Top 10 things needed in World of Warcraft |
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| BY Chris King Jun. 30th, 2008 | More on: |
06. Allow Horde and Alliance guilds to have some type of communication. If nothing else, at least allow horde/alliance guildmasters to communicate verbally. Through this, horde and alliance guilds could arrange to challenge each other in epic world PvP battles, i.e. “Your guild is horrible at PvP, and to prove it we will destroy in Halaa at 8 pm tonite, meet us there if you’re not scared.” Before you know it, you may have people regularly trolling these world areas looking for PvP at the “usual times.”
07. Award bonus honor in Battlegrounds for individual accomplishments. Person with the most killing blows, best kills to death ratio, person with most damage done, and person with most healing done.
08. Keep track of your lifetime kill to deaths ratio in Battlegrounds under PvP stats. Limit this to only Battleground kills (or killing blows) to deaths so that ganking in world PvP cannot be used to pad stats. This could be used by players as bragging rights of their PvP accomplishments.
09. Allow players to have a guildhouse. It can be an instanced building that you go into kind of like the one you go to buy Honor Reward items, except once inside it’s just you and your guildmates. From there, you could access a common guild “chest,” instead of having the guild “bank.” This could improve the somewhat lackluster social aspect of large raiding guilds seen today because there is a lot to be said for physically hanging out with guildmates. It’s nice to have a common designated area that you can go to meet up at, rather than just playing solo and talking on a chat interface to “faceless” people. The only time a lot of people meet up with their guildmates is a few minutes before going into the occasional raid or premade Battleground, which is pretty sad and all too common.
10. Allow players with one level capped character (80) to start a new character of any class at level 40 or higher. Players who already have a level capped character know how painful it is to start from level 1, running around on foot in the barrens. Don’t punish them by making them relive it multiple times if they want to experience other classes in the game! It may be necessary to foster a “learning” period of character abilities and talents by artificially limiting the new character to fewer spells starting at level 1 equivalent and slowly over the course of a few hours of fighting mobs have them learn new skills and talents at a super accelerated rate. Eventually they could catch up to where a normal character their level would be.
June 30th, 2008
at 6:13 am
I can debunk most of your wanted improvements for WoW just by sheer development capability. I’m not saying I wouldn’t want to see some of these changes but I just want to give my opinion.
1. & 2.) The “Demonic Circle” spell is basically the “tome of portal” from the Diablo series. I expect this spell to have anywhere from an hour to one day cool down. Just knock the hearthstone cool down from 60 minutes to 30 minutes and you’ll get the same effect.
3.) World PvP fails because their are battlegrounds and arenas. No one is going to do world PvP objectives when you have PvP instances that accomplish the same goal and give better loot. WOTLK’s Lake Wintergrasp PvP only zone will change this for a little while but then arenas will become the favorite again.
4.) Ah, I remember the days of Ultima Online when you got ganked you lost all your gear. I never want that in my MMO ever again. If you do then check out Shadowbane.
5.) I just don’t think Blizzard would ever put in a race or class change. It would affect gameplay and even balance to a certain extent. They seem fine with you just rolling another character and many will with the new Death Knight.
6.) They already have this and it’s called message boards and guild websites. I’d like a voice chat channel where horde and alliance could join though.
7.) It should be implemented with WOTLK or in a later patch if my sources are correct.
8.) Already had this in the game as well. It was the High Warlord grind. I do miss PvP titles though.
9.) This would only appease rp’ers and wouldn’t really bring anything new to the game. Also, it would put a major strain on Blizzards servers that run the game to have thousands of instanced guild houses over however many game servers they have. If you want guild houses the best thing to do is designate a place to meet in a major city and call that your guild house.
10.) I think Blizzard is just going to save the rolling a higher level character to the hero classes. I wouldn’t be surprised if they eventually let you buy a level 30+ character though. It would put a serious damper on the account selling business which has always been a problem in mmo’s.
Thanks for writing this list though because I have been wanting to write up something along the same line. And thank god you didn’t mention a graphics upgrade because I don’t think any PC game has held up as well after four years than WoW.
June 30th, 2008
at 10:01 am
I don’t play WOW, but people I’ve spoken to have talked about some problems you bring up here, so it sounds like a good list. Interesting to see what future versions look like!
June 30th, 2008
at 9:13 pm
@Joshua O.
1&2) I agree with the fact that if hearth cooldown were lowered it would help this problem somewhat, but it still doesn’t solve the problem of getting to your friend who may be getting ganked in Stranglethorn if you’re in say Outlands. It’s nearly a 10 minute trip to get from one place to another almost no matter where you are and I see that as a problem if you’re trying to go help a friend in need. By the time you get there it’s probably too late, so you just don’t go.
3) IMO and the opinions of a lot other people I’ve spoken to, the best PvP experiences ever had in the game have been in world PvP. The early days of Halaa were epic. Really, you could argue that Battlegrounds and Arena fail on another level because they feel artificial compared to world PvP. Suppose it’s a matter of personal preference. If you don’t play on a PvP server, that may explain a lot about personal preference. The majority of players don’t care about it because they play the game to focus on raid/instance content, but that’s not the case for everyone.
4) I didn’t say, nor did I mean to imply that the gold or reward to be looted from a corpse would come out of the killed player’s own gold. It would be generated just like the small amount of money and armor scraps, etc. that is on a player’s corpse in Alterac Valley Battlegrounds. This suggestion is nothing like that of old UO or Shadowbane, but it does help provide some of the same meaningfulness those games had, that is lacking in WoW’s world PvP.
5) I don’t understand how allowing someone a paid race change would affect gameplay or balance when people are free to do it already by just putting in more playtime. At least this would save them the headache. You could argue the other way and say things are unbalanced right now when player who feels stuck with a blood elf shadow priest loses to an undead shadowpriest because the undead guy has an extra dot that heals and a racial that makes him resist fear. That’s unbalanced in my book.
6) Currently websites and message boards don’t seem to be fulfilling this purpose because it doesn’t exist and horde/alliance guilds don’t meet in game for battles. Raids on faction cities and Battlegrounds don’t count, those are PUG events. I had in my more organized fights, not zerg fests.
7) Good.
8) High Warlord grind didn’t count kills vs. deaths. There’s an enormous difference IMO in someone who is skilled enough to go 24 and 0 (without a healer babysitting them) vs. someone who is 20 and 18.
9) I believe this would be nice to have and not only for “RP’ers.” I’m hardly a RP’er and I got my start in the old days of UO PvP. I’ve never experienced anything like the tight knit closeness guilds had back in the days hanging out in our guild house as we would get our inventories ready/duel/shoot the sh*t before going out to battle other guilds. Highly underrated. Standing around in a city isn’t quite the same.
10) Didn’t Blizzard kind of imply that you would be turning your level 55+ mage/warrior/whatever class into the blood knight? So you wouldn’t be starting at level 55, you would actually be trading in what you already worked for to get it.
Glad you enjoyed the list though. I think the game’s graphics are still going strong thanks to the art direction. People whined about the graphics when they were new, but it’s a lot better than many other MMO’s have it. Really, that’s probably one of the reasons of the game’s mass appeal too because it is easily accessible to nearly any PC.
To be honest, I think one of the biggest problems with WoW, though it’s purely from a PvP viewpoint is the itemization. Though that is a core part of the game and will never change. At least if they did some other things as I tried to suggest it will make the PvP more meaningful than it is now. Right now it only revolves around grinding BG’s and Arena, but it could be so much more.
June 30th, 2008
at 10:05 pm
10.) That information is incorrect. As long as you have a level 55 or higher you will be able to make a Death Knight of any race on any server. Of course, if your on a PvP server then it will have to be the same faction as your current character.
Also, I know Blizzard commented on the paid race thing so i’m going to try and dig that up. I know Blizzard feels if you want to be another race than just re-roll another character. To be honest if your complaining about the useless-ness of your racials in PvP maybe that person just isn’t that good. I play a Night Elf who has crap for racials and I do fine. Then again i’m a priest.
P.S. Blizzard officially said that PvP is a “sidequest” in their game. They put about 95% of their development team into the PvE aspect of the game. If you want to strictly PvP then play Warhammer though it’s really unbalanced.
July 1st, 2008
at 7:58 am
Okay, I’d never seen the Death Knight explained that clearly, so just thought that’s what it sounded like.
About races, there’s no denying that for certain character classes some races are flat out better give equal gear and player ability. Especially when it comes down to the priest’s bonus ability. It’s a well known joke that human priests completely suck and that’s why no one rolls them other than people who don’t know any better.
It’s kinda sad if Blizz doesn’t take PvP seriously since there are quite a few players who enjoy it. They go as far to make PvP servers and world PvP objectives, if they’re going to try making it interesting why not at least get it right instead of doing it half way?
I doubt Warhammer will be any better, it doesn’t sound too impressive so far. Every game that has came along has failed for quite some time now…Age of Conan was supposed to be the next PvP game and from many people’s view, it also fails. Unfortunately UO and Shadowbane are so out of date and/or ruined by game changing “updates” that they are not worth playing for me at least. WoW could be the perfect game for PvP if it just tweaked a few things (overlooking the reliance on gear).
July 2nd, 2008
at 12:27 am
I played Age of Conan for the free 30 days and that game shipped with about half of its features missing. I remember them screaming from the rooftops that guilds could build their own cities and fight against other guilds. Well that feature didn’t ship day one and although it is in the game now it’s buggy as hell. Honestly, if I wanted to mash buttons to attack in a game i’d just play Ninja Gaiden.
August 3rd, 2008
at 5:15 pm
I like the ideas, but they are obviously biased toward PvP geared players. No suggestions for PvE oriented players at all. The “guildhouse” could count - but it’s more of a general game thing than a PvE thing. The shorter/multi hearthstone thing would also be nice for PvE (set to current progression instance - bam). But overall, generally suggestions for PvP encounters/players.
Dont get me wrong, I do like some of the suggestions. The option to change races would be stellar. Being able to start a new character at a higher level would kick ass (ala DAoC - for one).
Only taking 1 part of the game into consideration (PvP) while completely ignoring all other parts is worng though. What about terrible options for Crafting professions? When’s the last time you needed a tailor for something other than a new bag? Same for blacksmithing and leatherworking. Compare that to how many times you’ve asked for a Jewelcrafter and/or Enchanter in the last 30 days. Many of the “end game” profession patterns are laughable compared to others. I would like to see my Blacksmithing take me a little further than 1 single item that is replaced after the 2nd tier of raid instances. Enchanters and Jewelcrafters can make money every day, just due to the way their profession works.
These suggestions are not terrible - they are certainly nice for PvP players, but they are no where near the “Top 10 needed things in WoW”.