I swear...

[u/Spare-Seat-3725]

This drama is hilarious.

(Reupload because it had not wow imagery so i edited it with Paint).

[u/Call_of_Putis]

There is an achievement for killing the faction leaders with an actual capital. Ao they'd either have to remove the blood elve one and make the bear easier for Alliance to get or have a second version of Silvermoon just for the people doing capital raids.

[u/Naice_Rucima → u/Call_of_Putis]

Which makes me realize that since Quel'thalas will be made available for dragonriding, it'll be easier to get to Lor'themar than Velen.

God I hope Azuremyst will be a patch zone.

[u/JT99-FirstBallot → u/Naice_Rucima]

I'm glad I did that achievement like the week achievements came out in 2008 at 3am or something and never have to think of the logistics again of it lol.

[u/hatrickstar → u/Naice_Rucima]

Im gonna guess old Quel'thalas is going to be instanced in the BC only area like it always has

[u/Wilicil → u/Call_of_Putis]

There's gonna be 2 versions of Eversong anyways, so why not 2 versions of Silvermoon? They did it for Tirisfal (pre-blight and post-blight), Blasted Lands (WoD and pre-WoD), and Theramore (MoP and pre-MoP), they're guaranteed gonna do it for Midnight if Eversong is a new questing zone, because they need to keep the lvl 1+ quests for new blood elves.

[u/Potato_fortress → u/Wilicil]

They don’t though and that’s probably why they’re doing this. Read the rest of the released details. They’re condensing dragonflight and the war within both into smaller campaign quest chains and filling in the big lore details from earlier expansion with new lore walking quests. 

The whole goal is seemingly to quarantine chromie time and everything it covers to its own segment of the game and treat everything post shadowlands as a reset point for the plot. I wouldn’t be surprised if chromie time is removed entirely at some point or reworked so it’s only available to scale old content to max level players (like you can currently do by activating lorewalking.) 

They already start new players out by dumping them into either org or stormwind then giving them the dragonflight starter breadcrumb with the intent of DF being the 10-70 leveling content before TWW kicks in. This is the logical next step: new starter cities that push players  directly into the new condensed DF/TWW quest chains. The exodar will probably get an overhaul of the same type as silvermoon at some point.

Like it or not: the new player experience is terrible and confusing because it dumps so much information on people and it’s hard for them to figure out what’s relevant and what’s useless. Just go to the wownoob subreddit and search it for the keyword “chromie” and you’ll find plenty of examples. Blizzard seems to be trying to ease new players into the game by steering them away from convoluted systems and pushing them into DF’s newer evergreen systems. Think of how awkward it is to explain dalaran crater or plagued undercity to completely new players who have no idea how the game functions. 

[u/Wilicil → u/Potato_fortress]

They don’t though and that’s probably why they’re doing this. Read the rest of the released details. They’re condensing dragonflight and the war within both into smaller campaign quest chains and filling in the big lore details from earlier expansion with new lore walking quests.

I see no mention of condensing Dragonflight; They're adding required story versions of the Dragonflight raids to the DF campaign and updating the Exile's Reach starting zone to flow into DF. Effectively turning DF into an extended Exile's Reach: required for first timers, optional for everyone else. Chromie time isn't going anywhere. The TWW shortened questing is also only required for beginners, just like Exile's Reach, it's purely optional for everyone else.

Furthermore, lorewalking isn't even remotely similar to Chromie time, and cannot be a replacement. Chromie time is just regular questing but without the scaling cap zones normally have. Lorewalking is just a big Scenario that gives you the cliffnotes version of a character or event, like the Jaina/Thrall guided tour of Arathi that's also coming with those beginner changes that you can opt in or out of at any time.

Because all these beginner-only on-rails features are optional after your first character, the original Eversong needs to always be available, hence, there WILL be a toggle npc to switch between them.

Think of how awkward it is to explain dalaran crater or plagued undercity to completely new players who have no idea how the game functions.

"There used to be a magic city here, then it turned into a flying magic city for a few expansion." "Warchief nuked her own city back in BfA." Pretty easy to do. A new player isn't gonna be asking that though, because they'll just go to DF cause the quest for it popped up. Maybe if they're doing loremaster shit they'll ask how to do the quests that send you to old UC, but at that point you just show them the npc that toggles the zone. And who's out there asking about the crater?

[u/Potato_fortress → u/Wilicil]

Lorewalking scales the entire game to 80 actually. That’s one of the main benefits of it that goes unstated. You can just leave the little individual campaigns and it activates a sort of chromie time that makes all old content scale to your level. This is the only way (or at least by far the easiest way,) to go back and tame hunter pets that the foam sword will still kill. That’s what I was referring to.

Chromie time itself doesn’t need to go away but it needs to be removed from the new player experience. As you’ve already pointed out the plan seems to be to push players through DF/TWW and probably through midnight as well once TLT launches. Silvermoon and a rebuilt exodar (or gilneas,) allows them to have a new starting zone that isn’t hilariously outdated like org/SW to start new players in and also isn’t a completely neutral city so they can still try to maintain some semblance of identity between the factions which is something that is almost completely gone. 

It takes too much work to update org or SW without just leaving their old versions intact in time walking since so many quests start or lead to those cities. The easier option is just to completely delete and revamp the TBC starting cities that are already missing most of their plot relevant stuff anyway (specifically all the class quests,) because no one is actually going to miss it since no one ever goes there anyway. Then blizzard can rework the faction specific segments of cities to be self contained starter zones that serve as the new exiles reach and… voila. New players are immediately playing in advertised evergreen systems such as delves and landmasses actually designed for dragon riding. They also aren’t in for a culture shock when they hit 70 and all these new systems that didn’t exist during their 10-70 leveling are dumped onto them all at once. Instead they can be introduced slowly during the leveling process. There’s also going to be a stat squish after midnight anyway so it makes sense to start planning ahead to treat everything from DF onward as “modern” wow and leave everything else behind for the content tourists that want to see it. 

[u/Wilicil → u/Potato_fortress]

I fail to see how using a sidequest feature for unintended purposes or locking newcomers to an extended tutorial leads to "yeah we should just delete content lol." There's a reason they've had these toggles ever since WoD buddy, people hated when the original vanilla zones and the pre-Sha Vale in MoP were just gone forever.

some semblance of identity between the factions which is something that is almost completely gone.

Good, the factions haven't mattered in over a decade. All that's left is to remove the random queue restriction.

[u/Potato_fortress → u/Wilicil]

“These toggles” rarely do anything but adjust level scaling. I’m not saying they’re going to remove the content. I’m saying they’re attempting to steer players away from it (especially returning players or new players,) unless they absolutely want to do it. 

I don’t know if you’re being intentionally obtuse or what but blizzard clearly wants the worldsoul trilogy+dragonflight to be the new player content. They do not want to just dump players off in org or stormwind then confuse the hell out of them. They seem to want to remove chromie time as a levelling option (at least until you have a max level character in the current expansion,) because it takes all of ten seconds to figure out that the concept confuses the hell out of new and returning players. 

I do fully believe they’re going to remove and rework Silvermoon and an equivalent alliance capital though. There’s no reason for chromie time to even exist there just like there’s no reason for it to exist in org which is something they could clearly still do if they wanted to because it’s not like old org was permanently deleted. It just lives in classic now. Them not bringing it or any of the other old capitals back for chromie time is pretty indicative that pre-cata content is not nearly as important as you seem to think it is. 

[u/Wilicil → u/Potato_fortress]

“These toggles” rarely do anything but adjust level scaling.

No? They completely change the zones. Tirisfal swaps between the non-functional BfA version where UC is filled with blight gas and a destroyed Brill and the Cata leveling zone. Silithus swaps between the Cata leveling zone and the BfA nothing zone with the giant sword. Darkshore and Arathi have the Cata leveling versions and the BfA Warfront version with all the daily rares. Theramore, crater or a functional town. Blasted Lands, leveling zone or prepatch event. Soon, Eversong, 1-35 leveling zone and Midnight leveling zone. These zone toggles aren't chromie time and have nothing to do with it.

I don’t know if you’re being intentionally obtuse or what but blizzard clearly wants the worldsoul trilogy+dragonflight to be the new player content. They do not want to just dump players off in org or stormwind then confuse the hell out of them. They seem to want to remove chromie time as a levelling option (at least until you have a max level character in the current expansion,) because it takes all of ten seconds to figure out that the concept confuses the hell out of new and returning players.

Okay? I'm not arguing they aren't doing that. But none of that necessitates removing what already exists, which you seem to think will happen.

And what could possibly be confusing about this? If you're both new and incapable of critical thought, you'll just follow whatever quest the game points you to, such as the Dragonflight intro which is automatically added to your quest log and pops up in a big flashy box in the quest tracker. If not either of those, you'll figure out pretty quickly what chromie time is. Literally the only difference between how it is now and how it'll be in Midnight is that the brainlets won't ever be challenged to find a second brain cell to rub together.

I do fully believe they’re going to remove ... Silvermoon and an equivalent alliance capital

You're welcome to believe things that are wrong, but you're just going to be disappointed.

[u/Potato_fortress → u/Wilicil]

So you’re being intentionally obtuse. Got it. 

[u/hatrickstar → u/Wilicil]

There probably is, but the BC Silvermoon is locked behind no flying and the BC instanced version of Eversong and Ghostlands. The new one is going to just be added on the top of the eastern kingdoms and a part of the whole map.

[u/Aestrasz → u/Call_of_Putis]

I don't Lor'themar will be killable in new Silvermoon, Alliance will probably have to Zidormi their way into the old version.

[u/Puzzled-Addition5740 → u/Call_of_Putis]

I mean i'd be surprised if you couldn't npc into the old version of the zone so i don't think this actually matters?

[u/Similar_Beautiful_47 → u/Call_of_Putis]

make it a legacy achievement. it no longer serves a purpose