I've never been a fan of anything, and always aim to hold a neutral stand on things with a analysing mindset. I'm trying to keep my thoughts short now, so if you're lucky there will be only a "omg wall of text" ahead, instead of a "OMGWALLOFTEXT!!" ;)
My snowball started rolling the past week when I came back to wow after a break.
I had too many alts, no motivation to grind restricted pvp/pve currency, no feeling of being in touch with any of those chars to be honest. I can only blame myself, since I knew that one can not get attached or involved if there are too many choices at hand. I should have sticked to one single char, and only one bank alt mule perhaps. No more.
But, since I am only human, I have needs. If you know what I mean (Mr.BeanFace.Jpg).
The crave for diversity got too strong, I started buying looms, premeditating my new hunter alt. Then a DK, gotta have a DK. And a rogue, rogues are fun. Never had a high lvl warrior, let me try that. Mages are nice too... And soon:
"I'm in control, I can stop making alts whenever I want... just one more, literally only one more alt because... now... all my 10 slots are full!? When did THAT happen?? O,O "
I really do like to play every class, I need variation to keep it fun.
So my problem is that this variation is too hard to get. The leveling and gearing up for new chars is too time consuming.
I've referred to BF2:Bad Company and TeamFortress2 a lot in my previous posts, and I'm doing it again since it makes such a great point:
Imagine if you had to play a single player campaign for weeks to level up and unlock weapons, before you were allowed to do pvp? And even then, it would be only 1 class, medic, sniper, soldier, etc. And if you wanted to change your class, you'd have to repeat the same grind, do all the same quests and solo missions to unlock that new class. Wouldn't be no fun anymore.
However of course, wow has a big roleplaying element with lore, unlike BF2:BC and TF2.
It would be illogical to tell players they couldn't use items in pvp which they obtained through pve questing and dungeons. But it also isn't reasonable to prevent other players from doing pvp because they haven't done "the grind" (level and gear).
TF2 is imo the most user friendly game, since the new items that you find are not simple buffs, but gear modifications. Item stats shift around, you gain a perk or ability, and lose another. Choices, options. Not just buffing up dmg and health like in wow, which makes pvp so unbalanced anyways since BG's are played in 5-level brackets.
BF2:BC isn't that noob friendly, since it gives buffs to higher level players.
Not much, but still enough to make a difference. For example magnum bullets allow snipers to kill anyone in 1 non-headshot hit, whereas new players need to get a clean headshot to kill someone. If it's a body hit, the target will see from what direction it came from and most likely return a deadly burst before you can even reload.
Playing without kits is a real hard challenge imo.
But, those kits are what I like. And MOP will introduce them to wow. Yes you heard me.
BF2:BC kits in wow. What do I mean?
The new talent selection, 1 every 15 lvl.
You pick a choice from a few buffs, offensive or defensive,
"how do I want to play, what fits my style, what do I want to do and how?"
I haven't tried MOP beta so I can only wait and see how things are going to work out with it.
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| Thanks for not falling asleep yet :)
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This however covers only the kit aspect.
What wow needs imo, is a on-the-fly class selection, just like BF2:BC and TF2 have it.
Put a pin in that and I come back in a sec...
The new acc related achievement feature will be a awesome improvement,
and I'd like to see more changes to the game of that type.
I guess the developers finally realised that there is too much content to explore and grind, which causes char related achievements to demotivate players. We don't want to grind the same dungeons, insane reputations, quests and zones a bazillion times on every alt we got.
Now back to the pin...
This is where class related quest reward heirlooms come into the picture. Class kits.
Here's the example:
Every 10 lvl you get a nice "longish" quest line with some tasty lore.
The reward is a boa heirloom for any following slot;
(Weapon1 is mandatory at lvl 10, after that you get free choices)
-head
-shoulder
-back
-chest
-legs
-feet
-hands
-weapon1 - this includes any 1h, 2h, shield, ranged, thrown or relic.
-weapon2 - this includes any 1h, 2h, shield, ranged, thrown or relic.
(All items have a handful of "built in" transmogs to select from with a 1h cd?)
When you hit 90 you'd have every kit unlocked.
These kit items will transform relative to what class/spec you choose to play.
If you start as a warrior and at lvl 13 feel you want to change to a hunter, go ahead.
The 2h weapon1 kit that you chosen after completing the epic lvl 10 quest will turn into a bow or gun for the hunter. Or into a staff for a caster, or shield for a paladin, etc.
You are no longer forced to reroll a toon and grind content you've already explored and cleared once!
So if you were to have only 1 main, you could re-class him to something else without losing any clvl or kit items. Any other unusable gear like plate for mail users or leather for cloth users must be stripped off before being able to change class.
FYI: I am aware of the race/class restriction related issue, we can discuss that matter in more walls of text in this thread :]
Overall, these are heavy suggestions, big changes, I know.
But I think it would allow players to find their own favorite class, due to this user friendly way of easy class swap, and getting to explore new classes faster even at end game lvl.
Having only 1 main char now (not forced ofc, you can do 10 the old way if you like)
would also help us keep focus, time and effort on it, keeping that good feeling alive of "staying in touch" with what you do in the game, something that can be very hard with 10 alts all over azeroth from lvl 1 to 99. Yes, ninetynine. Problemdiablo2?
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| Still reading?... thanks :>
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Now some thoughts about wow is trying to be 2 things at the same time, which are the opposite of each other.
When I play a single player game, there's a story ahead.
I can play and pause when I want, don't have to think about anyone else.
It's like a interactive movie or book that paints the events onto the screen.
There is a end in SP.
When I play a MP game online, it involves other people,
and it's mostly fast action/strategic pvp or co-op vs bots/mobs.
I can play a lot of maps with different people.
There is no end in MP.
Now, one of the biggest downsides of wow imo is that it wants to be a SP with lore but also a MP at the same time, and this doesn't work out too well.
There are no alternative endings, you can't make choices that have any impact on the ingame world, azeroth is not dynamic, it doesn't care about you or what you do.
Quests are only there to gear you up and sometimes give you some lore.
Sadly however 90% of all quests are more or less something epic like
"Please kill 10 mobs type X and gather 10 items type X for me then I give you a followup quest to another meaningless npc like me who has no lore and wants you to repeat my quests by killing 10 mobs type Y and gather 10 items type Y for him...".
Content such as materials, crafting, gearing up, all is a solid 1-way ticket, serving only as a stepping stone to the next phase, expanding in quantity with every expansion, not in quality.
There is no reason to revisit any old zones, only aercheology at the moment.
But that's simply a hit and run job, just like farming rep, or getting a transmog from a 70 or 80 hc dungeon that you solo, and once you get those, you'll never come back.
Dead zones are dead, and that's sad.
I encourage the developers to take a strong turn towards removing clvl,
and make every zone and quest have a full replay value.
The current design is just suicide. It survives only as long as you keep pushing out expansions. A new class makes players want to try it, then they need to visit old content and farm low-mid lvl materials to skill up professions, but after that the old content has still no value but to serve as a paper mug for the next cold drink when the player gets thirsty, aka. a new expansion comes out.
This is not sustainable design.
It's fast food bubble gum, the good taste is gone after a moment and you're still hungry and lack nutritions. That's not what I or anyone I know would call quality gaming, no matter what the sales numbers say. You know how much tobacco companies profit?
You know how bad smoking is for you? Good, you get it that it's pointless to say I'm wrong just because Blizzard is making billions.
Now now, don't hate or flame, I'm not trying to bash wow,
just giving some neutral feedback based on experience and logic.
I really think wow has potential to be way more than what it is right now,
and that some of my suggestions would help make it a much user friendlier and enjoyable, true MMORPG.
I'll be back when I got the energy...
Let me hear your big thoughts about wow.
I can write and also read walls of text ;)
