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Pet Wars and other minigame ideas
If the response to new hairstyles at BlizzCon means anything to the developers (Frank Pierce told me that he almost didn't even bother mentioning the new hairstyles at the keynote, and was amazed that it got one of the biggest cheers), it's that you can't ignore the little changes. New raid bosses, and bigtime lore storylines are cool, but sometimes people just want to relax and have a little fun with their characters.So Karvoth has a great idea: turn noncombat pets into combat pets (of a sort), and make them into a fun little minigame. Just like the Tonk wars (and doggone it, if anyone on Thunderhorn's Horde side has a Tonk left, come see my Shaman, because he has one and no one to fight with!), setting up a little mode for dueling minipets would create endless fun, and fill in all those hours of group waiting and guild setup pretty easily.Of course, that's not the only game they could implement-- ever since the Darkmoon cards were implemented, I always thought it would be awesome to have an ingame card game. I probably doubled my time playing FFIX just because of Tetra Master, and putting a simple but addictive card game inside of WoW would give me a whole new reason to play even more.Unfortunately, neither of these ideas are likely, because Blizzard has made it pretty clear with WotLK that WoW is some serious high-level business. But just like the new hairstyles, players will always jump at the chance to have more simple fun with all the time they spend in Azeroth.
Notes from the BlizzCon press conference
Blizzard's J. Allen Brack, Frank Pierce, and Rob Pardo sat down in front of a small group of members of the press this morning to answer question about Blizzard's history, games, and outlook, and WoW Insider was there. In the hourlong chat, we covered Wrath of the Lich King, WoW's past, whether WoW should appear on a console or not, and what's going to happen to the old world. Just for you guys, I personally asked about Heroic Deadmines, midlevel content, and what they're going to do about those AFKers in Alterac Valley.My notes from the chat are after the jump. There were not one but two PR people hovering around the developers, so even they had to stop themselves from revealing secrets, but they did provide a lot of background and a lot of clarification about what players want to know about Wrath of the Lich King and Blizzard behind the scenes.
