Tuesday, March 31, 2020

Buying Time for Shadowlands

This is a polite reminder that this article was published on the 31st of March. This is a serious article and not an April Fools' joke. I don't intend to publish a joke article this year anyways.

Ever since the Wrath of the Lich King, the period between the last major patch and the next expansion has consisted of a lack of significant updates that lasted about a year. After Mists of Pandaria, attempts were made to address the issue in Warlords of Draenor, when a plan to release expansions yearly was revived and put into action, only to fail miserably almost immediately due to content design problems in the aforementioned expansion. This in turn led to the same lengthy content drought that happened during the previous three expansions though patch 6.2.2 and 6.2.3 were implemented to try to remedy the issue and much like patch 3.3.5, such patches were somewhat effective at best in terms of addressing the content drought.

Legion, much like Mists of Pandaria, staggered content additions with major patches adding story quests and other zone content, then raid availability coming a few months later, usually alongside a minor balance patch. This resulted in the final raid, Antorus, becoming available during late 2017. Patch 7.3.5 came out less than two months later and featured the level scaling mechanic in low level zones, improving the leveling experience somewhat, though I personally considered the addition insufficient for truly improving the leveling experience. The period between the end of Legion and the beginning of Battle for Azeroth was noticeably shorter with a content drought of 7 months at most, though it is worth mentioning the period between the major 7.3 and 8.0 patches was about 10 months.

Unfortunately, this came at the cost of the release iteration of Battle for Azeroth not being received too well. While the release iteration definitely had problems, I personally went on record saying it's not as bad as vocal players, some of whom claimed the expansion was worse than Warlords of Draenor, thought it was. I considered Island Expeditions a decent addition to the game even in its initial iteration because of its application as complementary content especially for leveling, which I believe should be expanded upon by making it available as early as level 10 after the Shadowlands level squish. While I have yet to post an article on Azerite, the initial iteration seemed to fix some problems I had with the Artifact system such as by dampening power-based Paragon progression further and not having Artifact Knowledge cause major numerical inflation.

The biggest problem with the release iteration of Battle for Azeroth in my opinion was Warfronts, which I mentioned in my article reviewing the content. I specifically mentioned a second Warfront being available on release would have helped to address issues with content accessibility since multiple Warfronts would help to reduce the possibility of downtime caused by the unexciting contribution phase. Control phase content could have also been improved to feature content that was added later such as World Quests. Ultimately, delaying Battle for Azeroth by a couple of months to add this second Warfront and refine other content additions, such as by fleshing out Island Expeditions into something similar to its 8.1 iteration, would have made the release iteration of the expansion much more enjoyable.

At the time of this writing, the only thing that is known about the release date of Shadowlands is that it will happen sometime in 2020. Considering patch 8.3 came out at the beginning of this year and the legendary cloak's Corruption Resistance upgrades cap out at 125 by early September, it is likely that the expansion will release around early fall of this year. However, I believe it would be more prudent to release later than that if only to refine content such as Torghast, the roguelike dungeon I am personally looking forward to, further.

Regardless, unless the highly unlikely possibility of the next expansion releasing in the next two or three months occurs, there will likely be a content drought that, while not as long as some previous expansions, is still quite lengthy. While this period should be strongly devoted to developing the next expansion, I believe there should also be more of an effort at keeping players entertained. Therefore, I have a number of suggestions to make for a theoretical minor patch that could be implemented a few months from now, preferably around early summer, to accomplish the goal that the title of this article states: buy time for Shadowlands.

Major Suggestions

I have split the suggestions that I wish to make into two parts. This part involves the more significant additions that I believe would be appropriate for a minor content patch that's intended to be more ambitious than most past minor content patches. With that said, I tried my best to give players plenty of worthwhile activities to do until Shadowlands prepatch with as little effort as what I consider reasonably possible. This is accomplished by reworking past content, improving the lifespan of current content, improving the leveling experience, and adding new content for endgame players that shouldn't be too demanding to implement.

Rejuvenate the Proving Grounds

I've already written an article about rejuvenating the Proving Grounds, so I'll make this somewhat brief by summarizing parts of the suggestion that I believe could make it into a minor content patch along with some personal refinements since the suggestion is about two years old.

I think the Proving Grounds are a good example of the content obsolescence that happens with games like WoW as they constantly march onward with new content updates to keep players pleased. To be fair, there have been attempts to address this obsolescence by making old content relevant at level cap or introducing features to encourage players to experience low level content again, such as Timewalking and raid boss pet drops for the former and level scaling, Allied Races, and Party Sync for the latter. However, I believe much more can be done considering the sheer amount of low level content there is available and the fact some of that content, such as the aforementioned Proving Grounds, languishes without much attention for years.

To that end, a minor content patch could add a reward structure to the Proving Grounds, feature other aesthetic themes such as one related to the upcoming Shadowlands expansion, and introduce mechanical enhancements similar to Horrific Vision madnesses.

When it comes to rewards, experience is a must and should be awarded from mobs in addition to completing trials or defeating sufficient amounts of waves in Endless mode. Completing trials and defeating waves in Endless mode should also feature at least some rewards suggested in my article such as consumables, reagent, money, and gear. Endless mode rewards should also scale based on the number of waves completed, with my suggestion stating each wave completed awards 15% of the base reward, plus 30% for completing 10 waves. Gear rewards at level cap should also improve based on how many waves are completed in Endless as I suggested in my article. In this case, item level 470 gear could be awarded by completing wave 30, with additional gear pieces being awarded by completing higher level waves. One addition I would make that I didn't mention in my article is that players are required to complete at least 10 waves in Endless to earn rewards at all.

When it comes to aesthetics, Proving Grounds would be more pleasant to do if it featured more than a single arena and Pandaria-related enemy varieties. I personally think the logical choice for a cosmetic addition is a theme centered around the upcoming expansion to give players an idea of what to expect visually from Shadowlands.

Introducing madness-like mechanics is an easy way to increase the mechanical challenge of Proving Grounds that doesn't involve the more time-consuming act of adjusting or adding more mobs with new spawn patterns, mechanics, and behavior. These additive mechanics could change every 10 waves in Endless mode, much like it does in The Crucible in Grim Dawn. In the future, it would be nice to see mob adjustments and additions especially for the sake of making Endless mode less repetitive.

Ultimately, a few changes that help to make the Proving Grounds more relevant would accomplish much. Newer players would be more motivated to try to earn the title rewards from completing wave 30 in Endless mode. Experienced players would have a sandbox that provides rewards which scale strongly with personal performance. The Proving Grounds would also be an additional form of leveling content, proving more much-needed leveling activities and allowing less confident players to learn to play the game in a group-like environment without being harshly judged by others.

Add Raid Scenarios

When I reviewed Warfronts, one suggestion I made when discussing future iterations of the content was to implement more raid scenarios. While Warfronts seem to have been so poorly received they were largely abandoned after patch 8.1, I don't see why raid scenarios as a whole should be excluded as a form of content since other iterations of raid scenarios don't appear to have upset players. In fact, I would go as far as to say assault content and especially invasion points have elements of what raid scenarios would have since large groups of players can group up to complete objectives and defeat a boss with no regard for role.

When it comes to a minor content patch addition, multiple one-boss raid scenarios can be added. I believe these would be less demanding to make if a specific approach is used. For example, raid scenarios can be designed like the aforementioned invasion points or Final Fantasy 14's trials, which generally feature fairly small arenas with a boss and minimal trash mobs. This means more time can be spent on encounter mechanics rather than elaborate environments, trash mob spawns, and minibosses like Ruby Sanctum, the patch 3.3.5 raid, had. Encounter mechanics can also be simplified to a degree because of a lack of a role requirement. Using mechanics that generally affect all players such as those featured in Horrific Visions, Island Expeditions, or even Heroic Battle for Darkshore should suffice in terms of providing players with a challenge. I would particularly approve of the addition of a few raid scenarios with brutal difficulty or the potential for it as long as insanely hard raid scenarios are not the only raid scenario content available.

Some raid scenarios could be also be intended for leveling players. This would provide them with a taste of the raiding environment with relevant challenge and reward, which is a privilege often reserved for level cap players. This would also provide yet another leveling activity to do and because it is a scenario, the queue for it should be fast. Raid scenarios could also be useful for providing some notable quest enemies with an encounter more worthy of their status.

Rewards would be pretty similar to what I suggested in my Proving Grounds suggestion. This means for lower level players there would be an experience reward and other rewards could include gear, money, reagents, and consumables. Raid scenarios could have additional rewards depending on its theme. For example, a raid scenario that is based off plot from a specific expansion could award currencies and reputation related to that expansion.

Raid scenarios, especially the one-boss ones I strongly suggest making several of, do not suffice as a replacement for an entire raid tier's worth of content that players seem to hunger for. However, I believe they are a good addition as part of what a minor content patch has to offer. They should be quick to add because the design parameters for scenarios are generally simpler, but it's still possible to provide a decent level of immersion and challenge for players. There's plenty of quests and other sources to draw inspiration from, which serves the dual purpose of making it even easier to design raid scenarios and using them to flesh out existing content. Finally, given how I suggest it, there could be raid scenarios for all players from those who are leveling to inexperienced and veteran level cap players.

Add World Quests and Events to Leveling Zones

A few years ago, I briefly mentioned that there should be World Quests in older zones so that lower level players have more activities they can do while leveling up. I personally thought this idea was a no-brainer and while I was not explicit in suggesting it again later on, my strong opinions regarding the need for more leveling activities was clear especially in my Leveling Quick Fixes article series.

While this has not happened yet, events, which were featured in some form in Warlords of Draenor leveling zones, have become a major part of the assault content in 8.3 if only because of how much faster they make completing the assault quest. Events in their current form feature fairly simple objectives with completion credit being shared with all players who participate. This is great since as I mentioned in my previous article, events are similar to FATEs which were a form of content I was planning to suggest for WoW. In any case, both World Quests and events would make for excellent leveling content if added to older zones.

Adding World Quests to leveling zones would at the very least allow players to relive old quests they may find enjoyable. They could also be used as a way to easily create new questing content without overhauling old zones, though there would be storytelling limitations since quest chains would not be available. Finally, World Quests generally make zones feel more lively since the quests that are available would change every 6 hours or so, which in turn change what's happening in parts of the zone.

Meanwhile, the addition of events would serve as a point of interest for players due to the various minor objectives that cause small changes throughout the zone which players can choose to address. Events would be simpler than World Quests in terms of the objectives the player has to complete, but teamwork would be strongly encouraged since credit for completing the objective is more easily shared. Unlike 8.3's events, I believe events should be available more frequently like FATEs are, which is generally how I would like to see events be implemented in the future. Specifically, when an event is finished, another event would spawn in a different part of the zone. Furthermore, players can complete as many events as they want without being time-gated out of a specific event. One thing I would like to see kept from the 8.3 iteration of events is the fact players have to find them using the minimap instead of the map. This would encourage players to explore in a way that treasures and rare spawns, which also only show up on the minimap if at all, do.

Unfortunately, the logistics of adding World Quests and events to all leveling zones would be demanding for a minor content patch. Therefore, I would prioritize modernizing the zones that desperately need it the most. This means that Northrend and Outland zones should be the first two sets of zones to receive World Quests and events. There does not need to be too many World Quests and events and I think a few of each for each zone would be more than enough to make the experience of leveling through these highly outdated zones a little more interesting. I would also consider adding World Quests and events to Draenor zones because while they are considered to have a good questing experience, the quests are very linear and repetitive to do on multiple characters.

When it comes to rewards, experience would be the primary reward along with money and maybe gear. Other rewards such as reputation and various items would depend on the zone the World Quest or event is in. There could also be more creative rewards such as consumables that directly help to improve leveling such as a potion that grants a little rested experience, which took the form of an actual consumable in the past. In fact, such rewards may not be a bad idea to award from any content a leveling player is capable of doing.

There's no questioning this suggestion in particular is explicitly one that is meant to add leveling content. While changes have been made to leveling and, at the time of this writing, there's even an event running in response to an ongoing real life crisis that increases experience gain by 100%, what I am suggesting in this section (and other parts of this article) would be directly improve the leveling experience to a greater degree like patch 7.3.5 did. However, unlike patch 7.3.5, this suggestion not only does more to fix issues I have with the current state of leveling, but it's only a small part of the theoretical minor content patch I would like to see. I believe it's important to make improving the leveling experience a part of every minor content patch at the very least. To be fair, patch 8.2.5 did accomplish this goal to a degree since features such as Party Sync were only part of what that patch had to offer.

Add new Corruption-related Heirlooms

During the concluding parts of the Mists of Pandaria and Warlords of Draenor expansion, heirlooms that scaled up to the maximum level of the following expansion were a major reward to encourage players to continue playing. In Mists of Pandaria, the final boss of the Siege of Orgrimmar raid dropped weapon heirlooms of varying strength based on difficulty. Warlords of Draenor, on the other hand, added a new Mythic difficulty to dungeons and added trinket heirlooms as a reward. I liked the addition of these heirlooms and while their addition as a reward doesn't justify a lengthy content drought, it makes the experience more tolerable at the very least.

As my previous suggestions show, I want to see the addition of raid scenarios and Proving Grounds as content for endgame players to enjoy. Much like with Mythic Dungeons in Warlords of Draenor, adding an heirloom reward in addition to all the other rewards I suggested would encourage players to try the content. These heirlooms could then be used for leveling, which would be improved by the Proving Grounds rejuvenation and the addition of World Quests and events in some leveling zones.

Acquiring Heirlooms

However, I also do not wish to make some of the same mistakes as the Mists of Pandaria and Warlords of Draenor iteration. To that end, I am suggesting that the acquisition of these heirlooms is made entirely consistent and can be earned through existing current endgame content. To accomplish this, a new currency should be added that can be gradually acquired to purchase the heirlooms in question, with boosted currency awards from the theoretical raid scenarios and rejuvenated Proving Grounds.

I believe it's also important to balance heirloom acquisition around having multiple characters since due to weekly lockouts on raids and Mythic Dungeons, it was far too advantageous to have multiple characters when it came to farming heirlooms. At the same time, I do not wish to punish players for playing multiple characters or force them to play on a single character. With these two points considered, I think it's important to make the currency an account-bound item that stacks very high (possibly 9999) for the time being. Furthermore, there should be some account-wide currency reward restrictions for the more lucrative time-gated rewards.

This is ultimately how I believe the currency system should work:
  • An heirloom costs 300 currency.
  • The following involves time-gated and account-bound limited currency rewards:
    • Each specific emissary quest awards 50 currency to the first character on the account to complete it.
      • Emissary quest completions on subsequent characters awards 20 currency.
    • Each specific assault quest awards 50 (minor) or 75 (major) currency to the first character on the account to complete it.
      • Assault quest completions on subsequent characters awards 20 (minor) or 30 (major) currency.
    • The Mythic+ weekly chest awards (50 + 10 * highest key level completed that week up to 10) currency, up to a maximum of 150 currency on the whole account each week.
    • The Conquest weekly chest awards (50 + 10 * ((highest seasonal rating - 1000)/100 or 0, whichever is greater) currency, up to a maximum of 150 currency on the whole account each week.
    • The weekly Island Expedition reward for earning 36000 Azerite awards 50 currency for the first character on the account each week.
      • Earning the weekly Island Expedition reward on subsequent characters awards 25 currency.
  • The following are currency rewards that are not time-gated or limited at all:
    • Completing a Horrific Vision awards up to 60 currency.
      • Defeating the boss awards 15 currency, plus 5 for each side objective. For a successful run, an additional 5 currency is awarded for each Faceless Mask used.
    • Completing a trial in the Proving Grounds awards a variant amount of currency.
      • Completing the Bronze trial awards 10 currency.
      • Completing the Silver trial awards 15 currency.
      • Completing the Gold trial awards 20 currency.
      • At the end of an Endless Mode run, the player earns 3 currency for each wave completed, plus an additional 10 currency for every ten waves completed. Currency can only be earned if the player completes at least ten waves.
    • Killing raid bosses in any Battle for Azeroth raid awards a variant amount of currency based on difficulty. Currency can be awarded for bosses the player has already defeated during a given week.
      • Normal bosses award 10 currency each.
      • Heroic bosses award 15 currency each.
      • Mythic bosses award 20 currency each, or 25 for Mythic Ny'alotha bosses.
    • Completing an LFR wing awards 30 currency, even if it's been completed before during a given week.
    • Completing a raid scenario awards currency based on length and difficulty
      • Normal Warfronts award 25 currency upon completion.
      • Heroic Warfronts award 40 currency upon completion.
      • One-boss raid scenarios award 15 currency or more upon completion depending on difficulty.
    • Completing a Mythic+ dungeon awards currency based on key level and performance.
      • The player earns (5 + (1 * key level)) currency for completing the Mythic+ dungeon.
      • The reward is increased by 1 currency per key level if the dungeon is completed in time.
      • The player earns an additional 2 currency for each level the key gains from completion.
    • Completing a random heroic dungeon at level cap awards 10 currency.
    • Battlegrounds and Brawls award 10 currency for winning and 5 for losing.
    • Arena skirmishes award 5 currency for winning.
As I mentioned before, I attempted to cover much of the endgame content available when it comes to earning currency to buy the heirlooms I'm suggesting. As promised, rewards from level cap content added in the theoretical minor patch are given a bit of a boost, though it's still reasonable to earn heirlooms through other endgame activities. Account-bound restrictions have been placed on the more lucrative time-gated rewards, but as a compromise a reduced reward that falls in line with grindable reward amounts can be earned on subsequent characters. Note that Horrific Visions is listed as being an activity that is not time-gated, which will be addressed later in the article.

Heirloom Details

When it comes to the heirloom details, they would be usable but not overwhelmingly powerful in the hands of endgame players, with an item level of 415 at least. These heirlooms would scale from level 1 level 120, or level 60 when Shadowlands comes out, without any need for upgrades. More importantly, I want to make these heirlooms special much like their Mists of Pandaria and Warlords of Draenor counterparts. Mists of Pandaria weapon heirlooms were incredibly strong and had sockets. Warlords of Draenor trinket heirlooms had equip effects that were more effective when fighting the many Demon enemies the Legion expansion would offer. For Battle for Azeroth heirlooms, I went with using the recently added Corruption mechanic. This means all heirlooms added by this suggestion would either have a specific corrupted equip effect or Corruption Resistance.

I have a few reasons for adding heirlooms using the Corruption mechanic:

The first is that I find the beneficial and detrimental equip effects interesting. Many of the beneficial effects consist of procs that provide trinket-like or somewhat unique effects such as increased cooldown reduction rate or damaging effects that scale off maximum health. With that said, some beneficial effects would need to be reworked to scale properly at lower levels, such as the flat stat procsInfinite Star, and Twisted Appendage. Detrimental effects would serve as an inherent risk for using corrupted gear as I mentioned in my previous article. While they would need to scale properly with lower level characters to prevent unfair instant deaths, being able to modulate the difficulty of leveling content by opting into increasingly dangerous mechanics is a great option to provide for players who want to make leveling more challenging.

The second is that Corruption Resistance is lacking at level cap until the player gets their legendary cloak. This is a problem since the legendary cloak is required to cleanse corrupted gear, but players can earn many pieces of corrupted gear beforehand. This means players can be awarded otherwise great gear upgrades that are too risky to use. The fact players need to earn the legendary cloak to properly handle corrupted gear, which might require a bit of gear to accomplish, feels like an oversight. One way to address this is by providing players with a way to increase Corruption Resistance on their alts, which would be nice to have for managing Corruption they get from corrupted heirlooms anyways. In addition, having access to more Corruption Resistance beyond upgrading the legendary cloak would allow players to control their Corruption level better, which would be a nice benefit to have to experiment with more corrupted gear.

Third, there is a lot of room for creative heirloom design due to the amount of equip effects corrupted gear has. This is because there are 53 possibilities for corrupted equip effects when not counting unique equip effects on Ny'alotha weapons. This is further increased by adding heirlooms with Corruption Resistance and inventing new equip effects. However, adding 53+ versions of an heirloom for a specific equipment slot would be excessive. Instead, each equipment slot should be dedicated to every rank of one or two specific corrupted equip effects or Corruption Resistance. Ultimately, it is up to the WoW team to determine what kinds of Corruption-related heirlooms are added assuming this suggestion is taken seriously. However, it is important to add corrupted heirlooms for multiple equipment slots that allow players to access every possible positive and negative Corruption effect.

Finally, assuming there are many heirlooms featuring most if not all of the corrupted equip effects, level capped players can utilize a specific equip effect without dealing with randomness. This is because normally most corrupted equipment is granted a random equip effect and as the previous paragraph points out, there are many to choose from. Players looking for corrupted gear with specific effects may be frustrated as a result. Corrupted heirlooms with specific equip effects would provide a consistent, though often weaker, alternative so that players can finally get their cooldown reduction proc or the like.

Overall, the addition of Corruption-related heirlooms would serve as the reward system that complements the other major suggestions in this article. It would serve as motivation for players to try the new or reworked content that is available or at least encourage them to participate more in endgame content. Leveling would be made more interesting because players can challenge themselves with Corruption mechanics. I would like to think this suggestion is not a cheap ploy intended to keep players playing since there are other suggested additions and I attempted to address issues with how the weapon and trinket heirlooms were awarded in Mists of Pandaria and Warlords of Draenor respectively. By the way, adding an experience gain bonus to the heirlooms I am suggesting is entirely optional, but appreciated.

Minor Suggestions

I have some minor suggestions that largely consist of tweaks to 8.3 content that haven't been addressed in a hotfix already. These suggestions, aside from being something of an extended criticism of patch 8.3 content, are intended to improve the endgame experience without trivializing it excessively in my personal opinion.

Remove the requirement to enter Horrific Visions

By the time a theoretical minor patch comes out, which I would personally release around early summer, the need to time gate access to Horrific Visions will be unnecessary since any reasons to time gate the content such as gear and cloak upgrades would have long since fallen out of relevance. To that end, giving new and returning players an opportunity to upgrade their cloaks to the maximum rank at their own pace would be a good change to make a few months from now. I also wouldn't be against removing or relaxing the time gating restriction of gear rewards.

This change also has other benefits. To start, there would be no need to farm Coalescing Visions from assaults in order to do Horrific Visions. There would also be significantly more room for error, which means players would be more willing to do group runs, explore the scenario, or experiment. Thanks to my suggestion to add Heirlooms and a currency to purchase them, Horrific Visions would be more worthwhile to farm especially in the most challenging way possible. 

To conclude, I believe removing the requirement to enter Horrific Visions, especially in combination with other suggestions, would encourage players to do more than a single weekly Horrific Vision run to increase the Corruption Resistance on their cloak.

Make Coalescing Visions more useful

Coalescing Visions have a single use at the moment and that is to purchase Vessels of Horrific Vision, which are used to access Horrific Visions. However, because of my previous suggestion, Coalescing Visions are effectively useless, which is a quality about currencies I dislike. This issue can be resolved with a couple of small changes.

To start, Vessels of Horrific Vision can be reworked to be consumed to double Corrupted Memento gain for a single Horrific Vision run. This allows the item and the currency used to purchase it to continue to be useful without being necessary. A new vendor can also be added that exchanges Coalescing Visions for useful consumable items that are only usable in Horrific Visions. These consumables would only be half as effective as a typical Battle for Azeroth consumable so that those consumables would still be useful.

With this suggestion, Coalescing Visions would ultimately have their role shifted by making them optional to farm to enhance Horrific Vision runs instead of making them mandatory to farm to do Horrific Vision runs at all.

Make all applicable gear drops corrupted

One advantage that the corrupted gear system has over Titanforging is that gear always corrupting does a lot less to undermine gear-based progression compared to the massive item level increases guaranteed Titanforging may cause. I also think players should be able experiment with corrupted gear more as their Corruption Resistance increases. To be fair, changes have already been made to make Horrific Vision and Mythic+ weekly chest gear drops always corrupted (unless it's Azerite gear).

However, I don't see any issue with simply removing the random chance to corrupt entirely at some point in the near future... except for one I will address in the next suggestion. Guaranteed gear corruption wouldn't eliminate all the frustration of receiving corrupted gear since players might not get the equip effects they want, but such a change would at least remove an entire layer of randomness.

Remove the cost to cleanse corrupted gear

The cost to cleanse corrupted gear is a meager 5 Corrupted Mementos and largely serves to gate players out of the feature until they have gotten their legendary cloak. However, I believe locking players out of the feature, especially when they are guaranteed to earn corrupted gear that might be an upgrade for them even when cleansed, causes unnecessary grief that should be addressed as soon as possible.

Allow players to earn more than 2 Malefic Cores per week when catching up

Malefic Cores are the item used to increase the legendary cloak's Corruption Resistance. Players can normally only acquire and use one per week by completing a full clear of Horrific Visions or defeating N'Zoth in the Ny'alotha raid on Normal difficulty or higher. However, for players who miss out on Corruption Resistance upgrades, they can earn 2 Malefic Cores each week instead until they have caught up on those upgrades. This may suffice for now but will be an annoyance for new or returning players since depending on when they start playing (again), they might not be able to maximize the Corruption Resistance on their cloak before the prepatch or next expansion releases. This would be exacerbated further if access to Horrific Visions continues to be time-gated.

Therefore, I personally think players should be able to upgrade the Corruption Resistance on their cloak up to cap for a specific week regardless of how behind they are and believe a hotfix should be implemented immediately to make that possible.

4/2 Update: I didn't read the blue post thoroughly enough when writing this section and forgot to add a player needs to defeat N'Zoth and fully clear Horrific Visions to get both the Malefic Cores they can earn each week (they can't do Horrific Visions twice, for example). This can be a bit of an annoyance for people who don't raid, don't want to do any more Horrific Visions, or have alts that may not be considered qualified to raid. It goes without saying this suggestion would remove the requirement since players can earn as many Malefic Cores as they want up to the Corruption Resistance upgrade limit for a given week.

Closing Thoughts

I think it would be great to implement even half of what I suggested here over the next few months because while I doubt the suggestions I'm making would sufficiently satisfy all players, there would at least be more to do on WoW during the summer and part of fall, after which the Shadowlands prepatch can be released. The result would be a good release rate of content that reduces the need to release the next expansion sooner. However, it's important to temper expectations and consider various possibilities.

First of all is that the Shadowlands beta opt-in started about a month prior to the publish date of this article and while the closed beta itself has not started yet, it will likely start soon. According to Blizzard Watch, beta tests for the previous two expansions lasted for around 4 months. They go on to predict that Shadowlands will release in August. This would be before the Corruption Resistance cap on the legendary cloak is reached, but it's very possible that Corruption Resistance upgrade acquisition may be accelerated to the point that the cap is reached by the time the expansion prepatch is implemented.

Furthermore, at the start of this year, there was no plan for a minor content patch such as 8.3.5. This may change and I hope Watcher and the rest of the team do change their mind because I believe not implementing a minor content patch, which would help to allow for a more thorough testing of Shadowlands, would be a mistake. One joke I often saw being made about Battle for Azeroth was that it felt like a beta version of the expansion and it would be bad if that happened over two consecutive expansions.

With the previous points taken into consideration, it is likely Blizzard has a roadmap prepared for WoW for this year that thankfully won't involve distractions such as working on releasing Classic WoW, which based on an interview with Blizzard's CEO may have detracted from live development. It is therefore likely that this article, much like many other articles where I have made suggestions or discussed future possibilities, will end up being a personal musing about what could've been. To be fair, my ideas or perception of current and future issues with WoW are far from flawless. On the other hand, I would like to think an article like this can be utilized to a degree as a general guide on how to improve player retention during a content drought by maintaining a steady flow of content releases without seriously hampering the development of major content or using cheap promotional tricks that encourage players to subscribe for long periods of time.

To conclude, I don't really expect Blizzard to do much with live WoW in its current state beyond some more hotfixes while their development team focuses on Shadowlands. It seems contradictory to not keep players engaged in one of the many serviced-based games the company now runs, but I would like to think efforts are being redoubled to ensure the next expansion is not perceived as a flop on release. While I would strongly prefer the addition of significant amounts of minor content between now and the prepatch, I'm content with spending the summer and possibly the fall focusing more on other activities. I would like to think I'm not the only one accustomed to lengthy content droughts and are willing to be patient, considering how often Blizzard releases major content for their service-based games in general.

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