That is a really good idea as well. A bayonet would take the same place as a scope does now and perhaps it would let you use your skill in guns (or bows or crossbows) as the weapon skill and do a lesser percentage of the ranged weapon's damage...

Oh I like that.

basically it would double as a ranged and mele weapon. (Gun and polearm maybe?) that'd be cool

But the cool thing about the pistol idea is that you'd be able to use your shots in close range. A bayonet would seemingly have the same problems as using your melee weapons. Maybe it uses your gun skill in melee, but it would still be to be avoided in all situations. Good for flavor I suppose, but doesn't really do anything to address the fact that hunters have a completely seperate (and bad) toolbox in melee situations.

one thing blizzard has not added yet are new kinds of weapons to the game. Sure we have had new races and so far one new class, and those are great and I hope they continue making new ones in the future..but imagine the possibilities if blizzard started adding new weapons.

You could have epic whips, flails. They could add in boomerangs(and I don't mean the current thrown weapons) that add in a "watch your back" element to pvp for example.

And small arms like pistols are a great idea and could potentially open the doors to many other possibilities

A bow with a bayonet?)

"Snake, remember your CQC training."

Gun.

Knife.

Gun+Knife.

Gunknife!

Begin virtuous mission!

They should have every ranged weapon have different ranges, and have more variety of the weapons we get to choose from (depending how we want to play)

Shotguns - 0-15 yards, slow speed, very high damage, can hit 1-3 targets if all are within 3 yards of each other
Pistols - 0-25 yards, fast, low damage (dual wield)
Bows, rifles - 10 - 50 yards, medium speed, high damage
Crossbows - 5 - 40 yards, medium speed, medium damage
Sniper Rifle - 50 - 100 yards, very slow, very high damage

Maybe we could have 2 guns that we could easily switch between (with some sort of penalty, of course, like a 5 second no-shoot time).

That sounds like a FPS, which WoW is not. I see your point but it would be FAR too cumbersome of a system to implement.

As for the idea of Shotguns and melee range shooting...

Why not just make shotguns into a semi-melee range gun? I could see a gun that hunters could swap out from their rifles/bows/crossbows for range-restricting encounters with a no-dead zone, 10-yard range weapon; for encounters where we are supposed to actually be in range, they can bring out their original, longer-range counterpart.

But then again, it's introducing another weapon type. However, we shouldn't have to pay a penalty that other ranged classes don't. If they decided to delete the no-shot zone, that would solve ALL the problem we're facing. What's to stop a hunter from shoving the barrel of his rifle into his opponent's mouth and pull the trigger? (Or a pile-bunker move with a bow, or whatever... Damned archaic weapon, they are)