If WoW was a single player game

[gangstanigga]

It'd have to be turnbased imo. You can't micro manage 5-40 characters effectively.

there's this thing called WC3. . .

[Dr. Doom]

I'd imagine Blizzard themselves would of considered something similar. It's not a huge leap to have your 'troops' levelling like the Heroes did.

I'm struggling to escape the fact that someone (probably) pitched the idea of how much money Blizzard could make from the subscription model and how that ultimately influenced the direction of the game, from the RTS version to what we got next. I would welcome another RTS Warcraft tbh, but everything moves on. Says the guy playing the 10 year old version of a game...

Indeed it does, but sadly seems it does so for the worst. Not only was every successive WoW expansion worse and worse in terms of storytelling, but seems their RTS creativity is also... struggling to say the least. At this point, I genuinely feel that even if the whole nonsense from the MMORPG days was swapped, Blizzard/Activision lacks the interest and maybe even the capacity to write a compelling story like they did back in the late 90s and early 2000s.

I am terribly dissapointed in Heart of the Swarm as a campaign/storytelling mode. It was far, far worse than WoL, and nothing like the original Starcraft/Brood War game. There's nothing wrong with playing old games if you find them to be more complete and inspiring than newer installments. Just as a quick reference, vanilla WoW is the newest game I bother with playing

[mozibake]

What killed it for me was seeing the "personalities" who built the lore and universe of the RTS games get turned one by one into weekly loot piñatas. It was really obnoxious seeing every single jerkoff undead rogue named "Ipeeonulol" standing around in Org with their very own warglaives. You know, the legendary twin swords of Azzinoth, of which there are only supposed to be two (hence the name). Transitioning from RTS (or any other genre, see also: TOR, TESO) to MMO usually means that your team has to stop caring about telling a good story (since 90% of players probably won't even bother to read it) and start to focus on how to maximize subscribers. It also means having to focus on creating a "fun" gameplay experience for millions simultaneously, rather than one player at a time. Which usually means ham fisted "balancing" and homogenization of classes/roles.

At this point, I genuinely feel that even if the whole nonsense from the MMORPG days was swapped, Blizzard/Activision lacks the interest and maybe even the capacity to write a compelling story like they did back in the late 90s and early 2000s.

A lot of the original Blizzard team have long since left or moved on. What's left are a bunch of clueless nerds and Bobby Kotick mindlessly name dropping shit from the old games in the hopes of getting people to resubscribe.

[wilma1]

I really recommend you to try Divinity Original Sin Enhanced Edition, if you think this sounds like a good idea, Divinity really is the exact thing you're talking about.

[Glas]

Fun idea but i would not make multibox-like singleplayer. I would allow the player to get lots of companions you can hire, some could require reputation etc, then allowing companions to play dungeons with you and you pre-programm them to what they should do. Like action bars for them or so, or just a Menü what they should do, either choose tank heal dmg, or choosing abilities, or gear. Then boss need to be changed too so that it can be done with companions. Like the fire splash damage ragnaros does, you cant really see 20 companions and choose for all of them to run from the aoe to not get hit. Well maybe a command for all companions to move 5 yards away, yea ... a lot possible. but need to make legit design

A lot of customizations should be possible to allow a lot of ways to play with those companions

[Caedum]

So WC4 would be cool right?

[Xanax]

Fun idea but i would not make multibox-like singleplayer. I would allow the player to get lots of companions you can hire, some could require reputation etc, then allowing companions to play dungeons with you and you pre-programm them to what they should do. Like action bars for them or so, or just a Menü what they should do, either choose tank heal dmg, or choosing abilities, or gear. Then boss need to be changed too so that it can be done with companions. Like the fire splash damage ragnaros does, you cant really see 20 companions and choose for all of them to run from the aoe to not get hit. Well maybe a command for all companions to move 5 yards away, yea ... a lot possible. but need to make legit design

A lot of customizations should be possible to allow a lot of ways to play with those companions

So kind of like in the original Guildwars?

[Glas]

So kind of like in the original Guildwars?

Hm i dont know i didnt play Guildwars, just Guildwars 2

[Sametbh]

I would probably play more if it was single player.

[Limbflayer]

A French MMORPG called Dofus (which Blizz tried to buy years back) plays on a turn based role. You can use certain spells per class and each spell is weighted with Attack points. Moving in combat uses Movement points.
When you are in a big fight they can last a long time. Certain bosses take over an hour to do.

The MMO is out in English too but I doubt you'd be really thrilled by the concept.