World of Warcraft 2.0 – the dream of many fans. Now the WoW boss is talking about renewing the world and has good things to say.
Many World of Warcraft players dream of a “WoW 2.0” – a fundamental overhaul of the entire game, perhaps even a completely new game. However, that is not very likely – after all, WoW is still running solidly and simply “re-building” a game that has been in development for over 20 years is an undertaking that will take many years.
But at least it’s not completely absurd. Because the game director of WoW sees it as “probable” that the old world will be redesigned.
What was said? In an interview with GameSpot, World of Warcraft game director Ion Hazzikostas spoke about the possibility of a “revamp” of the old world, i.e. a refresh in which areas are reworked. Hazzikostas said that “will probably happen.”
What may sound to many as if this is just a theoretical possibility should take a closer look at the interviews from the last few years and the timing of this information. Because Hazzikostas is usually quite careful when making statements about things that he calls “unlikely” or “probable”.
The GameSpot interview was also the first big interview about Patch 10.2 – and the makers behind WoW usually think carefully about what information they want to have conveyed.
All of this ensures that a “revamp from Azeroth” is not only “probable,” as Hazzikostas calls it, but is almost certainly already being planned and implemented.
What could such a redesign look like? It is clear that hardly anyone wants a “Cataclysm 2.0”. Because one of the big disadvantages of Cataclysm was that old areas were lost forever and can no longer be visited today (except in WoW Classic).
In addition, many areas have lost their old identity. While each area used to have small, individual stories, in the Cataclysm areas almost everything revolves around the Twilight’s Hammer cult. A story that is actually long over and therefore seems more inappropriate with each passing year. Something that Hazzikostas also recognizes:
That is a deficit. If you take a step back and think about World of Warcraft as an ongoing, living world, we’ve kind of painted ourselves into a corner where we have all these iconic locations but we can’t use them because they’ve already been used.
It seems clear that when the redesign comes, you will still be able to travel to the “old” variants of the areas (i.e. in the Cataclysm state). Here, extending the Chromie time would be a simple, easy option to quickly bring several areas up to date.
However, analyst Bellular sees a completely different idea and possibility:
Bellular believes it is realistic that Blizzard simply “rebuilds” Kalimdor or the Eastern Kingdoms from scratch, essentially creating a new version of these continents. Because then the old world could be adapted much better to hang gliding. After all, the current size of the “old” areas is too small for hang gliding – this makes the zones all seem quite puny.
Such a comprehensive redesign of an entire continent would probably be the closest we could ever get to a “WoW 2.0”.
How likely is that? If we’re being completely honest, a redesign of Azeroth is very likely. This may not happen in the next addon, but it will most likely happen in the following expansion. Many buildings and objects can already be found in the game data, which are new assets from old locations. For example, high-resolution buildings have already been found for the forest of Elwynn, as well as graphically impressive ships and numerous components of human structures.
So it looks like the World of Warcraft team is currently working “on the side” to carry out a large-scale overhaul of the old world. It is very likely that this revision will come, especially given the recent words of the game director. The only question is: when?
Are you interested in a completely renovated Azeroth? How would you rework the old world and what would you like?