A Few Thoughts About (the future of) WoW
Posted: Fri May 13, 2011 11:46 pm
Seeing that my newest post on the official forums relates to the future of WoW and this forum is the next best thing considering it also regards the future of WoW I thought about all of the things they're incorporating into 4.2 and what perhaps should be next in their development.
It was mentioned by Ghostcrawler that he'd like to see less abilities on our bars. Indeed I think it would be nice to have simple action bars to the point of maybe filling a bar or two yet very unique classes. I thought this over for a while and I wondered about what I would really like to see in the World of Warcraft in general and I thought of something I felt would make the game a lot better. To me, getting new spells every few patches and having my talents overhauled every expansion seems to be old hat and more of a tiring process than anything past the initial joy of getting something new to stuff in my already packed actionbars.
What would I rather see instead of this? How about completely new game features, though not something like improved guild recruitment. How about new game features to make the game fun no matter how quickly you progress? How about something all levels could benefit from? I once played an MMO larger than WoW from across the pond.
It doesn't get much voice here in the United States though it is very interesting in its own right. There are many ideas I'd like to see be absorbed into the World of Warcraft. What about zones that always remain significant? I'm tired of never visiting places I once liked due to the resources from that location becoming useless. How many people are in Westfall or Shadowmoon Valley nowadays? Is it really acceptable to see players in such dense masses over certain areas? Instead wouldn't it be better to have old zones be just as significant to us as they were when we first wandered through them? I'm sure it could be figured out. Putting Onyxia near Theramore was (relatively speaking) somwhat in the right step. Things that are useful to all levels in most zones would be better though. They did it..
What about talents? I like balance more than I like new talents. Perhaps we could have something similar to what The Path of the Titans was supposed to provide us? I really enjoyed the idea of being a hunter of a certain spec remaining different from another hunter who chose the same spec as me because it would create much more variety. I'd rather have that over more levels. If you're concerned about content and levels why not just create more zones and merely provide better gear from those zones instead of routinely changing our abilities and giving us higher numbers to reach? It would keep us busy. Group quests that actually require groups would also be nice. An idea stemming from that would be spontaneous world events becoming more common people can come together for and take advantage of. It would make people of the same realm more involved with one another.
Graphics? FPS games, along with other MMOs have proven that graphics becoming more improved are all part of becoming immersed in a game. A dark forest isn't the same without more detailed looking trees and more convincing textures. Many of the textures in WoW seem flat and boring to me. The trees look like the shrubs in the front of my house, only 2D. Even the rooftops don't have individual shingles but instead are painted on in a manner that makes them look cartoony. While WoW's cartoony charm lasted for quite some time it's losing its touch with me. I eyeball other more detailed MMOs out there and wonder what they could hold for me in terms of immersion and visiting another world.
Where is WoW going? I like it, sure, but it seems that the things that really power a game seem to be taking the back seat in terms of WoW itself progressing as a whole. All that's been left to do is raid, or do dungeon runs which seem to be versions of raids, only smaller. There are battlegrounds, and then little battlegrounds we call arenas. I've been doing the same things for years now and it would be nice to see some more variety of things with significance to them reach our fingertips. Archeology and its involvement with Path of the Titans would have been a great start if it hadn't been scratched in mid developement of the expansion. I want more choices of things to do. I want to make things that effect different parts of the game never before imagined. There are interesting ideas such as those who could make one-use keys to specific dungeons. Perhaps those contested areas could all become capturable with the reward of dungeons and such accessible with those same keys.
Why do we need new abilities every expansion? Why not just work on the game itself? The new features in terms of graphics and environmental interaction, along with player to player interaction seem to be the largest hits in games like this lately. People enjoy farming strawberries and facebook so why not introduce something like that where a faction can harbor resources, where people work to cultivate them on a large scale and provide benefits to everyone? You could also have those same mechanics be attackable to add more to the World of WARcraft.
As a hunter there isn't all that much as there used to be that made me feel unique, especially with the disappearance of leveling my pet and feeding it. There also used to be something required that I go out and find skills to teach my pet for battle. As mind-numbing and a pain as those tasks could be it at least made us less likely to toss our pet in a heartbeat if we didn't like the way he looked at us that day, and it made us more unique as a class. It was also stated that things would be less grindy and actually take skill and effort. Where are those things?
It seems to me that developers are focusing too much on new abilities that rotate around balance, and keeping balance, and buffs and nerfs to really get the actual gameplay and features improved, let alone add new ones. Other games are beginning to take ideas from WoW so would it be so bad if we took a few hints from what makes them successful as well? WoW is a great game but it feels like it's slowly degrading over time with a repeat of the same things to do happening almost every expansion that WoW has endured over the past six or seven years.
Would you give up brand new abilities to further crowd your action bars every six months for more content and features and overall better experiences from the World of Warcraft? Would you like better balance in the game rather than get new spells that slow the progress with their own need to be focused on and balanced as well? Just my thoughts on a few things is all.
The link to the official forum thread for WoW is here.
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2522073905
It was mentioned by Ghostcrawler that he'd like to see less abilities on our bars. Indeed I think it would be nice to have simple action bars to the point of maybe filling a bar or two yet very unique classes. I thought this over for a while and I wondered about what I would really like to see in the World of Warcraft in general and I thought of something I felt would make the game a lot better. To me, getting new spells every few patches and having my talents overhauled every expansion seems to be old hat and more of a tiring process than anything past the initial joy of getting something new to stuff in my already packed actionbars.
What would I rather see instead of this? How about completely new game features, though not something like improved guild recruitment. How about new game features to make the game fun no matter how quickly you progress? How about something all levels could benefit from? I once played an MMO larger than WoW from across the pond.
It doesn't get much voice here in the United States though it is very interesting in its own right. There are many ideas I'd like to see be absorbed into the World of Warcraft. What about zones that always remain significant? I'm tired of never visiting places I once liked due to the resources from that location becoming useless. How many people are in Westfall or Shadowmoon Valley nowadays? Is it really acceptable to see players in such dense masses over certain areas? Instead wouldn't it be better to have old zones be just as significant to us as they were when we first wandered through them? I'm sure it could be figured out. Putting Onyxia near Theramore was (relatively speaking) somwhat in the right step. Things that are useful to all levels in most zones would be better though. They did it..
What about talents? I like balance more than I like new talents. Perhaps we could have something similar to what The Path of the Titans was supposed to provide us? I really enjoyed the idea of being a hunter of a certain spec remaining different from another hunter who chose the same spec as me because it would create much more variety. I'd rather have that over more levels. If you're concerned about content and levels why not just create more zones and merely provide better gear from those zones instead of routinely changing our abilities and giving us higher numbers to reach? It would keep us busy. Group quests that actually require groups would also be nice. An idea stemming from that would be spontaneous world events becoming more common people can come together for and take advantage of. It would make people of the same realm more involved with one another.
Graphics? FPS games, along with other MMOs have proven that graphics becoming more improved are all part of becoming immersed in a game. A dark forest isn't the same without more detailed looking trees and more convincing textures. Many of the textures in WoW seem flat and boring to me. The trees look like the shrubs in the front of my house, only 2D. Even the rooftops don't have individual shingles but instead are painted on in a manner that makes them look cartoony. While WoW's cartoony charm lasted for quite some time it's losing its touch with me. I eyeball other more detailed MMOs out there and wonder what they could hold for me in terms of immersion and visiting another world.
Where is WoW going? I like it, sure, but it seems that the things that really power a game seem to be taking the back seat in terms of WoW itself progressing as a whole. All that's been left to do is raid, or do dungeon runs which seem to be versions of raids, only smaller. There are battlegrounds, and then little battlegrounds we call arenas. I've been doing the same things for years now and it would be nice to see some more variety of things with significance to them reach our fingertips. Archeology and its involvement with Path of the Titans would have been a great start if it hadn't been scratched in mid developement of the expansion. I want more choices of things to do. I want to make things that effect different parts of the game never before imagined. There are interesting ideas such as those who could make one-use keys to specific dungeons. Perhaps those contested areas could all become capturable with the reward of dungeons and such accessible with those same keys.
Why do we need new abilities every expansion? Why not just work on the game itself? The new features in terms of graphics and environmental interaction, along with player to player interaction seem to be the largest hits in games like this lately. People enjoy farming strawberries and facebook so why not introduce something like that where a faction can harbor resources, where people work to cultivate them on a large scale and provide benefits to everyone? You could also have those same mechanics be attackable to add more to the World of WARcraft.
As a hunter there isn't all that much as there used to be that made me feel unique, especially with the disappearance of leveling my pet and feeding it. There also used to be something required that I go out and find skills to teach my pet for battle. As mind-numbing and a pain as those tasks could be it at least made us less likely to toss our pet in a heartbeat if we didn't like the way he looked at us that day, and it made us more unique as a class. It was also stated that things would be less grindy and actually take skill and effort. Where are those things?
It seems to me that developers are focusing too much on new abilities that rotate around balance, and keeping balance, and buffs and nerfs to really get the actual gameplay and features improved, let alone add new ones. Other games are beginning to take ideas from WoW so would it be so bad if we took a few hints from what makes them successful as well? WoW is a great game but it feels like it's slowly degrading over time with a repeat of the same things to do happening almost every expansion that WoW has endured over the past six or seven years.
Would you give up brand new abilities to further crowd your action bars every six months for more content and features and overall better experiences from the World of Warcraft? Would you like better balance in the game rather than get new spells that slow the progress with their own need to be focused on and balanced as well? Just my thoughts on a few things is all.
The link to the official forum thread for WoW is here.
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2522073905
