suggestions
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Definitive answers to UI suggestions
Over the past few days, Slouken (Blizzard's UI Guy) has been going through Cogwheel's compilation of UI suggestions and giving definitive answers on some of them. Here are the items which aren't going to happen and some that are:Declined Generic /sequence command Spell Queuing Vendor value without being at a vendor API to retrieve DND or AFK status message from another player Finer-grained action button enable/disable events with some logic moved C-side /stopcasting <optional spell name> /swapgroup <playerName> <playerName | subGroup> Some way to iterate over the pet spell lists of pets you're not currently using (client doesn't have this information) More on what is coming in the next two patches after the jump.
What else is around BlizzCon?
If you're coming along to BlizzCon, you might want to do more than simply come to the con. There is plenty to do in and around the area, and I thought that I might, as a former Southern Californian, point to some of the alternatives around town. Yes, we know there's a mouse who lives in Anaheim, but if you're not in the mood to visit the Temple of Disney across the street from the Anaheim Convention Center, there are other options. Food at the convention center will be basic, so if you get the chance to slip away for a meal elsewhere, I recommend it. My favorite place to eat, for instance, during the last BlizzCon was actually a little Red Robin just down the street, where I sipped my chocolate shake and listened to Warcraft-related conversations at the tables around me. If you don't mind a little walk, there is Storyteller's Cafe, one of my favorite restaurants at Downtown Disney, located at the Disney's Grand Californian Hotel. The prices are fairly reasonable, and the food is of good quality, with high class service. The one place I have been meaning to go ti but never have is Medieval Times Dinner and Tournament, where they have a Renaissance-esque meal served during a jousting show.If you are in town for a couple of days and like theme parks, you are definitely in luck. I am not a huge fan of Knott's Berry Farm, but I did spend my formative years at the Six Flags Magic Mountain north of Los Angeles and can highly recommend the Riddler. South of Anaheim along the Interstate is Legoland in Carlsbad, and further south in San Diego are three attractions perfect for the animal lover in the group: The San Diego Zoo, The Wild Animal Park, and Sea World. The weather should be nice next weekend, so why not take a drive down to Dana Point and enjoy some sea air? It's just down the Interstate 5 from Anaheim, and the area is dotted with shops and restaurants surrounding a lovely marina. These are just a couple of suggestions, and there's an excellent thread on the forums that details plenty of other options for dining and entertainment around BlizzCon. For those who are going, what are you planning on doing besides going to the con?
A compilation of suggestions
Until today, it had been a very long time since I visited the suggestions forum. I remember the last time well... long long ago, with a character far far too ugly, I posted this awesome new idea: "Why not make some kind of beauty parlor that lets us change our characters' appearance! Wouldn't that be neat?" Little did I know that it had already been suggested lots of times before. It's one of the suggestions they get most often, in fact, but it's still anybody's guess as to whether they'll actually implement it or not.I might have offered up more brilliant ideas, but the fact that I could never get an official Blizzard response there discouraged me. Besides, realizing that my first great idea wasn't all that new made me think "well someone's probably suggested all that before." So today I just poked my head in at the suggestions forum on a whim. I discovered that the only stickied suggestion there, other than the "welcome" post, is a compilation of suggestions designed to help us realize what's been suggested before, and start thinking of something new. It has everything from UI improvements to oft-suggested expansion ideas. It's updated to a certain extent (patch 2.0) and after skipping over the 4 or 5 paragraphs beseeching people not to post their suggestions in that thread, I noticed a lot of the ideas I had were there, as well as some that I'd never thought of before. Below are a few of the ideas which struck me as most interesting:
Wanted: Dead or Alive
Haven't you ever just hated someone so much in WOW you wanted to kill them over and over, even though you couldn't? Maybe it's the 70 who ganked you for hours when you're only 34. Maybe it's the guild leader you found out was modifying DKP to suit him and his friends. Maybe it's the guy spewing racial insults in Org general chat. Well, Gamemaniak on the EU realms has a proposal for you. See, on his server, there's a guild that offers bounties on the heads of other players. Provide a screenshot of your kill of that player, and you collect gold from the guild. So, he wondered, why not implement this into the game? Set up a "WANTED" board in the major cities, so players could put bounties on other players of their own or the opposite faction. It would cost a nominal amount of money to put up a bounty, and you could offer whatever you wanted as the reward (of course, it would be automatically deducted from your inventory if someone with the bounty quest killed your mark.) Heck, you could even have the game send a letter to the mark informing them that they're being hunted. Normally, I'm not a big fan of things that would increase gankings, but I sort of like this idea. It would add a refreshing new dimension to world PVP and help the WoW community become more self-policing on annoying behaviors like stealing mats, begging for gold, or generally being a jerk. What do you think of this idea? If there was a bounty hunting system in the game, would you use it, or do you prefer to settle your scores the old-fashioned way?
Forum post of the day: Hunters! Make your own mount!
Blizzard MVP Palehoof has come up with a pretty awesome idea in the Suggestions Forum: she suggests that hunters be able to tame their own mounts. Unlike paladins and warlocks, hunters would have to pay for their riding skill -- but after that, they'd be able to get unusual mounts. They could use Beast Lore to locate a creature that would be appropriate in size, shape and temperament (and not every member of every species would work!) and then use "Tame Mount" to turn it into a normal, inventory-based mount. She suggests that quests could unlock later levels of Tame Mount, so hunters could get epic mounts, flying mounts, etc. Also, rare reputation mounts like Wintersabers and Nether Rays could simply be untamable. I'm not a hunter, but I love this idea. Anything that allows players to make their characters individuals is fine by me. Just looking at Petopia, I can think of more than a few trainable hunter pets that would make great mounts. I'd love to see a troll go riding by on an albino crocodile, a tauren wandering past on a giant gorilla, or a night elf mounted atop a garish pink flamingo. In fact, I would like to see it mandatory that female night elf hunters be mounted atop garish pink flamingoes, but that's more of a personal prejudice. And no, Hordelings, you can't use gnomes as mounts. Stop asking. If I could pick my own mount, I'd probably try to tame the big dude pictured above. His name's Zarakh, and he's a spider boss found in one of the lowbie Draenei zones. Can you get any more menacing than that? What would you use as a mount if you could?
How to make the DS better
An article over at Next Generation outlines a few suggestions on how to improve the Nintendo DS. The system was a cautious experiment a few years ago, but its overwhelming success has made it as mainstream as peanut butter and jelly. Almost. Some of the ideas are easy upgrades that make a lot of sense, but others seem to go against the spirit of the system: Internal flash memory Better system interface Firmware upgrades Virtual Console support Integrated wi-fi and Pictochat Give the DS drawing and organizer abilities Better GBA slot support Firmware upgrades? Sounds like a headache. Part of the reason the DS is successful is its simplicity. Want to play a game? Grab a cart, shove it in, and you're good to go. We admit, a Virtual Console for the DS would be divine, as well as a more integrated Pictochat experience. But does the DS need to be changed? Why tweak a formula that's obviously working?
The official .Mac blog wants you
Here's your chance, folks. The official .Mac Blog has put a call out to its readers. Specifically, they want to know what you want covered on the blog. Are you interested in learning about cool and little-known iWeb tricks? iDisk basics? Why .Mac doesn't offer what Google Apps for Your Domain does? Ok, so that last suggestion probably won't fly, but if your suggestion is selected your name will appear with the accompanying post on the blog. Good luck.
TUAW Tip: Hit esc for some word suggestions
It appears that while typing a word in many OS X apps, such as iChat and Yojimbo, hitting the Esc key will present a drop-down list of word completion options. I *think* this might be a Cocoa-related service of Mac OS X (sorry, Firefox users), but I'm always hesitant to toss out a guess like that because I am constantly surprised as to which apps are actually Cocoa (Finder, for example, is still Carbon, even in Tiger). I get this popup in Ecto, Stickies and Mail as well, but not in any input areas on websites in Safari, so feel free to experiment with this handy but (as far as I know) undocumented feature.
