World of Warcraft®

I've been following a thread on the EU WoW boards that I'd like to call your attention to:

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/1951625705?page=1

Participants have been mulling over what tweaks Blizzard might make to enhance the experience of role-players. I was very pleased to find that Blue posters have taken an interest and seem open to the idea of making game changes that benefit role-players.

In the thread (linked above) a discussion ensued and after a lot of back and forth, a list of rather detailed potential enhancements was created and voted upon by over 100 forum participants.

Assuming that many of you may not follow the EU boards, I'm taking the liberty of calling it to your attention in case you might want to see what they came up with and add your thoughts.

Unfortunately, as posters to the US boards, you will not have license to chime in on the EU thread. So if you would like to add new ideas, it will have to be here.

If this thread garners some interest, I'll see what I can do about getting it linked on the EU boards so that the Blues following it there can see what we're up to.

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Quoting Vaneras (EU Community Blue)

"We have indeed noticed it (this post), and we agree that it is a good thread. In fact we like the thread so much that we linked to it in the Forum Watch section of the latest Community News.

What could be interesting to know is if there is one thing that would be more desirable than the rest. Of all the things that could potentially enhance role-playing, which one would be the best?

I suspect many of you have a different opinions on the best way to enhance role-playing, so another interesting question is if the role-playing community can come together and reach a consensus to decide on the one thing that would enhance role-playing the most?!? :-)

Please keep in mind that we aren't making any promises here, but despite that, we are of course very interested to know what you guys feel is important and what you think could improve RP."

Well with that attitude, of course they won't. If they can't see that you want some changes, how are they gonna make those changes? No one can read minds.

Anyway, I've noticed that they've added a few areas in the world that serve no real purpose except to offer RP opportunities. A few empty camps in Feralas, the whole town of named goblin NPCs at Fuselight-by-the-Sea in Badlands, and the areas previously occupied by the Dragons of Nightmare, just to name a few.

I'd like to see more of that. Areas that are just there for atmosphere and potential RP sites. I could go with the old "player housing" or "armor changing" topics, but adding in more RP sites would probably be a bit more reasonable.

There's no hurt to be had by talking about it, especially since they've acknowledged that they have in fact taken notice of the thread and ideas. The most constructive thing we can do is find one of the popular ideas presented, get behind that, and work to make it the forefront of our suggestions and get it instituted.

Whining, now that changes nothing.

I for one would love to see a greater array of character customization possibilities. What is a Wildhammer shaman dwarf without tattoos? What if you wanted to play a Maghar orc? I like the character skin/modification ideas quite a bit.

And the sheathing the weapon when talking thing DEFINITELY needs to be fixed. Those of us who patrol with torches would really appreciate it. :P

If they don't care, then why did they Spend The Money to create and maintain servers that are Labled as RP? Though, obviously, it would go a long way if they actually enforced their own RP rules for said servers, the fact still remains: They took a step, no matter how small, to give us our own realms. Realms, plural. Not one or two here and there, but dozens.

The sheathing of weapons/items when you emote or talk, is an easy fix. So lets pester them on that first, hm? Start out small and easy, then work our way up. We could ask for more uninhabited buildings in all the major cities, giving a good number of buildings in Orgrimmar an uninhabited second floor or basement, for example. Have the blood elves expand to repopulate more of the 'ruined' Quel'thalas, the dwarves, now that the three clans inhabit Ironforge again, should be looking into expanding the tunnels. Of course this could also be said of Undercity, not that the Forsaken are repopulating themselves again.

Other things, would be making pre existing items that serve no other purpose but RP more accessable, as well as the aformentioned pre existing avatar alterations like tattoos and different skin tones (I would love to see ghost and skeleton forsaken). Blood elf bandit masks from a vendor and those level 15 or so Dalaran robes, to name a few. Not to mention making gear normally seen 'only on npc's actually obtainable. On second thought, this step should come after the sheathing fix and before expansion of cities...

A random, epic idea one of my navy friends had, though this one's a long shot, would be that on each server seperately, one GM volunteers to 'part time play' as a specific faction leader, like Garroth, Varien, Tyrandi, Sylvanas, so on and so forth. They use their god like GM powers and word of mouth on alts to find out about RP events, genuine ones, and if the situation warrants, make a guest appearance! On my old server, he had a Horde guild that would every other week do a parade around Orgrimmar to recruit and promote the fact they were going off to raid the Alliance. Wouldn't it be morally boosting to see Garroth HIMSELF stop them at the gates on their way out, and give them a speech about Lok'tar Ogar and then "Hellscream's Warcry" buff them? Or if the Kning of Ironforge gave his respects to an all dwarven defense guild by giving them access to Ironforge Guards costume wands?


PS: Davinton, you may not be whining, but you are being a nai sayer. So please step out and let us foreward thinkers do our talking.

Ghost and skeleton Forsaken...I like that! It would go a good way toward giving them some options short of being jawless or bolt-faced. :P

05/16/2011 10:21 AMPosted by Catteline

The sheathing of weapons/items when you emote or talk, is an easy fix. So lets pester them on that first

THIS. ^

So are we in agreement? We start by asking them to make this one fix. Now for the part where I admit to my noobishness... Where do I/we post up a thread about this specific concept?

I personally have a few ideas.

Player housing: I know this has been discussed before, but please hear me out.
One option would be to choose different architectural style, form the different races, such as dwarven, human, night elf,gnomish, orc, tauren, troll, blood elf, etc. ((only those applicable to your faction))
Another possibility would be to have a quest vendor at your estate, who would hand out quests which would involve protecting your estate, gathering lumber, stone, etc, and construction, or some introducing you to different aspects of the houses. Some of these quests would involve purchasing turrets ((to control)) and vehicles. Depending on the placement of your housing, ((Perhaps a portal in each capital leading to somewhere where there might be battle of some sort?)) you would defend your fourtress/house against different enemies, or go on the offensive. Turrets & vehicles could include glaive throwers, rocket turrets ((those in SOTA)), steam tanks, siege engines, ballistae, chainguns ((Wrathgate questline)), etc. The quest-giver would reward you with gold, and tokens, which allow you to buy special items for your house, or exchange for honor, justice point, etc.
You could also create a room for any of your production proffessions, and open mines, plant gardens, buy animals for farms for skinning, and dig ponds for fishing.

Will, while the idea is admirable, we are trying currently aiming for SMALL changes. We are starting with Little ideas, like removing the sheath weapons/items when you emote/talk mechanic, and getting access to pre existing skins and item appearances.

An alteration on THAT scale would be a MASSIVE change, one taking months, if not a year or two to implement. As I and others have stated. We need to start small, and work our way up.

I really want all the chairs/benches to have the little 'sit' icon thingy. Sometimes I walk into a place and there should be chairs and there aren't! It's a small thing but I would love it if they fixed this.

Again... Will this be the thread we use to petition to the Blue folk? Or do we need to create it elsewhere? If all we do is talk about 'I want this' and 'I want that' we will get nowhere/ What we need is to form a thread, or kick this one into high gear, and say "WE Would like to see this happen, and then that afterwords."

One small step at a time, people. Granted, one small syncronized step, but a step none the less. lets start with clicking the thumbs up 'like' button for each constructive post that is in this thread? Excluding or including the nai sayer, as you personally see fit.

If you petition it will be locked. Don't do it.

Call me ignorant, but what does it mean to petition a thread? And at what point did I recommend doing as such? Instead of telling me what I can not do to help get these ideas moving, why not help direct me with what I CAN do to get things to happen in our favor?

05/16/2011 01:27 PMPosted by Catteline

What we need is to form a thread, or kick this one into high gear, and say "WE Would like to see this happen, and then that afterwords."

Catteline, what I saw happen on the EU forum is that a volume of polite and positive discussion on the matter called it to the attention of a roving Blue (Vaneras) who took interest.

I'm not sure if we need to do more than just share our thoughts here. Call me overly optimistic, but its my belief that if we come up with new ideas or are very supportive as a group of things the EU RP community is excited about, someone will find this.

And just because I've found that, in practice, optimism sometimes needs a boost, I'll see that whatever thread gets attention on the subject here gets mention on the EU side. So at very least those Blues continuing to follow developments there will be exposed to what goes on here.

To answer your question about what a petition thread is, you'll occasionally see (if your eyes are quick) a player start up a thread titled "add your name to this if you want [insert cause]"

Blizz doesn't consider creating a thread to ask for replies as votes to be a discussion so they tend to get locked quickly.

A discussion of what enhancements might be made to make RP more fun would not be a petition, however. So if we keep the exchange generally positive, conversational, and brain-stormy... even if we end up using some sort of voting system to come to consensus on which suggestions we feel most strongly about, I'm sure we'll be fine :-)

All right, then lets start with a list of EASY changes, and then vote on which among them we woud like to see first?

I would like to put forth the following ideas...

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Removing the sheathing on chat/emote mechanic, as that's just a matter of deleting ONE string of data.

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Making already existing npc gear (IE guard attire) and notherwise useless but nice things, like the Blood Elf bandit mask vendor accessable, based on the respective faction. For example, take the white plate armor sold in an Ironforge armor vendor, and change it's skin to look like the guard's armor.

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Take the tattoos sometimes seen on NPCs, and make them available to players through barber or character creation... With possible consideration for making some Night elves look like Highborne and even ghost or skeletal Forsaken.

All of these would be very easy to do, for little other reason then the imaging already exists, it's just a matter of altering other items, or making them more readily available. A copy and pasting for most of it, really...

I've posted this before on an idea thread before:

Player housing.

Now I have heard a bunch of people claim this, but I have a tiny little thing for it. Race specific houses, as in architecture. Instead of a portal, perhaps add a small building in the main city for that faction and when someone walks in it, they go to their house. Or you could even invite friends to your house and throw a party.

You could also let TEN of you non-combat pets roam around inside the house. And they could put achievment points to use by allowing people to buy items for their house with it. If not that then gold. Lets say you want to expand your house, pay gold.

1st Expansion: 200g
2nd Expansion: 600g
3rd Expansion: 1,000g

After three expansions, you get an achievment. I would like to add one more thing to this. This would be something I would like in an expansion not quickly like the greatly mentioned ones above. Trust me, for this, I would wait.

Also, who said I don't? It's just clear they will not do this... The Devs at Blizzard only care about money. If it doesn't give them profit, they probably won't put it in.

Roleplayers are still paying customers. Going by your logic, don't you think they'd want to accommodate any kind of player to get that profit? That's why they made the main game so accessible.