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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsBreakfast Topic: What features from other games would you like to see in WoW?
by Robin Torres 
Dec 19th 2011 at 8:00AM
EverQuest had its issues and Blizzard improved on most of them, but one thing EQ had that WoW doesn't is surnames. Once you hit level 20, you could choose a surname for your character. Star Wars:The Old Republic is implementing something similar, only you create a family name for all of your characters. I want to have Roblinator Shinycollector or Peenk Sparkles.
I would also love a sidekick or mentor system like in City of Heroes. Two players of vastly different levels can play together by temporarily kicking up the level of the sidekick or temporarily lowering the level of the higher-level character. I know we have Recruit-A-Friend and there are all those levels to be given, but it's just not the same as playing together in level-appropriate content with balanced experience gain. I want to invite friends to play and run dungeons together, not run them through dungeons.
Something I think we all would like to see is the level of character customization we find in so many other MMOs. I don't need to choose nose size or ear placement, but I would like to be able to choose a body type (like a healthier blood elf) and tattoos, scars, cosmetics, warts or whatever. For Forsaken body types, one of the choices could be to not have my bones sticking out of my clothes! Gosh, I want that so much. I'm OK with bones sticking out of my skin, but really, the clothes thing doesn't make much sense and is ugh-lee.
The thing that has always intrigued me about single-player roleplaying games and now SW:TOR is that there are often choices when doing quests and those choices affect your character. Yes, WoW has reputations that change how some NPCs react to us. But you can only select Accept or Cancel on a quest -- not really a choice. I wish I could take my character along her own path of neutral goodness and have that affect her options in the future, rather than having to torture things or sort through poop to progress through the story.
What surname would you choose? How would you like to customize your character? What are the features from other games that you would like to see in WoW?
Filed under: Breakfast Topics
Reader Comments (Page 5 of 6)
Drache Dec 19th 2011 12:00PM
My current peeve is skinning. Please let me skin without looting first! I'm leveling leatherworking... The time spent looting does add up when you're farming several hundred whatever-leathers, and the amount of greys is overwhelming.
Other than that - could male non-blood-elf horde characters please stand straight? I might roll a male toon again, if that were ever put in...
Drache Dec 19th 2011 12:02PM
Oh, and if the character selection screen could accurately reflect color choices (skin, hair, etc.), that would be quite awesome as well. Or at least the barber shop? A preview for all forms, if you're a druid? It's getting expensive...
N-train Dec 19th 2011 12:05PM
I agree with memoryburn, and this is always an argument that comes up every time a shiny new MMO comes out on a shiny new engine.
However, can you imagine the amount of work it would take to retrofit every piece of *just chest armor* to fit all 24 race and gender combinations, but now 4-5 different body types on each one of those combinations?? Remember you're not working on a brand new engine like SWTOR, you're working on a 9 year old engine that has to support 4 expansions and 11 million players.
Transmog was a perfect method of customizing characters from a development standpoint because it didn't take nearly as much work, and more importantly, has replay value that justifies the work. Every time you pick up a new piece of gear there's an incentive to use the feature, and the possibilities are nearly endless. Not only that, but now a ton of people are actively running old instances for Transmog sets.
Compare that to 15 new customization options that people spend 5 minutes on when they create a character and then never use or think about again. At the end of the day, for most players (especially after Cata), when it comes to new features that their helm, shoulders, and cloak cover up anyway or new content, they'll always pick the latter.
Charron Dec 19th 2011 12:21PM
I played DCUO when it went F2P while waiting for 4.3 patch to hit. Here's my laundry list:
1) transmogging is cooler and can be done anytime. Say you loot your tier shoulders. You equip it and you have now learned that "style." You can now apply that style to any future shoulders. You can also lock it so when you equip something, it will not change the style. They also allowed you to change the colors, but for the whole outfit, not per piece (no clown suits!)
2) achievement points mean something. Every 100 points you earn gives you 1 skill point to use in weapon skill trees or abilities. This makes me think that pursuing achievements as a sort of XP gain for max level to further customize your character. With Wow abandoning the talent tree system, this won't be needed, but the impmication is the same.
3) soloable dungeons at max level as a daily to get valor points . Sure they get easier as you gear up, but its another option Blizzard can use to expand options for end game players. Keep 5 mans as an option as well.
I think there were a couple more things, but those three came to mind as "I wish blizzard did this" kinds of things. The combat system with the mouse sure would make Fury warriorz fun as hell to play, but my mouse is acting up after a month of play!
zackwbrandon Dec 19th 2011 1:54PM
# 2 definitely. Or at least do something with the points to gate some content.
Perhaps replace the current rep system with an achievement based one whereby you earn achievement points that are faction specific and that unlock the items available. For example, have the Earthen Ring achievement "Vash'jir" be "Completed 130 quests in Vash'jir" and be worth 10 points in the Earthen Ring reputation. At 20 points you can buy green items, 40 for blues, etc.
Furthermore, specific achievements could become the gates for specific purchaseables. For example, completing "Ludicrous Speed" opens up purchase of the Wings of Aviana trinket that transforms the player into a Harpy. You pay for it in gold, but can only purchase it once you have completed the achievement.
Really, anything would be better than saying, "I have 9000 generic points that mean nothing in the game world!"
DarkWalker Dec 19th 2011 10:39PM
#2 is definitely not for me, though. The main reason I stopped playing DCUO was due to character power being tied to feats/achievements.
mdumoulin.home Dec 19th 2011 12:28PM
Hardcore mode from Diablo 2. You die, gameover.
Yeah yeah, i'm kidding. :P
iadamson Dec 19th 2011 12:41PM
Horde Mode from gears of war 3... burning legion style.
Loradio Dec 19th 2011 1:05PM
Everquest, now that brings back memories.. the surnames were cool, but the shared bank was boss.. no more mail, oh and much harrier dungeon crawls.
kelindre Dec 19th 2011 1:12PM
I'd really like to see better caster animations when they're casting spells. For instance, something that has a bit of a casting time, the caster swings or waves their weapons over their head. It looks much better with a staff. If I recall, the casters in Guild Wars and Rift are animated very well.
The Dewd Dec 19th 2011 1:19PM
Player housing could have windows so you can see the city and/or your neighbors (just someone random who is also in their house). Even if you can't customize it beyond a certain point, people still want it.
Or Blizzard could make it an auto-logout location so if you're in there for more than, say, 5 minutes, it logs you out or moves you into the street so you can log in/out in your house.
mem0ryburn Dec 19th 2011 3:27PM
Player housing would require one of two things. Either 1) it would need the equivalent of several more Stormwinds worth of space for everybody to have their own house, or 2), more likely, it would have to be instanced. If instanced, which surely it would be, you would not see your neighbours running around the street outside. It literally takes you out of the world. It would be rubbish for the game at large.
Believe me when I say I want an in-game house to call my own as much as you do, I'm sure, it just does not in any way seem to be practical. It would require an ingenious solution to the potential, and truthfully nearly guaranteed, problem of ghost towns.
Akawaka Dec 19th 2011 1:26PM
Instead of doing any number of these great ideas you all have suggested, blizz dedicates a huge amount of resources to.......wow pokemon! Seriously?????? A fun idea but when NO ONE even asked for such a thing and the game NEEDS any number of things, especially character customization let alone model updates, man I gotta wonder where these dev's heads are sometimes.
I think because blizz has had a such a mammoth mmo monopoly they have acted like they have all the time in the world and so make the players wait eons for tiny improvements that are few and far between. I mean seven years before they even seriously think about updating our characters and tho transmog is great there is still so much more to be done.
I REALLY hope that SWTOR ggives blizz a huge run for their money and can finally shake them up which would result in a more dynamic and better wow game. Competition in this sense is very good and blizz has had very little.
Perfect example is how at blizzcon when the question for updating moonkin form came up the dev not only brushed it off, barely answering it, he also seemed to be on the defensive, making it seem like a huge thing to do and I think was a little rude to the guy. And yet a new tree of life model is rushed out in a twinkle and its on a cooldown and yet blance druids have to be in moonkin ALL THE TIME At the least give a glyph to give an option to not be in moonkin form but keep the stats.
I do love this game but when the devs act like entitled out of touch, almost jerks on things so important yet so easily done on their end when compared to many other things they do......just boggles the mind.....
zackwbrandon Dec 19th 2011 1:46PM
While I agree that Blizzard sometimes seems a little tone-deaf to player requests it is important to remember that the do provide an excellent product with limited resources.
As to the objection to pet battles, I am singularly planning on playing Mists because of it. I have never played Pokemon or any other similar game (whether table top or digital). For me it is about being free to play around with the dozens of pets I've accumulated just for playing the game. I almost never take them out and they are wasting digital space when they could become a kick-butt way to show off and have some fun.
I am at a loss that so many resources go into building instances that will expire in a year (or even worse expire in a week due to being dreadful like the Trollroics) when with far fewer resources the same number of pets can be produced per year that are already planned out, and one instance designer can be reassigned to apply skills to a relatively simple pet combat system.
Amaxe Dec 19th 2011 1:29PM
Things I experienced in TOR that would make WoW better:
1) AOE looting (not going to get into the "who did it first" debate. I first encountered it here, even if other games had it first)
2) Choose which location you hearth to.
3) Lack of on the rails questing.
4) Bonus quests (Yes, TOR has "Kill X of Y" but it is optional and gives you instantaneous updates and xp as opposed to running back to the quest giver
5) Individual instanced areas
6) Class quests.
7) Making you the central hero... not the torch carrier for Thrall.
Class quests are nothing like the old WoW class quests. They advance a story for your character from planet to planet as you investigate some class specific threat.
I have not experienced things like PvP in ToR, so I can't offer comments on that. I've also only done solo, so I haven't really experienced group content either and can't compare it with WoW.
ThunderMonkey Dec 19th 2011 1:37PM
I don't know if this is in other games, but I find it odd that the body type for a warrior, paladin or death knight, is exactly the same as a mage or warlock of the same race.
I would like to see, as we level, our body types change a little bit at a time. The warriors gain more body mass, while the mages appear more and more frail. Hunters, druids and rouges become more lithe.
This came to me the other night when I was running in an instance with five members of the same race (and all the same gender). Other than the gear, you couldn't tell us apart.
Dude Dec 19th 2011 1:35PM
Body sliders in character creation, more faces, extra textures. Simple things, really.
zackwbrandon Dec 19th 2011 1:38PM
Abolish instances. Instead use phases to gate play through areas.
Eliminate the gear coloring system and stick to plain old item levels.
Eliminate gating based on character level and put it where the developers seem to want it: on item levels - this way we get to see old content and there is a slightly higher impetus to using it in fresh ways every so often.
Worry less about new and shiny and worry more about consistently enjoyable.
Elientralla Dec 19th 2011 2:00PM
Suffix and prefix titles.
Battlemaster Grishjärta, Herald of the Titans.
I want this.
SaintStryfe Dec 19th 2011 2:04PM
Dual-Wield classes in DCUO only have to get one item for their weapon slot - they don't need to win two drops to dual-wield correctly.
I think it makes a whole lot more sense.