Should Blizzard recycle its old zones?

Happy Vault Day readers,

Hope the RNG gods treat you well.

In this week’s issue, we have:

• A deep dive into recycling the old zones

• The Darkmoon faire returns the week

• A guide to acquiring the new currency in patch 11.0.5

• And more….

News

• Darkmoon Faire returns 6th-12th October (Wowhead)

• Rares dropping reputation tokens again (Wowhead)

• Hotflix summary (Icy-veins)

• Notable lore characters participating in the 20th-anniversary event (Icy-veins)

Guides

• The 20th-anniversary event, how to acquire the bronze token currency (Wowhead)

• Complete fishing guide (Gamerant)

Economy

• The wow-head economy weekly round-up (Wowhead)

Art spotlight

• Warlock tier hexflame coven armour (Wowhead)

Recycling old zones

A recent article published by PC Gamer (see here if you haven’t read it yet: PC Gamer) looked at how World of Warcraft deals with its content differently from most other MMOs.

The system World of Warcraft employs is to release several new zones during an expansion, have us adventure through them, then release several more the next expansion and move on.

Now this system works, and there is nothing wrong with it, but it does leave the world feeling a little empty.

When revisiting previously loved zones from old expansions there is not a lot of activity, save for a few players leveling through the zone as fast as they can, in order to get to the end-game content.

This is not the players' fault either, as when an expansion moves on, Blizzard moves all the exciting new features to the new zones, so there is no reason (other than levelling) to be in the old zones.

I have heard a lot of players saying they would like a change to this system, and they would like old zones to be relevant again. I also think this gives an opportunity to develop storytelling for old zones and expand the development of certain races and factions.

So here is my idea.

Revamp old zones, add in new stories, update the worlds to represent what has happened over the last 20 years, put in modern assets, and give more depth to races and characters that are currently lacking.

I can already hear several people shouting at the screen, saying this is far too much work to implement in one go. Imagine trying to release the World Soul saga and then also revamping another 10+ continents.

Simply put that will never happen.

But what if this was looked at as a long-term evergreen feature?

Maybe in every expansion, patch, or every other patch, Blizzard picked a zone and dragged it into the modern day.

This would mean over time zones would get slowly updated, and we as players would get a chance to see what has been happening in those zones since we left.

This can even be combined with larger revamps from whole expansions, the Midnight expansion, for example, looks to be set in Quelthalas and may be looking to update large parts of northern eastern kingdoms.

What could these updates look like?

Well, there are many options here, I think it would be a great opportunity to give some love and development to underappreciated areas of the lore, or lore that hasn’t been looked at for some time.

So my first thoughts are races that could use some love such as Vulpera, Goblins, Mag’har orcs, Nightborne, Dranei, Worgen, Pandaren etc.

I also think class factions would be interesting to revisit such as Sunwalkers, Orc clans, Unseen path, Conclave etc.

I love World of Warcraft, and I don’t want this to come across as I think that the game in its current state is bad, because I don’t.

I think a lot of the modern-day systems work and I find them all very engaging.

I just think that these systems combined with updating the world will make the whole thing seem more alive and more like a WORLD of Warcraft, rather than just the new zones in the World of Warcraft.

But what do you think?

Would you like to see old zones revamped?

How would you do it?

What would you like to see updated in the old zones?

Is there anything you would like included that I have missed?

Let me know on our dedicated facebook page.

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Thank you

Thank you for reading.

If you have the time I would appreciate your feedback.

Let me know what you like.

What you didn’t like.