Breakfast Topic: Have you been a late adopter of any features?

When pet battles were first announced, I was pretty intrigued. I enjoyed collecting rare pets and mounts, and I usually had my my Kirin Tor Familiar or my Worg Pup out when I was running around. The idea of battling with them and getting even more pets was something I could get behind.

Then Mists of Pandaria came out, and there was always something else to do. I had do dailies, or do heroic dungeons, or raid, or do dailies on my tailoring alt so I could make Royal Satchels. It wasn't that I hated pet battles, it was just that I never seemed to have time for them.

Then patch 5.3 came out. I wasn't too thrilled with Battlefield Barrens, and you can only run Raid Finder Throne of Thunder so many times before it gets a little old. Thus, I decided to finally level that pandaren shaman that I had sitting in Westfall for months, and as I leveled her, I figured I might as well have her do some pet battles.

Here it is, a few weeks later. I'm up to 5 level 25 pets, 370 pet achievement points, and I've been parking alts in Felwood, Silithus, and even Gnomeregan in hopes of grabbing rare pets.

Do I regret not starting pet battles earlier? I don't think I do, really. I had fun with what I was doing before, and I'm really glad pet battles were here to give me a backup when I needed a break from those things. That said, I do sort of wish I had gotten into this a few months earlier, because now I have to wait half a year for that dang Snowy Owl.

What about you? Whether it's been in this expansion or just in general, is there some part of the game it took you a while to get into? Tags: featured, game-discussion, gamer-discussion, world-of-warcraft-discussion, world-of-warcraft-topics, wow-discussion, wow-hot-topics, wow-issues, wow-topics

Filed under: Breakfast Topics

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Community Blog Topic Results: Features we wish WoW had

Last week, we asked, "What 3 features do you wish WoW had?" Quite a few people answered, many with more than three features. For myself, I suggested cross-realm mail, one free server transfer a month, and story questlines for each class. Here's the breakdown of the responses.

Level scaling

Since reading everyone else's ideas, I'd like to boot cross-realm mail out of my top three list and instead replace it with level scaling so that players of disparate levels can play together. Jojo over at Admiring Azeroth would also like to see level scaling be used so that players could return to lower level zones and complete the content with an appropriate amount of challenge. Feckless Leader's Ross has this to say about what scaling down would have to offer the max-level player:

Quest rewards can always contain gold, and perhaps scaled-down players would also earn the currency of the day, or be able to champion faction rep will questing with your friend. Of course this would work for low-level dungeons, too.

Player housing

Blizzard developers have said in the past that they don't like the idea of player housing. Of course they said the same thing about a few changes we've had now, so there's no reason to discount this as a possible option in the future. The reason they gave was that people would hang out in their Azerothian homes, turning captial cities into ghost towns. JeffLaBowski at Sportsbard suggests time limits would solve that problem. Henry at Taufmonster's Log posits that housing should be part of a guild neighborhood.

The guild neighborhood could have shared projects where the group could work together to add things like a bar, profession areas, things like a moonwell. It would then make a great personal gold and time sink but also a group time sink. It would also be great at giving a group identity and group goals.

Jojo from Admiring Azeroth would like to see player housing be implemented more like a gallery or museum area. This area would be where you could store things like archaeological artifacts or transmog armor. In addition, there could be a guild museum where heads of downed bosses could be displayed as well.

I have to say that player housing isn't high on my list because I do like the community feeling of people hanging around the big cities, though it would be nice to have the extra, personalized storage that player housing would provide.

Character copy

JeffLaBowski suggests an innovative way for friends to play together on different realms.

Forget the server transfer. You want a max level toon on any given server. Copy it over. They would have to work out whether you can take items or not. Also, put a decent cooldown on the ability so it wouldn't get abused. Maybe even make it limited to a one time thing per character. I'm thinking no gold and maybe only soulbound items would carry over.

Cross-character dungeon queues

Carlos at Clever Musings has an idea I'd never considered before: the ability to queue for dungeons on one character while playing on another character.

The general idea is that I'd like to be able to log on my main and go do dailies while being queued for a dungeon on an alt. Imagine that you're out in the world, earning reputation with the August Celestials, maybe doing a few pet battles in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms, but when you accept the queue, you're suddenly zoned in, on that alt, to the dungeon.

Account-wide storage

Aion in the comments would like to see at least 20 spaces of storage for account-wide use, much like the stash in Diablo III. Many commenters agreed.

Account-wide heirlooms

One of the most popular ideas in the comments was to make our heirlooms be truly account-wide by making them also cross-server and cross-faction. I agree wholeheartedly.

Tabard storage

Many people including thehuntressinthenight suggested that tabards be on the character pane or chosen from from some other menu rather than taking up space in the bank.

Secondary equipment slots

I love drakynfyre's solution to carrying two sets of equipment around for dual spec or PvP/PvE swapping.

Secondary equipment slots to swap gear out. No more holding equipment in your inventory. The equipment manager would let you open a second set of gear slots, and place your other set there. Gear is inactive while in the secondary slots. Switching gear switches these slots.

Guild store

Both lilkimmi2 at Dead Gnomes Society and JeffLaBowski believe there should be a separate store for guildies, perhaps where guildies could place workorders for crafted items. Or from Dead Gnomes Society:

Allow guild leaders to assign a price to certain items in the GB and open up a payment window when someone wants that item. Give players the option to sell or donate an item to the GB.

10-man LFR

In the comments, jmuiji suggests 10-man LFRs.

The current LFR is 25 so that a little dead weight won't kill the raid. So what? In the current LFR, you get a LOT of dead weight that kills the raid, and all you gain from it is a longer wait time. five-man dungeons have a little dead weight kill the run too, you know the answer to that? Kick the dead weight and get another. A Ten-Man LFR would give you the ability to more easily spot the dead weight and be rid of it, rather than the mass cluster of "It's not my fault!" that you've got now.

Peer policing

JS in the comments suggests a punk button that could be used once a year in order to boot a funsucker out of the game for 24 hours. More seriously, Feckless Leader suggests that the League of Legends Tribunal System be used in WoW.

Account-bound professions

BapoThe-Paladin posits that professions become account bound. Carmelo at Clever Musings suggests that professions be transferred. I think I prefer the account-bound solution, but either way would fix my problem with changing my main and realm and therefore not having access to my maxed out professions.

Appear offline

Ravyncat1 is one of many who want the ability to appear offline to Real ID and Battletag friends. This seems like such a simple, fundamental feature to any chat program that I am surprised it wasn't implemented from the beginning.

Open tapping

A few people agree with SallyBowls that open tapping of mobs and resource nodes would be a great idea. This way, playing together in all of these newly full Cross Realm Zones would be more enjoyable.

Cross-faction grouping

Both Kandorr and Taufmonster would like to see cross faction grouping so that you could play with anyone on your Real ID/Battletag friends list, regardless of faction.

A path for Best in Slot gear for each group size

In the comments, schmidt had a few great ideas, my favorite of which being his idea that Blizzard provide gear paths according to what group size you prefer to play in.

Provide paths towards BIS gear for all group sizes - raid, party, small group (scenarios), and solo - with roughly equivalent difficulty. If individual loot is implemented, it would be possible to have all such content share looting limits for the cutting edge gear across all group sizes, thus making it mostly useless from a gearing perspective to do all content every week, and as a consequence allowing the player to choose what he wants to do.

Gear dyeing

A few people including Tgail suggested being able to dye your gear different colors. It seems to me that this would make the crafting professions more attractive for making money as they'd be able to sell different colors of the same gear.

There were quite a few more ideas and variations of the same idea bandied about in the blogs and comments for last week's question, but it would take another page or two to list them all here. I tried to pick the most innovative or commonly asked for features with one exception: I left off merging servers or single server suggestions on purpose to discuss more fully in our next Community Blog Topic. Stay tuned! Tags: community-blog-topic, community-blog-topic-results, featured, features, game-discussion, gamer-discussion, world-of-warcraft-discussion, world-of-warcraft-topics, wow-discussion, wow-hot-topics, wow-issues, wow-topics

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion

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Community Blog Topic: What 3 features do you wish WoW had?

In the results of last week's Blog Community Topic, many people included wish lists for changes to World of Warcraft along with what they felt was wrong with the game. there were quite a few good ideas, but not really related to the topic. So this week, we want to know what is your list of the top three features you would like added to WoW.

Personally, I'm rather happy with the game as it is, but I still have a wishlist of things that would make my experience in Azeroth even better.

Free server transfers

I would like Blizzard to provide one free server transfer a month per account. It seems to me that many people are quitting the game because they can't afford the $25 to move their characters to a higher population server. Also, quite selfishly, I have some characters that I'd like to move to Zangarmarsh, our It came from the Blog guild server. And while I've paid to transfer characters there before, I really can't afford to keep shelling out the dough. I think this change would go a long way toward keeping people happy and still playing the game -- which is good for everyone.

Unique class storylines

I love what Star Wars: The Old Republic did with classes. Leveling up while following epic storylines specific to your class was a blast. I'd love to see something similar in WoW. I'd like to see what Blizzard has done with the monks' Peak of Serenity and the warlock's green fire quest done for every class. Perhaps we could get solo scenarios every 10 levels with an epic one at max level that might even need a group. I don't know. It doesn't have to be implemented that way, but something that made each class unique would be wonderful.

Account-wide mail

I want my account-wide heirlooms to actually be account-wide and not just server/faction-wide. I'd like to send cash and bags to my young Alliance duo that I am leveling with my daughter. Or at least just cash. I can see where this would affect the local economies, but we can already move cash around right now by selling battle pets acquired and leveled on different realms.

What about you? What are the top three features you would like to see added to World of Warcraft? Put your answer on your blog and post a link in the comments below. Or, if you don't have a WoW-related blog, just leave a comment. We'll spotlight some of the responses next week. Tags: community-blog-topic, featured, game-discussion, gamer-discussion, world-of-warcraft-discussion, world-of-warcraft-topics, wow-discussion, wow-hot-topics, wow-issues, wow-topics

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion

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A wish list for features in 5.2 or beyond

I'm greedy. Oh, not in a monetary sense - I'm notoriously bad at even pretending to care about money - but whenever Blizzard puts out a cool new feature it immediately gets me thinking about other cool new features I'd like to see added to the game. I know, I know, I should be happy with what I have. But since I'm not, here comes a list of features I wish they'd add to World of Warcraft, be it in patch 5.2 or in some future patch.

All of these are based purely on my selfish desires, and are in now way promised or even hinted at by Blizzard, so please don't start asking Blizzard why they haven't delivered on any of them. That would be like going to McDonald's and demanding that Bacon Sausage Egg McMuffin (with Canadian Bacon) that I dreamed up when I was 20. Seriously, how has that never actually been a thing? My cardiovascular health dodged a bullet there.

The Revenge for Southshore battleground/World PvP hub

Seriously, how is it this hasn't happened yet? It seems like a natural to me. While the World PvP might be a bit too disruptive to leveling characters (relatively easily fixed with a phasing change, but it might be better to just make it a battleground up front) the actual idea seems simple enough - Alliance landing craft disgorge a massive force on the beaches south of the ruined Southshore and begin their push north. As players, we either defend Tarren Mill, or take part in the drive for revenge northward. Victory is achieved by claiming a series of important strategic points and then taking the other faction's starting zone and successfully destroying it. Perhaps it's just nostalgia for all the times we ran into Tarren Mill back in the day only to discover we couldn't really do anything, but I'd love to finally set it on fire.
A portable transmogrification vendor

I have a mount with a reforger and a vendor and that's pretty awesome. Engineers can make portable mailboxes, repair bots, there's even anvils you can drop and go. My wife likes to joke that her hunter is essentially a small moving town at this point. The one thing we lack is a portable option for transmogrification. Is this a necessary feature? Of course not, that would be absurd to even argue. It would be cool, though, and I'm all for cool. As it stands, with my reforger handy, I have at times been able to slap a piece of gear on right after getting it, and with a transmog option I could assuage that voice in my head that keeps insisting that I should keep the replaced item on until I can mog it to match my current gear.

Of course, in order for this to work, we'd also need a portable personal bank/void storage guy. I'm okay with this. Would I use this to change my look during raids? Yes, I probably would. I know I have a problem.

More void storage

I won't bother to justify this. I need more void storage. Give me tabs or whatever, I'll pay whatever ridiculous in game gold sum you force me to pay, just please let me have more space. My weapon and armor collection is getting ludicrously out of hand. And yes, I do need every single one of those two handed swords, even the ones I never mog to at all.

More Caverns of Time

I know Nozdormu has lost his Aspect of Time superpowers, but that doesn't mean the Caverns of Time went anywhere, and we know that we still have the threat of the Infinite Dragonflight, since by definition those guys exist in a different time frame. Heck, with the Bronzes potentially folding up shop, that just leaves us with the responsibility to ensure the timeline isn't hijacked.

The WoW TCG has the interesting Timewalkers concept; I say it's time that WoW makes them a faction in game, gives us a bunch of daily quests involving going to various timeways and ensuring that our timeline comes to pass, and lets us become Timewalkers charged with the defense of existence.

And yes, I want to get to see classic moments from Warcraft in the game. I want to get to go back to the sacking of Stormwind, the betrayal of Gul'dan and the Tomb of Sargeras, even the Troll Wars. There's a ton of awesome stuff in the past for players to go mucking about trying to save. We could even have entire Battlegrounds set in the past, or even the future! That's not even counting stuff like the rebellion against the mogu or the last Pandaren emperor Shaohao's creation of the Mists. Okay, so I'm a total mark for the CoT concept.

Scaling content

One of the things I really admire about the design for challenge modes is that the gear level is adjusted down to keep them challenging - you can't just gear up and blow through them. They can get easier because you grow familiar with them and learn short cuts and strategies, but not just because you came back with ilevel 500+ gear and blow them up.

I want to see this tech used more and in new ways. There are a lot of dungeons in the game right now that would be cool to revisit. Imagine if your random dungeon queue could have every single dungeon in the game in it, and either the monsters and bosses scaled up to you, or you scaled down to them. You could use a variation of the scenario reward box to ensure that players could gear up for future content while running scaled dungeons (one of the reasons I usually run three or four scenarios in a day is just to see if the loot box gives me another epic) and the older drops could still be rewarding for transmog.

I'd also like to see some form of mentoring make it into WoW. For ease of use, I'd prefer something that could be used to bootstrap a lower level character up to a similar power level as the higher level mentor (I could easily imagine some form of scenario tech being used here as well, so that the lower level character is brought into scenarios alongside their mentor) but one that lowered the ilevel on the higher level character's gear could work too.

Randomly generated content

As cool as instanced content is, it's predictable - once you've run a raid or dungeon enough times, you know it. Some games, like the Diablo series, use randomly generated maps to compensate for this to some degree - the mobs and bosses are usually the same, but the path to them is randomly generated and you don't know exactly where or when you'll encounter them.

I don't think we should replace dungeons as we know them with nothing but random maps, but I do think the occasional random dungeon crawl could be fun. You could even use the scenario tech (again I fall back to scenarios, they're definitely some of my favorite content right now) and have one or two new scenarios a content patch that were random dungeon crawls with possibilities for big cool looking rewards.

That's probably enough out of me. What about you? What would you like to see?

Mists of Pandaria is here! The level cap has been raised to 90, many players have returned to Azeroth, and pet battles are taking the world by storm. Keep an eye out for all of the latest news, and check out our comprehensive guide to Mists of Pandaria for everything you'll ever need to know.
Tags: caverns-of-time, features-wanted, mists-of-pandaria, patch-.2, transmog, transmogrification, void-storage, wish-list

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Lore, Mists of Pandaria

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Patch 5.2 features new spell effects

The folks at Wowhead have found a whole mess of new spell effects coming in Patch 5.2. These include effects for several new talents, like the rogue talents Marked for Death and Hit and Run, which replace current talents like Preparation which is going baseline. Also getting new effects are redesigned talents such as the warlock's Blood Fear and the Monk ability Nimble Brew.

It's interesting to see redesigned abilities also getting new effects - you'd expect it of entirely new talents, of course, but going back and redoing existing abilities, even if they are getting revamped, is not quite as expected. It's welcome, of course, and some other abilities could use some new paint as well - I'd like to see Enrage get a once over, as an example.

Mists of Pandaria is here! The level cap has been raised to 90, many players have returned to Azeroth, and pet battles are taking the world by storm. Keep an eye out for all of the latest news, and check out our comprehensive guide to Mists of Pandaria for everything you'll ever need to know.
Tags: mists-of-pandaria, monk, patch-5.2, patch-5.2-ptr, rogue, spell-effects, warlock

Filed under: Rogue, Warlock, Analysis / Opinion, Monk, Mists of Pandaria

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