Community Blog Topic Results: Features we wish WoW had
Last week, we asked, "What 3 features do you wish WoW had?" Quite a few people answered, many with more than three features. For myself, I suggested cross-realm mail, one free server transfer a month, and story questlines for each class. Here's the breakdown of the responses.
Level scaling
Since reading everyone else's ideas, I'd like to boot cross-realm mail out of my top three list and instead replace it with level scaling so that players of disparate levels can play together. Jojo over at Admiring Azeroth would also like to see level scaling be used so that players could return to lower level zones and complete the content with an appropriate amount of challenge. Feckless Leader's Ross has this to say about what scaling down would have to offer the max-level player:
Quest rewards can always contain gold, and perhaps scaled-down players would also earn the currency of the day, or be able to champion faction rep will questing with your friend. Of course this would work for low-level dungeons, too.
Player housing
Blizzard developers have said in the past that they don't like the idea of player housing. Of course they said the same thing about a few changes we've had now, so there's no reason to discount this as a possible option in the future. The reason they gave was that people would hang out in their Azerothian homes, turning captial cities into ghost towns. JeffLaBowski at Sportsbard suggests time limits would solve that problem. Henry at Taufmonster's Log posits that housing should be part of a guild neighborhood.
The guild neighborhood could have shared projects where the group could work together to add things like a bar, profession areas, things like a moonwell. It would then make a great personal gold and time sink but also a group time sink. It would also be great at giving a group identity and group goals.
Jojo from Admiring Azeroth would like to see player housing be implemented more like a gallery or museum area. This area would be where you could store things like archaeological artifacts or transmog armor. In addition, there could be a guild museum where heads of downed bosses could be displayed as well.
I have to say that player housing isn't high on my list because I do like the community feeling of people hanging around the big cities, though it would be nice to have the extra, personalized storage that player housing would provide.
Character copy
JeffLaBowski suggests an innovative way for friends to play together on different realms.
Forget the server transfer. You want a max level toon on any given server. Copy it over. They would have to work out whether you can take items or not. Also, put a decent cooldown on the ability so it wouldn't get abused. Maybe even make it limited to a one time thing per character. I'm thinking no gold and maybe only soulbound items would carry over.
Cross-character dungeon queues
Carmelo at Clever Musings has an idea I'd never considered before: the ability to queue for dungeons on one character while playing on another character.
The general idea is that I'd like to be able to log on my main and go do dailies while being queued for a dungeon on an alt. Imagine that you're out in the world, earning reputation with the August Celestials, maybe doing a few pet battles in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms, but when you accept the queue, you're suddenly zoned in, on that alt, to the dungeon.
Account-wide storage
Aion in the comments would like to see at least 20 spaces of storage for account-wide use, much like the stash in Diablo III. Many commenters agreed.
Account-wide heirlooms
One of the most popular ideas in the comments was to make our heirlooms be truly account-wide by making them also cross-server. I agree wholeheartedly.
Tabard storage
Many people including thehuntressinthenight suggested that tabards be on the character pane or chosen from from some other menu rather than taking up space in the bank.
Secondary equipment slots
I love drakynfyre's solution to carrying two sets of equipment around for dual spec or PvP/PvE swapping.
Secondary equipment slots to swap gear out. No more holding equipment in your inventory. The equipment manager would let you open a second set of gear slots, and place your other set there. Gear is inactive while in the secondary slots. Switching gear switches these slots.
Guild store
Both lilkimmi2 at Dead Gnomes Society and JeffLaBowski believe there should be a separate store for guildies, perhaps where guildies could place workorders for crafted items. Or from Dead Gnomes Society:
Allow guild leaders to assign a price to certain items in the GB and open up a payment window when someone wants that item. Give players the option to sell or donate an item to the GB.
10-man LFR
In the comments, jmuiji suggests 10-man LFRs.
The current LFR is 25 so that a little dead weight won't kill the raid. So what? In the current LFR, you get a LOT of dead weight that kills the raid, and all you gain from it is a longer wait time. five-man dungeons have a little dead weight kill the run too, you know the answer to that? Kick the dead weight and get another. A Ten-Man LFR would give you the ability to more easily spot the dead weight and be rid of it, rather than the mass cluster of "It's not my fault!" that you've got now.
Peer policing
JS in the comments suggests a punk button that could be used once a year in order to boot a funsucker out of the game for 24 hours. More seriously, Feckless Leader suggests that the League of Legends Tribunal System be used in WoW.
Account-bound professions
BapoThe-Paladin posits that professions become account bound. Carmelo at Clever Musings suggests that professions be transferred. I think I prefer the account-bound solution, but either way would fix my problem with changing my main and realm and therefore not having access to my maxed out professions.
Appear offline
Ravyncat1 is one of many who want the ability to appear offline to Real ID and Battletag friends. This seems like such a simple, fundamental feature to any chat program that I am surprised it wasn't implemented from the beginning.
Open tapping
A few people agree with SallyBowls that open tapping of mobs and resource nodes would be a great idea. This way, playing together in all of these newly full Cross Realm Zones would be more enjoyable.
Cross-faction grouping
Both Kandorr and Taufmonster would like to see cross faction grouping so that you could play with anyone on your Real ID/Battletag friends list, regardless of faction.
A path for Best in Slot gear for each group size
In the comments, schmidt had a few great ideas, my favorite of which being his idea that Blizzard provide gear paths according to what group size you prefer to play in.
Provide paths towards BIS gear for all group sizes - raid, party, small group (scenarios), and solo - with roughly equivalent difficulty. If individual loot is implemented, it would be possible to have all such content share looting limits for the cutting edge gear across all group sizes, thus making it mostly useless from a gearing perspective to do all content every week, and as a consequence allowing the player to choose what he wants to do.
Gear dyeing
A few people including Tgail suggested being able to dye your gear different colors. It seems to me that this would make the crafting professions more attractive for making money as they'd be able to sell different colors of the same gear.
There were quite a few more ideas and variations of the same idea bandied about in the blogs and comments for last week's question, but it would take another page or two to list them all here. I tried to pick the most innovative or commonly asked for features with one exception: I left off merging servers or single server suggestions on purpose to discuss more fully in our next Community Blog Topic. Stay tuned!
