So. If you had access to Blizzard’s devs for a day, and you could make any one change in WoW – trivial or significant, but not game-transforming – what would you pick?
I have a few favourite answers to this question, but I’m interested to hear what everyone else would pick, too. I’ll post my answers in a few days.
I’d change it so that PvP couldn’t start unless both parties were already flagged. Not so much to end “blue-walling” but to stop flagged people from trapping others into flagging by standing on a mob, NPC, Flight Master, etc. or by dueling and surrendering the duel just as their opponent is about to hit them. If someone’s not flagged, they’re saying “I don’t want to PvP right now” and I’d really like the system to enforce that.
I’d like to see a smarter loot drop system. If a drop can’t be used by anyone in the party, or if all classes that could use the drop already have the drop, then the drop shouldn’t drop.
If you’ve ever used Pawn, you know that a system of loot weights per class is very real. If a pair of gloves has a Resto Druid score of 47 and all of the equipped gear for all of the Resto Druids has a score of 50 or better, then don’t use that item as a drop.
No one likes farming for specific drops. No one likes raiding for hours only to see a drop get sharded. No one likes fighting about loot because it is mediocre enough that the fight is who is going to use it more for off-spec.
Blizzard is on the right track with the way crafting recipes and patterns now only drop when there are party members that can use them. They need to take it one step further and apply that to all gear.
I fear that all of this Wrath stuff about combining stats on gear is the wrong way to get to the same point (more useful drops). The upside for Blizzard is that it is now easier to code as there are fewer stats, but the players are going to suffer as more people will now fight for the same loot (and look the same). This will only increase farming, not decrease it.
Instead, I’d like to see Blizzard take the harder road and code in the gear weights and actually think about what to drop, instead of just relying on the RNG.
OK, so I am going to cheat a little bit here. I have two things which I would like to see changed, and since I can’t decide between them… I’ll just have to put them both down.
1. Green fire darn it! Warlocks have been crying for green fire for so long, and if I could grant that, I’d be a lock goddess!
2. I think that we need a way to make it more difficult to accidentally get saved to a raid. I don’t know how many times I (or people I know) have gotten saved to a raid by mistake because someone has gone in who is saved and managed to save everyone else. Perhaps change it to being saved as soon as you interact with something, allowing for people to ‘escape’, but not for them to be able to complete quests without getting saved.
Hrm, not game-transforming eh?
*Thinks streamline Arena Rating system. Nah, is game-transforming*
*Thinks If I could widen the change from WoW development to the whole WoW experience it would have to be fix the Ruin-EU Battlegroup. Nah, to specific an issue to one BGroup*
Ah, two ideas. My first one, and preferred, would be to allow surnames. A purely RP change, I think it would aid in maintaining community/guild cohesion, give a greater sense of character individuality and provide a little more fun with naming conventions. I will, of course, nab ‘Hoomite U-bee’ immediately for my dwarf warrior.
The Second idea is colour dyes for character armour. Unfortunately I think that Blizzards game engine can’t allow anything like this currently, but I think it would be great to have a dye shop whereby you could recolour your Armour/Cloak. Given the game has matured to the point that gear variation among max level PC is less rather than more diverse (blame the Arena and PvP for that) I think this allows a much-needed level of character appearance customisation.
Simple as that really. ;)
Along the lines of things more trivial, I want to be able to Dressing Room mounts!
I’d buff Paladin tanking (selfish, but you asked).
1. Paladins get their own version of Last Stand and Shield Wall
2. Improved Righteous Fury is buffed from a 6% damage reduction to 10%
3. Holy Shield is off the Global cooldown
4. Improved Holy Shield reduces it’s cooldown by 1 second and it can be used while silenced.