Recently I canceled my World of Warcraft subscription, the reason for my cancellation of my four-year old account is simply, the game lost my interest, the combat system was totally unbalanced and worst of all; there seemed to be no reason for me to log on. Yet, there is a small light at the end of the tunnel for all WoW gamers, and that light’s name is Warlords of Draenor, from the trailer and information announced Warlords of Draenor looks like the key ingredient to spark the life of World of Warcraft.
The Real question is, “What can World of Warcraft do to improve their game?”
World of Warcraft can improve their game by taking away abilities from the player, sound odd right? For combat purposes, the game can be improved by taking combat abilities from almost all classes, the classes are too independent in Battlegrounds—thus players are only after grabbing kills and not working as a team. By handicapping the players, the players will be forced to work as a team, this will lead to classes like the warrior and the rogue to be more reliant on the smaller DPS classes such as Elemental Shamans and Druids. By “weakening” the huge DPS classes, they will be more reliant on the healer – this gives the healer the power they need. In rated Battlegrounds where all players work as a unit rather than a group of independents the first goal of RBG’s is to kill the healer, then finish the DPS/Tanks off. The method of RBG’s should be the common methods used in Random Battlegrounds as well, this would spark the arena feel of Random BG’s.
Travel
In “Vanilla” World of Warcraft, the player had to run through many terrains on their land mounts to get from place to place. This gave the player the ability to see the beauty of Azeroth on their mandatory road trip. Now players have access at level 90 to fly around all of Azeroth, not including a few locations—this leads to the player no longer experiencing the beauty of their environment, instead they are running through beautiful locations such as Darnassus in order to be as efficient as possible, it is understandable that players don’t want to spend too much time in travel, but it also takes away the feel from World of Warcraft.
Transmogs
Transmogs seem to be one of the most important things for Level capped players, they want to look nice and stand out from the crowd—yet overtime the uniqueness of transmogs seem to dilute. Rare Transmogs are soon known to be common, but how can Blizzard change this? It is true that Blizzard cannot stop a good-looking transmog from becoming common, what Blizzard should do is make transmogs more.. Customizable. In Guild Wars II the player had the ability to change the color of his/her armor with dyes purchased from merchants, Runescape had the idea of changing the looks of armor with dyes as well. Now I am not suggesting WoW starts to copy all other MMORPG’s I just believe that WoW should introduce another mechanic for armor looks in the game. They have tried to do this with Challenge mode armor but much like other transmogs it soon became common and mainstream.
What can Blizzard do to shake up Transmogs? I thought of this for a while and finally came up with a couple ideas.
Guild inspired transmogs:
This transmog will give guild leaders the ability to make transmogs available to their members for a cost (gold/achievements required) the transmog would be much like the challenge mode gear (with no stats, simply for looks) these transmogs may be distinguished within the ranks. (G.M’s can make armor specifically for higher ranking members) and are fully customizable.
No more filled banks slots.
If you are an armor collector for transmogs you know that transmogs soon become a hassle as they take over your bank slots, how can this be fixed though if you want to keep the transmog for a later date? Blizzard should make a mechanic in the game where players could destroy their armor (much like disenchanting) in exchange for a permanent transmog perk. This “perk” would allow you to turn any armor into that look, but you wouldn’t need to carry around the pieces of armor with you.
Nice armor boss, mind if I borrow it?
When raiding you can come across some nasty bosses, and most of the difficult bosses have sweet armor on them. Yet, the transmog dropped by those bosses most of the time do not look anything like their parent transmog. My idea: What if you could get a look alike armor from a boss that had the same armor style as you (Lich King for Death Knights, Warriors) but in order to get their armor you must complete a near impossible time trial? This would give players motivation to do older raids in effort to get their favorite transmogs.
Kill the King.
Players from rival factions attempt to do raids against their enemy’s main cities in effort to get achievements. As a new player I thought this was the greatest idea ever, using your man force to bring havoc to the enemy players. Yet, now in days it seems that players’ only inspiration to raid enemy cities is to troll new-comers. There should be a new inspiring reward for attackers of the opposite faction (mount?)
This is only “the tip of the iceberg” for what Blizzard should fix in their next expansion. I can say that even with the short comings of certain things such as PVP and transmogs that Blizzard has a fantastic game and I hope that with their new expansion Warlords of Draenor they can fix these small problems.
I first started my life as a gamer on the Christmas of 2001- that was when my father purchased the first Playstation for me- throughout the years the gaming industry evolved and so did my love for gaming, for me gaming was not just a past time—it turned into a passion. Currently I am in college for game design and business in efforts that one day I can change the world of gaming forever.
