I think that would be amazing. I also thought all new mmos should design their worlds with this in mind.

In Skyrim, without giving too much away, there's a questline in which, if you pick a side in the wider conflict, you are on the battlefield and actively participate in the taking of a city held by the other side. The game world is changed politically and socially by your actions in a permanent way.

I would LOVE to see stuff like that in WoW - raze enemy cities, take control of zones for your faction - but I assume, on the off-chance it ever happened (which I have no real hopes of, but still), for gameplay reasons they'd restrict it to PVP servers, and probably not even all of those. And then when rolling a new toon you could choose your server based on a new criteria: its current geopolitical landscape. :P

I think we're more likely to see repeated events like the elemental invasions than the big one-time events of old. Blizzard has been moving away from doing things that only a small portion of the player base will see.

I'm not sure if they'll be effected by player actions but from some of the maps they displayed at Blizzcon it looks like Pandaria is going to evolve with every major patch, starting out as an almost untouched Pandaren continent and with increasing Horde and Alliance military presence and fighting every time more raids are released

@grovinofdarkhour, that is the idea im going for, something that would make all the servers different after a certain ammount of time but I can understand this would go horribly on 90% hord 10% alliance servers or vice versa, but this would go well with if bliz plans to fix population problems

This would also present a real issue with server population control.

Right now, all servers are equal in terms of what the core game offers. The only differences between any two given servers tends to be the number of people on it, and the things directly related to the number of people (pug raiding is easier on high pop servers, usually a better economy on high pop servers, etc). However, there is no "Server X is better for Horde because it controls 3 more zones than server Y does" for good reason. Once a server gets "good", people will want to move to it. The more people that try to move to it, the faster it hits capacity and the dreaded login queues begin.

On the flip side, "bad" servers would just get worse as people started a mass exodus away from them. Soon there could be 50 servers up, but only 5 that people actually want to play on while dozens are barren wastelands. After all, whats the incentive for the masses to spread out evenly across realms to help with Blizz's server load if there is active reason to not go to them?

Sure, some people would go just because its a blank slate they could mold, but most people wouldn't.

So yeah, I don't think we will ever see a time where you can just log into a random server and be able to tell which one you were on because of how different it was.

All it would take, even on a balanced server, is for one side to get a foothold on changing the mutable portions of the world and slowly tilt that server to their faction's "advantage" and people from the "fail" side will jump ship.

Just like people sick of losing BGs with their main faction will transfer servers to one in the battlegroup where Horde has an 85% win rate or whatever.

I doubt it would happen but that's a really cool idea! It's a better way to make each server unique. But seeing as Blizz is trying to make each server less unique, a la multi-server dungeons and raids and what have you, I don't see it ever happening. It would still be really cool though.

A lot of the new 1-60 quests function like that. It all started in Icecrown when you help the death knights take over a base. Now, go quest as Alliance in Swamp of Sorrows, or Horde in Stonetalon Mountains.

You DEFINITELY participate in some major battles that cause the end result to be different than the beginning.


Side-note: Blizz, give mages a new portal location when Theramore is removed >.>

I feel like they're unlikely to do a faction v faction event for the reasons listed above, but also because of what they learned from the AQ gate events. The two factions weren't in direct competition to open the gates, but each side had to contribute a certain amount of turn-ins. Servers with extremely imbalanced factions would often have one side impatiently waiting on the other, to the point where dedicated raiders would open second accounts to re-roll toons of the other faction (this was before faction transfers and the ability to roll as both factions on a PvP server), or farm mats just to sell really cheap on the cross-faction AH. It was a huge mess.

Of course the problems that come with realm imbalance go much deeper than an inability to implement world events...

@Smashbolt: battlegroups don't matter, and haven't mattered in a LONG time. This applies to RDF, LFR, BGs, and rated BGs, with the sole exception being arenas.

I think in alot of ways dungeon finder and lfr are a blessing but also a curse. Sure you get into groups much faster but you lose touch with your server. Id like to see things you could do on your own server that reward greatly and aren't contained in a small quest hub. Something that could potentialy get us into other cities to hang out in. Because of dungeon finder, when im out and about playing an alt and questing, every zone is a barren wasteland, its so much easier to click a button, kill stuff, and get rewards, and repeat until your 85. I miss the days where no matter where I went people would be there. I like dungeon finder but I miss the days where we had to travel to the instance.

@twill

Interestingly, questing as Alliance in the Swamp of Sorrows will show you how your actions have no effect on the political landscape whatsoever.

@ Grovinofdarkhour thats so much harder to do in an mmo because of the player base that isn't doing exactly what you're doing. in skyrim you're the only one experiences that. there would need to be massive phasing if wow tried to to this.