World of Warcraft®

Pepi dear, as I have stated, that's far too large a change, and your asking for it far to suddenly. We need to start small, tweek a game mechanic here, make this otherwise pointless item more available there. get the programmers into the groove of doing things with us in mind. Build up from small stuff, and eventually, when we know they are dedicated to teh cause, ask for player/guild housing.

One step at a time, and lets try to agree upon something, a single topic. One focus of alteration.

I'll throw what may seem a really odd one out there. One of the things I look back on as being a lot of fun was an expedition some guild friends and I took on a lark.

We created level one alts in a city of our choice, guilded them, then spun a tale among ourselves that we were young and aspiring [insert race] adventurers.

We'd heard (from an orphan who was passing through) that a great battle was being had in Northrend - Uldaur it was called. So with the clothes on our backs, we set off, walking, to follow in the footsteps of our betters.

We were excited to see the world, as had Little Orphan Randy:

http://totallosers.net/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=1281

This was pre-Cata so we gathered our level one selves and marched the dangerous path from our starting area to the boats leaving for Northrend. We had many challenging adventures along the way as our 'raid' progressed.

In Northrend, some in our party fell by the way. It was a frightful trip by foot.

But hours later, the survivors fell upon the camps and summoning stone of Uldaur. We'd gained 5 or 6 levels each along the way (just from exploration) and had many a story to tell at the inn once we'd hearthed home.

So how might Blizzard help interest others in taking on a challenge like this - one that might be a ton of fun but not involve improving your main? Well, an *GUILD Role-Play Feat of Strength, perhaps.

"A Walk In My Shoes": While in a Guild Group, Walk from Starting Area to [Difficult But Not Impossible to Reach Location] Beginning as a Level 1 - Without The Assistance of Any Higher Level Characters

I think it'd be a blast for some people (primarily RP'ers). Could it be done? I think so. The bit about 'no assistance' was done back in vanilla with one of my favorite quests ever: the hunter quest for Rhok'delar, Longbow of the Ancient Keepers so at least that aspect should be workable.

Even if this particular achievement idea turned out to be impractical or unpopular, adding ANY sort of achievement recognizing role-playing activities would be a way for Blizzard to give a tip of the hat to our sort of game-play... just as many many achievements acknowledgethe efforts of solo-questers, group raiders and pvpers.

So in short? Give RP an achievement of two!

Somehow! Maybe some of you have a better idea for what an RP achievement might involve?

I'll throw what may seem a really odd one out there. One of the things I look back on as being a lot of fun was an expedition some guild friends and I took on a lark.

We created level one alts in a city of our choice, guilded them, then spun a tale among ourselves that we were young and aspiring [insert race] adventurers.

We'd heard (from an orphan who was passing through) that a great battle was being had in Northrend - Uldaur it was called. So with the clothes on our backs, we set off, walking, to follow in the footsteps of our betters.

We were excited to see the world, as had Little Orphan Randy:

http://totallosers.net/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=1281

This was pre-Cata so we gathered our level one selves and marched the dangerous path from our starting area to the boats leaving for Northrend. We had many challenging adventures along the way as our 'raid' progressed.

In Northrend, some in our party fell by the way. It was a frightful trip by foot.

But hours later, the survivors fell upon the camps and summoning stone of Uldaur. We'd gained 5 or 6 levels each along the way (just from exploration) and had many a story to tell at the inn once we'd hearthed home.

So how might Blizzard help interest others in taking on a challenge like this - one that might be a ton of fun but not involve improving your main? Well, an *GUILD Role-Play Feat of Strength, perhaps.

"A Walk In My Shoes": While in a Guild Group, Walk from Starting Area to [Difficult But Not Impossible to Reach Location] Beginning as a Level 1 - Without The Assistance of Any Higher Level Characters

I think it'd be a blast for some people (primarily RP'ers). Could it be done? I think so. The bit about 'no assistance' was done back in vanilla with one of my favorite quests ever: the hunter quest for Rhok'delar, Longbow of the Ancient Keepers so at least that aspect should be workable.

Even if this particular achievement idea turned out to be impractical or unpopular, adding ANY sort of achievement recognizing role-playing activities would be a way for Blizzard to give a tip of the hat to our sort of game-play... just as many many achievements acknowledgethe efforts of solo-questers, group raiders and pvpers.

So in short? Give RP an achievement of two!

Somehow! Maybe some of you have a better idea for what an RP achievement might involve?

They could take you idea, and make it a willingly activated thing. IE: You open the achievemnt tab while in this lvl 1 raid, and then choose that achievment, and hit "Try". From that point on, you are phazed out from everyone else, but still in the world. So you CAN NOT be aided by a high level...

But AGAIN, I would like to draw your attention to a BIG fact. A change like that would take months, perhaps a year at the least in order to create and put into effect.

As I have said several times: Start SMALL, then work our way to the BIG changes.

05/16/2011 05:59 PMPosted by Catteline

But AGAIN, I would like to draw your attention to a BIG fact. A change like that would take months, perhaps a year at the least in order to create and put into effect.

You have a valid point, and I acknowledge it. And I like the ideas you've proposed.

I'd also like to see Blizz find a way to directly validate the RP style of play through the Achievement system. The question is, how? So much of the RP I used to enjoy involved just words passing between players - and very little direct interaction with the game world.

Still... might be a way (and I'm just not thinking of it)

I like Chiemi's idea and the ones that Catteline mentioned. It would be great to have both.

Well then, lets focus on narrowing it down to one thing first. Which would you rather see First? The sheathing mechanic scrapped, the achievments thing(Which would take a good while to program) RP items/tattoos/skins made more readily available, or something else?

I would love the achievments and I would love the items/tattoos/skins. The sheathing mechanic isn't a bother for me as I don't sue torches or the like. I would rather have the items/tattoos/skins.

It would be spectacular if you could emote your spells and abilities, and emote a death. All of those animations already exist in the game so I don't think it would be hard to have /die and /exorcism (as an example). The trick would be that I don't think they could make the emotes class or racial specific, but I still think they'd be a great help to RPing.

I think more patterns for crafters to make rp specific armor and weapons would be nice. The idea of the npc uniforms is good, why not make it a craftable thing. It could even be an acheivement to buy, make or wear the new role play custom items. Call the achievement Dressed for Success, or something like that.

Achievements given in recognition for creating, and/or putting on an RP outfit... Hrm, if memory serves, isn't blizzard suppose to have GMs on RP servers who's sole job is to support and enforce the RP rules? Why not have one who roams the major cities (Literally, one per work shift who pops from capital to capital looking for RPers) and by click of his/her god like mouse, gives the achievements when they encounter someone in an improvised RP attire... *Ponders ponders*

However, a more plausable, and FAR more likely way would be to put an invisible 'tag' on items that are known for their RP value, as well as a serial code number. Now when someone dawns a full set of items that share one serial number, it triggers the achievement the same way it does for when you dawn all epic gear of so and so level. This would still take a good amont of time, simply by virtue of listing all the possible RP attires, but would be MONTHS faster then the Player/guild houses.

Still trying to figure out a simple RP-oriented achievement. I know achievements aren't HUGE unto themselves... but some of them seem to have been created to encourage players to build skills for another type of game-play.

For example "Ready To Raid" orients players who enjoy Heroics to area of effect boss mechanics and the Childrens Week seasonal achievement "School of Hard Knocks" asks casuals to expose themselves to very specific aspects of PvP (made me quite nervous when I did it!).

Respecting whats been said about complex achievements requiring a lot of coding, what about a very simple simple RP oriented achievement that exposes players who might not be aware of all the ways they can communicate in game to at least try emotes (beyond /spit)

For example:

The Great Communicator: Use all the following /emotes with players within the Theramore Inn (alliance) or Wyvern's Tail Inn (horde) [list of 10 or 15 RP-oriented emotes] and create an emote of your own using /e

Doesn't seem like that'd take a year to program... and it might expose some players to a side of the game (communication through emotes) that they don't make use of as often as they could.

05/16/2011 01:53 PMPosted by Catteline

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?

Posting late since I was gone last night.

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.

You said it yourself right there.

Do. Not. Petition. Blues.

They will lock the thread and never look at it again.

Alright, I am sorry, wrong choice of words. Now, do you have something helpful to say? Or just a list of 'do nots'? Are there any ideas you agree with here? Disagree? How about advice on how to progress this topic to help it GET possitive looks from the Moderators?

A good way to get Blizzard to read this thread... Is to effectively say "Change (x) around to better the Roleplay experience, or (y) will happen to your monthly income." The community manager can't ignore something like that easily, considering its their paycheck that will be affected, too. I mean, think of the income lost if all the RPers suddeenly just *poof* quit!

While I can certainly appreciate what you're saying, what got attention paid to the EU thread I referenced in the opening post was simply the enthusiasm players had for making constructive suggestions. No doubt that enthusiasm was boosted by a Blue expressing interest a couple pages into the thread, but no 'stick' was necessary in that case - just a lot of tasty carrot.

In any event I don't think we have to worry too much about having it read as once we build up more steam here I'll cross-link it on the Euro boards - so at the very least, the Blues following that thread will see what we've had to contribute.

While being respectful of the skepticism many have that our suggestions here might ever EVER spark change in the game, I'd encourage you (if you can) to just (for fun if nothing else) join us in brainstorming cool ways Blizzard might help US enhance the RP experience.

And I say "help US" because when you come right down to it, RP (unlike most anything else in WoW) is something that is almost entirely player created. All we do is take best creative advantage of the tools that Blizzard provides.

While Blizzard can make or break any given battleground, dungeon or raid instance, at best they can only facilitate creative story-telling between players. At worst, they just starve us for tools. They can no more destroy RP as a whole than they can make me stop looking out the window and day-dreaming.

Personally I see Cattelyn as the right way to go at this.

Pester them about things like weapon sheathing, adding emotes (such as /die, it would spit out something like, "*death animation*(character) dramatically fakes his/her death")

We do need to start small, just at least get them listening, then we move on.

My priority would be: Fixing emotes / adding them, Getting tattoos / more skin tones; first a hairstyle for dwarfs, then skin tones and such, then move on with the bigger things.

I think if we made it to the tattoos then we would have a smashing success.

Gill, if I didn't have a verdict against touching goblins, I would kiss you!

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 realize that. If you want to start small, Blizzard could work up the ladder of that post I made slowly. Starting out with houses, adding gathering proffession rooms,then prod. proffession rooms,etc. They already have the portal for it in stormwind. Something I would like would be an rp set conformign to normal armor styles of each race, or an armor set for each military rank, respectively for each faction.

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 realize that. If you want to start small, Blizzard could work up the ladder of that post I made slowly. Starting out with houses, adding gathering proffession rooms,then prod. proffession rooms,etc. They already have the portal for it in stormwind. Something I would like would be an rp set conformign to normal armor styles of each race, or an armor set for each military rank, respectively for each faction.

What we think small are much smaller than your small (Haha, good luck figuring that one out)

We mean small small, like fixing the sheathing weapons when talking. Or more RP hangouts. Houses take away resources that could be used towards the PvE and PvP content, which looks bad on us. Simple things, like fixing the sheathing problem, is what we're aiming for.

EDIT: Oh, and I would like to fix the glitch when the chat bubble keeps popping 100 times. I'm not sure if this happens to everyone.

Your probably thinking of the level 60 PvP armor sets, very cheep these days. However, the very basic, lowest first step of the idea you posed would it and of itself take months, at least, to even be plausable. Right now, we are trying to even out swift, simple changes. Little things here and there, as Gillix, Chie and I have already stated...

Emotes which employ pre existing animations. Already existing items or item skins being made more readily available. Giving players access to tattoos, skintones and gear that NPCs have. These are the sort of small changes we should start with.