These are my concerns for World of Warcraft after Blizzcon... 

Im glad you brought up the "were working on 3 expansions". Weve always known this, they know where they are going with the story well in advance and always have. Only new information is we now have is the names in advanced.

As a person that right now has 17 level 70's, I can share a few things about why I like what they are doing. I have only a couple I care about power, that is the one I run mythic+ with and the other I raid with. I don't have others to funnel power. Nine of them are my profession alts, they just do professions and gathering. I am still tirelessly grinding rep for all these toons, because they have recipes locked behind the renowns that all of have to be unlock. The buff to rep helps, but it has been horrible the get all nine through Dragonscale, Tuskaar, ect.... and then every main patch restarting the process over again with niffen and now the new one starting Tuesday. The other alts are for the process of transmog. I have cloth, leather, mail and plate, that do all the content that has sets, in example: Time Rifts, Dreamsurges, Forbidden Reach and many others. With all this content I have to repeat over and over, such as rep, I don't get the opportunity to play my main that often, maybe once a week for a couple hours, my progession has come to a grinding halt with the pace of content in DF. My main Priest (mythic+) is currently 420ilvl with a 1000 Raider IO, lowest it has ever been in any expansion. I know I don't have to do all these things, but I prefer transmog and profession over other end game content, but I hate that it comes at the sacrife of my mythic+ and raids. With these rep changes and other things, I feel like I won't have to make those sacrifices in the future. But then with the addition of Delves, they maybe off the table anyways because that sounds like the best thing ever introduced to the game. Something I can do solo (without all the problematic enviroment), but still have progession. BTW, yes you can repeat the Heritage quest. I have done the Blood Elf, Tauren, Forsaken and Orc several times each.

I'm really excited for the warband stuff personally. I used to always max every rep every expansion and do all the side stuff but I mained warrior from mid vanilla until I quit in warlords. Then I returned at the end of bfa and fell in love with m+ but with how balance works I'm changing mains at least every other season. Now I'm looking back at my rep sheet on different toons and seeing stuff I already completed not done so I think what is the point in caring about this stuff when the game doesn't want to give me credit for it but on one toon and it has to be the same toon every time if I want the rewarding feel of seeing them all complete. Was pretty lame personally. I love the t-mog changes closest thing to removing lock outs on old raids I could ask for and in fact a little better as I can now just focus on 1 raid at a time and chain it down with multiple classes and progress them all of them at once.

Regarding the rep, they could still do that weekly huge rep quest. They'd just have to flag the quest in the same way they do those certain pet battle quests. Pet battle junk is often account wide so you can only do that given quest once a week total. The hooks at least exist to gate it in that way. I'm hopeful with the legacy content, he seemed to imply that we start with war within, then dragonflight, and then they start to go further back after that.

I am fine with the 3 days. That epic feeling in Dragonflight was first not being able to log in for hours on launch day, then if you were able to log in you were stuck in the port of Stormwind unable to get on the boat. I gave up and just waited till the next day to log in.

honestly rly excited what they gonna do with the hero talents, subclasses are always cool in mmos imo

The 3 day head start is actually huge for those who gets a head start in collecting materials that will be necessary to raiding in order to make big bucks at the start of an expansion. So it does matter for the economy of the game. It's kinda funny acquiring a studio because it was doing so much good work, then proceeds to fire people and expect it to perform as well as before XD. It's like buying a car and removing some parts of the engine and expect it to work XD. When it comes to the heritage armors for alts etc, i think you have to be exalted with your factions main hub town, like Stormwind or Orgrimmar for the character you want to do the heritage quest on in order for those heritage quests to actually show up for your alt. I'm not 100% sure on that though so don't quote me on it :P. Anduin is what a person in a position of power should not be, self-obsessed, too emotional to make important decisions etc etc. He is a crybaby and that is not a good look for someone that is supposed to be the a leader, the King of the people.

I don’t think they will abandon weekly quests. They will probably have gold, gear and upgrade currency as a reward, with reputation at a weekly cap. There will still be a reason to log onto alts to do world content, like Delves, since those unlock an option from the Great Vault every week.

i disagree with the alt thing, yes my main will always be my main personally, but if something takes me 8 hours to do (and most of it being monotinous grind) once; then i damn sure dont wanna do it again on my warlock for instance just go gain access to a tailoring recipe. having it all account wide gives the people that want that a good thing. The people that are not bothered about it can just not interact with it

I would really like a comprehensive story for each expansion. Like imagine if you had an adventure journal with a cohesive story for vanilla where you fight ragnaros and kel'thuzad, than to TBC, Wotlk etc all through the years in an evergreen type adventure journal

So, Blizzard confirmed at Blizzcon that the 10.2 Raid will be the last (new) Raid for the Dragon Isles expansion. Blizzard also announced that the next expansion, The War Within, comes out in the Fall of 2024 which could be November of 2024. So that means that we could have close to an entire year left of Dragonflight. Given the fast pace of previous patches in Dragonflight, how do you think Blizzard can keep new content coming until next November??

The reason you have a portal to ghostlands is because ghostlands and everything north of it shares a map with the rest of the outlands, so it's basically like a second dark portal :p

My main issue with Shadowlands (and Dragonflight) is the villain. The Jailer, to me, was an uninteresting character who came out of nowhere and was retconned into Warcraft 3's story and Artha's tale. Sylvanas was also wasted IMO. She had great potential to remain this anti-hero type figure working towards her own interests, that's how she's always worked best as a character. The amount of power she obtained so quickly also felt inorganic, I'll never forget how sad I felt watching the Shadowlands announcement cinematic and seeing her just one shot the LK like that, as if it was that easy the whole time. Made the entire Warcraft 3 story seem moot. I'm no writer so I can't speak on the objective quality of the writing, but I don't really care about that, what matters to me is my perception of it. Legion, MoP, and Wrath had great villains that carried the story, that's what Warcraft has always been about, heroes vs. villains; if one side is lacking the story fails. The game hasn't felt like "Warcraft" to me since Legion so I'm hoping the next expansion changes that. Shadowlands was particularly non-sensical to me. It felt like they had people writing it who didn't understand the Warcraft franchise, so even it were high quality or not it didn't belong here. I do agree with what you say about Anduin, his character progression is one of the few things I like that came out of Shadowlands. I'm glad they're using these characters going forward and finally addressing the sword. The premise that it was aimed at someone is a great idea.

In relation to that type of statement around selling stuff, Fall ends on Dec 31st in the US. That's why they use it. It's a binding statement.

Not sweating the weekly rep quest thing you’re worried about. It’s easy enough to make the weekly quest account-wide. This is already how the Time Rift weekly works. So using your Zereth Mortis example, you’d just have done it on one character, it wouldn’t be available to others once you completed it, and the whole warband benefits.

21:50 i think a benefit for the 3 day early release for people who bought the epic version could potentially be a smoother launch for everyone. You wont have as many players funneled into a zone on both the early launch and the global launch which puts less stress on the servers theoretically. That being said i think d4 had some launch issues despite doing the same thing so I could be very wrong here, but time will tell

Blizzard pays around 53% less than the competition for the same level of dev experience. ( Taken from q4 of 2022 so mightve changed but highly doubt it ) I dont see how theyd ever be able to make something of good quality with the majority of their staff having little experience as game devs ALONGSIDE of paying them less than half of what other studios do.

They will cap renown gains so that you dont feel forced to do it 13 times a week. I dont think they wanted us doing 500 Hunts in 2-3 days to max renown to get our first Primal Focus before raid release like we did at the start of Dragonflight. As someone with 13 toons, I have one "main" whose done all the story, but on all my alts in Valdrakken I have what feels like hundreds of quest markers on the map of quests i already have done on my main. Its kind of ridiculous and overwhelming, like theres no way im gonna go through and even try to see what those quests are on my alts so i just forever have a mess of ! all over the map. I dont need to do the bread crumb quest to show me where the Revival Catalyst is on every character. I wouldnt worry about locking yourself out on quests if it stays that way going forward, i kinda wish I could toggle on/off "Quests I completed on this Account" because I have already seen the story and they generally give no rewards aside from 20ish gold. Every time I log in to an alt i hear "Champion, can I have a word with you?" and theres some little pet looking thing with a ! over it following me around. There has to be some sort of middle ground, because I wish I could be like you and pick one toon and just play it forever. I started DF as Prot Pally with the intention of keeping it my main all expac, but when they put mana on me that was the end of that. I am SO GLAD I do not have to the campaign, do all the story just to swap to my new Evoker main, and if I need to swap again its just a matter of gearing the toon, which imho is the BEST feature of Dragonflight BY FAR. I 130% agree with you about them being stretched too thin. Im really afraid they will over promise and under deliver. I never felt that way before Dragonflight, and to me the Dragonflight Beta was scary and the things I was worried about are actually still problems I have with the game. I dont know about Alphas, I never got invited to an Alpha until Dragonflight, but I was generally in the first wave of Beta since Pandaria. Shadowlands Beta was 131 days. Dragonflight beta was 81 days. In Shadowlands Beta I felt it was mostly ready to ship aside from a few bugs here and there. Dragonflight Beta was like "is this really what we are getting?". In the Dragonflight beta seeing the development of the Thundering Affix was like "OMG what are they doing?" and honestly it felt like they were still developing it AFTER release as the whole "Tank gets the 3rd -/+ charge" didnt happen until well into the season. The first iteration was so bad I just assumed we would never bring Melee to M+ or at most 1 melee. Then all the sudden we just dont have seasonal affixes anymore, which kinda makes me a little sad (even though I hated Thundering). The whole Work Order system wasn't implemented until almost 2 weeks before release and it was super confusing in beta. Now I personally feel like we have Auction House, and The Other Auction House. The whole expansion felt so rushed and more and more I just feel like its "How little can we do to appease the masses?". While I agree with you on the 3 day head start... those people are also getting the Beta, so its way more than a 3 day head start. I know you dont actually get to keep what you do on Beta, but just "practicing leveling" is a HUGE head start, and usually enough to get Ahead of the Curve, so to speak, on other people leveling so your not caught in choke points. Which is what I think the 3 day head start is supposed to alleviate. Letting a % of players start early will make "release day" much smoother. Unfortunately it will also make "paying" for the 3 day head start and have it be full of crashes and WSD (I play on Illidan US its always a problem) feel terrible. If it takes more than 3 days level ill be surprised. I almost agree with you on Classic+, but I have a lot of friends that are going to come back to WoW to play Classic+ for 1 reason. Its super low commitment. Leveling 1-25 in a month and getting to do "a new raid" with "wacky stuff like tanking warlocks" is a cool game mode. I dont think anyone is gonna take it TOO seriously. I think its just an experiment to see if they can fix "Warriors are the ONLY tanks worth having" and/or "Why would you even consider playing arcane mage?". I'm more interested in just playing with these friends again who have long given up on the game, I kinda worried whats gonna happen when they realize theres no Random Dungeon Finder in Classic+ tho xD Thank you Metro for taking the time to read this. I hope some of this is thought provoking for you. Wubs.

I have already seen a few interviews, I can answer a few things. Rep grinding.- The repeteable quests (daily, weekly...) will give rep only the first time you do them in each period of time (that day, that week, etc...), and I suppose non repeateable quest will give rep only the first time you do them (although no confirmation there). Evokers.- Will start at level 10, like other hero classes. Quel-thalas portal.- Both that zone and the draenei starting zone are, currently, in the same map than Outland, although not seen and far away between them, but they are in the same map, when you are in that zone, you are currently playing in Outland. Delves might be a blow for M+pugs, though, as a lot of M+ puggers do it as an easy way to get better gear than in outdoor without strict timetables and, with the current situation in M+ in regards of the community.

As a wannabe gamedesigner, what you spoke about account wide possibilities made my gizmos turn and I came up with a way I'd like to see some account wide benefits, if any. Assuming the xp per level scales non linearly ( which I don't know if it's the case for WoW because I've been playing it for a while but never wanted to investigate this part of its design), you could make it so that any character you play other than the highest level one you have gets a version of rested xp boost that lasts up to a certain total, derived from a fraction of that highest level character's XP amount. Now, in theory, if each new level scales non-linearly, this should give the replaying experience of making alts a little more spunk without spiralling into brokenness. I'm pretty sure this has little to do with your own concerns and I do apologise for going down a tangent here but I just wanted to share my two cents :D

You definitely have a different take than I do. Alts have kept the game interesting outside the first month or two of the patch. For my alts i just want to get leveled and start the mythic + grind. Not reputation and busy work that is usually required.

Good video. My only genuine and legitament concern is augmentation evokers and the state of support roles in the game. Dps is by far the most popular role and in m+ there are now only 2 dps slots, and as long as metas as god comps exist, this further creates friction from playing what you like, which I think is genuinely poisonous to the game. Delves seem to combat meta issues though imo but I honestly love m+ and I’m worried that Aug is genuinely harming the meta and enjoyment of it for everyone.

Hi Metro 👋. I'm looking forward to warbands in 11.0 but at the same time you brought up great points regarding rep and quest lines for alts, gets people thinking. I love Anduin's character development and where he's going and I agree, Shadowlands set that up. Thank you for sharing your thoughts ☺

I can honestly say I have never used an alt to make my main stronger cept through trade skills, even in EQ1 I didn't use alts to make my main stronger either, nor in any game really

Long time viewer first time caller. Just want to say I really appreciate your take on all things WoW and though I'm a newer player (started in Shadowlands and also don't get all the hate for it!) I can already tell how certain community desired changes driving the development team can easily have unintended consequences to how the game changes/how people interact with the game. When you were talking about Classic towards the end -- I just started playing classic (just classic, no hardcore, no wraith) because I really wanted the OG experience. I'm playing with my partner who started playing in classic originally, and when I started making observations about certain QOL things missing from retail that would make playing classic "easier" they quickly pointed out how making those changes over the years massively changed the game in unintended ways. Putting in LFG queues makes dungeons more accessible but you lose the community aspect of having to manually form a group and people are not really working together anymore to tackle that content in the same way; opening up cross-realm grouping means no one has a server-reputation anymore and people can act like assholes without any social consequences, etc. You pug a mythic dungeon with people you're never likely to see again; in classic I see and interact with the same people all the time and it just feels different in a good way. Leveling is meaningful in a way it can never be again in retail. I love playing both, but they feel like two separate games at this point! I think having more things account-wide like rep is also going to have unintended consequences that maybe we can't even see now, but it's sort of too late. Like you said, they're a business and they need to make money to stay in business so they're always going to be a certain amount of catering to your audience. But I do sometimes feel that people complaining about these things don't actually like what the game is and want to turn it into something else and my question is always "why don't you just play a different game?" Anyway, sorry for the long babble, but just wanted to say I appreciate your thoughts and always enjoy your longform videos when you talk about the game!

Excited for account wide bank, gold, and reagents.

Can they please fix soar? I want to be a dragon. Druids will have better dragon riding than dragons and that’s a sin.

I don't agree with the criticims of account bound stuff. I am a serial alt enjoyer and the reason I am like this is because I struggle with focus, and swapping characters makes it easier to exist in the game without getting bored (For example, I don't have a main character but a roster of them that I play on and off depending on how I feel at the time and what I feel like playing each session). The one thing that is a massive bother for me is the rep requirements, and the thing is, because it unlocks so much that you need now it simply can't be ignored for the most part and you HAVE to level the rep for cosmetics / crafting recipes / mounts / QUESTS and various other things, where in the past you only needed to level the rep if you wanted the mount or one of the basic weapons, but none of the main story beats were locked behind the reps. Having account bound reps I think is a solid change that means that you don't get penalised for changing characters part way through the expansion (My wife and friend both changed their main throughout the expansion so far and are terribly behind, and even myself have to go back on a character i'm not vibing with because I need to level the reps). There is a penalty for changing characters and it's quest completion / gear and that's ok (although it could be like other MMOs where all gear could be warband locked and you send it to the character you want to play, but I don't think they would / or should do this necessarily). And the thing about this whole thing is that most of the people still playing the game don't have the time to grind like they did back in the day when they had less life / responsibilities, and so the game changes with them, you may not like it because you DO have the time as it's your job (or you just don't care for alts like other people) but the reality that a majority of the player base are getting older and have jobs so they just won't engage if it stays the same in perpetuity. In addition to that you need to think about the competition and how they handle the same thing, and the age of Blizzard and WoW's systems are showing. Perhaps the "wanting to play it like it was" is a massive vote for Classic and Classic+. Regarding the quests, again this is where Blizzard are showing their age, most MMOs have a repeatable quest system in case you want to repeat older quests but for some reason that sort of thing is only possible while party synced, so the ability to do it is there but they just haven't implemented it. This is a great way to have your alts complete quests that have been completed before in case the progression was account wide. Remember this, reputation is NOT a necessary element of RPGs, this is a GAME MECHANIC that Blizzard used to use to time-gate rewards. I think the main issues with the story right now is how tame it is and how disjointed it is from a storyboard perspective and I think the reason SL was so panned was because it invalidated a lot of the previous high and low moments, had an unrelatable bad guy and the individual story beats were very inconsistent.

What program are you talking about that edits the video for you?

I think you make a good point about various systems and old content that will be affected by warbands. Its a lot of work which has probably taken a lot of the devs time. However I still don't think you're letting yourself see the positives of the warband system. By making the game alt friendly blizzard is giving players hundreds of hours of more playtime now that you have so many ways to play. Theres no reason to make a player choose one or two classes to play and expect them to repeat so many tasks just to use then in pve/pvp. Games like osrs and ffxiv have shown how entertaining and poweful it is to remove barriers and let players experience all of the game roles and not just a fraction of it.

If I'm not mistaken, I think the way it would work is you physically have to add whichever alts you want to the warband for it to apply to those characters. Characters not in the warband wouldn't get the rep from the characters you put in the warband. Hopefully that's the way it works because I see your point otherwise.

Rep weekly will be per account for the rep reward

The “everything account wide” thing is just a shining lie. They still couldnt figure it out how to make rbg titles accountwide. Again these are just some titles that you own from probably from 2005-2006.

I agree with a lot of what you say here, primarily when it comes to Blizzard just pandering to the community. In terms of the story, I think the writing for Dragonflight is god awful but the writing for Shadowlands was amazing! My worry for the three expansions is that they're just gonna inject more postmodernist nonsense into badass characters like Anduin and Thrall.

They set up the Shadowlands end of Arthas’ story years ago? Then they have been that irredeemably awful for that many years?

As far as I understood , you have to pick characters to include into warband. I am happy with everything they have announced. I will try that new "classic"+ for sure even tho I am not fan of classic at all. I am fine with Cata annoucment as well because that maybe/probably means we will get Pandaria "classic" as well and that is my favorite expansion to the point where I would even leave retail to play it.Also I might play some Cata as well I am excited about upcoming changes because I am into collecting reps/achivs etc and I have spread those over my alts to make it easier and with upcoming changes its gonna be even better. Every video you made so far that is similar to this I have agreed with you and had same opinion as you 100% but on this one is not like that at all but you did made some good points especially about community and wow now being so spread out with so many versions and hardcore version is 100% "hype" version.I like your view about story and Anduin as well, Maybe you have been overthinking too much this or like you said maybe you have built up some expectations?

Well i assume they making those changes since its a wrap up of WoW its the end after that 3rd expansion, so meaning they just give us more and more stuff let us be able to play more characters for the last expansions. So i think its justified for those changes in my opinion.

Don’t see why legacy content rep/renown cant be account wide. Ie: How busted would it really be to have an alt army do Brood of Nozdormu rep farm?

I don’t think it’s bad writing I think it’s like a movie some people love certain movies some don’t . I don’t call it bad writing I just don’t like the story .

the game is becoming what people joked about 15 years ago when they said if the players designed the game the game would be a joke

retail lost to many players there gonna have to keep doing things that siphon as much money off who's left most the money prob comes from start of season wow tokens and those promotional deals they do all the time for game time or mounts and stuff

Sorry the writing is bad. It's never really been good though. If you want good writing you have to go read books.

Honestly, I was sad to hear account wide rep and account wide flight paths. There is RP value there for me, of my characters having a history of what they did. My alliance have near maxed Legion and BfA reps. My Horde have near maxed Shadowlands and DF reps. It's a road map not just of my characters, as their own individual self, but of my history as their controller. Who I mained, what I did on who. What I earned on what. If everyone has it. They lose their individuality, and become just....pixels.if that makes sense.

Lol. I think Anduin is lame AF. I have 0 respect for him. Ready for Grey mane to take over as king.

if this account wide shit gets more people playing the game im all for it i just wanna see some fresh blood in the community

sacrificing rpg elements for player convenience, since they butchered gem crafting and colored slots, and simplified secondary stats I think it's not a real rpg anymore, my opinion I don't really mind warbands as announced, the point you brought about weekly quests is important, maybe it will be a one time per account, we will see, but yeah, everything they said was in line with the community for what I can tell and it feels odd they weren't pushing back or doubling down on anything hero talents is cool, even if not deeply impactful, they might keep tinkering with talents, it's better than the covenant abilities which had nothing about class fantasy the only wish I had (still have) is old world revamp, finally attaching ghostlands is a start, also delves could be around the old world as well I haven't bought it yet, I'm thinking about the heroic edition for the mount which is all I care for now, wish it had a fel-green color too, but can't wait to check your transmog, keep up the good content

Nitpicking hard. Game the way it is currently ? Bad . Oh we get changes ? Bad. Gimme wotlk mama . The real wowkiller is the playerbase u guys can never be satisfied

Im sorry but retail will never be good without a reset. No matter how many expansions they list off

Anduin is not a bad ass. His dad was. Anduin just cries a lot

My concern is why does female dwarves have beards