Breakfast Topic: What skills would you like to see in WoW?
by Andrew Ross 
Sep 17th 2011 at 8:00AM
I won't lie: I cheat on World of Warcraft. It happens, but she's a forgiving game. She keeps my friends in largely the same place while I'm gone and sometimes lets me introduce new ideas from other games to her. Usually they're features, such as XP from battlegrounds or guild quests, but sometimes other skills too, like gemcrafting. Blizzard has even previously mentioned borrowing skill mechanics from other games. I'd love to see more skills added for the next expansion!
Woodworking's come up a few times, but perhaps it's too similar to things we already have. Dual-wield pistols came up as well, but for some reason aren't coming quite yet. However, what about animal husbandry? You could potentially breed new companion pets, mounts, or even hunter pets! Or maybe add in a whip skill, allowing people who choose to give up their ranged slot for a bit for to use a consumable whip that works similar to Death Grip, Root, or even a taunt or silence, depending on the variant.
What kind of skills would you like to see added to WoW? Masonry for house construction? Zeppelin licenses to pilot large, multiplayer airships? Bug catching as a fishing/archaeology hybrid?
Filed under: Breakfast Topics, Guest Posts
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 7)
Yoxx Sep 17th 2011 8:10AM
Id like to see that masonry for sure. That way you could build your own house and as an guild challenge construct a guild hall to your liking.
Demonxaian
Belna Sep 17th 2011 8:11AM
Houses and even Guildhouses that you could buy and be your own in a seperate instance, were you could see part of your achievements on the wall, invite your friends and have a party.
Dancing and building could be used.
Literaltruth Sep 17th 2011 9:25AM
I used to kind of like the idea of guild / personal housing when I hear it at first. However, after reading Blizzard's comments on it, I kind of see their point. It would effectively empty out the cities and make Azeroth a rather dead-feeling world. I suspect that most people would spend their time in their own little instanced houses and never really see other players.
Kind of the same reason Blizz put everything this expansion into Orgrimmar and Stormwind - the more spread out or instanced away the playerbase it, the less it feels like an MMO.
samhain Sep 17th 2011 10:49AM
I think player housing could work. But ONLY if they'd incorporate a mechanic that increases incentives for going out. I'll go out on a limb and come up with some ideas:
One way they could do this is by introducing another goldsink like rent. You have to pay (weekly?) rent in order to be able to enter your house. Or even having to collect housing tokens from NPC's. Making it a daily.
Not being able to queue for dungeons/get teleported to raids/etc. could be a motivator to get people out there. Without it feeling entirely disconnected or "tacked on".
Maybe the best way to incorporate housing is by making a second hearthstone or key-item with a cooldown and even limited duration which allows the user (and group?) to go into this housing but can only stay there for 60 mins. per 24 hr. The reason for the limited time could be some kind of "Duty calls" mechanic. Or something.
No matter what, all of these solutions feel rather synthetic or arbitrary. When people have homes they "should" be able to enter and stay freely. But we don't want and empty world. It's a dilemma but not without solutions, methinks.
Hob Sep 17th 2011 11:43AM
@literaltruth
As much as I miss sanctuary cities, I think the emphasis on Orgrimmar and Stormwind was probably to reduce lag.
Considering that both cities can be really laggy in their old bank / auction house districts (despite new banks and auction houses in other parts of each city)... I can only imagine the lagfest that a sanctuary would have brought this expansion.
Den Sep 17th 2011 11:47AM
Just make player housing non-instanced and part of the towns/cities/outposts already in game. Make them capture points on a timer so that people *gasp* world pvp for a reason! Imagine if the alliance actually captured cross-roads, but rather than despawning the guards or anything, simply made it so questing in that region would generate cash for them. There are ways to balance it that I've seen in other games, but instancing isn't the answer.
Greg Sep 17th 2011 1:12PM
Am I the only one who thought it strange that everyone would huddle in two major cities while a zone-barbecuing dragon is flying around randomly crisping swaths of land? Who would actually do that under those circumstances?
If Deathwing were a real threat- and not just an end-of-expansion encounter, we really WOULD be huddled in our houses, probably far apart from each other for survival. As it is now, Deathwing is about as real as guild housing, and as threatening as a patch-day.
Thundrcrackr Sep 17th 2011 1:39PM
A bunch of AFKs standing around SW/Org don't make it feel like an MMO to me. If all those people were hanging out in their instanced player housing instead, i wouldn't notice. It's the people who are actually DOING something in SW/Org that make it feel alive - using the AH, bank, honor/justice vendors, training dummies, doing cooking/fishing dailies, visiting class trainers, etc. People will still need to come to the cities for that stuff, even if they have player housing.
Noyou Sep 17th 2011 1:43PM
I, for the life of me, will never understand why 90% of the population parks themselves around one central location on each faction. I could see if they were socially interacting with the people in their surroundings but most of them are not. It's good to see lots of people on and in cities and I am happy to see many returning to Darnassus and Ironforge. But yeah, it's a head scratcher to me.
TaurenBard Sep 17th 2011 3:18PM
It's because of the portals. Blizzard stuck portals to all the new zones in Stormwind and Orgrimmar, effectively making these cities mandatory and killing all of the others. There should be portals in EVERY city, or none at all. It's really sad to go to Ironforge, my favorite city, and see it completely abandoned. It's just like Exodar now.
Marius W. Sep 17th 2011 6:44PM
I kinda don't understand why people want their own house in WoW.
So you get your own house and you stand in it. You sit on your chair.
You look at your 4 walls. You go outside and look at it. You get on your mount and fly onto the roof.
What then? You invite a friend over and you both stand there. You both sit on the chair.
Then what? Guildies come over. You all stand in the house, probably jumping up and down over and over.
I just don't get the appeal.
Can someone explain the appeal and benefit of your own house in Azeroth.
Mitawa Sep 17th 2011 11:38PM
There was player housing in Ultima, and people hung out in their houses all the time, but it never emptied out the cities... Britain was still crazy laggy, especially near the bank.
Houses in there had real meaning, though, because of the weight limit on your personal inventory and bank. Houses could be endlessly personalized, floor tile by floor tile and it took real skill to figure out how you might take a bunch of benches and make a shelving unit or a bunch of single scraps of cloth and make a bed or something. The 3D and static nature of the WoW models would inhibit a lot of personalization.
Another nice thing about houses in Ultima was the ability to place vendor NPCs on your stoop. As player housing in WoW would be instanced, that would be impossible.
I'm not entirely sure what WoW players would use their houses for, but they could make a carpentry/masonry sort of profession that would allow you to decorate with at least a few things and possibly place personal forges. Houses would give Rpers a place to go with good atmosphere and without greifers, and guild could have meetings there without griefers and without having to be in a raid. You could set your hearthstone to your house and still be located in a major city without having that "vagrant" feel...
I guess what I'm saying is that there is no way to know what player housing in WoW would be like or be for because it would be implemented very differently from anything that has happened before. We can hypothesize, but no one knows what it would be "good for" until some dev actually designs it and tells us what we're supposed to be doing with it.
Hob Sep 17th 2011 11:48PM
@Marius W.
Because some other MMO had guild housing.
That's about the only reason I've ever heard.
Gendou Sep 17th 2011 8:13AM
Dual-wield fist weapons for Druids.
Dual-wield pistols for Hunters.
Zeppelin replacement for multi-passenger mammoths, complete with Cataclysm-level vendors and a ridiculous price.
Class mounts for all classes.
More (non-draconic) flying mounts, like bats.
Costuming skill that teaches you how to make gorgeous sets of pseudo-armor just for the purposes of reforging.
Greater flexibility for individuality in the class skills and talents we already have.
Luke Sep 17th 2011 9:13AM
I've always been partial to the idea of Death Knights getting fist weapons.
Dimmak Sep 17th 2011 1:06PM
As to dual wielding pistols, I think it would be easy to do if they simply made the 2 pistols one item. In other words you want to equip the pistols at the end of SFK, it's one item that goes in your ranged slot. normal white shots alternate left and right handed shots while special shots are either both guns at once or over the shoulder stylish shots. Just make them count as guns.
And yes fist weapons for DKs please... excepts their all agility damnit.
Noyou Sep 17th 2011 1:45PM
Class mounts for all classes- Yes please. And of course for hunters they would have a selection to tame as mounts :)
Thomas Higgins Sep 17th 2011 8:17AM
The skill that I think would be the greatest quality of life improvement in the game would be the ability to repair your own armour, using tools bought from the blacksmith suppliers. These would be the same kind of thing that you get in Morrowind, tools that are not guaranteed to work all the time at low skill levels and are used up in stages every time you try to repair an item.
In Morrowind, they are often the thing that stops you getting hammered by an opponent when your armour or weapons decide not to play.
Noyou Sep 17th 2011 1:49PM
Would be cool and yes I love that from oblivion. One of the reasons I think they said about armor damage is that it forces you to go back to the towns and repair- unless you had a repair bot. So once again Blizzard contradicts themselves. Which reminds me, I need to make some more scrap bots on my engineer toons.
Kaljaen Sep 17th 2011 8:22AM
Blacksmiths having the ability to repair their own armor at the cost of a small amount of materials (metals, maybe some enchanting mats or something) instead of spending money would be nice.