The Massive List of How-To for Blizzard Game Developers
Greetings! It’s that troll aficionado, Old Zul! I have spent a lot of time compiling my own opinions and ideas to help Blizzard have a How-To manual that, at the worst, may at least give them the incite of someone that has been playing Warcraft games since 1994 on MS-DOS, or at best, it might give the departments a Blizzard unique or new ideas they had not considered previously.
Two quick things to note- I have more than 30 toons at lvl 110+ - and ALL of them are trolls. Thus, when I mention certain things, expect them from the view of a WoW vetran, not a new user, and I will be using trolls as the main example (since I know them the best); however, my ideas can work for anything. That said, these are just my ideas and may be terrible, great, or somewhere in-between, but I do hope they will cause dialogue and maybe give Blizzard reps some new perspectives. That said, look below for whatever How-To idea you need to focus on!
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How to do make the community happier in general:
You have been stressed, likely, because it seems like every time you make a move, introduce something new, or think you will make the player base happy- you seem to mostly end up making them angry. The current way you do Q&A’s is not always well received. Often times, the dev’s know much more about things then they want to tell the public, or questions that are asked are not answered, and so on, so how do we fix this? Easy
• Reverse Q&A’s
• Use consultants
What do I mean by reverse Q & A’s? Rather than have a million people asking questions, before Blizzard dev’s even start to design something like a system- they reach out to the customer first for feedback. THEY ask the questions and the players answer. You would not be able to do forum polls easily, due to folks that would potentially try trolling. However, if people are answering in words, it is a lot easier to see who is just messing around and who is serious. So, Blizzard rep, you’d ask on multiple channels (forums, twitter, twitch, whatever) a question and legitimately listen to the feedback. Some people will say that you are doing things for “the vocal minority” but the reality is that you energize your player base. People see that you want their opinions and they know to speak up.
However, this will require listening well, and following through. There are always ways to innovate and give players what they want while still turning a profit. That pertains to the general people giving you feedback. By consultants, I mean, out of the player base, get people that know things and specifically, under NDA’s, run your design ideas through them. You have access to all our data, ever. You know who is the best at raiding, PvP, and so forth. Have a question about a transmog system- ask someone with vast collections of transmog. Need to know if troll players would like something or not? Ask them in general and then find someone like me that, being autistic, eats, sleeps, and breathes trolls. Between the feedbacks, you would get in general and the precise, focused feedback from knowledgeable consultants that are also long time customers- you would likely be able to build and shape a game that more people would like. You’d make WAY less mistakes in the eyes of the community this way, and if people did ask for something that turned out lame- you’d have some great deniability! Lol
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How to do leveling:
As one can see through multiple outlets, leveling is not something a number of people find fun. Having an expansion come with a free character boost is a great idea on Blizz’s part, so that a new player can join his or her friends quickly, but when it comes to leveling, itself, due to numerous changes over the years, it has become something abstract and often boring.
The ways to fix it are to make it both engaging and rewarding. How do we do that?
• Because of scaling, make any zone anywhere available for leveling from lvl 10 or 20 onward.
• The zone’s quest unlocks translate directly into levels.
• Heirloom gear stat based, equal to blue dungeon gear at every level.
• Heirloom hands, bracers, boots, and belts unlocked at leveling achievements
• Loremaster tabard (or ‘Loremaster of X’) give a large buff to XP gain in all zones (or specifics)
• For every toon at max level (of any given expansion) the player’s other toons have a 5% XP buff- stacking.
The in-depth explanations are below, though all these ideas support folks “getting out into the world” while leveling and to enjoy content that they like best.
The first idea is to make all zones available from levels 10 or 20 onward. This way anyone and everyone leveling has a choice to go anywhere to level (excluding whatever the new expansion is). So, for an example, say a player hits the appropriate level, have a quest pop up or go to a mission board, and then rather than two choices, it shows, like when choosing a zone in Legion, a map. The player can choose any zone, including, Pandaria, CATA, Outland, Northrend, with the only exception being the newest expansion (BfA at the moment) not selectable.
This also means that flying should be purchasable when someone gets to lvl 20 or just simply a “given” that one can fly anywhere, since some of these zones require flying. As a boolean, you could always put what zones require flying and which don’t using a true/false to see if the player has the ability to do a zone and gray it out if they can not. Flying is generally seen as fun. I should add that if this is not doable, then, like with heritage armor, then allow this type of level scheme for anyone that has already leveled a toon to max level. Also, do not make any zones “gray” to a player until they reach the current expansion’s content- any content until then (currently lvl 110) should be available for questing as they desire to do it.
The second idea is that instead of just leveling by killing mobs and turning in quests make it a “bonus objective” of any and every zone in the game to complete that zone’s story. Thus, if one does all the quests in a single zone, they get a BIG bonus for completing the storyline. This promotes them to follow along with even the old narratives.
For those that have played enough they can purchase and upgrade heirlooms, the looms should not give XP bonus anymore (that will come from other ideas). Instead, to promote players to go out into the world and quest, make heirlooms equal to blue (or even purple) named gear to allow those folks that invested all the time and money into these, to have a very fast time killing mobs. As feedback showed, those of us that already have killed 50 plain striders for 10 beaks did not desire it to take as long the 10th time we did the quest.
Next, finally introduce the heirloom pieces that are missing (belts, boots, etc.). However, rather than make them a simple purchase from a vendor, make them unlocked by achievements. While questing, players are not looking at gear stats that much and it does not really matter to a veteran what those stats are. With heirlooms now being strong again, we level through the game wihtout even looking at the gear (again, new players would have to their first time because they cannot afford heirlooms and have not unlocked the extra looms).
If a player reaches max level of an expansion on a toon, whatever the gear type of said toon is (cloth, leather, mail, plate) they get a care package or a new quest or achievement, the completion of which bestows an un-upgraded set of the missing heirloom pieces of that armor type. Devs could make it where they come from different sources, but this player has clearly paid their dues as a ‘X’ wearer and should be given an easier time should they level another ‘X’ wearing toon. This, again, encourages someone to work at a goal and being rewarded for leveling.
If someone has become a Loremaster of a certain area, or better yet, obtained the loremaster tabard, THIS should be one big chunk of extra XP gain. Instead of heirlooms bestowing an XP bonus, you have made them powerful, and now a player needs to go out and earn all the achievements needed to get their loremaster tabard. Now, once earned, this tabard, available to all toons, it gives a 100% (I suppose this can be whatever Blizz wants it to) XP buff from all sources. This means someone went to a lot of work and have earned the right to speed through leveling because they have clearly done all the zones in the game (or at least in a zone like “Loremaster of Outland”).
Finally, with every toon a player gets to max level (currently lvl 120), all their non-max level toons should get a 5% XP buff from all sources. You can have this also max out at say 100% or even 200% (rest XP type buff). Basically, as we discovered from the exploit of the XP potions in BfA, people legitimately were having fun leveling very fast. By getting a toon to max level, it should be rewarding and encourage them to play more- more toons. By having this stack as they get another toon to max level, it entices them to play a whole new class or toon and do it again. May not benefit “boost” sales, but it will definitely help with the “log in” and “time played” metrics.
Now, all these ideas may not work, and I do not claim they are all the best ideas- but they are a good place to start. Something to think about and tweak, because all my ideas here encourage folks to not only level, but to be out in the world doing it, and to do it more often- which translates into “time-played” metrics while making it fun, rewarding and engaging for the players- because it is in their hands to play the zones they like, kill things faster, earn more XP for reaching achievements, and getting rewarded to promote even more leveling.
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How to do Transmog:
Blizz, feel free to look at all my trolls to see their unique and cool transmogs. As you can see, I have spent countless hours, days, weeks, months, and yes, years to put these together. What can you do to improve transmog while promoting even other parts of the game (like leveling for example)?
• Make transmogs slot based- not item based
• Remove lvl restrictions
• Remove armor type restrictions
• Exception to race- in which case- make more transmog!
What do I mean by this? You have added the ability to basically remove just about anything but pants, and the world did not end. Opening new customization options will only cause players to play more and be happier. By this, I mean that if restrictions were removed, players would be encouraged to run content on more than one toon for items to create their collections and sets.
As an example, let us say the player is a troll priest. Everywhere you go, you see NPC priest trolls wearing the “Defiler’s Mail Pauldrons”, a tiki mask troll shoulder reward for mail wearers from, oddly, Arathi Basin. If you remove transmog restrictions (NPC’s certainly are not restricted- not to mention even players like how a Dark Iron Dwarf can wear full plate heritage armor, but be a mage), then the troll priest now makes a new toon, a hunter or shaman, and levels that toon focusing on getting those shoulders- for his cloth wearing priest! Now, whole new sets can be built by players while encouraging them to play more toons!
Ultimately, if you want the player base to feel that they have much more customization on their characters and want to promote them leveling other armor types to collect armor and weapons they can then transmog on other types, you open up a floodgate of more “_played tim_e” metric while also making folks happy.
As far as race, the heritage armors make total sense. You are a Zandalari- you’d wear those clothes- and no other race would. You are a Nightborne, BE, and so forth, you should only have certain armors available to them based on the fantasy. However, add more. For example, as much as I do not care for elves, let us use a BE player example. If one goes out to the Isle of Thunder, one finds the Sunreavers. As one can see, the elves march about with their iconic shield and glaive. So, if someone is a BE, find a way, be it an achievement or whatever, where they can unlock the look of these things. NOW, make it where anything they are holding can be mogged into that shield and weapon set.
That is why I say stop making mogs item based, but rather, make them SLOT based. This also means that as a toon levels or changes gear from raids and such, they still look the same. Even if they strip down to their knickers, they would look fully dressed. If someone wants to be naked I could see them having to go to a transmogrophier and hiding all their slots, but other than the less-than-1% of the nude player base, the vast majority like how we look and do not need or want to have to change things up.
That said, this BE example is perfect. Let us say the player is a Blood Elf Priest. They are holding a staff. Now they have unlocked the Spell breaker weapon set for all their toons, even this staff holding priest can go and transmog his weapon slot to be the shield and glaive. Whether he switches the staff for a mace and off-hand or whatever, he still holds his spell breaker shield and glaive. That is innovative and fun, and could potentially cause a lot of other playing. Let us say to wear this Spellbreaker Weapon Set one must, obviously, be a BE but how did they unlock it? Maybe they had to get a BE only achievement, like they had to go to BC content and kill both versions of Kael’thas, Become exalted with the Sunreavers in MoP, and do some other BE related material. This promotes played time metrics, causes them to have to earn something unique, AND learn about their race in the process by questing/dungeon-diving in Blood Elf specific material. There are dungeons, zones, and reputations around every race that we can play, so think up unique ways of making iconic and matching (as in, the colors match the heritage armor colors- “gold” matches the gold of the heritage armor- I’m looking at you, Zandalari!) heritage weapons or even other types of heritage armors available for us to go out into the world and discover. You could potentially even wrap up professions into it, as in, maybe different professions pertaining to different races do unique things. Like a troll leatherworker can get the ability to make a ‘heritage Rush’kah mask strap”. So players need to go get troll related achievements, like beating Zul’Gurub, Zul’Farrak, Zul’Aman, AND Zul’Drak, to unlock a cool new voodoo mask that matches some new heritage armor, but they also have to visit a fellow troll that is a leatherworker to have the strap made. And putting all it together- get their new mask. Again, player interaction, world engagement, played time metric, everything is wrapped up in this, and yet, people are rewarded and worked to get their look.
And, the lvl requirements should be taken off. When someone makes a new toon, anything they have collected should be available to them for transmogging from the get-go. (Again, slot based)
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How to Add Player Customization:
Blizzard, this one is very easy and would cost you very little as a company as well as little time to implement it. Players are always asking for more ways to be unique, and here’s how to do it on a dime!
• Make more of anything that requires no new modeling available
I’ll go into the more expensive and obvious methods in a moment, but let us start with this. The devs would like this, as would their accountants, because this costs them little to nothing and no time. So, what do I mean by this? I mean make what already exists available. For example, I whipped this up:
~https://i.imgur.com/VMcN6tc.jpg
As you can see from this illustration, I am showing just a few examples. This works for MANY races across the board, and would require Blizzard to do no work at all. The work is there and done, just not available to us. In this case, you see that we could potentially be other types or trolls or in the case of dwarves- wildhammer dwarves. To implement this in such a way as to cause player engagement of some kind, require perhaps certain criteria. And, though the dev’s tend to come and go with what fits lore or does not, I would say either of these examples would fit.
If the Zandalari are allied with the Horde, the other troll tribes would, like always, follow the Zandalari’s queue and climb aboard. With Dark Iron dwarves in the Alliance, the Wildhammer would certainly step up their game and become a bigger player in the faction. Thus by unlocking Zandalari Trolls and Dark Iron Dwarves, the player might now have access to these cosmetic skins on their Darkspear Troll and Ironforge Dwarves. So, as you can see from this, it would be a VERY easy addition. No need to pay animators, modelers, artists, and more to build whole new models- they just use what is already there! However, in regards to more time consuming, resource-draining ideas for customization:
• New eye colors, hair, facial features, and more
• New models
• Custom animations
• Custom magic/attack colored graphics
Of course, with these examples, Blizzard would need to invest more time and resources. However, making a targa file in photoshop is not hard. Making or mixing animations now that the playable races share one “rig” that is just stretched around is not hard either, like how a Sethrak uses pandaren and worgen animations, the same could be utilized on the toons. Now, if, as a company, you know the player base wants more customization (and we do), then you could make up the investment in one of two ways.
The easiest is by allowing people to purchase new skins, faces, eyes, scars, tattoos or whatever via the shop and pay a couple of bucks for them. However, if you want to use these as new ways of obtaining “time played" metrics, then make them unlockable as with the original suggestion I gave- through achievements in the game. You could even make some of the rarest ones available only to someone that has X number of that race at max level! Have 10 Dwarves at max level- enjoy now making their skins Wildhammer! 10 max level Darkspear trolls? Have fun RPing you are from the tribe of your choice!
So, as you can see, there are multiple ways to get this done, but no matter how it is done, plenty of players would enjoy access to new customizations.
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How to do flying:
Flying has not only been in the game since the very first expansion pack, but some entire zones require you have flying or you cannot even complete them. While there is contention between a minority that say flying is bad and the majority that actually fly on a flying mount all the time, the reality is that it exists and is part of WoW. However, what makes most people angry is the time-gated waits. How do we improve this?
• Flying is a reward
• Should be available by first patch of an expansion
You are on the right path by making Pathfinder. It requires a person do quite a bit to unlock flying, and thus, they pay their dues and deserve to fly. You might add treasures and rares killed to the achievements, but it should unlock flying no later than the first patch of an expansion. When the “.2” patch is released, a new pathfinder (let us call it Pathfinder 2) should be required and now that person must earn the right to fly in the new zone. Once these are unlocked, they should be account wide.
There is no logical reason to withhold flying as the only possibility is to make 2nd or 3rd quarter numbers rise (for example, with my 30 toons BfA level, I won’t level them until you unlock flying, thus I will play more), but I would have played more in the other quarters if you had done this, and when the “.2” patches come out, the player will still need to do the Pathfinder for that new zone anyway, meaning they would be in the game getting the metrics up for that quarter anyway.
This would make an immense number of players happy (and would take away nothing from those that do not support flying- who, oddly enough, I have noticed always have achievements that would require that they use flying to get). So, no one is hurt- including your time-played metrics or quarterly numbers, and the community, in general, will be very happy about it.
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How to improve trollish transmogging:
This section is strictly in regards to Troll Transmogging specifically- I’ll let players of other races worry about their own lore/clothing. I have compiled the armor that is either missing for troll players, or should be put in- and to make your job even easier, I have listed actual troll NPC’s in the game that have the weapons and armor so you can easily look up the gear we do not seem to have access to.
For Troll Armor:
Cloth: For cloth we have the Amani Regalia, which is green colored, and we have access to a red and black version of EVERYTHING for it except the shoulders, and in the black set version, the gloves.
The Hexxer’s Mask- The Old Vol’jin model, and several Darkspear NPC have a version colored the Darkspear Tribe colors.
Amani’shi Medicine Man- Red and gray version of Forlorn Loa-Binder
Z’tenga the Walker- Red version of green Claw-Fringe Mantle shoulders (See also Drakkari Fire Weaver and Amani’shi Flame Caster and Chanters)
High Priestess Kilnara- Blackish/purple Claw-Fringe Mantle (See also Gurubashi Cauldron Mixer)
High Priestess Kilnara- Blackish/purple Charmbinder’s Grips
Leather: We have the Shadowtooth Regalia, and surprisingly we have access to all pieces of all versions except not a single blue colored version (they are in the game though). However, the boots matching the red set, for some reason, are not the same model as the black or green boots - same model as Timeworn Shadowtooth Boots.
Drakkari Battle Rider- Entire Blue version of Shadowtooth Regalia. (See also Amani’shi Tempest for full blue version)
Mail: You have partial sets, for example, for Amani Mail Regalia, you have a green colored Arrow-Fall Chestguard, we also have the pants and gloves to match, but no access to the helm or shoulders.
Amani’shi Beast Shaman- purple version of The guantlets of Sniping and the Gauntlets of Rapidity, like Grips of Nature’s Wrath, all are big and bulky, but someone goofed on Mojo mender’s Gloves and made them puny. Please make a purple version that matches the other colors.
Amani’shi Wind Walker- purple version of pants, Zombie Walker Legguards, instead of “kilt”
Drakkari God Hunter- Full yellow set of Amani Mail Regalia
Drakkari Frostweaver-Full green set of Amani Mail Regalia
Drakkari Medicine Man for green Brittle Flamereaver Leggings
Zanzil- Green version of Brittle Flamereaver Mask
Zanzil- green version of Brittle Flamereaver Pauldrons
Gurubashi Shadow Hunter- Blue Version of Headdress of Sharpened Vision
And for a weapon skin, please make a purple, green, and yellow version of Restrung Voodoo Bow to match those mail sets for troll hunters.
Plate: This one has bugged me since the old ZG was removed. We can get the entire set matching the Fanatic’s Regalia, which the Darkspear Guardian NPC’s wear, EXCEPT the helmet. Please give us access to it.
Darkspear Guardian- Green colored version of Amani Mask of Death
Darkspear Guardian- sleeveless version of Tarnished Fanatic’s Battlevest
Gal’Darah- sleeveless red version of Tarnished Fanatic’s Battlevest
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Fun Idea for a Debuff
When anyone kills King Rhastakhan in the raid, they get a 20 minute debuff that cannot be removed called “Rastakhan’s Revenge”. Every minute or so they make a burp or toot sound and occasionally do that “kneel and vomit green” animation from quests and such.
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Ok, I’ll add more as I find time, and it never hurts for others to share their ideas either! Hopefully, someone at Blizzard found these ideas useful.