Making WoW more fun: A suggestion compilation (Half of which are now in the game)

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First, before I go on to the suggestions and such, I would like to mention that some of them may seem incoherent. If that is so, please point it out. I wrote all this over a couple of weeks and probably had a scrambled mind. If you can understand the suggestions fine, then please disregard this. However, if there's something wrong grammatically or something like that, please point it out and I'll fix it. It happens, especially with something big like this, so forgive me for that.

Also keep in mind this is a poll. I would appreciate feedback through voting as well as posting a response (of constructive feedback, please!).

Making WoW More Fun: A Suggestion Compendium

Lately, I have noticed more and more people, including myself, who have been getting bored and burned out, unable to find things to do. In addition, some problems, or a lack of content, are becoming ever more obvious. This is caused by a variety of changes (or lack of them) in the game, which I will discuss to some degree later on. In light of these issues, I have brainstormed several ideas. They are not perfect in any way, and of course, like anything else I post like this, constructive feedback is appreciated. I also urge you to make your own suggestions to make WoW more fun as well.

This thread does not address class balance. If you wish to discuss class balance, please take it somewhere else.

Table of Contents of Suggestions:

1. Solo Content

Questing (NYI)
(Removing) Raid Restrictions (Added in patch 5.1!)
"Infinite Content" and Improving Dailies (Resolved in Patches 4.2 and Mists of Pandaria)
1v1 Arena or "Duel Arena" (NYI)
Interactive Professions (FANTASY LIFE has this, but why doesn't WoW?)
Gathering Contests (NYI)
Contest of Arms (Implemented in patch 5.1 as the "Brawler's Guild" with significantly more fleshed out concepts) - (Also implemented in 5.4 as the "Proving Grounds")

2. Alterac Valley (Sort of resolved with blacklisting battlegrounds in Mists of Pandaria)

3. Dungeons

A New Idea (Implemented in Mists of Pandaria in the form of Scenarios!)
New Difficulty Level? (Implemented in Mists of Pandaria in the form of Challenge Mode dungeons!)

4. More Sunwell

The Isle of Quel'danas. Part 2. (Implemented in Patch 4.2 and beyond...)

5. Real ID: Social Connections

Partying Through Real ID (Implemented soon after this suggestion was made! Further enhanced by later implementations like CRZ!)

6. Player Owned Houses

7. A New Way To Twink

My Suggestion To "Lock" Experience

8. Coming Eventually: The Guild Progression Problem

Small Guild vs. Big Guild
Discrepancies of Guild Experience Awards
Guild Challenges (Or The Lack of Them)
"Leveling" Guilds
Guild Rewards and Reputation: The Problems
How to Solve

Has been posted on my blog instead of here. Issues have been sufficiently resolved with Mists of Pandaria

9. Interactive Professions: Going Into Further Detail: - This has been scrapped.

Primary Professions
Secondary Professions

Suggestion abandoned in favor of analyzing professions further

Other. User Submitted Suggestions:
-Gear Customization by Astygia (Now rendered semi-obsolete with Transmogrification)

1. Solo Content:

Let's face it. World of Warcraft is a game that primarily involves teamwork. Even though one can solo while leveling, many choose to use the Dungeon Finder or do Battlegrounds. At level cap, there's very little to do on your own in comparison to group content. You can do dailies and achievements. However, that isn't appealing to some people, for one, and much of it is either monotonous, boring, and/or time consuming. Playing the Auction House is one alternative option out of few, but that does seem to make WoW more like a business, which ruins the purpose of the game for others. In addition, it's primarily to make money (possibly lots of it) and then do something else in the future.

In addition, people have to wait in Dungeon Queues for half an hour or more (not to mention the dungeons themselves can become quite a time investment). The story can be the same for doing Battlegrounds as well, though this has been alleviated significantly due to the Random Battleground feature (and no role requirements). However, it's difficult to deal with people you don't know. It is possible to do it with friends or your guild, but for some, that isn't an option. Your friends and guild members are not available all the time either. The same can be said for events that require more of an arranged time, such as raids, arena, and rated battlegrounds.

The content at the moment, especially raids and heroic dungeons, in general is rather "limited" and often very time-demanding. This is both in the way that some people will never see the content and groups often arrange to raid or do other things at certain times and some number of times a week. The issue of raid content being less accessible is further exacerbated by raids sharing a lockout based on size, allowing entry into each of the available raids once per week when previously the amount was doubled (in Wrath of the Lich King). I know this is technically a step back to the way things were, but there were some bits of content installments of WoW prior to Wrath had to offer, and it was more "fresh and new" then as opposed to now. Most of the current content, group or not, is not ongoing and isn't as really that on demand, or has likely gotten bland and is "more of the same." Ultimately, the above reasons, among others, result in a lot of dead time for the players. I am not in any way saying Wrath of the Lich King in terms of its content was great, just very easily accessed by a large portion of the playerbase for several reasons, ranging from the content itself being easy, which led to pick-up groups which require no scheduling, to gear progression being simplified, making it easy for a fresh level 80 player to become raid geared without much difficulty (except dealing with other players, of course).

Heroics aren't much better. In its current state players often do one heroic then stop. In patch 4.1 players will do seven to fourteen heroics over the week, then wait until next week and do it all over again.

A short recap of the above: World of Warcraft is limited in what a player can do to have fun, especially on their own. There are a few options, such as leveling, but some people prefer having one character due to reasons like difficulty managing multiple character. Also, there's only so much one can do before either getting burned out from leveling or running out of character slots. The game should be consistently enjoyable from level 1 to level 85 - it doesn't matter if you're level capped or not but players should be able to have fun. In addition, some content is out of date and monotonous regardless of level. Why not improve that as well?

Even further TL;DR: WoW needs to have more "arcade-like" elements to it. You can log right on and do some leveling or quests. However, there is really no content beyond that that could be considered "arcade-like" due to a required time investment (with exceptions to battlegrounds) or significant dependance on another person, such as arenas or raiding (which doesn't fit into an arcade-style element). WoW should have some "log on and do this quickly" stuff that shouldn't necessarily be rewarding, but at least fresh, fun, and interesting enough to have "replay" value. That is the intent of this set of suggestions!

(A small note before going on. I criticize the concept of queues yet also put in ideas that would use the concept of queues anyways, the addition of these ideas is completely different than a "more of the same" approach in the sense the suggested ideas are compiled on top of the current content, allowing for significant diversity in what a player can do and giving them something to do while they wait to do something like say, a Battleground or Dungeon.)

As a result, I have decided to suggest the following:

Questing:

Blizzard did a great job making questing fun again. They added fresh new quests to the new world and completely transformed it. I have seen many eagerly leveling in the world that has gone through The Shattering and enjoy the stories each zone has to tell, among other things (such as creative new quests).

The problem is players hit a roadblock at level 58 (or 60, if they choose to keep leveling in the old world), and they have to level through Outland and Northrend, which have had little to no quest revamping at all. However, it would be quite demanding to revamp all those quests as well. Regardless of this, I feel it would make leveling fun across the board if quests were revamped, giving players a more consistently fun experience. There's just not all that much immersion (especially in Outland, but Northrend is longer, so...). Most players just skip the content by doing battlegrounds and dungeons, which ruins the purpose of the continents to begin with...

In addition, players have a tendency to outlevel the old world zones (no Heirlooms or other experience bonuses) before they finish. This should perhaps be looked into. Also, some players tend to return to the old zones to quest (for an achievement and whatnot) and tear right through without significant immersion (unless they desire to). Implementing more vehicle-related quests that do not involve the player using his or her own class abilities could alleviate this issue and make it challenging for all, regardless of level.

So what should be done? Just give zones the Cataclysm treatment. This would be rather hard to do to Outland, but Northrend already had the revolutionary quest design set in it to some degree (use of vehicle mechanics and the like). The terrain doesn't even need to be changed, just alter the quest progression a bit and make each zone tell an overarching story (or multiple overarching stories if lore allows for it). You can even keep the small zone hubs that tell shorter tales (like the Taunka Village in Storm Peaks), but there should be a bit of linear quest progression to some degree that the old world zones now offer.

Added on 10/10/2011: It should be noted that quest variety would also greatly strengthen the quest progression in zones. In addition, very few people at level cap will willingly experience this content, so this primarily appeals to newer players or players interested in leveling alts.

Raid Restrictions:

This is a pretty brief and simple request. Remove the requirement to actually have a raid group to enter a raid. The intention of a raid group is to have more players partied at the same time to progress through content but a player shouldn't be prevented from entering. In addition, people simply circumvent the requirement by having friends log onto their alts then form a raid with them (the alt then logs off but doesn't leave the group) and it is possible to have a normal party group while in a raid (convert back to party) without being removed from the raid.

I don't really understand why it would be so problematic to have people be able to walk into the raids they want to do. It's just a minor inconvenience that shouldn't be there. Even if someone did find some bizarre exploit to solo Bastion of Twilight trash or something, they can form a raid and get in anyways. Just make it easier for people to access a raid so they can solo Zul'Aman and stuff.

"Infinite Content" and Improving Dailies:

When questing through the new Azeroth, I came across a few quests that were fun minigames, but to my disappointment, could not be done again on that character once it was done. Examples include the "Plants vs. Zombies" questline in Hillsbrad and Tailgunner in Uldum. It would be very hard to implement some of these minigames, but definitely make it possible to at least do quests like the aforementioned dailies if not repeatable quests, and some minigames should be accessible as some sort of option after the quest line is done (i.e. the Plants vs Zombies minigame could become accessible after finishing the quest chain). One daily quest in particular I would love to see implemented that I did not mention above is dailies involving the aerial "jousting" quests in Mount Hyjal. There's currently no dailies for the Guardians Of Hyjal reputation, and that's a good place to start. Another good quest to convert into a daily is Slash and Burn (also in Mount Hyjal).

Edit: In 4.2, dailies on Mount Hyjal and in the Firelands will award Guardians of Hyjal reputation. There will also be potential continuations of the aerial jousting quests.

The current dailies also lack the punch the new Azeroth dailies had. Most of them are "generic kill quests" and standard gathering quests (especially the ones in Tol Barad). This doesn't mean they should be removed completely, but there should be much more variety so the quests actually seem fun (more vehicle-related dailies and "bombing run" quests, for instance). In addition, some daily quests that are fun take a bit of time to reach (like the catapult daily quest in Uldum).

Finally, players should be allowed to do more than 25 dailies a day (perhaps up to 50 or something?). I'm almost completely sure more daily quest hubs will be implemented in the expansion, and the current set of Cataclysm dailies alone nearly exhausts the 25 daily quest limit (there was a similar issue in Wrath of the Lich King).

In short, make easily accessible content that can be done over and over without it becoming bland. Make something players can get obsessive compulsive about without long queue times attached or a large demand for time in terms of long intervals (i.e. it's easy to come back to, unlike an instance run).

1v1 Arena or "Duel Arena:"

I know what's coming. Don't even start mentioning how PvP is not balanced around 1v1 because I have no intention of forcing 1v1 balance when Blizzard themselves have claimed the game is not balanced around 1v1 combat (even though the situation arises every now and then in PvP anyways). Keep in mind as well that there is a reason Blizzard stopped 2v2 ratings from meeting the requirements for some PvP equipment. This is a relatively justified suggestion as you will soon see.

The idea of "Duel Arena" is to give players a way to quickly do some PvP without having to sit in a long Battleground queue or waiting for their teammates to show up for larger scale arena. It is essentially what the title states. The "Duel Arena" feature will use the standard rotation of arenas available for the other brackets, but only 2 players will fight. There will be a "rating" system like all other arena brackets. However, this is purely for purposes of matchmaking with players of similar rating in 1v1 Arena (and probably ego flexing) and will not affect any aspect of other brackets of arena (for instance, it will not affect MMR or personal rating). To add a feeling of competition, the top ratings should be displayed somewhere (possibly in similar fashion to the other Arena ratings)...maybe.

The incentive is for each win, the winning player initially receives some amount of Honor (roughly 50 Honor, possibly, at level 85), with a maximum amount of obtainable Honor each day (around 250), then Honor gains would diminish for that day (i.e. you gain 50 Honor for five wins, then gain 20 Honor for subsequent wins at level cap). This is similar to how Conquest Points from Arena match victories work but ideally 1v1 will be easier to access because it's simply a single player against a single player and nothing more. It is also an alternative to doing Battlegrounds and dealing with other players without heavily impacting PvP progression (if that's even a possible concept). This feature should be available to any characters that can normally do Arena (level 70, 80, and 85 characters).

I would like to note it would be possible to queue for this alongside Battlegrounds and the Dungeon Finder.

In addition, this is a "partial" introduction to players aspiring to doing Arenas. It isn't meant to represent an indicator of balance, but it does help to teach a player how to fight another player without any other interfering objectives that aren't pertinent to Arena. In short, it is an alternative option to Battlegrounds. From personal experience. I learned quite a large amount of dealing with other players and other class mechanics from DUELING. Also, Duel Arenas give an alternative choice to players for gaining Honor besides Battlegrounds (which is the only other real option at level cap - yes Tol Barad counts as a Battleground).

Interactive Professions:

Ever sit around leveling your professions and just press "Create All" then AFK? Ever thought leveling professions in general is a bit dull?

Well, a possible solution to making crafting professions a bit more exciting is to allow the opportunity to gain extra skill points through interactive "minigames" that occur as one levels their profession. For instance, any time an object is created (or is being created, if the programming would allow it), a secondary window showing a small minigame (for instance, a metal bar on an anvil if the profession is Blacksmithing) that permits an opportunity to gain additional skill points or increase the chance of gaining one if the player performs the minigame well enough. They should be brief and not interfere too much. For instance:

Tailoring: Your mouse becomes a needle and thread. Click a hole in the article of clothing shown and quickly thread through all the holes by moving your mouse over them to complete the object and possibly gain bonus skill points.
Leatherworking: Hold down your mouse button and cut along the dotted lines to create the item.
Blacksmithing: Click the metal bar repeatedly to create the object.
Engineering: If using an anvil, it will be the same as the Blacksmithing minigame. If not, you may need to click a rock repeatedly to turn it into powder, click your mouse over several highlighted points to complete the object, and so on.
Alchemy: If making a potion or elixir, stir the cauldron as quickly as possible with your mouse (click and hold the rod and rotate mouse). If doing a transmutation or making an object besides a potion or elixir, you must pour all the vials of liquid into a larger vial (click the smaller vial then drag over the larger vial).
Inscription: Click, hold, and drag along the lines to create the glyph or other object.
Jewelcrafting: Your mouse becomes a chisel and you have to click the gem to cut it. The amount of times it has to be cut is random.
Cooking: Move the piece of food over the fire and take it off when it becomes "cooked" but before it becomes burned (if it becomes burned the object is still made but no bonus skill points are gained).
First Aid: Can't think of one for first aid. Suggestions would be great!

For most of the ideas above, finishing the minigame quickly will result in a higher chance to gain bonus skill points. There should be enough randomization that a player won't "create" the same item the same way (i.e. creating the same shirt for tailoring may place the holes in different spots), reducing the monotony slightly.

However, for people who don't like having to do this or want to AFK while crafting large amounts of objects, there should be an option to disable "Interactive Crafting Professions."

The purpose of this idea is to not only save materials but making professions a bit more exciting to level and in general, do. Keep in mind this would be purely optional and would provide no benefit if you're crafting items at the level cap of that skill. (Enchanting doesn't count for all this because it's a mix of both and does require a bit more interaction anyways.)

However, to continue to motivate people to use this feature after capping out professions, the crafting time will be faster or it will consume less of the more common materials (i.e. if a recipe requires a Chaos Orb and some Blackened Dragonscales, it will use less Blackened Dragonscales).

Gathering Contests

Don't worry. I didn't forget the gathering professions!

I've noticed lately that the gathering professions, primarily Mining and Herbalism were a bit dull. I looked at the Stranglethorn Fishing Contest and got an idea.

Why not make contests for those two professions? At the moment Mining and Herbalism is pretty much just run or fly around and gather ores or herbs when you see them. People are botting as a result because of how mindless it is. The contests won't make the professions significantly less mindless, but it will give some purpose to people who chose Mining and Herbalism.

Essentially, these contests will occur at some point in time on a weekly basis. Players will need to gather some amount of a special herb or ore that will automatically drop from herb nodes or from ore veins. These contests should be continent specific (i.e. there will be separate contests for Outland, Northrend, Kalimdor, and the Eastern Kingdom) and occur at different times for each continent. Whoever finds enough of the special herb or ore can then turn it in to the contest NPC in that specific continent and receive a prize bag of a relatively large amount of herbs or ores, depending on the contest won. Just like with the Stranglethorn Fishing Contest though, there will be lesser rewards to other participants either in the form of gold or bags that contain less herbs or ores (and the contest will also last a prolonged amount of time to motivate people to gather).

These contests may even be divided based on the types of herbs or ores that can be harvested (i.e. there's several across the continents of Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms where the special contest item can be harvested from specific nodes in a zone or multiple zones, if applicable (i.e. Cataclysm herbs/ores that spawn in Kalimdor will yield the Cataclysm herb/mining contest item).

This would greatly motivate players to farm for herbs and ores. It may not cut down on the botting, but the competitive nature of the contests would make it more prone to observation by Game Masters (hopefully) and help to bring actual players back to gathering professions.

I excluded Skinning because of the nature of the profession. Dead, skinnable monsters don't just free float around (actually I guess they technically do, but they were killed by other players). It would probably be a bit difficult to create a contest or some other event around Skinning anyways. If anyone does have a suggestion to make Skinning more exciting though, it would be great to see.

As an afterthought, I believe the Tauren Cultivation racial will probably need a nerf. Harvesting in 0.5 seconds is a bit ridiculous. Druid Flight Form may need a looking into as well.

Contest of Arms

This is not a PvP contest! This is more of a contest of who can do the most damage, healing, or threat in 3 separate contests.

The first, the Damage Dealing contest, will accept several (perhaps 5) players at a time. They will all then deal damage to their own target dummy (It is always boss level). Whoever defeats their target dummy first wins. The dummies will scale based on the gear and level of the players involved.

The second, the Healing contest, will accept up to 5 player, who will attempt to heal their own individual target to full (similar to Dreamwalker encounter in ICC) while they are taking constant damage. In the case no one can fully heal their target, the winner will be determined based on how long their target stayed alive or the amount of health the target had after a set amount of time. Like above, this contest will scale with the level and gear of the players.

The third, the Tanking contest, every single player involves will try to take threat on the monster. There will be constant damage inflicted to everyone, which will automatically be healed (to give some classes a fair chance) and half is physical while the other half is magical. It is possible to avoid the physical component, just as if you're normally tanking a monster with melee attacks, except the attack affects all the players as opposed to the one with the highest threat. After a certain amount of time (about 2 minutes, maybe), the player with the highest threat wins (that player has to currently be "tanking" the target). The damage the tank players take is based on their level and gear. I understand this doesn't evaluate how well a player can mitigate damage, but since mitigation can be RNG-based and the mechanics to do so are drastically different across the tanking classes while threat generation can be streamlined through steady, gradual damage, this was really the most practical way to do it (unless someone can suggest better. I am open to suggestions on this, as a tanking contest appears to be the most difficult to design in terms of measuring skill and gear).

All three of these contests will attempt to group together players based on their gear (keeping similar-geared players together so everyone has a fair chance). Each contest will can also only have same-level players. If there is a mismatch in gear level among players, the scaling aspect of the contest will be the average of the gear levels of all the players involved. Obviously, you can only enter the contests if you can actually perform that role (i.e. a Hunter can't enter the tanking contest). These contests will also have some random mechanics to them like fire on the ground or some other effect that has to be avoided to help keep a player's reflexes sharp in hopes of teaching players what to do in content they may choose to do.

The rewards vary based on level. Perhaps at lower levels players can win bind on pick-up Uncommon gear and a small amount of experience. At higher levels, the gear quality may improve (but should never be superior to Rare gear obtainable from dungeons of that level) and possibly Justice Points where applicable (possibly from level 70 and above, because that's when the Justice Points matter). At level cap this may award gold and/or a small amount of Justice Points. There should be a cap on how many Justice Points are awarded based on level.

The intent of these contests is to give players something to do while they wait for a Dungeon Finder queue or similar situations where waiting is involved. This option can be found in the Dungeon Finder (but does not interfere with the queue). While you do have to queue for it, it's quick and battleground-style. In this case each player gets 20 seconds to accept the queue. If they fail to, another player is then given a 20 second window to accept the queue. When in the contest, all players are given a 1 minute preparation time (with the standard preparation buff) to allow players to enter and change specializations and buff and so on (obviously if somehow only 1 person is left in a specific contest due to people not accepting queues they win and if there's no players the contest just ends). However, some ground rules will also be set, such as the restriction of consumables (like potions) so people get a fair chance.

In addition, the Contest of Arms will hopefully act as an aid to help players learn to play their class without adding in additional tutorials and so on. In fact, if this feature was released, it should be geared towards newer players as a method of having the players learn to play the game without actually telling them how to do it. The Contest of Arms, like Battlegrounds, will become available at level 10, for the purposes of giving players an option of what to do from the significant PvE standpoint, as opposed to forcing quests (let's face it, the quests aren't teaching players how to play all that much), forcing mob grinding, forcing PvP, or forcing a mix of the three.

As with the Duel Arena suggestion above, this feature could be queued for alongside Battlegrounds and the Dungeon Finder (it will not restrict the player from any and yes I know this is technically redundant to what was stated above).

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2. Alterac Valley

Alterac Valley. Out of all the battlegrounds I actually believe this is the most hotly debated and talked about battlegrounds. But why?

Well, it was primarily due to balance issues and the fact it has gone through quite a few significant changes since its inception. For instance, remember the elite NPC mobs that used to patrol around or guard the towers? They don't really exist anymore. The addition of reinforcements occurred around the same time to shorten the length of the battleground time, as it used to take days (and then hours) just for a single battleground to finish. It then became one of the most disliked battleground by some because it essentially was PvE race in a PvP setting (i.e. 40 players trying to kill the opposing general). More on all this later.

So why do I have an issue with this battleground as opposed to other ones? Let's dive into the problems...

Problems:

Reinforcements:

Don't get me wrong. The concept of reinforcements is an okay idea. However, some players do want the battleground to be of a somewhat longer length, myself included. Unfortunately, the length is greatly reduced because after destroying every tower and defeating the Captains, there is 200 reinforcements left. Even then, the battleground is over anyways because people will likely be fighting the Generals at this time. But in contrast, the mines only add a small amount of reinforcements back (1 every 45 seconds, from what I recall) and there's no other special way to do so, even though the battleground still has many old quests from Vanilla WoW that could be used for this purpose.

This results in players who enjoy PvP (as in actually fighting other players, in which there is plenty of opportunity to do here) to be rather limited. Each team can instead ignore the towers, but that ruins the entire point of those objectives anyways (weakening the General along with reducing reinforcements). Besides, 600 kills can go by quite fast, depending on the situation.

Zerging:

I see this strategy a lot (primarily in Wrath and it's actually on the fall in Cataclysm). This is due to a lot of reasons, but the main one if that players want to get out of the battleground as quick as possible (brought on in Wrath because the Captains and Generals were very heavily undertuned). However, not everyone is of this opinion and what results is a mass of chaos or as I said above: PvE race in a PvP setting. I understand that a small defensive strategy in tandem does work with this, but it still ruins the purpose of the battleground. With Cataclysm, however, it is much harder to actually get to the General and quickly defeat him before the other team does, so this isn't as much of an issue as before.

I understand this is a player-related issue, but there should be some way to curb the urge to use such a strategy and miss out on what this battleground has to offer. It is an acceptable strategy, however, so a compromise would work best.

Faction Imbalance:

Both factions actually have issues in this battleground. Allow me to break it down based on faction:

Alliance Disadvantages:

1. Alliance Get Heavily Bottlenecked:

I've seen this happen constantly in Alterac Valley. Even though it is possible to do it to the Horde, there's a pretty small swath of open space near Icewing Bunker that the Horde can simply camp and stop the Alliance from ever getting to the offensive front. This is even more devastating if the Horde controls the Stonehearth Graveyard nearby. In addition, while there are a few paths to get down to this single road (allow Alliance to bypass a Horde offensive), it's really easy to spot players unless they have stealth. In comparison, Horde defensive area has a lot of trees and other environmental objects that can allow players to hide. It looks more like a forested area that will uncommonly be passed through by Alliance but a perfect way to sneak back up to the Horde offensive (though it is possible to bottleneck at around Tower Point and Iceblood Graveyard, there's a high road where people can just run past.)

2. Ivus Sucks:

Not a big deal, but Ivus in comparison to his counterpart, Lokholar is really weak. This is because as Lokholar lands killing blows, he gains more power. Ivus does not have this property. This means Lokholar will outmatch Ivus. In addition, Lokholar has a stun (Ivus has a root).

3. Alliance Cave:

If Alliance have to defend, but resurrect at the cave, they have to either run around or suffer some falling damage to get to their graveyards and towers in their base (or Stormpike Graveyard). It's not really that bad, but for Horde it's a clear run to the base or Frostwolf Graveyard. I would like to point out, however, that Irondeep Mine is really close to the cave, giving Alliance a quick reinforcement advantage early on.

4. Alliance Graveyards:

I guess this isn't a massive imbalance considering in some matches Horde will take the graveyard. However, every Alliance side graveyard is easily camped (in comparison, it's tough to camp the Iceblood and Frostwolf Graveyards) due to the impassable terrain and easily bottlenecked area.

Horde Disadvantages:

1. Alliance Zergs Have It Easy.

The distance Alliance and Horde have to cover are pretty different amounts. While Alliance have a pretty clear run down to Galvanger, then down to Drek'thar, the Horde have to run out to the bunker where Balinda is in, go through the door from the back (not the front like Galvanger), then run through a pretty forced path to get to the latter objective of Vanndar. Now this wouldn't be an issue by itself. However, the Horde area is smaller and it's easier to just run in a straight line down to the Frostwolf base.

In addition, there's still an Elite guarding one of the towers up in the northern Alliance towers and the NPCs in the base in general are easily aggroed. In comparison, there's only really one named NPC (non-elite) who does this in the Horde base and she's easily killed.

Finally, the bridge to the base is easily defended, even by a small group because of the archer support and it's easy to use knockback and other area effects to hamper and harass the Horde offensive (this is the ONLY way to get into the base). In comparison, the areas the Horde archers can shoot from the Frostwolf towers is much short (literally about 20 yards of open space before reaching the gate to the heart of the base) and then players can run into the tower. It is defensible, but the area is smaller, and knockback cannot be abused.

There's other reasons why, such as the fact Dun Baldar archers can fire down on any Horde capturing the Stormpike Aid Station while Frostwolf Tower archers cannot fire down on Alliance capturing the Frostwolf Relief Hut, but if I went about pointing out every single thing wrong with Horde and Alliance, I'd probably be here all day. So...

2. Tower Design:

I'll just get this off my chest. Horde tower design is just plain horrible and heavily slated in favor of melee/people defending the towers. The reason for this is the area the flag is a very small, roughly 6-7 yard radius area. Sure, ranged can shoot over the side at oncoming players, but then again, the same can be done at the bunkers. The oncoming players are then protected from ranged attacks. Then, in the tower, the melee will have free reign (on both sides). Knockback has a heavy advantage here too because of the fact the entire tower is pretty open as opposed to the bunkers, where there's plenty of space inside to maneuver.

I have literally walked into a tower and Bladestormed an entire Alliance garrison then proceeded to take the tower back because of this design. However, it can just as easily be turned against Horde players like me by stacking a ton of players inside the tower and doing the same. It makes it hard to take the tower back because an aoe will literally hit everything inside the small room.

In comparison, the Alliance bunkers are quite spacious (about...15 yard radius from the center indoors). This makes it much more balanced for attackers and defenders of all types, I believe. In addition, the archers inside the bunkers can turn and shoot as you attempt to take a tower. Due to the design of the Frostwolf towers, a player can just walk in, line of sight the archer right in front of the opening to the top room in that tower, then cap the tower.

In conclusion, something has to be done about Frostwolf tower design. I know it's modeled after the Watch Tower design in Warcraft (3) and is present in many areas, but making the top of the tower one giant room with openings the archer shoots out of (perhaps small alcoves where some archers can be placed outside the tower room can make it from being too unbalanced and too difficult for Alliance to capture) would immensely help with the balance.

3. Galvangar Is Pitiful

Ironically, this wasn't the case prior to Balinda getting some nice (much needed) buffs. However, Galvangar wasn't really brought up to speed. He does hit a bit hard, but as a Captain he's not really threatening without support (to be honest neither is really, but I have seen Balinda legitimately wipe a Horde group without an Alliance defense). In addition, Balinda can summon adds and scrub off debuffs with Ice Block, yet has the same health as Galvangar, effectively making her more of a "delay" than Galvangar is. Galvangar has a fear, but the Captain no longer chases feared targets out of the bunker and his Whirlwind attack isn't really that powerful (actually, neither is Arcane Explosion). Beyond that, he really has no major mechanics to watch out for.

4. Drek'thar the Warrior?

Not so much a "faction imbalance" thing. Seriously though, why the hell does Drek'thar use warrior-like abilities. Isn't he a Shaman? Well? Isn't he?

If anyone has additional things to add to this list. Please note it by all means. (I don't play much on Alliance side, for instance).

The Old Stuff Is Useless and/or Ignored Because It's Not Mentioned AT ALL:

I have never seen any mention to Lokholar/Ivus and the special "quest turn ins" and so on (Wing Commanders, ground reinforcements, and the like). There's also been very little work done to revamp these and make them more apparent/visible to players (or outright remove them). As a result, most of the old Alterac Valley quests and special NPCs are ignored or downright useless, serving very little purpose towards most matches.

5. Travel Time In General:

Alterac Valley is one of the largest maps in terms of length. What's worse is you have to run up and down the map. You have no choice in the matter. Although you can get a trinket that allows teleportation to your base, the quests to get them are very obscure and thus few players will have them at all.

My Idea (How to "Fix" it):

So now that (most of) the problems have been noted, what can be done?

Well. Let's go through it step by step.

Step 1: Revamp the Battleground

Some of the content in Alterac Valley needs to be brought up to speed. For instance, Lokholar the Ice Lord and Ivus the Forest Lord need to be properly tuned for every bracket and the directives to summon him should be more obvious to see (though not made mandatory. More on this later) and other objectives should be more accurately portrayed as to what they do (i.e. destroying a tower causes reinforcement loss).

Galvangar obviously needs some sort of new mechanic (actually all the bosses should). What would be cool is progressive mechanic changes as the level brackets get higher. So for instance, in the lowest level brackets, Galvangar won't fear and Balinda won't Ice Block. A small exemplary list of what can be done is shown below:

Level 45-49, 50-54, 55-59

Captain Galvangar: Cleave, Mortal Strike, Whirlwind
Captain Balinda: Arcane Explosion, Fireball, Frostbolt, Cone of Cold, Summon Water Elemental

Level 60-64, 65-69, 70-74, 75-79

Captain Galvangar: Cleave, Mortal Strike, Whirlwind, Frightening Shout,
Shield Wall: Reduces all damage taken by 75% for 8 second. Used at half health. (Yes I know this technically makes no sense considering Galvangar uses a 2-handed weapon)

Captain Balinda: Arcane Explosion, Fireball, Frostbolt, Cone of Cold, Summon Water Elemental (can summon up to two), Ice Block

Level 80-84, 85

Captain Galvangar: Cleave, Mortal Strike, Frightening Shout, Shield Wall,
Bladestorm: (replaces Whirlwind) Deals 150% weapon damage to all enemies every second for 6 seconds. Also deals an additional 5000/7500 damage per 3 seconds to damaged targets for 9 seconds.

Captain Balinda: Fireball, Frostbolt, Cone of Cold, Summon Water Elemental (can summon up to three), Ice Block,
Blast Wave: Deals 7500/10000 Fire damage per second for 6 seconds to all enemies within 8 yards. Damages targets are slowed for 4 seconds.

Also, Galvangar will have slightly more health to compensate the lack of adds.

Drek'thar and Vanndar also need similar revamps. Some ideas are displayed below:

Level 45-49, 50-54, 55-59

Drek'thar:
Stormstrike: Deals damage with both weapons, dealing an additional 100/150/200 Nature damage.
Frost Shock: Deals 650/800/1000 Frost damage to a random target, slowing them for 5 seconds.
Shockwave Nova: Deals 300/400/500 Nature damage to all targets in 8 yards and stuns them for 2 seconds. 3 second cast. Cannot be interrupted.

Duros/Drakan:
Frenzy: When Drek'thar goes below 50% health, damage and attack speed are increased by 75%.

Vanndar:
Thunderclap: Deals 300/400/500 Nature damage to all targets in 8 yards and reduces their movement, attack, and casting speeds by 25%.
Storm Bolt: Launches a hammer at a target, dealing 500/650/800 Physical damage to them and 50% of that to targets within 5 yards, stunning them all for 2 seconds.
Whirlwind: Viciously spins around, dealing minor Physical damage to all within 8 yards, but dealing an additional 200/250/300 Physical damage per 2 seconds for 8 seconds to all damaged targets.

Levels 60-64, 65-69, 70-74, 75-79

Drek'thar: Stormstrike, Frost Shock, Shockwave Nova,
Telluric Circle: Deals 300/400/700/1000 Nature damage per second to all targets within a targeted area of 5 yards radius.

Vanndar: Thunderclap, Storm Bolt, Whirlwind,
Shattering Strike: Deals 200% weapon damage and reduces the target's armor to zero for 5 seconds.

Levels 80-84, 85

Drek'thar: Stormstrike, Frost Shock, Shockwave Nova, Telluric Circle,
Icy Lash: Deals 200% off-hand weapon damage as Frost damage and slows the target's attack and movement speeds by 20%. Stacks up to 5 times.
Thunderous Wrath: At 25% health, Drek'thar harnesses the powers of a storm, dealing 5000/8000 Nature damage per 3 seconds to all raid members.

Vanndar: Thunderclap, Storm Bolt, Whirlwind, Shattering Strike,
Heroic Blow: After a 3 second cast, deals 75000/130000 Physical damage (cannot be mitigated) to all in the front area of Vanndar. Deals significantly less damage to other targets (6000/10000)
Avatar: Vanndar becomes an unstoppable force. All damage taken is reduced by 25%. All attacks have a 25% increased chance to critically hit. Attacks cannot be dodged, blocked, or parried.

Take note for both the lists above, the damage figures were pretty randomly set by me. They are not perfect in any way, shape, or form. They are simply there for the purpose of the example of something that can be done.

Next, as I stated above: please change the architecture of the Horde towers. Make the room take up almost the entire top of the tower. Have a couple archers standing in the indoor area and some outside the tower room, or have them all stand on the small balcony-like area outside the room that will remain and change the archer positions in all the Alliance bunkers so they can't interfere with capturing.

In addition, add some "roadblocks" on the Frostwolf side and otherwise make it a bit more difficult for the Alliance offense. The overall distance an Alliance has to travel to reach anything as opposed to a Horde is generally much shorter due to the map's design. This needs to be alleviated. I do understand that better strategy will still win out, but it's really easy for the Alliance to penetrate Horde's side as opposed to Alliance. In addition, add some NPCs around the area where the two towers, the graveyard, and Drek'thar's hall are. If Alliance have several NPCs that aggro upon trying to capturing anything in Dun Baldar, Horde should have similar benefits, after all.

Add in a capability to change the resurrection location and allow graveyard warping in a similar matter as Wintergrasp (talk to the Spirit Guide and choose another graveyard your faction controls to resurrect there instead). This will prevent camping and allow people to be able to switch to a graveyard that is more desirable to the strategic needs (or the player's needs). This capability will include warping to and from the cave if you are dead. This graveyard warping could be added to every battleground with multiple graveyards that a faction can control (i.e. in Arathi Basin, if you control the Stables and Lumber Mill and are at the Stables graveyard, you can switch your location to resurrect at the Lumber Mill as long as you control it). Also, like in Wintergrasp, it is possible to talk to the Spirit Guides while alive and teleport to graveyard locations under your team's control. This allows better coordination and transitioning between offense and defense. However, teleporting while alive will have a cooldown (something around 2.5 minutes) so people don't just hop around (to pretend to not be AFK, and also to prevent abuse).

To also go in line with streamlining the battleground a bit better all players will be able to talk to some Quartermasters in their starting caves and receive an item that allows teleportation to the base. It is reusable but has a cooldown. Players with trinkets will have better versions of this item based on their reputation (shorter cooldowns, down to 0 seconds on the final rank version like the final rank trinket). This way, there is no excuse to defend the base.

The objectives to win and so on are the same. Reinforcements will stay because:

Step 2: Make a "New" Alterac Valley Battleground

Let's face it. Some people do just want to get out of a battleground as quickly as possible. Alterac Valley is no exception. Because of this, changing the battleground by removing reinforcements and adding in my actual way of improving Alterac Valley would ruin some players' gaming experience (i.e. getting in and getting out rapidly to maximize honor gain), possibly even a majority (no I actually have no clue whether this is true). However, because of the nature of battlegrounds ending too fast, some content of Alterac Valley will be ignored, even with revamps. Therefore, I have devised that:

-The Alterac Valley battleground with reinforcements will be called "Alterac Valley (Clash)"
-The Alterac Valley that will be revamped and not use reinforcements will be called "Alterac Valley (Conquest)"
-A player can choose to join either battleground as if they were separate battlegrounds.
-Random Battlegrounds will add both to the rotation. Either that or there will be a toggle, choosing which version of Alterac Valley the player wishes to play (although if this is added at all, it probably should be put in after a good amount of players have experienced both). The "Conquest" version will probably award a good sum of honor to compensate for the fact Random Battlegrounds award bonus honor (more on this later).

So what is Alterac Valley (Conquest)? Read on...

Firstly, reinforcements are gone. Instead it is replaced with a capture bar similar to the capture bars that show up at bases in Eye of the Storm, workshops in Wintergrasp, and bases in Tol Barad among other areas. This will be significantly more noticeable, replacing the area where the reinforcement counters were and serving as a "Morale Bar." It will start at the center and have 31 "tick points," putting it exactly 15 ticks from both the Horde and Alliance sides of the bar. Completing objectives will allow this bar to move in favor of the faction that completes it. Objectives include:

-Destroying Towers: This pushes the bar 2 ticks in favor of the faction that destroyed the tower.
-Capturing Graveyards. Successfully capturing a graveyard will push the bar 1 tick in favor of the faction that captured it. Simply capturing the flag and having the graveyard be contested (not completely controlled) will not move the bar.
-Killing Players: Every time 50 players are defeated, the bar pushes 1 tick in favor of the faction that killed that amount of players.
-Killing Captains: Defeating Captain Galvangar or Captain Balinda will move the bar 2 ticks in favor of the faction that defeats the caption.
-Killing Generals: Defeating the Generals (Drek'thar and Vanndar) will move the bar 4 ticks in favor of the faction that defeats the general.
-Defeating Lok'holar the Ice Lord and Ivus the Forest Lord: Defeating these elemental lords will count as defeating 25 players, counting towards the "killing players" objective.
-Soldier Upgrades: Turning in Armor Scraps will ultimately cause more powerful NPC units (graveyard guards) to take the field. Each upgrade will move the tick bar by 1 in the favor of the faction that upgrades. Keep in mind that there is a limited amount of upgrades. Armor Scrap drop rates should be decreased a bit to compensate (both battlegrounds).

Obviously, if the bar completely moves in favor of one faction, that faction wins. However, there is another way to win. More on this later.

Secondly, the mines will have an altered benefit. Mines will grant some passive honor gain periodically (based on bracket), allowing some recompense for the duration of time the battleground will take. In addition, mines will increase the maximum health of all NPCs and players of the faction that controls the mine by 5% (the bonus is additive) and allow players to gather supplies, which they can turn in to their respective Quartermasters (which will now be significantly more conspicuous) in the form of a repeatable quest (now a blue question mark quest, so anyone can gather supplies without having a quest now as long as the mine is under their control).

Thirdly, the Generals and Captains will matter more. However, they will matter in a different way. Since defeating the Generals will not outright end the battleground, the buffs they normally grant should be made more noticeable (motivating players to kill them/defend them). Captains should grant a minor damage buff (10%) that lasts 3 minutes every 5 minutes. Generals should grant a health bonus (20%) that also lasts 3 minutes every 5 minutes. This will be different from the other version of the battleground, where similar buffs occur at intervals or when some objectives are completed.

Fourthly, other NPCs should matter. This actually should be a change for both battlegrounds, but it will likely matter in this version more. Some of the more special named NPCs like the Wing Commanders and such should be made significantly stronger, making them difficult to kill and more of a challenge. I've already mentioned Lokholar and Ivus getting retuned - what about their respective summoners (Renferal and Thurloga)? There should be alerts indicating when a Wing Commander reaches the base and some of the more major NPCs should respawn (like Wing Commanders and the elemental boss summoners or other quest NPCs)

Finally, a second, alternative method to win should be placed. After all, there's a pretty good possibility that the capture meter will not move in favor of one faction or another and a stalemate occurs. The second way to win involves summoning Lokholar and Ivus. The amount of Storm Crystals or Stormpike Soldier's Blood to summon the respective elemental bosses will still be 200 initially. However, if they die they can be summoned again at the cost of 100 Storm Crystals or Blood (and since the summoners themselves respawn). The summoners will be placed at the summon area as opposed to being at their bases and having to take quite a bit of time to get up to their places in the Field of Strife. Obviously, the elemental bosses themselves will be significantly more durable and powerful to ensure it's difficult to defeat them. The objective to automatically win is to get your faction's elemental lord to the opponent's base (Ivus to the front of Frostwolf Keep and Lokholar to the front of the Stormpike Bunker). At this point the match will end. Also, the elemental bosses will now patrol the Field of Strife for only a minute instead of 10 minutes.

That's my ideas so far on this topic. If anyone would like to voice constructive feedback or additional suggestions, please do. Until then, let us move on to the next topic.

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3. Dungeons

Dungeons are pretty good. Don't get me wrong. I just feel there are a couple improvements it could use. These, however, are not quite as important as the rest of the suggestions and is quite brief so if you so desire you can skip this suggestion.

A New Idea:

In short, there should be some dungeons that can accept a larger variety of players based on role. For instance, make some encounters that involve significant amounts of healing as opposed to damage dealing and adjust the role requirements (i.e. 1 tank, 2 damage dealers, 2 healers) to add some versatility as opposed to the standard "3-1-1" dungeons.

Also, some dungeons should be heavily vehicle based and accept any role. This helps to speed up the queue and add a little flavor to something where you'll just be using your class abilities by introducing new abilities. Perhaps make an Oculus-like instance where you only ride the "drakes."

I understand that implementing these suggestions would take quite a bit of time, as they are a bit different from the standard setup and would require some pretty significant balance analysis to properly design.

A New Difficulty Level:

This isn't really my suggestion, but possibilities of a new "difficulty" level would be excellent. For instance, there could be content more difficult than Heroics for 5-mans. These ideas can also apply towards raids (actually so can the above idea, but then again, that's already been put into play anyways).

I will probably expand on this more but so far I really don't have anything. If you wish you can watch some of Totalhalibut's "Azeroth Daily" and find the episode(s) where such suggestions are made.

Additional Suggestions:

Suggested by Hyperspacerebel of Wowhead

The best solution, imo, is to give the option of declining an in-progress invite while keeping your place in line (and then the next person in line will get the invite, and he can accept or decline and keep his place, and so on). That way, everyone's happy: the people who want a full run can wait it out until one is available, and those who just want a quick run for the extra points will get in faster.

The intention of this suggestion is pretty obvious. Some people simply don't like joining dungeons that are in progress for a variety of reasons. Because of this and the fact some people actually like going into dungeons in progress to quickly get some Valor Points, this compromise works both ways. It may somewhat harm a group's chances of continuing the dungeon, but at least players will have the option to join a fresh dungeon group or a dungeon group in progress.

4. More Sunwell

Patch 2.4, Fury of the Sunwell, introduced a lot of content I found to be quite excellent. Class balance aside, I found very few issues with that patch. This was primarily due to a couple reasons:

The first reason was the fact a new 5-man was introduced. It was quite difficult in comparison to other Burning Crusade 5-mans of the time. Blizzard repeated this idea in Patch 3.3 by adding 3 new 5-man instances. Also, more 5-mans are definitely on the horizon. Blizzard clearly wants to keep using this idea. Can you blame them? It's good to have some fresh new 5-man content on a regular basis (even if it's a recycled instance, such as Zul'Gurub in Patch 4.1). Because of this, this isn't the main focal point of this suggestion.

The second reason was the daily quest hub on the Isle of Quel'danas. I really liked how the server as a whole was caught up in an effort to take it back by doing dailies. Only one other such event is like this, and that was the event involving the Gates of Ahn'Qiraj (had to turn in supplies, etc). Since then I have not seen it at all, which is quite a shame. It felt like people were accomplishing something and changing the world for everyone. Blizzard tried to replace this with phasing, and it's not that bad, but it would be cool to bring back that concept where the actions of some change it for everyone (even though Blizzard did say something about making less world events like that).

The Isle of Quel'danas: Part 2:

It's pretty simple. Just make a quest hub like the Isle of Quel'danas. This means that there are only a few dailies to begin with. However, as people do the dailies over a period of time, the quest hub changes in steps, like taking the Inn and Sanctum areas back on the Isle of Quel'danas. Adding in 5-mans and a raid instance associated with the quest hub is purely optional.

Perhaps there will be one with the release of Firelands. I wouldn't know, to be honest. However, if there is not, that would be an excellent place to put such a concept in. A harrowing war against the elemental plane of Fire where players and NPCs alike battle to gradually take a foothold and strike out at Ragnaros would be cool.

I don't really know what other places to use as examples at this time, but definitely consider creating a quest hub like Isle of Quel'danas (many more times).

Edit: It seems we're getting something like that in 4.2. It's sort of a mix between Argent Tournament and Isle of Quel'danas. After checking it out (on live, not PTR), I'll make a judgment of the pros and cons. Hopefully they will continue to do this multiple times over the Cataclysm expansion!

5. Real ID: Social Connections:

Criticism from many people aside, this feature isn't really all that bad when used properly. However, at the moment it only allows communications across realms and factions. There is no option to communicate across regions (a feature that should be implemented) and there's no other real benefit of doing so. Despite the fact this feature in itself is currently a breakthrough, it is obvious that Blizzard is quite capable of linking every realm in a region for battleground matchmaking. Therefore, why shouldn't players be allowed to do activities together across servers if they are Real ID friends. Obviously, it would have to be limited to prevent significant deprecation of the Paid Character Move, but other games offer features where players can communicate across servers and even do stuff with them (though in some cases they just switch servers, which is completely free in that case).

So what can be done to enhance Real ID? Read on...

Partying Through Real ID:

Using similar functionality to merge battlegroups together for Battleground queuing, also use similar functionality to allow players who are Real ID friends of each other to invite each other while on different servers. While grouped, these players can queue for Dungeons and Battlegrounds, and can communicate as if they were in a party normally. They cannot really do anything more, as that would heavily damage some of the realm-specific functions (Arenas, the new solo content above if it's implemented, and the like). Because this functionality would render conversations obsolete, conversations would be removed. In addition, because of this, Dungeon Finder would also have to be extended across regions for matchmaking just like Battlegrounds.

This will still be faction restricted to adhere to the rules, but I feel this would allow players who truly are friends of each other to be segregated by realms. Don't panic though. Players in your group will all see each other as if they were in a Battleground or cross-realm Dungeon group. This means names (including yours) will show up as <Charactername-Realmname> (unless you match realms with someone of course).

I understand that problems I outlined above would be prevalent and people may even go so far as to openly give out information for the sake of reliable grouping. However, unless this gets so bad to the point 5-man dungeons and premades are being made solely through Real ID and solo queuing is impossible, I doubt people will be forced into using Real ID just to do their daily dungeon or battleground. This idea is to primarily allow Real ID friends to actually do something together without resorting to other measures like rolling new characters or paying out money. Talking is nice and all, and I know WoW is a social game, but friendships are a bit "distanced" when you can't even do stuff together without leaving a place you're attached to.

I forgot to mention it should be possible to create a raid group through Real ID if this goes through, for obvious reasons.

Call me crazy, but I believe it's a decent idea. I know I'll get a lot of flame for this, but if you don't like it or have a better idea, please say so. Don't just insult me over it or something - constructive feedback is what I'll focus on. (I'll put this at the end of the suggestion list, but I feel I should also post it here too).

6. Player Owned Houses:

Yes I stole this idea from Runescape. Don't need to say it.

The Idea:

Essentially, players will be allowed to purchase a plot of land for a small sum of gold. They can then buy a house of their choice. Houses will use the building models currently ingame, such as an Alliance Inn or small Horde hut. Obviously, the larger and more extravagant the building is, the more it will cost. You can choose to upgrade later for the difference in amount, but you can never actually sell your house for a refund (to prevent gold sellers from doing so to boost their gold stocks).

But where will this land be? Well, when you purchase the plot, you can choose which capital city to tie it to (of your faction). You can then access your land by going through portals located in each capital city (should be at least two per capital to prevent heavy crowding). These portals go to a special area that is phased for each player (location is your choice. For instance, it can be placed in the middle of nowhere like some of the "unreachable" spots.)

When on the land, you can choose to enter a building mode by talking to the NPC that is present there and add stuff, such as your house. You can add some of the larger doodads this way. Water can also be added and land can be raised and lowered and the land tileset can also be changed. All of these will have specific costs. This UI will work in a similar way as the Warcraft 3 World Editor or the like, allowing players to at least have fun creating a special plot of land for themselves. It would also add a special feature that World of Warcraft really lacks: the ability to change the actual world in some significant way.

Through this UI you can add trees, waterfalls, rocks, shiny pools in the water (like a fishing pool, but keep in mind the water cannot be fished), schools of fish, birds, some shrubbery, and so on. These can be removed, but you receive no refund if you do so. You can also enter a "sandbox mode" where you pay no money but can add plenty of terrain based features (to a limit, obviously, to save server space). You can then set that as the player housing area you want, and pay the cost, locking it in forever like the Talent Tree Preview function. This will add in a feature to build that I believe is very lacking in the game so far. Minecraft in my WoW? It might be closer than you think.

Some NPCs can also be added too. Most would be quite expensive. However, there shouldn't be significant vendors (except maybe for extremely large amounts of gold). Perhaps there will be bankers, possibly a guild vault, and maybe even a mailbox. They're already in the capital you're teleporting from so it's not really a big deal. I understand Blizzard wants players in the "hub city" but isn't that effectively what the player owned house a part of anyways? Also, you can even get an Innkeeper and bind yourself to your actual home (this should probably be pretty cheap, maybe). By default, there will always be a portal back to the capital city you come from. No other portals can be put in.

Furniture and the like can also be added. However, most if not all should be purchased items through special currencies or other methods. These include:

The Justice Point, Valor Point, Honor Point, and Conquest Point vendors.
Guild Reputation Vendor
Other Reputation Vendors
Professions (Leather sofas, cloth curtains, metal railings, the list goes on).
Achievements
Rare drops?
Completing specific quests.

For instance, if you complete the quest to turn in Onyxia's Head, it can be placed in your home. If you have a Feat of Strength for a legendary, you can place a copy of the legendary for display somewhere in your home. The list goes on for what can be done here. A lot of these special furniture and minor perks should cost varying amounts of gold, depending on the quality of the item.

A few of these items can be salvaged and are unbound, even after using them, but a good number are Bind on Account. This is because your player house is actually bound to your account as well (based on realm, unless Blizzard can somehow extend the functionality to region like they're attempting to with Bind on Account items) to significantly save server space (50 houses per account is just plain ridiculous). You'll see why I thought it would be better this way soon.

I'll keep adding ideas as they come, but I feel this will sufficiently give you an idea of what could or should be done. Obviously, as it is, Blizzard would be hard pressed to implement this at all. Therefore, I should probably say you shouldn't get your hopes up unless five million+ people suddenly cry out to put in player housing.

Additional Stuff:

Not too much to put here, but obviously it would be nice to allow some functionality to allow players into each others' houses. This can be done by inviting a player to your group, then toggling an option to allow players into your house (even if you're not in it). This can be toggled by the NPC selling houses or the NPC who allows you to build in the housing area. It can also be toggled in your UI or by right clicking your own character portrait and selecting the option to allow players in. When entering the portal, a player can then enter the house of the party leader. It's possible other functions can be put in, such as the portal being interactive and allowing you to enter the house of any player in your party.

For cross realm you can enter the houses of your Real ID friends only. This is an extension of the Real ID suggestion above.

For obvious reasons, players on ignore cannot enter the houses of the player ignoring them.

In addition, you cannot enter build mode while players are in the house (you can eject all players then do so) and players cannot enter a house in build mode.

7. A New Way To Twink:

For a long time coming Blizzard nerfed twinking over and over again. I can agree a good amount of the changes were justified. After all, people shouldn't be walking around with level 70 enchants at level 19. However, Blizzard finally put an effective end to twinking by putting in the concept of battleground experience. This made it so players would level up, no matter what. Blizzard also put in an experience lock system. The issue with this was that it changed the set of battlegrounds the player could enter.

Now don't get me wrong. I understand that Blizzard destroyed twinking to prevent people on the lower level end of the battleground from having not just a disadvantage, but a nightmarish disadvantage again their opponents.

But it didn't stop there. People did find a way around this by "locking" their experience through the method of simply not purchasing expansion packs. For instance, if a player wanted a level 60 twink, they could do it by transferring that character to an account with Vanilla WoW. The same went for level 70 having up to Burning Crusade. People often then did Alterac Valley, as the ceiling end of the level range was 60, 70, and 80.

But then Blizzard changed the battleground brackets so that it always is X4 or X9 (i.e. 10-14, 15-19, and the like) with Cataclysm. This put the final nail in the coffin of twinking. It may be possible to organize such battles (maybe through War Games), but blindly doing so cross realm is near impossible. In addition, the prevalence of twink guilds is dying out due to all the previous implementations. It's also harder to beat on people within 4 levels of you as opposed to 9 levels.

My Suggestion To "Lock" Experience

I think it's time to bring "twinking" back. This can be done by doing either of the following:

-Allow battleground queuing to no longer differentiate between experience locked and experience unlocked characters, allowing both to enter the same battlegrounds.
-Allow an experience bar reset function. This service can be purchased for 10 silver * character level each time. It will completely reset the experience to zero for that level.

Why would I bring back twinking though? Well, the main reason is because of the new brackets, which have a much smaller level difference. In addition, with the nerfs to enchantments and the changes to leveling and quest rewards which have players more prepared, twinks won't outgear their opponents as much as before. Finally, progression of abilities has changed so that everyone will have their signature abilities from the start and a few more as they level. I do know some of these talented abilities can be gotten at twink levels, but because you get talents every two levels as opposed to every level, the advantage won't be quite as ridiculous (once again, repeating the above about smaller difference brackets).

Additional notes I forgot: I forgot to note heirlooms also help close the equipment gap between twinks and leveling players, although new players will be a bit on the weak side. Maybe there should be some scaling alterations to better close this gap, if only by a bit...especially at lower levels when a few points of a rating stat equate to massive bonuses to the equivalent statistic.

This would also allow Blizzard to not have to fix their zone progression too much in terms of experience gains for all sorts of playstyles. Instead, players can reset their experience and continue leveling in the zone long after they should've out-leveled it and left due to doing an instance or the like. This doesn't mean Blizzard should not change zones where you can normally out-level the zone by just doing the quests, however.

I do understand there will still be some amount of unbalance in battlegrounds and does ruin the purpose of endgame at level cap. However, not everyone has Cataclysm or they wish to access a different expansion of endgame at that level to break up the monotony of level cap (for instance, not everyone will like the suggestions I put above for solo content and are tired of doing whatever they are doing at level 85).

Obviously, for the new feature of resetting experience, there has to be some way to point new players to that feature.

That concludes my list of suggestions. As always, constructive feedback is appreciated. I highly doubt any of this will even be enter the minds of Blizzard's developers or be implemented. However, if the feedback is good and enough users want it, then I will repost this to the Official Forums and see the responses there.

Also, additional suggestions are accepted. I would appreciate if suggestions were readable so that I can edit them into the post without significant trouble.

What I will ignore or not take seriously is insults without reason and the like. If you think these suggestions are stupid, give a reason, but please refrain from personally attacking me or other posters in the thread. I would prefer civil discussion and so on and will report offensive posts as soon as possible.

These suggestions were written in Patch 4.0.6 by Interest.

These suggestions were last edited in Patch 4.0.6 (March 22th)

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Publicado por Interest

The following suggestions were posted by other users:

Suggestion: Gear Customization.
This suggestion was created by Astygia of Wowhead.

I'm okay with WoW using cartoonish character models (not really cartoonish, but just by comparison to the newer MMOs out there), and I'm ok with every scene, setting, and character detail not looking like it's currently being directed by James Cameron. That said, I believe adding a TEENSY bit more ability to make your toon unique would go an incredibly long way and be loved by the WoW masses.

How it works

I'm shamelessly stealing the mechanics behind this from Aion, and probably from other MMOs too since it's pretty simple. The concept of gear customization is unlocked and introduced to you at level 20 by an NPC that basically says 'yo I like my sword but it's fugly, I want it to look like this sword instead', you follow the quest breadcrumbs and discover the item remodeller. Upon speaking with the NPC, she tells you to put the item you want to keep (the master item) in the top box, and the item you want it to look like (the skin) in the bottom box. You pay a fee, the 'skinned' item is destroyed and its appearance permanently applied to the master item.

Items skinned in this way can essentially be cosmetically recycled forever; in other words if that 2h sword skin you're using now is still just the sexiest thing in the universe to you but you just got a blade with better stats, you can take that old 2h sword, skin it on top of your new piece, and enjoy the sexy new stats while still slinging the same look.

Limitations

Level of the skin and level of the master item are irrelevant, so a level 85 shoulderplate could be skinned onto a level 10 shoulderplate, or vice-versa. The stipulation is skins must be the same item type as the gear they are being applied to. Basically this means cloth shoulders can only be skinned with other cloth shoulders, plate chest with plate chest, 1h swords with 1h swords, so on and so forth. While I think this is an important limitation for weapons to avoid ridiculousness (a rogue with daggers remodeled into dual Armageddons would be funny for about 10 seconds and retarded for the rest of the week), I am not sure if it's such a huge deal for armor and don't think folks would have a real problem with the ability to make their cloth look like plate or anything in between.

Legendary items.. not sure if they should be skinnable; they are after all legendary and beyond unique. I could go either way with allowing them to be skinned I suppose. However, soulbound items can be skinned on top of unbinding 'trash' gear. This means you could actually farm the older instances (I'm looking at you, Burning Crusade!) for the more flashy, crazy bits of gear, and skin those boss drops onto gray vendor trash, then sell the skins on the broker. Which leads me to my next bolded section!

Why do this?

Forget about making your toon all unique and sexy for a moment...and remember the devs worked f'in hard on that old stuff, and you don't even stop to pay homage to it, do ya? When was your last pilgrimage to the Black Temple! Consider that this would bring a massive amount of activity into content that has so much appeal to offer, not just cosmetically but in gameplay and lore, but is completely skipped and forgotten these days because it's just not part of the flow anymore. People would go there again, to farm the skins for themselves, and/or as a lucrative way to make some gold by selling the more exotic and cool skins out there, and in doing so would actually get to see and feel the content of yesteryear.

And on a your-toon level...think back to BC, or even early vanilla; wasn't there a piece or two (or a set or two) of gear that still, to this day, nothing has really come close to being that cool? For me, a prime example would be the Bulwark of Azzinoth, the most beastly and intimidating shield in the game. Sure to you it's just a hunk of curvy, spiky metal, but to this day, no other shield out there has ever looked so awesome in the hands of my warrior, or hanging from my warrior's back. By today's standards though...the stats, not so awesome. I know many, many players feel the same way about various items, and allowing such models to be reused and kept alive would go a long way in putting some activity attention into the content of old.

Also, I don't care what server you're on, adding a new commodity to the market (skins) would be a hell of a boost to your local auction house.

Publicado por Interest

Reserved (for even more suggestions)

Publicado por 127599

This post was from a user who has deleted their account.

Publicado por Interest

Haven't read it yet, but DAMN Interest!

Also first.

Lol, you need to really look at my other threads.

Publicado por 304214

This post was from a user who has deleted their account.

Publicado por 788184

This post was from a user who has deleted their account.

Publicado por Cambo

Publicado por drenched

return of the long ass quest chains please!
and keys and attunemet! there was nothing wrong with that but blizzard has to cassualize everything ):
and more world pvp also no more pvp gear!

Publicado por SirQuake

Publicado por Interest

I'd rather have more cowbell than more Sunwell.

But I like your fleshed out ideas of player housing.
I'd like to suggest keys to houses, which are unique to the player's account on a certain faction. Or perhaps a hearth-stone or portal device to enter the house.

I'm pretty sure I mentioned something about a portal...

Hmm..

Give us the ability to scale Dungeons to the level of people entering them. I wouldn't mind a level 85 Stratholme or Scolomance.

And in concordance with that, scale Raids to group size. Give me a 5 man Ulduar dungeon with the ability to still be able to do the 25 man Raid. I think the only thing you would need to scale down would be HP and Damage of the attacks for a 5 man Dungeon group as opposed to a raid group.

I was thinking about that, but the sheer amount of work for it would be quite daunting...even more than most of the suggestions I put that would require extensive work.

Publicado por Monday

Hey Interest, do you know how to use anchors?

Publicado por Interest

Hey Interest, do you know how to use anchors?

I'm planning on adding the anchors soon. Don't worry.

Publicado por Monday

Alright, thanks. That'd make it much easier to navigate.

Publicado por SirQuake

Give us the ability to scale Dungeons to the level of people entering them. I wouldn't mind a level 85 Stratholme or Scolomance.

And in concordance with that, scale Raids to group size. Give me a 5 man Ulduar dungeon with the ability to still be able to do the 25 man Raid. I think the only thing you would need to scale down would be HP and Damage of the attacks for a 5 man Dungeon group as opposed to a raid group.

I was thinking about that, but the sheer amount of work for it would be quite daunting...even more than most of the suggestions I put that would require extensive work.

There is another MMO out there that does something like this. It scales for how many people you have in your party (up to 8). The only bad thing was, there were different ""missions" so you had to zone into a seperate map. If you added someone, the difficulty changed. Not quite sure how WoW could implement this without having maybe a portal after each boss or mobs only spawn when the party gets close enough to the spawn point. The downside would be a rogue stealthing through the entire place and spawning all the mobs and then inviting more people to make it easier.

Publicado por Interest

Publicado por SirQuake

Also, I think that generally follows the rift concept from RIFT right?

I have no idea. I haven't/didn't play Rift. I was speaking of City of Heroes/Villains.

Their Task Forces were locked to the amount of people you started with, but regular missions could add/drop people at will, much like dungeons in WoW.

I've never tried, but can you invite more than 10 people into a 10 man raid without it bumping you to a 25?

What if I want to do BoT with 16 of my guild members and not have to pug 8 people to make a required 25 yet not get our rear ends handed to us on a smoking ring of fire?

If they could scale difficulty to X people in the raid I think it would be a great idea. When it comes to loot, let's say any group over 18 drops the higher tier gear.

I'm not a programmer. Frankly, the thought of trying to code something as complex as a 25 man raid makes my head want to explode so I don't know hoiw hard it would be for the system to check say.. level of Group Leader against Level of Dungeon and adjust HP/Damage/Healing accordingly, even if it were for say a 5 man group of level 85s going into Utgarde Pinnacle.

edit: typos

Publicado por Interest

Anchors are set up. Enjoy.

Making WoW more fun: A suggestion compilation (Half of which are now in the game)

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