We’re less than two months away from BlizzCon and the announcement of the next expansion for World of Warcraft. Everyone has their speculations — some think it’ll be a Legion expansion, some believe in the Dark Below, and some think it’ll somehow be both. Myself, I think the Dark Below is legit.

But the purpose of this post isn’t so much about what I think will happen as what I want to happen. As before, it’s time for my wishlist for the next expansion.

The ocean and Azshara:

Even before the whole Dark Below thing, I was hoping for an ocean-themed expansion. The Great Sea is the last major area of Azeroth that we haven’t explored, and they’ve been foreshadowing something terrible in the oceans for over a decade of real-world time now. Murlocs are not supposed to appear inland — something’s driven them out of the depths.

Furthermore, while I’m not the biggest Naga fan in the world, I do think Azshara would make an absolutely epic villain. Barring Sargeras, she’s pretty much the only iconic Warcraft villain we haven’t tangled with yet. This is the woman who first brought the Legion to Azeroth, who caused the Sundering, and who leads the Naga in their current evil-doing.

Azshara was one of the most powerful sorcerers in history before the Old Gods empowered her, and now she’s abducted Neptulon and conquered the plane of water. Her power must be nearing godlike levels.

An ocean expansion also opens the door to finally facing N’Zoth, the Drowned God. This mysterious Old God is behind many of the recent troubles of Azeroth, including Deathwing and the Emerald Nightmare. While I don’t think we’ll ever see an Emerald Dream expansion, an ocean-themed expansion featuring N’Zoth could include the Dream as a raid and/or zone.

There are many other interesting settings an ocean expansion could introduce. More underwater zones like Vashj’ir, islands, or both. One popular fan theory is that Azshara might use the powers of Neptulon to raise the ruins of ancient Kalimdor as a new continent. I’d be all for that.

The Great Sea is also home to fascinating locales like the Tomb of Sargeras and Kul Tiras, both things I think are overdue to be included in WoW.

New neutral race: Vrykul

I’ve said before that I think World of Warcraft has too many races already. The truth is that a new race just doesn’t add much to the game — they ceases to be exciting within weeks of their release.

But there is one more race I want to see added: the Vrykul.

My reasons are pretty simple. I’m a massive fan of Norse mythology and Viking culture, and I adored the Vrykul back in Wrath. Honestly, who wouldn’t want to play as a giant Viking? Lame people, that’s who.

I also think the Vrykul would make a good neutral race, meaning we won’t need a second race. They’re the ancestors of humanity, and they share common origins with Gnomes and Dwarves, so they’ve got a very strong connection to the Alliance, but their savage and warlike culture is also a perfect fit for the Horde.

Plus, the Vrykul aren’t really evil. They just lost their way as a people when the Titans abandoned them. So unlike some other popular race ideas (Naga), it’s not terribly lore-breaking for them to turn over a new leaf and ally with the factions of Azeroth.

New ranged weapon class:

It’s a pet peeve of mine that WoW has so few options for fighting with ranged weapons. We have seven classes and sixteen specs able to fighting with melee weapons, and five classes and nine specs capable of fighting with magic, but only one class and three specs for fighting with ranged weapons.

To make matters worse, it’s a class with incredibly little variety between its specs. So if you want to play a ranged weapon fighter, you really only have one choice.

As someone who enjoys ranged weapon classes but doesn’t much care for the hunter class or its mechanics (especially pets), it’s a source of unending frustration for me.

There are a lot of forms a new ranged weapon class could take — tinker is a popular option — but my vote would go to dark ranger.

For those who didn’t play Warcraft III, a dark ranger is somewhere between a shadow priest, a death knight, and a warlock, but they also make heavy use of bows. Their focus was on using mind control and necromancy to turn an enemy’s own strength against them. Sylvanas is the iconic dark ranger.

Now, dark rangers are only undead High Elves in lore, so it couldn’t be exactly the traditional dark ranger. My suggestion would be to make it a more general combination of ranged weapons and dark-themed powers, something many other Warcraft races use. Trolls have their shadow hunters; Night Elves have their… everything.

If we’re taking inspiration from shadow hunters, that also opens the door for the class to have some voodoo inspiration, something underrepresented in current class choices, and support and healing skills.

This would provide another thing WoW is currently lacking: an “evil” healer. All current healing specs use nature or holy magic. So there’s a lot of potential for a shadow/blood magic healer.

Could offer some very unique skills. Imagine having the option to drain health from the DPS and give it to the tanks, or a battle resurrection that doesn’t count towards the cap for an encounter, but comes at the cost of sacrificing another player’s life.

Armor dyes:

‘Nuff said.

An alternate advancement/horizontal progression system:

I don’t like gear as a method of progression. For one thing, it’s not really progression. Your gear gets reset every expansion. We never actually get any more powerful. Thanks to wacky stat-scaling, my characters are actually much less powerful now than they were in Wrath of the Lich King.

For another, it’s very binary. You either get your drop, or you don’t. It’s possible to spend hours playing and log off without progressing at all.

One of the reasons I’m always leveling more alts is that I find leveling a much more rewarding form of progression. I’ll never replace that level I spent hours grinding for, and absolutely everything gives XP, so every play session is rewarding.

I’d like to see these advantages brought to endgame with some sort of alternate advancement system, perhaps akin to Diablo III’s paragon levels.

It would be difficult to implement without making it another mandatory grind, but I think it could be done. It could provide gold find, out of combat utility skills (double jumps, maybe), and other useful but not game-breaking perks.

No more mandatory subscription:

Yeah, I think we all know my thoughts on this by now.

I don’t like subscriptions. They’re restrictive, and they’re incompatible with the way manypeople play games these days. To paraphrase a comment I read on another blog a few weeks back, “15$ a month isn’t too much to spend on a hobby, but I have a gaming hobby, not a Warcraft hobby.”

(They were talking about WildStar, but the principle’s the same.)

While I have advocated for free to play and would welcome it, it’s not actually my first choice. I’d prefer a buy to play model more along the lines of Guild Wars 2 or The Secret World. Free to play is still better than a subscription model, but it tends to make it too easy for trolls and gold-sellers to make it into a game. A little barrier to entry is a good thing.

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So basically I want to be leveling a Vrykul dark ranger through the Ruins of Zin-Azshari, while working on alternate advancement for my warlock and coming and going as I please due to the lack of subscription. What do you want to see announced for WoW when BlizzCon rolls around?

So the last major patch of Mists of Pandaria is upon us. I’m finding that the expansion is ending the same way it began — with inconsistent quality.

Of course, the main feature of the patch is the Siege of Orgrimmar raid, which sounds like it’s going to be very cool, but the wings for the Raid Finder are being trickled out at a glacial rate, with the whole process ending in late October. Because people like me are casual scum who should be grateful we get to see content at all.

I’ve very interested in immersing myself in the story for this raid, so I probably won’t bother touching it at all until all four wings are released and I can run them back to back.

Unfortunately, since that’s over a month away, I’ll probably have every aspect of the story spoiled for me by then, because subtlety is unheard of on the Internet. I’ve already heard who the new warchief is.

Sigh. Thanks, Blizzard. Really.

So that leaves me fiddling around with the other additions of the patch. Compared to how epic and game-changing 3.3 and 4.3 were, I’m finding 5.4 rather anemic.

The Timeless Isle:

I’ll give Blizzard some credit for trying something different with the Timeless Isle. It’s certainly unlike anything we’ve had before. Unfortunately, it’s just not that fun.

After a few hours of running around the Isle, I’ve come to the conclusion it’s nothing but grinding in its purest form. Kill stuff, then kill stuff, then kill more stuff. MMOs have apparently come full circle back to the EverQuest days.

It shines an unwelcome light on some of the more outdated mechanics in World of Warcraft, too. The fact that mob-tapping is still in effect for all but the rares is painful. With what appears to be literally hundreds of other players running around the Isle, the main challenge is not in defeating the enemies, but in simply finding some that haven’t been tapped yet.

It also sucks that bind to account gear still isn’t really bind to account. With my alts spread across multiple servers, sharing the gear drops is near impossible for me.

I’ll probably appreciate the Timeless Isle a bit more once my monk reaches 90. Dull though it may be, it’s an avalanche of gear. Not the greatest gear — my warlock finds none of it useful — but good for getting an alt ready to go.

Still, even that just feels like a bandaid for how badly they’ve buggered the gearing process in MoP.

Prove yourself!

The one thing added in 5.4 that does have me rather excited is Proving Grounds. Truly challenging solo content is something I’ve always wanted to see.

Thus far, I’ve only taken my warlock through it. I won’t bother on my rogue because, well, I’m not a masochist, and I don’t have any other characters at 90 right now.

I’m not exactly pleased with my performance, but I’m not disappointed, either. I was able to complete the silver DPS challenge without too much trouble, and I got up to wave nine of the gold challenge before finally calling it quits. I might come back in a while and see if I can claim gold.

So I’m pretty middle of the road. Which is what I expected.

The difficulties are well-designed. Bronze is quite easy, silver is noticeably challenging but manageable, and gold is panic-inducing. All in all, it was an exciting and enjoyable experience, and I think it will do wonders to help new players. They should make it like the Gatekeeper in The Secret World and make it mandatory for entry to endgame content.

I also think it’s very cool that they let you try all challenges regardless of class or spec. I was able to get bronze in the tanking challenge with dark apotheosis, though silver proved more painful. Again, I might come back and try again. I don’t think my build was optimal.

Proving Grounds does have a few flaws, though. For one thing, it seems quite skewed to favour certain specs over others. Burst and mobility both seem to be utterly crucial. Switching to destruction spec from demonology made far more of a difference than it should have.

It also lacks replayability. Once you’ve gone as far as you can, there’s no reason to go back. I still think it’s a very positive addition to the game, but it does little to alleviate the content drought until the Raid Finder finishes unlocking.

The decision to not add any new dungeons this expansion is really starting to hurt.

World changes:

The one other thing I’m appreciating about 5.4 is the way the world has changed as a result of Garrosh’s actions.

Seeing the Vale in ruins was a punch to the gut. Even though I knew it was coming, it was still shocking to see the ponds dry, the trees dead, the pagodas smashed.

The night before the patch, I made sure to redo the quests to open the Vale one last time on my monk. It was a bittersweet experience to watch all those refugees — driven from their homes by crimes we had committed — streaming into the Vale with the hope of a new beginning.

That hope has now been crushed.

This is something that WoW’s story often lacks: failure. We’re supposed to be the heroes, and we failed utterly.

There was only one nice place left on Azeroth. Untouched by the Legion, the Scourge, and the Cataclysm, Pandaria was a bastion of hope and calm.

And we destroyed it. The hatreds of the Horde and the Alliance unleashed the Sha, ravaging the entire continent. We as players tried to make right our wrongs by defeating the Sha, and we achieved some great victories.

But it wasn’t enough. We were too late to stop Garrosh, and now he has dealt the killing blow to Azeroth’s last saving grace. The refuge of the Pandaren people has been destroyed. The sacred heart of their culture has been defiled. The lifeblood of their society has been drained.

Think about it. The waters of the Vale were what made the Valley of the Four Winds so bountiful. With the waters gone, the Valley will no longer be able to produce such mighty harvests. Already battered and beaten from war, Pandaria will now face famine and starvation.

It’s reversals like this that make stories meaningful. A story where the heroes faceroll to victory at every turn quickly becomes dull. Failures make the victories all the sweeter, and they provide a greater motivation for the heroes.

I don’t know about you, but I’m more eager to take Garrosh down than ever. For vengeance, and for atonement.

While less dramatic, I also appreciated some of the other world changes that came with 5.4. Orgrimmar is now in lockdown and feels like a proper police state. The warlocks are being rounded up, the Goblins in the bank are being shaken down, dissenters are being arrested, blindfolded Trolls are being executed outside the gates, and there are surly Kor’kron everywhere.

Elsewhere, the armies of the Tauren and the Trolls martial at Razor Hill. The feeling of anticipation is palpable.

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All in all, I find 5.4 a good microcosm of Mists of Pandaria as a whole: fantastic story, headache-inducing game design.