What could replace Path of the Titans?

Where are your glyphs that made us run
To WoW.com for information
Indeed your development days are done
Oh Path of the Titans, I hardly knew ye.
-Inspired by the tradition Irish anti-war song "Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye"

With Path of the Titans officially scrapped, I have been thinking about whether something should be implemented to replace it. I was excited for Path of the Titans because it promised to add a new dimension of character progression to the game, one that would make solo-ing at the level cap more interesting. With that gone, it seems that when we reach the level cap, all we'll have to await us is the same old same old of dailies, dailies, dailies. And in case you weren't aware, I am sick and tired of the same old dailies, dailies, dailies. I want something more, and I was hoping that Path of the Titans would be that something more. Now it won't be, but we can still hope that Blizzard will implement something to keep us soloists occupied. (You know, something other than the massive overhaul of the old world. What can I say? I got my druid to the level cap, now I want to do something with him... something other than raiding or PvP.)

But what could that something be? Well, as much as we soloists may want something that will reward us with unique items that raiders won't be able to get without spending twice as much time on the game (such as the ancient glyphs that Path of the Titans would have provided), that would be unfair to WoW's raiding community, for they would need to spend an ungodly amount of time on the game to stay as competitive as possible. Since Blizzard is making 10-man and 25-man raids share a lockout in Cataclysm to prevent raiders from needing to spend an ungodly amount of time on the game to stay competitive, we can bet they wouldn't want raiders to need to spend twice as much time on two parts of the game just to stay competitive. While Blizzard could always implement some mechanic to allow raiders to progress along this solo progression as they raid, preventing them from needing to spend extra time to stay competitive, this would rob the solo community of the sense that their progression is special to them, and it would almost invalidate any efforts they make towards that progression; after all, why spend time doing the solo ventures if raiding gets you good gear and helps you progress along those solo ventures just as quickly?

So we are left with the conclusion that whatever solo venture Blizzard could put in to replace Path of the Titans, it would need to reward similar rewards to raiding. This kind of precedent already exists in game in the fact that both PvP and raiding award gear, but the stats on that gear make it specifically geared for the content that rewards it, so it never feels like you need to engage in one to be competitive at the other (at least, these days I doesn't feel that way). Perhaps if Blizzard added a solo venture to replace Path of the Titans, it could also reward gear, but the gear rewarded would have stats on it (and set bonuses?) geared specifically for solo-ing. At this point, you may be asking why we should even have solo content that rewards gear the same way raiding rewards gear, but as I have already said, since Blizzard draws us in with WoW's solo content and some of us are quite content with that solo content, they do owe it to us to keep us as occupied as they do raiders and PvP'ers.

But how to reward that gear? Why not have it start with something that everyone will be going for: faction reputation. I assume that Cataclysm's endgame content will still have factions who reward raid-worthy gear at exalted, so perhaps the path to the end-game solo content could start there. Perhaps the factions could give people who reach exalted with them special quests that they can only trust to their "closest allies", such as infiltration missions or quests to search for some secret artifact. Though those quests would take a long time, they would reward better gear than most solo ventures. They could also be a good way to add a bit more lore to the game.

Of course, all things being fair, the gear these solo ventures initially reward would have to be worse than the gear dropped by heroics, so that people who like heroics wouldn't feel pressured to pursue these solo ventures. To borrow numbers from this current expansion, perhaps these solo ventures could reward rare-quality ilevel 200 gear, which would still not be as good as the epics one can gain from heroics, but better than the items gained from normal 5-man dungeons (which are like an extension of the solo content, anyways). As new 5-man dungeons are released, the solo ventures could be updated as well to reward items better than the normal mode loot of the new dungeons, but not as good as the heroic mode loot. That would mean, if this kind of system were implemented with Wrath of the Lich King, once Trial of the Champion was released (200 on normal, 219 on heroic), new quests would be added that would reward 213 epics. When The Frozen Halls was released (219 on normal, 232 on heroic), new quests would be added that would reward 226 epics.

But how exactly would these quests play out? I envision something like the Swift Flight Form questline, minus needing to run a dungeon to finish it. I envision questlines that would take you all over the world to perform a wide variety of tasks. They could begin with simple killing, collecting, and exploration quests, and end with quests that involve vehicles, flying mounts, and perhaps even phased quests where you and you alone go through some sort of gauntlet assisted by members of the associated faction. Or perhaps a quest like The Drakkensryd, which, to this day, is one of my favorite quests that I have ever done. Hell, I wouldn't mind if these questlines required temporary dailies (like the ones that award Aspirant's Seals), as long as there is a good in-quest reason for them.

There are some of my ideas. I know we'll probably never see anything like this in-game, but it's always nice to dream.