Forum Post of the Day: Features you wish were in WoW
by Elizabeth Harper 
Jul 26th 2007 at 8:58PM
Over on the official forums, Granada asks what features you've seen in other games that you wish were available in World of Warcraft. Sure, some of the suggestions are just silliness (do we really need chainsaws and nailguns?), but there's quite a bit of good info in the thread as well. Some common suggestions:- The music-playing system from Lord of the Rings Online
- Player or guild housing found in many games
- Fully automated NPCs that could be hired to fill party slots, as in Guild Wars
- Armor dyes found in many games
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Fan stuff
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Sbloyd Jul 26th 2007 9:13PM
* Something like the COH sidekick/exemplar system (squiring?) so lowbies and ubers can adventure together somewhat...
* the ability to switch sides to/from Alliance/Horde...
* more face/body/hair/etc customization options...
* the ability to change some of those options ingame...
* a 'get out of lowbie free' card when you hit 70 (a token or some such that lets you skip twenty or thirty levels on a new alt)...
* Guild alliances/wars...
* A more interesting fishing system (I miss fishing up sea monsters and treasure maps and such in UO)...
* More variety in the crafting system (like, higher skill means a better product, maybe? right now a 300 LW makes Dusky Leather Belts the same as a lowbie would)...
...off the top of my head.
Lexanya Jul 26th 2007 9:25PM
The only thing I want more than anything is the sidekick system found in CoH. I'm sick of soloin' because my friends are all to big to group with me.
Sheldrake Jul 26th 2007 9:30PM
Post and fantasize all you want... Blizzard will *never* add any of these good ideas. Their demonstrated priority is MORE RAID CONTENT. They surely have the resources to implement any of these but instead they have *chosen* not to over the last 2.5 years.
Accept it and learn to love the grind...
Dwomt Jul 26th 2007 9:34PM
There's a 2D MMORPG called Dark Ages that Blizzard should look at. It has the typical level grinding that can be found in WoW, but also has so many other cool features. Players run the local towns themselves by electing players to political positions to make sure the towns are safe and to hold events. I'd like to see something like this in WoW. There's also a main library in Dark Ages that has history books listing past players names who made their name well known in that world. I wish WoW had some way a player could make a difference in the world and get his name into an Azeroth history book or something. This would give players the chance to feel like everything they do in WoW adds to the history of the world they adventure and fight in, no matter if they are horde or alliance. There's just so much potential Blizzard is missing out on. Oh and yes I'd like to see some type of Guild vs Guild feature like Guild Wars has.
Shinesse Madison Jul 26th 2007 9:43PM
Sheldrake, I know they won't which is why after my next game card runs out I'll probably be saying bye. I really love the game and its lots of fun but soloin' is boring as hell. It's an MMO for goodness sake. I'll probably head back to CoH were a few of my friends still play.
Henlan Jul 26th 2007 9:47PM
Mounted combat would rock i mean why wouldn't a sword work from atop a mount there could be an armor debuff for it or a high chance to miss.
prottank Jul 26th 2007 10:22PM
SWG had a heck of a crafting system. With all the short comings of that game after the CU the crafting system was always spot on!
Anteia Jul 26th 2007 10:28PM
I've always thought warriors should have a mounted combat talent. I mean, we don't have pets to get things off of us if we have to run, we don't have any speed run-away things like rogues with dash, druids with cheetah...we don't have any mount perks like paladins, druids, and warlocks. We can't feign death, or dump aggro in any manner - and we can't heal ourselves except through potions as we're running. No bubble to protect us... Let us have an option to stay on the damn mount when we fight! I could see a debuff that lowers the mount speed so people can't run away -that- easily, but there's some creatures in outland that actually do fight while 'mounted'. Why can't the supposed masters of melee combat, warriors, do the same?
Dave Jul 26th 2007 10:38PM
I'll give you three from my very long list.
1. I'd like the ability to do custom enchants and potions/elixirs where certain ingredients do certain things (sort of like sockets) rather than the static recipes currently in the game. Add a dash of this and get some extra agility in the potion, and a drop or two of this and get some extra spirit, etc.
The infinite possibilities of this would be a nightmare for the programmers, but this is a wishlist and I can dream.
2. I'd LOVE the ability to defect from your current faction and go to the other side. Obviously there should be huge consequences in doing this (permanently hated by your old faction, and a long rep grind with your new one, for instance) to keep people from going back and forth.
3. For non-combat pets to provide a buff... even a small one. Priests could use white kittens for extra holy damage, Druids could use green whelps for extra nature damage, Mages could use red/blue whelps for extra fire/frost damage, etc.
Niyx Jul 26th 2007 10:40PM
a 'get out of lowbie free' card when you hit 70 (a token or some such that lets you skip twenty or thirty levels on a new alt)...
What this guy said.
So boring doing those first 20-30-40 levels with every single alt. I know that personally, its the reason i bought a second character rather than levelling one.
bwest0526 Jul 26th 2007 11:19PM
Few things that WoW doesn't ahve that others do that I would love to see and forgive me for all of the EQ references.
*A Crafting system like EQII.
*Casting/Manna regen/fighting on mounts like EQ.
*NPC control, where you can become an NPC at any level to group with lower level friends like in EQ.
*Progressive Weapons that progress in stats the more you use them like in EQ.
Those are a few I can think of right off the top of my head. But over all, I do enjoy playing WoW (more so because I can get the wife to play WoW and not EQ! Haha!)
Shadowisp Jul 26th 2007 11:41PM
@6 Mount Combat, why not... ask a druid in cat form chasing a target. Combat system is too fiddly, druids can get range on moving targets due to the way combat is cast from centre of avatar.
The usual as mentioned above, more player customisation, more social and interaction of characters.
But of them all Guild Bases and Guild-vs-Guild combat the same as City of Heroes/Villains.
Improved relationship between Devs/GMs and thier player/customers.
Multiple Dance Emotes per character, like CoH
Mount Raising, Caring and Racing like Final Fantasy Online Chocobos.
Capture, Train, and Combat Mini-pets ala Pokemon (you said any game :P) I choose you Egbert.
CrpyTech Jul 27th 2007 12:01AM
Honestly, with 9,000,000 subscriptions and only 2 tier 6 world kills I would like to see a sevice that allows me to buy gear. I've been playing for almost 2 years. I have 3 high lvl characters, 60+, but I have no hope of ever seeing end game content. If Blizzard was really serious about ending gold farming, and seriously, there are areas built into the game made for them, and no, I have never, will never buy in-game gold, if they just set up the service themselves similar to SWG all gold-farming would be shut down tomorrow. ( Of course they would lose thousand, upon countless thousands of paying subscriptions)
I'm on Illidan, there is nothing on the AH for low lvls, and I work full time plus as a first responder, so would I like to spend my time sitting in my basement, raiding 5 hours a night to get a purple set. Hell no. I save lives for a living. The percentage of that 9,000,000 who are able to squander their lives for a game is thankfully low. But why can't I use some of my hard earned money to get me some gear that at least will give me a fair chance in world pvp?
Seriously Blizzard, stop kissing Nihilim's ass, which compared to what I do for a living is a joke. Give if not a majority of your customers at least more than 10% a chance do do something end game. Because TV has no interest to me anymore, but the first frackin MMO that comes along that is even close to WoW (Warhammer, maybe Conan) I'm gone.
RogueJedi86 Jul 27th 2007 1:30AM
Actually #13/CrpyTech, I believe a half-dozen other guilds have gotten Illidan kills already, but you don't see announcements on World Second and World Third and Fourth and etc kills.
Varus Jul 27th 2007 2:07AM
Ok.. Not necessarily features from other MMO's but these are kinda top priority for me...
- I want to be able to AH my enchants.
- Make weapon skills progresive. If I'm a level 70 warrior, I should damn well have some basic idea how to use a 1-handed mace, without having to level it up from skill 1.
- Make crafting usable even at low levels. Actually just re-do all the professions, most of them are quite worthless.
- Add content to old Azeroth. Mid-level content needed badly.
- Please don't implement Player housing. It's lame. Guild houses are ok, but player houses end up as semetary blocks nobody ever visits.
Having said that, I don't think my wishlist is very realistic - Blizzard is only focused on Outlands raid content, adding BoP crafting recepies that drop there and probably only for Jewelcrafting, screw the old professions.. Engineering revamp? They gave us couple of goggles and "yeah, well, we're still thinking about it".
It's all about grinding and in the future we'll see... even more grinding... Perhaps not very surprising considering one of the lead devs is old EQ player.
brett Jul 27th 2007 2:45AM
1. I think the addition of raid zones that are "sliding-scale" like ZA promises to be will alleviate a few of the "all they add is raid content" gripes. Finally raid content can be rewarding both for the seasoned hardcores and the squishy casuals.
2. Cosmetics: Hairstyles, colors, dyes, character models etc. This primarily comes down to a system requirements problem. The more of that crap they add the higher the system requirements go. The higher the system requirements the more QQ from people with aging and substandard machines. There was a huge wave of this whining when BC came out as the polygon counts went up dramatically, and framerates took a dip. That being said, I could do with a bit more verity.
3. Guild housing: I don't get it. I just don't. I think what players actually want is world impact. I think there are better and more rewarding ways to accomplish this. I don't see what having a "house" gets you besides a place to stand around while you are waiting for groups... and why wouldn't you want to stand around someplace where you can show off your newly gotten "phat lewtz"
4. The Crafting System: The WoW crafting system was a direct response to the EQ and SWG crafting systems. Which many saw as too cumbersome. Now pre BC my complaint was there were relatively few patterns that were even worth crafting. This has been largely alleviated with many of the epic patterns that are floating around in and out of raid instances.
5. Mounted Combat. Latency LOL. Enough said about that. It's already annoying enough to be a melee class.
So how do we solve the player impact problem? I think Halaa is a good first step but we need to make it more interesting to take and hold. It needs vendors that sell things that players want that they need to replenish. It needs to be a good hub for the team that controls it. The objectives need to be central. Halaa is so out of the way, once you leave that zone there is very little reason to ever come back save for grinding out a talbuk. However, it can't go to far. On a server with severe population imbalance it could lead to real issues.
Things I would like to see:
An arena/bg hybrid. 5-10 man teams that earn arena points in arenas that have more objectives than just killing the other guy. Team deathmatch is a good first step. A small scale AB or WSG would be fun though!
Aforementioned players impacting the world in some reasonable way. It's all about keeping the balance though.
More dailies, all over the world. What a great idea, now I just want more variet, both in quest type and location. Finally maybe a good way to send people back to zones they have "cleared". How can we expand on this concept and reuse Azeroth. I miss it so.
Fishing blows. The latest patch made it slightly more tolerable but maybe we could add the aformentioned sea-monsters to add some variety to the bobber clicking.
Paladins need better offspec options. Ret is a joke and tanking is too talent point intensive, hybrid tank/healing isn't as desirable as tank/dps or heal/dps.
Barnabas Jul 27th 2007 3:14AM
Less QQ and more pewpew...
yotix Jul 27th 2007 3:42AM
Letting people skip 30 levels doe to some prior achievement is one of the dumbest ideas I've heard in my life.
It would completely annihilate the pride people take in their high lv chars, and would IMO turn casuals off. The system would very much be beneficial to automated 'bot' gold farmers; however it would completely kill lv 19, 29 and 39 PvP.
In short: Azeroth would die out.
a) There's already so much whining about how few people are around in Azeroth nowadays. This idea would kill it off for good.
b) People are already laughing about how, given the right questing guide, you can level from 1 to 70 in 3 or maybe four week-ends. You want to reduce that time to, like, 'alf an 'our? Don't be ridiculous: That game is meant to be PLAYED. Not started, won, and thrown away.
yotix Jul 27th 2007 3:43AM
@Niyx: It has never occurred to you that during the time you spend levelling your character, a) you grow more attached to him/her and b) you LEARN HOW 2 PLAY.
I find that nothing sucks more than players who bought their chars.
Just yesterday a Lv 70 Hunter asked me if I knew what type of food his pet likes. WTF? I explained to him that there is a spell in his spellbook which ... if he had spent 70 levels learning the game instead of picking his nose and then buying a char, he might actually be a useful addition to a party. As is? Totally useless.
yotix Jul 27th 2007 4:00AM
PS That hunter had tamed a creature which Petopia has clearly tagged as having Caster Stats. No, I did not bother to start explaining.