I can see that being used as a priest using power word: shield.
Maybe when you go into a dungeon or delve or whatever you get a box and you have to pick from the box which spell you get and as you go through the zone you’ll be greeted with other boxes with more spells kind of like picking a gun in Apex. Shape of Dreams does something like this, I’ve only played a tiny bit of it. Or maybe every time you get into a dungeon you pick from a few loadouts you’ve made of how you want to play? Each spell button has three or so spells it could be and you pick which one you want to use. Different healing classes could play slightly differently such as shaman could be more AOE healers with healing rain/the new totem and chain heal while priest are more single target healers or in the case of discipline priest they heal or shield their party through damage they do. I don’t know, I’m just trying to give people more choices. Maybe in this one we could have our tank shaman and warlocks or have DPS options for protection warriors and paladins.
And hell make it first person also, that could be interesting. I know half the fun of WoW is dressing up your little dolly of a character but in games like Apex and Rainbow Six Siege and even Deep Rock Galactic that are primarily first person they have skins and customizable armors that you as the player get to see from time to time. Kill animation or victory poses in Apex, dancing at the bar in DRG, maybe when your group finishes a dungeon there’s a little scene of you all celebrating together. I don’t know why I care about skins in Apex since I can’t see my character most of the time but I do, sometimes it’s the difference of me picking a character or never using them so I might be okay with it in this type of game.
I think, especially in this game being built from the ground up, that Horde and Alliance should be able to queue together just to make the process faster, match people up quicker, get more things done sooner and for good measure, put PvP into the game. Probably something more arena like and if you want you can make that be Horde VS Alliance.
I don’t know, I think the way people just run through dungeons makes me think of all the running around in Apex Legends. Like I have this vision in my head of how this looks and it looks kind of cool but I don’t know if it’s actually coming across well. It’s like I just want more of this Hearthstone, Overwatch/Pixar OG trailer, we're frenemies vibe. Just dial some things back and let us help the good people of Azeroth while the “champions” fight Old Gods and Titans. I think the storytelling with the delves and dungeons now are better than they have been so I think it would translate well to this weird version of WoW and I think they could keep making silly, interesting plots. We could even do the old dungeons still, go back to Ragefire Chasm and fight the serpent king of Wailing Caverns. I like the idea of the housing being in this game and all the décor you get from WoW is shared or even the house itself is shared. We don’t need to explore the world in this game, maybe have a portal outside our house to a capital city to have access to the bank and auction house like we’re used to and then we just do some dungeons. Hell make it like a looter shooter, just give us a choice of a bunch of different characters of each class and/or spec and throw us at a dungeon and see how we do. I don’t like that idea as much but I don’t know! I’m just throwing stuff out there, I’d like SOMETHING different to come out of the WarCraft universe. 20+ years of WoW, 20+ years!
Best case scenario for Blizzard making this is maybe after Last Titan so like, 4-5 years at best? Maybe after Last Titan then can still make WoW expansions but also this “lite” game as like “calm has finally swept over Azeroth, though there are still minor problems that need solving.” Random Kobolds being a nuisance, elementals acting up, and maybe with this game they could actually add new races. Races people have been asking for for years. I feel like WoW as it is can’t change much because the foundation it is built on is so old that they can’t really make significant changes to it. Maybe making this game from the ground up would allow them some freedoms they don’t currently have. Or maybe an indie studio will make something similar instead. I could check out Shape of Dreams more and also Fellowship is supposed to be some kind of dungeon focused game, I just want WarCraft to do this because I love the world so much. My original thoughts of the controls was A being a spell you use often like healing rain or power word: shield, RT would be your main attack spell, Y would cycle to another spell (like changing guns in Apex) and then I wasn’t really sure about the other buttons. There’s still so much you could do with the controls, I didn’t even get into what the D-pad could do. Cycle through food, water and potions maybe? I was thinking you could also choose between ultimates so for a restoration shaman you could pick bloodlust, cause it’s cool, or a ascendance if your struggling with healing, it could give you the boost you need. I still like the idea of callouts when casting a spell on someone or placing healing rain down. I also like the “always run” option in games that offer it, like yeah, why not? Actually thinking about it now I think I use a controller for all the EA games I have (all three of them), Mirror’s Edge Catalyst, Titanfall 2 and Apex.
I'm sure I've mentioned this before but can't find it right now; I liked in the early days of WoW how few classes each race could be and maybe for this WoWlite game they could go back to that. Like I feel that Blood Elves should be more magic based and not have warriors at all. The closest thing they get is a paladin and rogues. No Orc mages, if you have the elements in you then you are a shaman. My thoughts personally. But I will say that I think Orc and Draenei could be demon hunters at this point. And maybe no hunters. Just a thought.
Anyways, what do you think? What about melee classes? I don't really play them often so how do you think that would work? What did you think of the housing trailer? The song really hit me in the chest when I realized what it was. What are your thoughts on this mess of words? Maybe I'll have to check out Fellowship. Leave me a comment with your opinions and Blizzard/random indie dev; if this sounds like a good idea to you and you have questions I will be more than happy to try to explain my thoughts better! Bye-bye.
Also, check out these other posts that are slightly similar: World of ChillCraft, WoW Times 8
WoW in first person isn't great, you don't even have hands!
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