Blue-Sky WoW

[Khaldun]

Thinking about a wish list always makes me think a bit about what kinds of innovations are possible in WoW over the longer haul, what would give the game even longer legs than it's already had from my perspective. What would make it shiny when it inevitably starts to get dull again some time before the next expansion.

I have a really different list of blue-sky ideas when it comes to MMOGs in general. But I don't expect WoW to suddenly become a sandbox design, or have a dynamic world. I accept it for what it is. I'm more interested in what *can* be introduced into it that will add a new element of fun--Wrath has some novelties along those lines (yes, even vehicles, overused to the point of annoyance, are fun in smaller doses).

Here's my personal list:

1. More boss fights where classes have to switch roles in some respect or do something unfamiliar. Like mages having to tank one boss in Gruul. This has to be done carefully so you don't create an effective requirement to have a particular class in order to survive an encounter or make it so that if one person screws up, everything else is a total fail, but I really like it when you have to take on a role that is unfamiliar to you in a scripted fight. Not only does that get you out of tank-and-spank mindlessness, if it involves learning what another class does and how they do it, that's good for the game. It's really frustrating when you're in a raid with dps'ers who don't understand at all how a healing class or tanking class actually does what they do. And here's the really interesting part of this idea: with the dual-spec mechanism coming, I wonder if it would be possible to literally make the dps'er into a tank for a single encounter. E.g., just like you hop into a vehicle and then have to control it using a different action menu, you could make a dps'er have to "hop into" a classic level 80-build tank or healer for one portion of the fight. Alternatively, you could just have the standard abilities of one class suddenly perform the role of another: say, for example, a boss where all melee dps on the boss translates not into damage but into HOTs on the tank, while all healing on the raid translates into damage to the boss.

2. More sophisticated reputation systems that have branching consequences. One of the things that annoys me a bit in Wrath are the questlines where NPCs *ought* to react negatively to you based on something you did somewhere else, but don't, or ought to hate you based on some other faction you have good relationships with. I actually liked the Scryer/Aldor choice in that respect. I agree that you have to allow that kind of choice to be reversible through a quest or something of that sort, but I'd like to have NPCs see me in variable ways depending on things I've actually done, and for some quests to have multiple possible outcomes.

3. More effort towards designing a level of 5-man content that's intended to be the most demanding in the game in terms of the coordination or precision required in an instance. I think Wrath has already demonstrated that 10-man content can be harder than 25-man content, if the scripting on the bosses is the same and it's just that they have more health and a few new wrinkles. 10-man Naxx to me often seems to require more care or focus, for example. So why not do the same with 5-man? There are times where I'd really like to go into a Heroic with 4 other guildies and do something that's really demanding.

4. Raids which scale rewards and difficulty to the number of people in the raid, up to 25. Why just 10 and 25? Why not have a Naxx where the minimum to go in is 10, but where the instance sets the health and difficulty of trash and bosses variably to the number of people who enter, and resets as numbers change? E.g., say you have 15 people for a Naxx raid. You enter, and the instance sets to 15. It'll stay at the 15-man setting within a plus or minus range of 1 toon (so if you add someone midway through, it's 15; drop one and it's 15). If you are plus-or-minus 2, it requires you to reenter, but with progress saved to wherever you were, so that the instance can reset difficulty appropriately. This would eliminate a lot of hassle around raid formation. If your guild can only scramble 15 or 18 or 13 that night, no problem: that's the raid you'll be doing.

5. A fourth class role. I really think that if anyone can think of another role for players besides damage/healing/tanking, it'll be Blizzard. I grant that it's really tough to think of something along these lines at this point in the history of DIKU-style MMOGs. An obvious possibility is to take all the utility abilities that DIKU-style games have had over the years and load a class up with all of them: transport utility, buffing utility, unlocking utility, scouting utility, etc. But of course you'd impoverish classes that are valued for their special contribution already, and you'd fuck the utility class over hard because it wouldn't have any ability at all to solo.

One idea that I *do* think might work is a class that takes the limited MC ability of priests and goes whole-hog with it. Call it a "possession" class, where the class itself is a disembodied spirit or wraith whose gameplay is almost entirely based on taking over mobs and playing them--basically a version of a monster class. You wouldn't be like a hunter with a stable full of regular hosts--every game session you'd make a new choice of host. So today I'm in Storm Peaks? Fine, I'm a mechagnome or a Son of Hodir or  a worm. Tonight I'm in Naxx-25? Fine, I'm a gargoyle.

I dunno. But I really really wish someone would come up with some distinctive new thing for a class to *do* in the game, something that wasn't just a variant heal, tank or dps formula.

[Sjofn]

2. More sophisticated reputation systems that have branching consequences. One of the things that annoys me a bit in Wrath are the questlines where NPCs *ought* to react negatively to you based on something you did somewhere else, but don't, or ought to hate you based on some other faction you have good relationships with. I actually liked the Scryer/Aldor choice in that respect. I agree that you have to allow that kind of choice to be reversible through a quest or something of that sort, but I'd like to have NPCs see me in variable ways depending on things I've actually done, and for some quests to have multiple possible outcomes.

That's probably the big one for me. Sometimes dialogue changes based on who I am or what I've done (The Ebon Watcher is all, "These Argent Crusaders, huh? They don't understand what we know." to my DK, but was basically all, "Hey what's up" instead to my hunter. I like little touches like that and wish there were more. It's a little silly when an NPC tells me NPC DK Man isn't like OTHER creepy, possibly evil deathknights, he's a good guy ... to my deathknight. Surely he'd have a little more tact than that. :P

[Koyasha]

2. More sophisticated reputation systems that have branching consequences. One of the things that annoys me a bit in Wrath are the questlines where NPCs *ought* to react negatively to you based on something you did somewhere else, but don't, or ought to hate you based on some other faction you have good relationships with. I actually liked the Scryer/Aldor choice in that respect. I agree that you have to allow that kind of choice to be reversible through a quest or something of that sort, but I'd like to have NPCs see me in variable ways depending on things I've actually done, and for some quests to have multiple possible outcomes.

I, too, would really like to see something like this.  I still think EQ did factions better than any other game, though far from perfect.  There were a lot of faction inter-relations, you could raise and lower pretty much ANY faction, you had a lot of freedom as far as your faction choices went.  I had wood elves that could walk around Neriak without trouble and there were trolls and dark elves that could go into 'goodie' cities.  Velious was a triumph, though incomplete of multi-faction relations between the giants, dragons, and dwarves.  Seeing something like that, only polished to get all the rough edges out of it would be awesome in WoW.

3. More effort towards designing a level of 5-man content that's intended to be the most demanding in the game in terms of the coordination or precision required in an instance. I think Wrath has already demonstrated that 10-man content can be harder than 25-man content, if the scripting on the bosses is the same and it's just that they have more health and a few new wrinkles. 10-man Naxx to me often seems to require more care or focus, for example. So why not do the same with 5-man? There are times where I'd really like to go into a Heroic with 4 other guildies and do something that's really demanding.

This sounds nice in theory, but I'm not sure how effective it would be in practice.  Difficult for one group is less so for another, and that's not just because of skill and gear, but simple class abilities.  There are fights in the game right now where if you don't bring someone who can cleanse poisons, are vastly more difficult and/or irritating than if you bring such a person.  Even normal raids assume you have all these basic abilities covered, so they can throw stuff at you that requires that stuff, but single-group content can't assume you have all that basic stuff.

5. A fourth class role. I really think that if anyone can think of another role for players besides damage/healing/tanking, it'll be Blizzard. I grant that it's really tough to think of something along these lines at this point in the history of DIKU-style MMOGs. An obvious possibility is to take all the utility abilities that DIKU-style games have had over the years and load a class up with all of them: transport utility, buffing utility, unlocking utility, scouting utility, etc. But of course you'd impoverish classes that are valued for their special contribution already, and you'd fuck the utility class over hard because it wouldn't have any ability at all to solo.

A lot of classes in EQ were support classes.  Crowd Control: Enchanters, Bards.  Pulling: Bards, Monks.  Buffs: Shamans, Bards.  Trouble with this and the reason they decided to avoid this design in WoW is, I think, because it's harder to balance.  Anything that doesn't work on direct numbers is very difficult to balance.  If an enchanter/bard can lock down 4 mobs and take them out of the fight, the fight is either impossible without a CC class or very easy with one.  Either that or it's set up in such a way that the CC class being present has minor overall effects on the course of the fight, which leaves you with the question of 'why bring them at all instead of another healer/tank/dps?'  It's something that's very hard to design around and I find it very likely the reason they didn't include any such classes is simply because they couldn't think of a good way to deal with it or they didn't want to bother.

One idea that I *do* think might work is a class that takes the limited MC ability of priests and goes whole-hog with it. Call it a "possession" class, where the class itself is a disembodied spirit or wraith whose gameplay is almost entirely based on taking over mobs and playing them--basically a version of a monster class. You wouldn't be like a hunter with a stable full of regular hosts--every game session you'd make a new choice of host. So today I'm in Storm Peaks? Fine, I'm a mechagnome or a Son of Hodir or  a worm. Tonight I'm in Naxx-25? Fine, I'm a gargoyle.

While this is a brilliant idea, can you imagine the sheer nightmare of balancing it?  EVERY mob would have to be gone over carefully, so that there's at least two or three in every zone that are balanced to be used in this manner, and none that are stupidly overpowered.  Furthermore, it'd be hard on the player too.  If each mob provides an ample number of abilities and such, the player of this class would basically have to get used to a new class every time they possess a new mob.  This is why there's a lot of mobs that are immune to mind control, and those that aren't tend to only have two or three abilities thus making them of questionable value to actually MC.  In order to keep them from accidentally introducing dozens of overpowered mobs that can be controlled.  They can just have most of them suck because it's just a gimmick anyway, but if it was a core class ability, every mob that could be possessed would have to be reasonably balanced.

I do think something in this vein has been tried in FFXI, but I haven't played since it was introduced, so I couldn't tell you any details.  It's undoubtedly rather limited and such in order to make it feasible.

[Khaldun]

What you could do for mobs if you had a possession class is first, treat them like items: give them a point-equivalence based on abilities, level, whether it's an elite or not, etc., and then peg the ability of the possessor to whether they can get something with those points. The class could have trees forcing it to choose between specializing in a particular type of mob or specializing in flexibility; only the specialists in a particular type could grab the most powerful mobs of that type. Length of possession, ability to access all the mob's abilities, ability to take a mob from outside an instance into an instance, could all be choices made in how you specced the character. And of course you could always just make some mobs off limits (the gargoyles in the Plague wing of Naxx, for example, would have to be impossible to possess).

[Hindenburg]

What you could do for mobs if you had a possession class is first, treat them like items: give them a point-equivalence based on abilities, level, whether it's an elite or not, etc., and then peg the ability of the possessor to whether they can get something with those points. The class could have trees forcing it to choose between specializing in a particular type of mob or specializing in flexibility; only the specialists in a particular type could grab the most powerful mobs of that type. Length of possession, ability to access all the mob's abilities, ability to take a mob from outside an instance into an instance, could all be choices made in how you specced the character. And of course you could always just make some mobs off limits (the gargoyles in the Plague wing of Naxx, for example, would have to be impossible to possess).

Now apply it to pvp.

[Khaldun]

Always the problem in WoW--or any MMOG that tries to do both. Maybe in PvP, you'd have a selected number of mobs that a possessor was allowed to take into an Arena or BG, same way that you disable some spells or items.

[kildorn]

2. More sophisticated reputation systems that have branching consequences. One of the things that annoys me a bit in Wrath are the questlines where NPCs *ought* to react negatively to you based on something you did somewhere else, but don't, or ought to hate you based on some other faction you have good relationships with. I actually liked the Scryer/Aldor choice in that respect. I agree that you have to allow that kind of choice to be reversible through a quest or something of that sort, but I'd like to have NPCs see me in variable ways depending on things I've actually done, and for some quests to have multiple possible outcomes.

That's probably the big one for me. Sometimes dialogue changes based on who I am or what I've done (The Ebon Watcher is all, "These Argent Crusaders, huh? They don't understand what we know." to my DK, but was basically all, "Hey what's up" instead to my hunter. I like little touches like that and wish there were more. It's a little silly when an NPC tells me NPC DK Man isn't like OTHER creepy, possibly evil deathknights, he's a good guy ... to my deathknight. Surely he'd have a little more tact than that. :P

Every time Arthas shows up and pontificates to my DK, I cry a little. BITCH WE USED TO BE LIKE *THIS*

[chargerrich]

Three additional things I would like to see:

1. Better/More underwater content - After playing a game like Vanguard you can gain a true appreciation for how well the underwater movement is done in WoW. I would like to see an underwater city and maybe a "depths of the ocean" underwater raid dungeon (somewhat like underbog access but much deeper and epic). Some underwater submersible "mounts" that would take you to the depths would be fascinating. Also adding some hidden content, hunting grounds, rare resources, etc would given incentive.

2. How about a true pet class, ala the necro in Diablo 2? Where you are literally weak as hell without pets but can raise dead and/or have groups of pets to do your bidding. Make them specific too, i.e. a "necro" class can only raise skeletons, zombies, etc while perhaps a "savage" can have 3 or 4 pigmy's or attack birds, monkeys, wolves, etc.

3. Guild leveling with new "abilities" ala Warhammer.

[Khaldun]

Speaking of Warhammer:

GIVE ME A FUCKING QUEST ITEM BAG. Right after, "Oh shit, another vehicle quest" in this expansion is "Fuck, I need to use that Horn of Skull-Fucking to banish the cooties from the Ensorceled Shitpile, where is that stupid tihng?" At some points, you've got 5-10 slots in your bags full of quest items.

[pxib]

1. Better/More underwater content - After playing a game like Vanguard you can gain a true appreciation for how well the underwater movement is done in WoW. I would like to see an underwater city and maybe a "depths of the ocean" underwater raid dungeon (somewhat like underbog access but much deeper and epic). Some underwater submersible "mounts" that would take you to the depths would be fascinating. Also adding some hidden content, hunting grounds, rare resources, etc would given incentive.

I imagine this is the next expansion... the world and history of the nagas has only been briefly touched, it allows exploration of the dangerous center of the world map, and it explains why everybody had their breath limits increased.

[Sjofn]

2. More sophisticated reputation systems that have branching consequences. One of the things that annoys me a bit in Wrath are the questlines where NPCs *ought* to react negatively to you based on something you did somewhere else, but don't, or ought to hate you based on some other faction you have good relationships with. I actually liked the Scryer/Aldor choice in that respect. I agree that you have to allow that kind of choice to be reversible through a quest or something of that sort, but I'd like to have NPCs see me in variable ways depending on things I've actually done, and for some quests to have multiple possible outcomes.

That's probably the big one for me. Sometimes dialogue changes based on who I am or what I've done (The Ebon Watcher is all, "These Argent Crusaders, huh? They don't understand what we know." to my DK, but was basically all, "Hey what's up" instead to my hunter. I like little touches like that and wish there were more. It's a little silly when an NPC tells me NPC DK Man isn't like OTHER creepy, possibly evil deathknights, he's a good guy ... to my deathknight. Surely he'd have a little more tact than that. :P

Every time Arthas shows up and pontificates to my DK, I cry a little. BITCH WE USED TO BE LIKE *THIS*

For real, it's like, "Baby, don't you remember me?"

[Simond]

I like the three versions of the "Welcome to Northrend" speech Horde characters get from Saurfang:

• Normal version: "Welcome to Warsong Hold. Don't mind Hellscream Jr. - he's just a dick preoccupied" (loosely paraphrased)
• If you've killed Nefarion and turned the head in: "Hellscream has the weight of the Horde upon his shoulders. Do not be dissuaded from your duties because of his temperament, <name>. <Saurfang nods.> Did you think that I would forget the name of a hero of Orgrimmar? It is not every day that I have the pleasure of putting the head of Nefarian on a pike!"
• If you're done the Gates of Ahn'Qiraj questline: "It seems that we always meet in the direst of circumstances, Scarab Lord. Were you not saving the world from certain destruction the last time we met? <Saurfang chuckles.> Your assistance is most welcome in Northrend, despite what the young chieftain might say. If we had even a dozen more soldiers with your power, we would be sitting in Orgrimmar right now, hunched over a warm fire."