« Suggestions to improve World of Warcraft »

Priority changes needed in WoW

Getting a bit big this page, need to partition it off soon, I'll get round to it. ~ Paul


Option to hide known recipes in Auction House lists and searchs.
Reasoning: If I am trying to find new formula I neither want nor need to scroll through pages of things I already have and can't learn again.



Badge of Justice
You should get a Badge of Justice from the end boss in (harder) normal instances like Arcatraz and Shattered Halls. I find it ludicrous that you can get one or even two badges doing a virtually risk free daily quest for a gases test yet don't get one for something incredibly hard like Kael'this in Magister's Terrace normal.
Addenda:
*Mutter* Should have kept my mouth shut, within days of posting the example the beggers had removed the 'Shattered Sun Supplies' reward from the Multiphase Survey quest.



Bags:
Herbs: 28 slot bag desperately needed. 36 slot wouldn't hurt!
Since posting this I've read in WoWWiki that, in the next patch (2.4.3) :
Mycah of Sporeggar has discovered how to create 28 slot herb bags.

Cloth: 20, 24, 28 slot Tailoring bags desperately needed - and long overdue!

Leatherworking: 24 isn't enough, definitely needs a 28 slot leather bag

Potions: 20, 24, 28 slot potion/food bags would be a good item too.



Filters on crafting professions
Whether it's jewelcrafting a silver ring or forging plate gauntlets it can be incredibly frustrating at times to have to scroll though dozens or even hundreds of designs and recipes to find options. Typically I will think:
Ding! My alt is level (40), what can I make for him? Begger that, I'll look in AH!
Doesn't help that under 70 most crafted items are rubbish compared to greens mobs (in that level range) drop. Anyway, in the exactly the same way Auction House works, you should be able to limit a search within player level paramenters. Left is an example of how it might look for Leatherworking:



Raid:
Ability to tab to other groups in raid party.

Rationale:
While you can fill your screen by dragging and dropping groups it's messy and inefficient. Gets messed up too if the raid leader re-assigns you to another group. What is needed is the option to tab to the other groups, configurable to run horizontally or vertically, defaulting to the latter.



Warlock flying mounts:
I dare say (many) others have suggested this but having just completed the quests for the epic warlock mount and recently helped a druid friend with his epic flying form quest it occurs to me that it would be great if Warlocks had the same for flying mounts.

Naturally the acquisition cost would have to have parity with existing costs of normal and epic flying mounts, with an associated quest line to acquire, though provision would have to be made for those that have already paid for training, perhaps getting otherwise expensive quest items free at the appropriate time. For example for the epic Dreadsteed in one quest you have to pay 150g for [Xorothian Stardust]. For say an epic 'Dreadbat' this could be 1,500g for 'Xorothian Fel Essence', given free if you have the requistive training.

My suggestions for said Warlock flying mount would be a possesed undead dragon, or some form of demonic bat.
Strangely enough, since I wrote this, I have heard rumours that something along these lines with be added with/for Wrath of the Lich King. Great minds think alike.



Enchanting:

I find the following a gross oversight by Blizzard!
Similar to [Formula: Large Prismatic Shard] which teaches you how to turn Small Prismatic Shards into a Large Prismatic Shard the new spell [Formula: Void Shatter], now with the cooldown removed (2.4.2 patch), should have a [Formula: Void Crystal] counterpart.
OYE, Blizzard, hint: where is:

[Formula: Void Crystal]
Requires Enchanting (375)
Use: Teaches you how to turn two Large Prismatic Shards into a Void Crystal

+5 fishing is LONG, LONG overdue

+2, +5 lockpicking are wanted also

Decent caster enchants for cloaks are needed to, Penetration is useless outside PvP.

Stamina or health enchantments for cloaks is needed too.

Enchanted gems:
It is probably to do with balancing game mechanics, all the same, I consider the omission of gems with [+5, +7, +15] Resistance vs [Fire, Frost, Nature and Shadow] a poor oversight by the developers. Especially given the number of green, blue and epic armor sets with resistance. Perhaps they will fix this in the Lich King Expansion.

Sunfire vs Soulfrost imbalance:
Soulfrost offers +54 to frost and shadow spells whereas Sunfire only gives +50 to fire and arcane. I believe, to be fair, these should offer parity, both at 50, or 54, or meet half way and both at 52.

On a related note… [Earthbolt]:
Can change the name, first one I came up with off the top of my head, but I think the developers are remiss not to include an enchant that gives +54 to Nature damage.
Comparison: Witch Doctor's Cane, a level 42 staff from Zul'Farrak, 'increases damage done by Nature spells and effects by up to 33.

Jewelcrafting:

Personally I think it would be great - and rather appropriate - if jewelcrafters could remove (un-socket) gems from their own (soulbound) equipment. Perhaps make them soulbound on removal to stop imbalances like people filling sockets with epic gems like Reckless Pyrestone (+5 Spell Haste Rating and +6 Spell Damage) which they can pawn off at will.

Alchemy
(July 2008)

In a similar way to the Sporeggars [Recipe: Transmute Primal Earth to Water] we need some faction to offer this:
[Recipe: Transmute Primal Earth to Fire].
There is mana to fire, and back, and fire to earth, so why now earth to fire. Yet another sloppy ommission by the developers, in my opinion! Actually, really, all the transmutes should be reversible.


Moreso is the disgusting imbalance that Scyers have [Elixir of Major Firepower] and Aldor get nothing whatsoever. It is my firm conviction that Aldor should have the (non-existant) [Elixir of Major Holy/Arcane Power]
As a side note, why is it [Elixir of Major Firepower] and not [Elixir of Major Fire Power] in keeping with the other elixirs?


350 Transmute Primal Fire to Earth (Kiurnai/Mag'Har revered). This has to be the most stupid, undesireable, moronic transmute EVER. Why is there no [Transmute Primal Earth to Fire]. What on Earth are you clowns in Blizzard thinking!?

More mailboxes
(June 2008)

It would be great if, outside of towns and cities, the rural flight paths had a mailbox.

Choosable titles
Guild Wars employs this system and I think it can be used to great effect here in WoW. For instance, the 'Social > Who' could include the option to search by title. Need a Belt of Blasting? Just search for Tailors. All those with 375 tailoring that are looking for work could be listed. Far easier all round - less spam for a start!

And we umm, already have it.. This has, of course, not been greatly enhanced with the release of the 3.02 patch.



Tabards
Only a thought, but I believe 'Exalted' tabards should offer enchant or Insignia charge of some kind, probably faction related (ie +18 Healing for Cenarian Expedition, +8 Defence for Honor Hold/Thrallmar).
Requires level 70 to keep it balanced.



Riding
Show modified speed for riding, similar to fishing,
For example: Riding 67% (+4 Mithril spurs, +3 Carrot on a Stick)




Bank toons - err, why!?
(June 2008)
Well, not exactly why create one as the reason is obvious, us pack-rats need the space - but why are we forced to?

Not sure what I mean? Bank toons go like this:
You waste waste an afternoon and a bag of gold running around Elwynn Forest (or wherever) to get nine signatures to create a guild. Having registered the guild you boot out the other nine signaturies and (can) pay the bank 100g for an extra 96 slots, or more.

I am forced to wonder why we have to endure this. If guilds can have banks, why not your account? Or two actually, one for your Horde alts and another for your Alliance. You can post stuff to alt of your alts, so there's no problem there. They already have the code so it's just a matter of tweaking it so that when you go to the bank you can look in the guild bank, or put (soulbound) items in your own bank, or, with this, use an account based bank as a convenient dumping ground. Frees up all the bank toons too.

Rationale:
Some items, like cloth, potions etc are often needed by several of your alts at any one time. Instead of playing silly beggers logging in and out of up to 10 alts to see where you put the mageweave, or to scrape together 1,000g for your flying mount, it's FAR more convenient to pour all such items into the one shared space. Just take Thorium bars for example…

My jewelcrafter uses it for setting for jewellery and my enchanter for Enchanted Thorium, which, with regular thorium my blacksmith uses for Enchanted Thorium Blades (which, incidentally is a great source for Greater Eternal Essence when disenchanted). My alchemist wants it for Arcanite bars and my engineers needs it for his Thorium Tubes.

And that is just one item…


AFK for the phone and killed by a squirrel!?
It's really rather annoying to go afk for a minute or two and find yourself lying on the ground dead because your toon doesn't have the sense to defend themself or retaliate - as a toggle-able option at the very least. Sheesh! It is the only game I can think of that doesn't have basic auto-defences for characters!



PvP in PvE? Gerroutofit!
(June 2008)
OK, this is contentious, the ones (ab)using the system obviously being by far the most vocal in ranting against it when I've raised the point. Everyone else tends towards agreeing.

Basically, you show me a tank in PvP gear entering a heroic instance and I'll show you a party about to wipe! Usually it is players in 'gladiators and greens', the greens often being something ridiculous like level 62 on a level 70, the gladiator gear being whatever is easiest to get without actually participating in the backgrounds.

I've heard all the arguments and some are not without merit, particularly where weapons are concerned, but you ask any experienced player and with very few exceptions you'll find them mortified by the thought of players in pvp gear. The simple fact is many people can - and do - leach in Battlegrounds. They enter, then wander off to watch the Simpsons or eat their tea, or just run around actually doing nothing. A week or three later they claim they are 'fully epic geared' and ready for Karazhan and heroic instances - ready for you to carry them while they wait for the epics to drop.

To complicate matters some items, like Battlemaster's Audacity, are available from both Badge of Justice and Alterac Valley Mark of Honor, while some of the items, like the Pendant of Subjugation can be had for just 10 tokens and are level 141 or 146, comparable to the epic drops in Mount Hyjal and Black Temple.

What I (and many others I've spoken to) believe is that PvP reward items should be flagged as such and disabled outside of PvP servers, battlegrounds and arenas. It should be - needs to be - such that unless you are in an Arena, a PvP battleground or based on a PvP server your gear turns red, reducing all it's stat's and bonuses to zero.

"But, but, but what about dueling (on a PvE world)?" Simple, either duel in regular gear or perhaps Blizzard can introduce 'fighting pits' specific dark and dingy areas in the underbellies of cities akin to wrestling and boxing rings, battling to the crowds chant of, Two men enter, one man leaves.. Simplest initially, from a coding point of view, is to allow one-on-one duelling in Arenas, but without rewards.

Keeping gold spammers out of cities and curbing general Spam

Limiting city entry
(Feb 2008) Simply put, place a level based gateway portal to major towns to keep the beggers out. I've run this across my (old) guild, general chat and to GM's a few times and am unable to find any real flaws in the suggestion, technical or otherwise.

Basically the gold sellers use bots and macros to continually create new accounts and characters (as fast as they are deleted) and send them back into the cities, usually direct to the bank and Auction House where they continually spam dodgy sites until enough people report them and they are booted out. It probably won't stop them, but if Blizzard make it so only level 5 or above can enter cities it hobbles them, reducing their number by a factor of perhaps 30.

For:
Much less annoying spam in cities

Against:
Genuine players are penalised. However, I - and everyone I've spoken too - believe this is an acceptable compromise. Basically new players generally gain several levels just from learning the basics in the starter area and probably wouldn't even notice the difference. For experience players it's no great hardship to train up a few level, even for bank/storage characters.

It could be argued the spammers will target lower areas instead, but some of them do anyway, so it's just a matter of monitoring the affect and acting accordingly.

I'd also look at similar methods to curtail all the whispered spam as well, because that it really aggravating!

Also:
This could be seen as negative publicity or positive action, depending on your point of view but one thought I just had (Oct 2008) is to Show and Tell…
On logging on, seeing a message to the effect:

Last month on (this server) [x] accounts were closed for spamming gold sales.
A further [x] accounts were closed for players proven to have bought gold for cash.

Contentious, yes, but it would ram the message home that it's not tolerated, hmmm!



Improving general and trade chat
(added June 2008)
Problem:
General and trade chat is in need of a serious overhaul. There are times when I am out in the wilds and might want to follow chat and other times when I'm in Shattrath etc and really don't want to see childish name calling from Stormwind or be bombarded by gold spam from Ironforge. If I'm in Orgrimmar and looking for work I equally cannot be bothered to travel to Silverymoon to give someone a minor enchant.

Solution:
Partition it, simple as that. You should be able to tick/toggle chat to filter it by zone. By default have all on, sure, but give us the option to turn off the drivel!

Before:

[2.Trade] [Somefarmer]: WTS some rare trinket
[2.Trade] [Fsfsfsfasfaf]: Hey friend, just look at my name, you can see you can trust us!
[2.Trade] [Fsfsfsfasfaf]: 1,000g for just 15€ 10% extra today!
[2.Trade] [Fsfsfsfasfaf]: Blah blah blah...
[2.Trade] [Mrangry]: Oh () why can't Blizzard stop these!???? WHY???
[1.General] [Banktoon]: Any1 wanna sign my guild charter, paying 5g each when done, U can leave after.
[2.Trade] [Pvpguy] Can anyone link me Mongoose, please?

After:

[2.Trade: Shattrath] [Somefarmer]: WTS some epic item
[2.Trade: Ironforge] [Fsfsfsfasfaf]: Hey friend, just look at my name, you can see you can trust us!
[2.Trade: Ironforge] [Fsfsfsfasfaf]: 1,000g for just 15€ 10% extra today!
[2.Trade: Ironforge] [Fsfsfsfasfaf]: Blah blah blah...
[2.Trade: Ironforge] [Mrangry]: Oh () why can't Blizzard stop these!???? WHY???
[1.General: Stormwind] [Banktoon]: Any1 wanna sign my guild charter, paying 5g wen done, U can leave after.
[2.Trade: Darnassus] [Pvpguy]: Can anyone enchant my boots with Vitality, please?

Straight off I look and think, Right, IF can go off, can't be bothered going to Darnassus, Ooh, epic's nice. So much easier all round!

After: (filtered)

[2.Trade: Shattrath] [Somefarmer]: WTS some epic item
[1.General: Stormwind] [Banktoon]: Any1 wanna sign my guild charter, paying 5g wen done, U can leave after.
[2.Trade: Darnassus] [Pvpguy]: Can anyone enchant my boots with Vitality, please?

Enchanting and applying modifactions to your 'alts' soulbound items

This is the bugbear for all enchanters - SINCE SORTED VIA INSCRIPTIONS IN 3.02

Problem:
You can modify everyone elses soulbound items - but not your own (other) characters. Rather annoying to say the least as you are left running around try to find (and tip) someone else for a skill you have, whilst hoping you don't get scammed into the process.

Solution(s):
There are a few ways around this without unbalancing the game. Either a special shared slot in the bank, or via the mailing system.

*Thinks*

Right…

Allow a tabbed security deposit box in the bank, similar perhaps to the guild banking system. For say 100g you get extra shared storage space for your account. This would have 10 tabs or bag slots, one for each possible character, perhaps with a nominal fee of 10g to unlock each additional one. To prevent abuse, while all characters - of the same faction - can look in the box only the owner can take items out. However, you can apply enchants etc to the items held in there.

Here's a working example:
Your main character, an Dwarf Hunter goes to the bank and buys an account based tab. Into this he put his new epic spear.
Logging out and back in with your Human Mage you go to the nearest bank and take a look. You can see the weapon but you can't removed it. You can, however, enchant the item with Savagery.
Remembering your Hunter is honored with The Violet Eye you purchase a slot for this character and put your shoulder armour in for him in turn to apply an Inscription of Endurance
Changing into your Blood Elf Rogue you go to the bank again, but this time only see two greyed out slots.


For the mail system you would need a radio button for 'enchant on delivery'. You can post soulbound items for trade upgrades but you can only modify and return the item, not take it out the mail box.


Both are really just a work-arounds based on the existing method for enchanting items in trade.

According to WoWWiki, The developers are thinking about giving the possibility to sell enchants on the Auction House; however, this won't be implemented into the game before the next expansion, Wrath of the Lich King.

This would imply creating expendable charged enchants similar to crafted items like tailored spellthread and armor kits. That would work well, yep! And we have to wait why, exactly?


Addenda:
Actually, as my alts progress towards level 70, this issue is really, REALLY, REALLY starting to
It is really aggravating and, in my opinion, moronic and obscenely inept that of the 25,000 characters on my server, millions spread across the planet, the only one I cannot enchant is my own alt.
You stupid

I am currently at the point where my wife is saying, Do you really want to be playing a game that makes you that angry?. And I am starting to agree with her. I have almost zero tolerance for stupidity and, as these things go, it's passed out of the realms of sloppy design and right into the territory of the mindless, imbicilic diatribe one expects from clueless politicians.