Breakfast Topic: What's the next big change?
by Mathew McCurley 
Aug 23rd 2011 at 8:00AM
Transmogrification is a bigger change than a lot of people realize. However, this is not the last time Blizzard will make such a huge change to the WoW philosophy. What will be the next big thing? Will it be a cross-faction race in the next expansion? Will players finally be given more customization options in the wake of the absolutely awesome transmogrification? What big change to WoW will Blizzard make next that seemingly goes against every grain we've come to expect? What are you hoping Blizzard works into the game that we had never really thought could be a part of World of Warcraft?
Filed under: Breakfast Topics
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 10)
Arrohon Aug 23rd 2011 8:07AM
The return of strength polearms! Along with a way for the next expansion to be less grindy. Grinding rep then grinding points the entire time is no fun at all. It can still take a while but be fun instead of grindy to unlock things. Blizzard just needs to find out how.
Jamie Aug 23rd 2011 8:25AM
Surely a polearm can be mogged on to a 2 handed weapon?
Don't get me wrong, I know you shouldn't have to pay extra for an item that suits your look & feel. But on the other hand the developers set aside that weapon type for a different play style.
Then again, this topic is about future wishes!
Fletcher Aug 23rd 2011 8:45AM
Nope - 2h axes can only look like 2h axes, 1h swords can only look like 1h swords, polearms can only look like polearms.
The only exception (so far, that we know of) is ranged weapons; bows/crossbows/guns can be made to look like each other.
Arrohon Aug 23rd 2011 8:47AM
If I want to look like I'm using a polearm I have to have one equipped. Only polearms can be mogged to look like polearms. Even if they add strength polearms I won't be able to use them as I'm a fury warrior :(
No, swinging two giant axes at that bear isn't enough. I need to swing two long pointy sticks too! My pally would appreciate it though...
Wallahalla Aug 23rd 2011 8:47AM
Someone please give me an alternative to the "grindy" play style that seems to be so rampant in this game. I would really like to hear someone with an idea or a possible solution; because honestly, it seems like people just don't want to do the work to get the rewards.
chaosdefined Aug 23rd 2011 9:50AM
There's a difference between not wanting to do any work and not
wanting to do the same work repeatedly. This expansion has been so
incredibly full of repeated tasks that I've come to despise the Molten
Front. I thought they almost had it, when the dailies would change
each day...but alas no, only about one quest in the stupid amount of
dailies actually differs from day to day.
My suggestion would be that they go fully through with that idea, and
have the dailies different from day to day so it feels less
monotonous.
imm110 Aug 23rd 2011 9:55AM
@Wallahalla -- I can play about 20 hours / week. I realize there are players that play a lot more than this, but 20 hours / week is A LOT OF TIME for most people.
I only PvP. I do not raid. I do not do dungeons. I don't farm rep. I don't farm mats. I don't farm the AH. I don't collect anything. I don't even do R-BG's. Oh... and I have 5 toons.
What does this mean? I have been forced to choose only 3 toons (leaving 2 behind). All I have time to do each week is max my conquest points and farm some honor gear.
It pisses me off that you think I'm not willing to put in the work for the rewards. I'm working the equivalent of a half-time job just to keep 3 toons Arena-viable.
You asked for suggestions? Here's a few:
1. Increase honor gains by 300% of what they are right now. Grinding a full set of honor gear takes about 60 hours (assuming 500 honor / hour).
2. Make arena victories worth 20% conquest cap again. 5 wins to keep getting gear? That usually takes about 8-9 games, which is ~1.5 hours. That seems fair! But that's not how it works. If I'm 2000 rating in 3v3, now my Conquest cap is like 2300, and at 180 CP's / victory, that's 13 victories needed, which will take about 20 games to get. That's going to take ~3 hours! So for me (playing 20 hours / week)
So, for me, playing 20 hours / week, on ONLY 3 toons (not even all 5):
If I prioritize Conquest Points each week, that is 3 days (9 hours) of my week.
That leaves me with about 11 hours to grind honor gear, which translates to 2-3 months of honor grinding. And that's if I'm 100% productive.
If Blizzards wants more Arena and R-BG participation, help us get honor gear a little faster!!!
So... WTF. Here I am stuck, having to choose which 3 toons of my 5 toons I can play competitively BECAUSE I CAN'T PLAY MORE THAN 20 HOURS / WEEK!
Don't tell me I'm not willing to work for the rewards. F that. What's the point of achieving max level if all I'm going to do is grind for 3 months before I can actually have fun. Oh wait ---- here's another PATCH! DO IT AGAIN!
Want a 3rd suggestion Blizzard?
3. Do NOT create honor gear each season that is BETTER than the Arena gear from last season!
I love PvP. I love Arena. I love BG's. But being forced to grind THIS much, just to stay viable on ONLY 3 of my 5 toons... And I don't even get to PvE...
YES -- SOMETHING SHOULD CHANGE.
"Not willing to work for the rewards?" Fuck you.
Dril Aug 23rd 2011 10:31AM
@imm101:
You haven't actually given any suggestions as to how Blizzard could make acquiring points more fun, you've just suggested they increase your point gain.
And I honestly don't understand: you're actually *mad* that keeping THREE characters at a competitive level takes a bit of work (and, let's face it, compared to some games you're not doing much. In other games, or even earlier expacs in WoW, you'd be spending more than that on just ONE character to get Grand Marshal gear.)
Most people only manage ONE character as their well-geared main. Even when I was playing a hell of a lot in Wrath, I only had 3 toons at 80 and only two of them were ever capable of doing the current tier.
You complain because you can't take *five* characters and make them cutting edge? What the hell?
That's just the essence of the sever over-entitlement people feel they have in games today.
imm110 Aug 23rd 2011 11:20AM
My suggestions remove me from the unnecessarily long honor-grind (which is NOT really that fun), and put me in more Arenas and R-BG's which ARE fun. Whether I master 1 or 2 characters or just get decent on 5-6 (or more) should be my choice.
I think everyone will agree that it is not fun to get slaughtered in PvP because their gear is vastly sub-par compared to their opponents. Blizzard has made it nearly impossible to have more than 1-2 competitive toons in PvP in a reasonable amount of time.
I realize there's a certain amount of grinding necessary to first level the toons, and then secondly EARN some gear. You misunderstood me. I'm not mad that it takes work, I'm mad at the amount of work. Yes, I think 20 hours / week should be enough to keep 5 toons geared for PvP, but it's not. You are arguing that 20 hours / week is an unreasonably low amount of time for my expectation that I should be able to have fun in PvP without suffering an extraordinary setback in gear.
Even if they made all the honor gear free, Blizzard needs to realize I wouldn't play the game LESS, I would play THE SAME AMOUNT, but have MORE FUN.
Ultimately, they want happy subscribers to keep subscribing. In PvE the gear-grind makes total sense. If gear were instantly obtainable, then everyone would kill each boss a few times and cancel their subscription til the next patch. But here's the secret about PvP, the fights are different every time because you're facing new thinking opponents every time. People don't do PvP for the gear, they do it to improve their skill. The more you remove gear as a factor, the more you make SKILL the focus. If you make SKILL the focus, you will find that players improve their skills! If you just put in a system that guarantees that all the non-skilled players start with worse gear, then the get slaughtered... they don't have fun... they don't participate in Arenas/BG's... and ... that's probably you isn't it?
You don't PvP seriously. I understand now. I have wasted both of our times.
noel mcleod Aug 23rd 2011 11:46AM
@imm110
I do PvP a lot. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I make a difference in the BGs that I play, I have run a few RBGs to KNOW that I am at least better than average when geared the same as the competition. I play for the fun of playing against something other than AI, so while I don't completely agree with your comments the idea that you can never get top-tier gear out a random reg BG is STUPID.
S T U P I D.
The most successful BG player is ... someone who plays arenas. They AREN'T the same thing Blizz. What? Let's reward those who have / time / energy / available RL friends to do arenas by letting them "pwn" in BGs by having substantially better gear? What absolute moron came up with that?
I have the full Vicious set except for one trink, which is Ruthless. 25 conquest points per day? What a FREAKIN' JOKE!!!!!
Sunaseni Aug 23rd 2011 12:00PM
No, Imm, I understood you perfectly. It's you that don't understand. In essence, you are mad that you leveled 5 characters to 85 and it's now Blizzard's fault that you are unable to realize that it's fine if you let some of the characters sit there.
"What's the point of getting a character to 85 if you can't spend the time to make him competitive?" Maybe you should have let him sit at 80 then. If you don't have time to build up the last 2 characters, get over it and only focus on 3 of them then. Better yet, just focus on the one you like the most. It's not Blizzard's fault that you put too much on your plate.
imm110 Aug 23rd 2011 12:41PM
Let's try this one more time............................
And let's just talk PvP for a sec, not PvE........
The # of characters that I should be able to play successfully should ONLY be a function of how long it takes me to develop the necessary skills to BE successful. For some people they only have the capacity to be good on 1 toon. For other people, maybe it's 3 or 5 or 10.
So, in my 20 hours / week, which I STILL FEEL IS A LOT OF TIME... I believe that's enough for me to have enough time on each to keep my skills sharp and be competitive on 5 toons.
So I didn't put too much on my plate. I level 5 toons, and I think I could handle that from a success standpoint. If I started to suck because I'm spreading myself too thin, then clearly my # is less than 5. This skill-capacity will be different for every player.
I'm not mad because I leveled 5 toons and don't have the mental capacity to be good at all 5 given my 20 hours / week. I'm mad because Blizzard has taken multiple toons OFF my plate when they enforce so much grinding that I am at a significant gear-disadvantage if I don't grind for honor gear 7-8 hours per week per character, when this is simply unnecessary.
(And I agree with Noel Mcleod to some degree.... there should be an Honor --> Conquest Point conversion.)
loop_not_defined Aug 23rd 2011 12:46PM
@Sunaseni
I'm glad somebody said this. I don't even have 20 hrs/week to play...it's more like 5-10 hrs/week. Still, I'm not selfish enough to demand that Blizzard changes their design philosophy to cater to my incredibly limited schedule.
I've had to make a lot of decisions about how I play this game since having a family and a full-time job with 4 hours of commuting each day. That isn't Blizzard's problem, though. Nor is it a problem that should affect all of WoW's other millions of players who *do* have the time to play more.
Wallahalla Aug 23rd 2011 1:06PM
For the record, I was pretty much talking about PVE. I do understand how difficult in can be to grind out PVP gear. I've seen friends do it for years and now I've started to try to put together a PVP set on my warrior and it is a bit tedious.
I agree with Sunaseni though in a way. If you (Imm) are not finding the game fun because of the terrible grind, maybe you should limit the number of toons you PVP with. I think it's bad ass that you have 5 that you are good at, but would it be more fun to grindface all 5 of them or maybe just focus on the ones you enjoy the most?
Since I believe you will take offense to this, I'll answer my own question.
Maybe there could be some sort of PVP heirloom system that allows you to send some sort of token or currency from one of your characters to another in order to buy PVP gear. There would have to be some sort of restriction like X number of BG's won on the lesser geared toon, or X honor gained, X honorable kills in BG's (or something for healers), you get the point.
I wouldn't like this in PVP because honestly, its already really easy to gear up any class or spec and get into at least the 4.0 raids. Which brings me back to my original point, I just don't think that some PVE players are willing to work for their rewards.
Wallahalla Aug 23rd 2011 1:09PM
Edit: I wouldn't like to see the heirloom thing in PVE.
StClair Aug 23rd 2011 2:27PM
@imm110:
"The # of characters that I should be able to play successfully should ONLY be a function of how long it takes me to develop the necessary skills to BE successful. For some people they only have the capacity to be good on 1 toon. For other people, maybe it's 3 or 5 or 10."
So now that you're teh awsum at PvP, they should just give you fully-geared 85s of whatever class you want to rock out with?
Arrohon Aug 23rd 2011 2:47PM
Blizzard walks a fine line. If pvp gear is too critical to success then it's too hard to get into pvp as you have to die a LOT just to scrape up the honor to buy the gear so you can contribute. Plus then a skilled player without the gear can die too easily to a mediocre player that is well-geared. If the gear doesn't matter as much (resil isn't making much of a difference) then pve gear does even better in pvp than it should. You shouldn't have to pvp to succeed in pve nor should you need to do pve to succeed in pvp. Pvp gear has to be good enough that you won't just use pve gear but it can't be too good or skill doesn't matter enough.
imm110 Aug 23rd 2011 3:06PM
@ Wallahalla -- Excellent post! You are perfectly entitled to challenge me by asking if I would be happier focusing on 3 vs. 5. And I like your suggestion too!
@ StClair -- That certainly is more extreme than anything I was suggesting... but tell me... why would that be bad? From Blizz's perspective, I'm going to be happier, and certainly not play LESS. From the player's perspective, you will more quickly learn every class to a deeper level, which improves your PvP skill, you will have more variety if you wish to have it, and your BG puggers won't suck so bad, so it'll really be all about skill. There's no competitive downside, there's no business downside, there's no player-perspective downside. I think PvP would be MORE FUN for everyone everywhere if gear weren't an issue.
Edit -- well the only players that wouldn't like this are the ones who have MAX gear and love trashing on low-resil noobs... but they're just bullying, and it's not worth helping them.
In my opinion, reg BG's should be all about practicing and getting more experience on your class, and less about being a punching bag for 3 months until your gear doesn't suck compared to everyone else.
What about this idea -- Conquest Points must be earned per toon. For every honor point you earn on 1 max toon, every other max toon gets the same honor.
StClair Aug 23rd 2011 4:15PM
@imm110:
Let's try this, then:
I've leveled one character to 85, done the quests, got the gear, can or have proven by whatever metric that I'm competent at the PvE game and raiding and such. Should I be able to just start ALL my future characters at 85, with a full set of blues, and avoid all that tedious grinding up to where the REAL game begins?
(Before anyone mentions DKs - you could only have one, they didn't start AT the level cap, and you couldn't start anything else at that level.)
imm110 Aug 23rd 2011 4:29PM
@ StClair -- I realize these are probably bad suggestions for PvE, but that's why in each of my posts I specified that my suggestions were for PvP only.