Chris Metzen for a Day

[Jeremiah]

Let's say hypothetically that you take over Blizzard's creative development for a day, which means you essentially become Chris Metzen. You have complete and total control over the story and overall feel of the next expansion. Now, I know people are incredibly and passionately divided over whether or not Mists of Pandaria is a good or bad idea, so I'm just wondering what you would all do instead.

Would you bring back the Scourge for yet another expansion, create an entirely new enemy, focus on the Alliance versus Horde conflict, or something entirely different and "Outlandish"? For those of you who really don't care about the story or lore, it still determines what your gear will look like, what continent you're going to be leveling on, and what sort of races and classes you'll have access to.

Personally, I'd love to see a spacefaring expansion or an expansion that focuses entirely on the present conflict between the Alliance and Horde. Mists of Pandaria claims to focus on this conflict, as there seems to be no "Big Bads" or supervillains present, and I think that's a step in the right direction. Still, Pandaria serves as a distraction from what could have been an amazing story of war between the Alliance and Horde. I think Blizzard gives too many shining moments to the good guys and has a difficult time creating believable villains. Most importantly, I think Blizz has a difficult time creating villains you can easily sympathize with. Their story department can't seem to create a villain that I would say, "Wow, he's actually right," to. I like villains when I can agree with their ends but have a few problems with their means, and so far, Blizzard has really only developed a caste of villains who want to "DESTROY EVERYTHING!!!" I can't get behind that kind of idea for obvious reasons.

I have a feeling that the "Sha", or the "Elemental Hate" is going to give this expansion a reason to end on a happy-go-lucky "We're the heroes of Azeroth" note; I don't want to be a hero, I want to be a player in a global conflict. This upcoming Mists of Pandaria expansion will end with the Pandaren tying the Alliance and Horde together with their lessons of kindness and peace, and the Horde and Alliance will eradicate the Sha, or the Elemental Hate, and learn to love each other. I hate to say it's going to end that way, but it is. I'll put 50 bucks on it right now. The story will start off with the Alliance and Horde plunged into absolute and total war with the destruction of Theramore, and for a moment we'll finally get to see these two great civilizations and their member states unleashing their most terrifying weapons. That will end soon when Blizzard's wise, Monk-like race exerts their international influence through their new Monk cadre and the fact that there are great number of Pandaren amongst the Alliance and Horde, when they will then stop the conflict with the power of love. Tell me I'm wrong, because I don't want to be let down.

We want to hear from you. What would you like to see from a future World of Warcraft expansion?

[Maisteri]

Maybe some un-named force (cause I don't know shit about lore) could threaten the break the world once again and the only way to stop it is to go back in time and do everything so that force wont be able to exist or become existant.

So gnomes and goblins get together and build a time-machine taking us back to level 60. Yes, the vanilla WoW as an expansion.

Then there could be new raids and such to prevent the force from becoming existant, while patches take us through BC (outlands remade), WotLK, Cataclysm etc. with new quests.

This would be a cool way to put the game back on the good tracks.

I'm now out of ideas.

[Confucius]

I would make an expansion all about pandas that bring peace to the world!


Oh wait...

[Nyarly]

I am not a writer and i'm bad at telling story. So i might be a little bit off topic but i think you misunderstood the reasons why i, and i think a lot of players, dislike MoP.
I love the Warcraft and Starcraft lore. I started to play WoW for the lore. I wanted to physically see Thrall and every main characters, what they looks like, how they fought for the battle of ahn'qiraj, how the icecrown citadel really looks like, ...
I just don't like when it doesn't make sense.

To me, dwarf shamans and tauren paladins are still a non sense. They tried to explain it but it doesn't fit.
They just wanted to open more race/class combinations. They didn't do it because it would be a natural evolution lore-wise.

I like the idea to put more PvP in the game (even if i don't really like PvP) and I wouldn't care about Mist of Pandaria if it made sense. It actually doesn't. You can try as hard as you can to explain why they put pandarens in Wow, you will never convince me.
What i mean is that Pandarens were an easter egg at first, they aren't a part of anything lore-wise since the beggining of the Warcraft titles. The only reason they put them into WoW is for marketing purposes (i don't know why but i know it's to make money) because that's what they do since they are Activision Blizzard and no longer Blizzard Entertainment (again, in my humble opinion. I don't say i'm right, it's only what i think is true).

I really don't think the Red tshirt guy likes MoP, because he obviously likes the lore and MoP just seems to ruin everything.

So it's not because MoP and Pandarens looks childish or because we won't have a big vilain, it's because it seems that they decided to give up on the lore and just do whatever they want to gain more money.
It's pretty clear to me that they don't care at all about the lore lovers anymore. They just make stuff out of nothing to try to prove us that they planned it for years. It isn't and everybody who likes the lore won't be fooled, but since it's a minority of the players and that the vast majority of the players don't care at all about the story and will not read the background or just accept what they are told, then it's good enough for them.

How many Garrosh hellscream are in the game ? 4
How many Rexxar are in the game ? 3
Kael'thas ?

I could tell you many more examples about how they ****ed up the lore, but i don't think it's necessary.


So what i would like for the next expansion ? Something that makes sense, that's all. I don't care if we fight voidwalkers, sargeras or any other living creature, i just want it to have a place in the lore.

[Confucius]

To me, dwarf shamans and tauren paladins are still a non sense. They tried to explain it but it doesn't fit.
They just wanted to open more race/class combinations. They didn't do it because it would be a natural evolution lore-wise.

Well wildhammer dwarves have always been shamans and even had some druids. For tauren paladins there were hints about sunwalkers, but they don't have that much lore.

[MeesterCookie]

I'd proberly focus on an expansion of "Caverns of the time".

I mean, caverns of the time seem to always getting worse and worse, plus they add new zones here and there and seem quite goodly scripted but for people who have played warcraft 3 or otherwise might feel left out. With this expansion I would proberly fix all the errors in the lore between WC1 and WC3 and show the events of how it lead up to the world of warcraft as it is today. This would proberly be quite phased or just make it so they can re-vist places but obviously, highly code and script it. For example you could even have the hero games as a quest or battlefield just like warcraft 3 custom games where the alliance goes against the horde but it's a raging battle between two bases and this would have to happen without being phased as people would have to quest inbetween, this gets reset but the lore-zone would have to be reset as if it was a great battle between horde and alliance or it could just foucs over time just as if you do quests to help your faction there and then. Depending on wich side wins whoever is on each side acomplishes that zone and moves onto the rest of the lore but if not it has to be reset, the levels could not matter as long as the XP they eared from doing a quest, for example "Steal supplies from the alliance" "XP Reward: 1000" and they loose, they earn but they won't get the XP the secound time around completing it. This could lead the game focus alot more intresting, this could also add alot more moral choices for the player to decide and there rewards and the correct lore era after that one depending on the game and it could also add real-time cinematics where the whole group can join in. This could happen for clans aswell.

Don't get me wrong, the text above may make it seem like I'm stealing this from "Final Fantasy xiii-2" for anyone who has completed this or played it but it's not like that, it's about the caverns of time finaly opening up and by I mean unlocking the correct lore era I mean like to stopping the people who want to destroy time in that era so they move on otherwise, it would have to reset or it would lead to fatal sacrifies or disibilities in the game. This would give people alot more idea of the lore between the games plus for people who haven't read the book either. This could also add alot of playing hours on to the game for alot of reasons plus it could unlock new battlegrounds, levels, gear, new monsters and creatures and alot more!

How an opening cinematic could go would be like this:

*Evil voice* "You mighty heroes, you have outstanded every challenge the world has thrown at you but if they was not to happen you would of been doomed, but whos to say they did happen?"
*Sees a video of two major different faction cities changing as if previous things was never completed or even for other zones*
*Information about it like level cap apears on the screen*
*Evil voice* "If you change the future, you change the past. If you change some choices you could seriously alter the timeline leaving it corrupted and distorted. What if <Insert some lore here> didn't happen? What if <Insert some lore here> didn't happen? What if <Insert some lore here> didn't happen? What if none of these happened or even if they players wasn't born?
With alot more music, information, cinematics and that crap.

This could mean majour differences in the current world of warcraft right? But the evil people have a problem, they can only get to one time zone from another but have to work there way through so it's like an epic chaise through the game but you could have to warp through different eras and other timezones randomly but you unlock one by one and every time you do a portal appears in the caverns of time but it's client-side this is to save space basicly and for alot easier transport.

Starter Quest:
You're sitting there in the middle of the city belonging to your race. In that area somewhere after level 85 there will be a ghost, who has just appeared and starts walking around. You then get a quest of that ghost what goes "Everything is not what it seems." You then say "Wait what?" and you hand the quest in. A phased cinematic appears and everything starts to change as if things didn't happen for example if you was outside stormwind a flashing deathwing would be there, but it would be like a ghost you can't attack or anything. You then get teleported out of that place by the leader of the caverns of time, he then explains the current situation (Bla bla bla.) and then you find yourself wound up in another time (Maybe from WC1) You then randomly teleport after finishing each place and making sure the time-warpers have been banished from each zone and that your faction won or that the lore is how it should be. Then you start following the questline though the random places you teleport to from WC1 to WC3 to the things what have happend pre-game in WoW. This will be quite fun as in some sitiuations you have to convince people to do somthing, earn there trust and at the end it's all restored and a client-side depending on what character your on a statue appears in the middle of each city, but only you will see it with your name and character on it. This would be cool with the gear too as you could have time-zone spefic gear.

Edit: Will add more tommorow.

[Jeremiah]

Thanks for your contributions, guys. I've enjoyed reading them

[Bloodygaming]

After Defeating Deathwing and Thrall Son is born he sudenly wakes up and realizes it was all a dream ( come on nightelf, org mages, tauren paladins and dwarf shamans?? cocain is a hell of a drug)

Meanwhile Tirion Fordring realizes that he must go back to Northrend and defeat the Lich King and his beloved friend Bolvar.
But to be able to defeat the Scourge for all time he needs help. He comes across a rumor of mystical magic from a foreign country and he trys to travel to it.

on the horde side Hellscream makes his own horde that does follow all the commands from warchief thrall and that declares war to the humans ( the player will be allowed to choose witch side he wants to join, players on the thrall side are peacefull to alliance while on hellscreams side they are hostile. this brings world pvp back )

one day hellscreams ship follows a human ship and they get into some kind of storm and sudenly they are stranded on a island. ofc they fight each other etc. then they realize there are pandas blabla and pandas are also at war with other pandas and each side joins forces with the other side etc..

and ye so we getting prepares to kill bolvar woohoo

[TehVoyager]

Posted this on the news art. i keep forgeting to check the real thread >.>

Metzen for a day huh?

10:00 am: Buff mages.

12:00-3:00 Tell the player base there wrong in as many ways as Humanly possible, without repeating myself or telling a player they are wrong, twice.

3:00-3:03: Invent an Expansion worse than MoP with things rejected from Wrath. spend 2 1/2 minuites more dev time on it than MoP.

5:00 Make a good salary and have no possibility of being fired for shoddy work.