Breakfast Topic: What could WoW borrow from console games?
by Andrew Ross 
Sep 22nd 2011 at 8:00AM
Does anyone remember when Blizzard said it wanted to add Animal Crossing-style fishing to WoW? What about the idea of a more personalized daily experience for the Molten Front? MMOs are great, but console games still offer a few things that could add some additional depth to genre, and Blizzard already knows this.
Personally, I'd love to see combat get revamped to be more like Monster Hunter. Dodges and attacks are based on real skill, not arbitrary stats (though damage taken and received is still stat-based), plus enemies have specific parts you can hit to eventually break or cut off pieces of a creature. I mean really, wouldn't it be cool if a whole raid focus fired on Nefarion's neck in order to chop his head off and haul it back to Orgrimmar?
Or what about random power-ups appearing, à la Mario Kart or Super Smash Bros.? You're just running around the game world, and suddenly a giant sword appears, increasing your damage dealt by 1,000% and giving you a single move that constantly fires up for 15 seconds. Take that, murloc scum!
What kinds of console-like features would you like to see Blizzard implement in WoW? Enemies that can be knocked out and dragged? Randomly appearing pipes to secret treasure caves? Open-world, mounted combat?
Filed under: Breakfast Topics, Guest Posts
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 5)
MusedMoose Sep 22nd 2011 8:04AM
I want a PvP battleground based on Katamari Damacy. No, I don't think I need to explain why.
Ad134 Sep 22nd 2011 9:01AM
We got Gnomebliteration as a quest... I think that's the closest we'll ever get to Katamari Damacy in WoW.
Didax Sep 22nd 2011 9:07AM
Na naaaaa, na na na na na na naaa, na na na na na naaaaaaaa.
Tygerwolfe Sep 22nd 2011 3:51PM
Or at the very least, make Gnomebliteration a DAILY. The Ramkahen grind would've been SO much more fun...
Darky Sep 22nd 2011 8:05AM
Super mario galaxy gravity for the next burning crusade type expansion please.
Jamie Sep 22nd 2011 8:07AM
Four players - one screen!
Wait a minute isn't that multi-boxing..?
DarkWalker Sep 22nd 2011 10:11AM
Well, I would really love if players could control more than one character at a time, without resorting to the current set of multibox tricks.
I really think I would have a better chance of clearing random heroics than the PUGs I got thrown with by the LFD.
Imnick Sep 22nd 2011 8:07AM
Honestly the only part I agree with is "separately target-able body parts" and that's not even a staple of many console games at all. And it's already in the game in some places!
Changing WoW's combat system would make it into an entirely different game! That would take massive development time, undo all the balancing work Blizzard has ever done and make such a huge difference that it might as well have been released as online monster hunter instead of this game.
It would also necessitate a change of camera mechanics and would probably mean most boss mechanics would have to change to suit.
Plus what would spellcasters do? Or HEALERS?
Random powerups wouldn't really add anything particularly good, especially if they appeared in competitive raid or PvP environments. Nobody wants to win simply because they happened to be standing nearest when a big shining orb appeared on the ground that turned their abilities into "I Win" buttons
Or maybe they do, but it wouldn't be much fun
Jamie Sep 22nd 2011 8:15AM
I like the idea because it's quite an inventive way to change the play style of WoW and certainly would make it different from other MMOs out there, but I don't think it suits the playstyle.
I think there i already enough going on for a lot of classes that have a full actionbar in their rotation without focusing on body parts too.
I know this works well in games like Crackdown & Fallout, but in these games you're playing against the game a lot not against other players.
Not that you said anything about PvP but if it changes for one it changes for the other.
Noyou Sep 22nd 2011 8:42AM
They could do it without too much problem. "Headshot", "Disable", "Maim". In essence we already have some of these. Mostly stuns. "Hamstring" and "Wingclicp" come to mind. We don't have the animations but in theory that is exactly what is happening. If they wanted to go that route you could have a passive bonus perhaps.
CDave Sep 22nd 2011 10:45AM
http://www.youtube.com/#/watch?v=bvAs1oyG_0o
This is more of a lobby based multiplayer online dungeon game, but it shows the potential of reflex-based combat.
CDave Sep 22nd 2011 10:57AM
Whoops, broken link.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvAs1oyG_0o
Durenas Sep 22nd 2011 11:49AM
Star Wars Galaxies did something similar with the new game experience. It did NOT go over well. As in, it pretty much killed the game.
Spazmoose Sep 22nd 2011 7:18PM
There are "power-ups" so to speak, within certain battlegrounds (Arathi Basin comes to mind), though they are relatively week, but every little bit helps. Not to mention that there has been at least one place where a sort of power-up was made available in PvE as well, such as the little orbs on the trash in the Blood Wing, or the food on the Vanessa Van Cleef encounter.
While I wouldn't like to see this sort of thing become the norm, I would love to see more of a variety...maybe something that you have to make a conscious effort into grabbing during a fight. I'm all for making them have consequences too. Then again, I've seen how some players react to getting a power up with consequences, and it isn't pretty (I'm looking at you Blood Queen).
And hell, there is even one player-based power up that I can think of off the top of my head; it has the benefit of reducing your chance of dying, but people still don't use it (Lightwell).
Uriah Sep 22nd 2011 8:14AM
I like the idea of "Dodges and attacks are based on real skill, not arbitrary stats". It would be nice if we could utilize our environment more in combat such as a Mage being able to freeze things right away with frost spells if a mob is dragged through water.
Jeff Sep 22nd 2011 8:16AM
"Treasure caves" ftw!
Bard2701 Sep 22nd 2011 1:48PM
A battle system like "LotR: Return of the King" from the PS2 would be sweet. Combos and greater rewards for how well you do.
Lohith Sep 22nd 2011 8:16AM
I have always been more of a console game nerd, though I do enjoy MMO's and FPS's on the PC. I guess the main thing that any PC game could learn from a console game is the controls. With most console games you only have maybe 10 button combinations to remember. Give or take a few. With a PC game you can easily have 20 to 50 combinations to remember. Thus controls play a bigger part in PC games where as with a console game, the gameplay and mechanics become more important since the button combinations are just so simple to understand. Take any platformer for example. As long as you know the jump button, you can play the game.
kukichimonji Sep 22nd 2011 8:22AM
Monster Hunter was good times. I think I'd enjoy that, to be honest.
goldeneye Sep 22nd 2011 8:23AM
Like... Frost Nova in water freezes the water so anyone can stand on it for x seconds.