The Egotistical Priest
An irreverent and opinionated discussion of the many classes
in the World of Warcraft gaming universe.
Suggestions for Blizzard Re: Fun
by Vonya
I was catching up on my blogs this morning (haven’t had time to since last Tuesday, I think, so I was waaaaay behind), and I saw a post by Big Bear Butt Blogger reminding Blizzard to add FUN, not just content.
I fired up my comment, and then decided I’d do a little post on it instead.
To set the scene, “fun” things are those that don’t impact progression, have nothing to do with balancing or unbalancing classes, and really have no purpose beyond looking cool. BBB’s examples ranged from the most commonly anticipated feature in the upcoming expansion (if you guessed instances, you’d be wrong…it was HAIRSTYLES) to the removal of the ghost wolf from being tameable by hunters without giving some kind of replacement.
Ghost wolves may break lore, but in truth, it was just another skin for a common wolf model. How much does it take to add another skin? Same wolf, same capabilities, no better or worse than other hunter pets….just something different.
My Suggestions :
Mounts!
I’m going to echo the oft-repeated pleas for more mounts. Hide the bloody things behind long, gruelling, group-requirement quest lines, I don’t care. But the mount you ride is one of the first things that people notice about you as you meander Shattrath or Stormwind (or…whatever city you hordies go to. Undercity, where the glow of the ichor moat can highlight the fur of your beloved undead bat mount, who knows).
Mounts, mounts, mounts.
Why, EXACTLY, did Blizzard only implement a single color for the Cenarian rep mounts? WHY? The things are bloody expensive, add MORE colors! The epic flying mount? It’s nice, sure…but why not toss neat armor on the other colors available instead of having the armor color be the only thing that changes? (and for the love of all that is holy, FIX the bloody hideous colors you gave the regular horde flying mounts. The 10-second washed out pastel skins are SHAMEFUL and whoever designed and approved them should get a swift kick to the beanbags).
Class mounts! Give more of them like the epic flight form quest! People LOVE this stuff, and you wouldn’t even have to implement new models to make it work. People would be happy with recolors of existing mounts!
People CRAVE uniqueness. They want to be different and special and turn heads.
Critter Taming
-Also- (and here’s my favorite suggestion)
Hunters and engineers.
Engineers should make pet traps - little contraptions with mediocre material requirements.
Hunters (and hunters only) can take these little traps and set them throughout Azeroth and Outland and “tame pet” the little critters you see running around. The critter might resist the tame pet and run away. The critter might enrage, turning into an elite level 72 mob that the hunter then has to kill or be killed. The critter might enter the cage and “die”, thus using up the cage and netting nothing….
….or the critter might be captured, and can then be sold to ANYONE as a BOE item.
Remember all those colorful parrots in Un’Goro? How about the little fire beetles in Shattered Halls? Or the spiders and rats? Or the millions of other “flavor” critters running around?
Heck, don’t even make it hunter-only - anyone can use the traps. Set it out and if a critter gets close enough, they are affected by it.
You could go all out on this. Cooks can make up a “critter bait” recipe that makes it more likely that the catch will be successful. Alchemists can make “Eau De Crittair” that also increases the catch likelihood.
It’s goofy, it’s stupid, it has absolutely no bearing on the effectiveness of the game or the PvE or PvP capabilities of the game.
But here you’ve given everyone something silly to do, incorporating the talents of multiple professions (or, for a more simplistic version you could just have a vendor sell the cages for 100 gold a pop)
And you just KNOW Shattrath would be teeming with the little buggers the next time you walk through it, people proudly showing off the pet they’d tamed.
Special non-critter pets would still be rewards from blizzard - no elephants, sporebats, or dragonlings - but you KNOW that your farmer from Westfall needs a cow following him around Stormwind.
=]
FUN. Goofy, meaningless fun.
We need more of it.
Edit : They’d never go this far, but I’d totally go for critter battles, where you can set your pet to “aggressive” and it’ll attack other “aggressive” pets randomly. Neither of them die, but you’d hear little battle cries and the loser would scurry back to their “cage” in your inventory.
January 21st, 2008
This needs to happen.
The first thing I’d tame would be the skunks. OMG, they are to die for cute. I cried when I found out they weren’t the pets for Draenei.
January 21st, 2008
I love the idea of critter battles!
And that way critters have more meaning than casting Polymorph: Pig on a spider and calling it spiderpig.
January 21st, 2008
I am for languages. Languages, languages.
Let them be trained. Turn them off if you don’t want to see what Horde says!
Another good usage would be allowing Human diplomacy to enable a human to at least understand any language. It’d add an actual flare to be able to play say, an intellectual mage who’s enamored with the idea of knowledge through any language available, or the battle-tested warrior who’s learned to communicate with his most violent of foes by continued confrontation over the years.
I dunno, I just love the idea and it makes me sad they won’t go anywhere with it.
January 21st, 2008
/vote for more flavor
(damnit I wanted a bright blue Cenarion mount for my little nelf girl so bad :/)
January 21st, 2008
There is so much potential in this game–all of your suggestions, and those of the commenters above, seem to be relatively easy to implement. I’m tempted to write my own essay on the topic. Maybe we can start a groundswell that Blizzard won’t be able to ignore!
January 21st, 2008
Please don’t post this stuff anymore. You just get me all excited for things that will NEVER happen. They’re great ideas, and silly, unimportant, FUN, exploratory things is exactly what this game needs, but sadly I have no faith it’ll ever happen.
January 21st, 2008
yeah.That’s good idea.^^
January 21st, 2008
@shatter
Yeah I wish they had a way to speak the other languages. Heck even to just let us learn the other languages of our own faction.
Or maybe some sort of unremovable tourist buff that transforms you into another race for a while so you can explore faction specific dungeons or their cities.
January 21st, 2008
Some good funs there, Ego. Sleepy Willy and Speedy the Turtle have told me they wish to forms theyselves a 2v2 arena team.
And I still says blacksmiths need a flying anvil mount. You know, to uphold our dignity when congregating with engineers.
January 21st, 2008
Some one on some blog somewhere made reference to enchanters being able to create little enchantment pets, similar to some of the things running around Silvermoon city. Little arcane anomalies, or little Curator guys, etc.. would be pretty cool, and just up the everyday enjoyment for many.
January 22nd, 2008
Perhaps introducing battle pets will give too much of a Pokémon feeling or whatever other japanese themed cartoons out there (Yugo-something?).
I like the idea tho, gives something to do during down-periods at raids for example.
But how about pet emotes then? Wouldn’t it be cool to let my non combat pet dance, quickly joined by other people’s pets? Or perhaps even humm or sing?
Now that would defo bring some Gizmo feeling back for us old farts
January 22nd, 2008
Shatter brings up a good point. The language barrier between Horde and Alliance is artificial at best and serves no purpose other than dividing the resources of servers in half. Lore-wise it obviously makes sense but there’s no reason you couldn’t “learn” (by some means) to speak the other languages. NPC’s certainly have NO problem with it and they’re composed almost entirely of core, playable faction races.
PVP (servers and battlegrounds) are a different story. The amount of smack talk (QQ if you will) could be overwhelming and entirely undesirable for most casual players (Hillsbrad/STV come to mind).
PS: We live in Orgrimmar.
January 28th, 2008
Hi Ego.
I think you miss something in this game, if you call for fourth fun
http://www.wowwiki.com/List_of_pop_culture_references_in_Warcraft
Have a nice day.
January 30th, 2008
The emote got me thinking, emote for anything you are controlling. Such as Mind Control. Or when a hunter is using .. eye of the beast? Where you can control your pet. that would be fun. Emotes for tonks would be cool! Slap some hydraulics in there and make your tonk “dance”!
Let horde do the quest chain to get the Furbolg wand! I want to turn into a furbolg!
Just be prepared for the legion of whiners who will scream “why are you working on this when my class is obviously broken!”
February 14th, 2008
I’ve always been a fan of the “more mounts” movement - I think every class (except for huntards) should have an epic mount. For priests, I propose an angel flight form. Picture a giant “Spirit of Redemption” flying around, or for shadow priests add some wings fo Shadowform.
February 22nd, 2008
Wow, what a brilliant idea. Your whole trapping critters thing… I cry inside, thinking that it will never be…
Its just soooo good.
March 8th, 2008
free car quote…
Excellent post. Keep it up!…