Zone replay in WoW?

I was hit by a sudden realization today regarding WoW's solo content. In contemplating the "daily grind" I have returned to (a term I coined a bit over a year ago to describe the repetitive ritual of doing the same daily quests every day), I thought about methods that other games have used to remain interesting after being completed out of hopes that the lessons learned from these other games could be applied to WoW. Thinking about this took some time, for my stingy-ness regarding buying new games and my recent penchant for open-ended games (the last four games that have held my attention for any extended period of time were WoW, Rock Band 3, Minecraft, and Rock Band 2) means it has been some time since I played a typical game that could be "beaten" in any conventional sense. But when I looked back upon the games I have played which I was able to "beat" and continued playing, I realized that most of the time, I was simply playing these games multiple times all the way through, occasionally with some sort of "New Game Plus" bonus.

Thinking back, I realized that this was how I milked most of my old games for more play time once I had finished them; I simply played them again. Yet when I looked at WoW, I realized that there is no such simple "play the game again" feature. There is no way to replay entire zones that you enjoyed, unless you level an alt and do the whole level grind over again, a daunting thought for such a huge game (especially when some zones are horribly behind others in terms of their design philosophy). Outside of rolling a new alt, there is simply no way to experience WoW's solo content more than once.

And the truth is, I see the option to roll and alt and experience the whole game again as a less-than-optimal way to give players the option to replay the game. Why? An argument for this method would say that it is equivalent to starting a new save file in a console game, but that analogy doesn't really work, because WoW is no longer equivalent to one game. It is now equivalent to several, and forcing players to start from the beginning if they wish to re-experience a part of the game is equivalent to making them play multiple games in order to replay the one they like. Let me elaborate. In the beginning, there was vanilla WoW, which was equivalent to one game (we'll call that game WoW 1). Then Burning Crusade was released. Because we had to pay extra money for Burning Crusade, it was equivalent to another game (WoW 2), and ditto for Wrath of the Lich King (WoW 3). Cataclysm is an interesting case, because we got all of the new 80-85 content (WoW 4), as well as the remake of old-world Azeroth (a remake of WoW 1).

To provide an analogy, look at the side-scrolling Metroid Games. You had Metroid, released in 1986 on the NES; Metroid 2: The Return of Samus, released in 1991 on the Game Boy; Super Metroid, released in 1994 on the SNES, and Metroid Fusion, released in 2002 on the Game Boy Advance, all of which were chronologically related to each other in terms of story and all of which were great technological improvements over their predecessors, much like WoW and its expansion packs. But after Metroid Fusion was released, a game called Metroid: Zero Mission was released, which was a remake of the original Metroid that brought it up to speed with the technological advancements made after the original Metroid was released. Cataclysm is the equivalent of a game that packages Metroid Fusion and Metroid: Zero Mission together, in that we have an advances fourth entry in the series, as well as an advanced remake of the first entry, while the second and third are still behind the other two in terms of how technologically advanced they are.

Why do I make this analogy? I make it because I think forcing WoW players to play through the updated Vanilla content, Burning Crusade's content, and Wrath of the Lich King's content before they can replay Cataclysm's content is equivalent to forcing a Metroid fan to play through Metroid: Zero Mission, Metroid 2: The Return of Samus, and Super Metroid before being able to replay Metroid Fusion, which just wouldn't be fair. Now, when you apply this analogy practically, it makes it seem like I am suggesting that people should be able to skip entire expansion packs when they roll a new character, which is not what I mean to suggest at all (although Death Knights can already do that, but they start out right in the least-advanced content, which is hardly an ideal skip). What I am saying is that the precedent set by other games makes it seem unfair that we should have to play through all of that old content just to replay the new content we enjoy.

It was at this part in my thought that I was hit with an idea: what if we could replay entire zones? What if we could go through a zone again and play through it's one-time quests a second, third, maybe even fourth time, and the longevity of the solo content could be extended that way? The precedent for it exists with the Caverns of Time; major villains could be replaced with members of the Infinite Dragonflight with similar abilities, and occasionally, a quest giver could be replaced by a member of the Keepers of Time. Or perhaps there could be one quest-giver from the Keepers of Time who gives a bread-crumb quest that starts you off in each zone. These quest-givers could be set up near the portals in Stormwind and Ogrimmar, and they could get their own portals that would lead to past versions of each zone. Thus these "replay zones" would be their own separate zones, allowing Blizzard to put in quests that wouldn't award items (to avoid flooding the dust/essence/shard market) or reputation (to avoid making faction rep too easy to farm), both of which would make sense due to the fact that you aren't actually doing anything to help any of the zones you play through again. To keep the sense of shared questing, the game could also show other players replaying the zones alongside you, preventing it from becoming a lonely experience.

What purpose would these replay zones fulfill? Aside from allowing players to play through a zone again without needing to level a character through old content, the quests in these zones could also award money, making them an alternative to the "daily grind" we have now. Because there are countless more one-time quests than there are dailies, this would probably be a more interesting experience than the dailies we have now, and would make it take longer for players to get bored with Cataclysm's high-level solo content (of course, the dailies would stay around to help players earn reputation). Perhaps they could also award reputation with a new faction comprised of members of the Keepers of Time, giving solo players something else to work towards. They would also allow players to re-experience key moments in the evolving storyline of WoW (in case they missed them the first time around), as well as give Blizzard an idea of what works in questing and what doesn't by allowing them to see which zones players replay the most.

But really, the important point is that these replay zones would allow players to experience the best of currently available content without needing to replay the old content. Raiders who roll a new character don't need to run Molten Core, Black Temple, Ulduar, etc. with that character before they can run Cataclysm's raid content, so it seems a bit silly to force us to experience old solo content more than once when we just want to re-experience the relevant, not-behind-the-times-in-design-philosophy content.