I’m somebody who enjoys a little bit of class fantasy in my online role playing games™ and I had an idea for Pickpocket while playing today on my new rogue.
So one of the major issues with Pickpocket is that it doesn’t really get you anything anymore. Used to be nice in Classic to get that extra silver here and there or a tigerseye you could hock on the AH for some good moneys, but nowadays it feels really forgotten.
I remember in Legion (and I think WoD too but never played rogue in WoD) they had a unique currency for Rogues to pickpocket and they got some fun little trinkets n junk they could buy that no other class could buy, that was cool. But hear me out, new idea.
Part 1: The Rogue’s Stash.
I think Rogues, upon learning Pickpocket, should gain an extra bag similar to the Keyring of old (I was there when the ancient texts were written), and it only holds loot obtained via pickpocketing. It’s called the Stash. Any time they Pickpocket, any items found automatically get tossed into the Stash instead of the inventory. It has 16 slots, just like the Backpack, and only “Pickpocket” items can go in there. It also has its own Currency tracker at the bottom of it, which tracks your “Markers” (part 2). All of these items are white-name items that have various uses that I’ll get into (part 3). At vendors, for rogues only, there’s a “Sell Stash” button that’ll clear your Stash for gold value instead of alt uses.
Part 2: Markers.
“Markers” are my stand-in name for a Legion-style pickpocketing currency that only Rogues can get. In different towns, there’s Rogue vendors who will sell Toys, Mounts, Cosmetics, Conveniences, etc. only for Rogues. Things like shadowy bandanas, tight leather outfits, your typical run-of-the-mill scoundrel attire. And, to add RP fantasy value, put different themed outfits in different places. Have Defias gear you can find from a hidden Deadmines rogue vendor only rogues can see, have a hidden vendor in Icecrown Citadel that sells Gheist-lookin’ gear, maybe someone in Desolace that sells some Night Elf lookin’ stuff, etc.
Different zones would have different cosmetics or mounts or whatever and you’d be able to pickpocket clues from creatures in that zone that add markers to your map that show you how to find the hidden vendors.
Part 3: Pickpocket Item Uses
So, I like the idea that you could find valuable gems in pockets and use them for Engineering, Jewelcrafting, etc. and you could also find cloth or leather sometimes too, especially in the junkboxes you find. I wanna see that get expanded upon in a fun way.
Imagine if the items you find are things like “A leather wallet,” “A silk kerchief” etc., and if you have the appropriate profession, you can break those into Leather, Silk, etc.
Now take it a step further with Warbands, what if you could throw those items into your Warband stash, and have another character of yours who has the profession break them down? Obviously it wouldn’t be anywhere near as effective as just having Skinning, not even close, but it’d be a neat roleplay-centric means of gathering materials as a rogue.
Like imagine with me, your Warband is delving into War Within’s zones, and the rogue of the group comes in and dumps out a pouch of materials that they scavenged to help the rest of them craft.
Now there’s more uses I thought of too: What if you were able to “examine” the item, such as a Wallet, and find a clue about who it belongs to? Now you can find the person it belongs to, maybe a completely randomly chosen NPC, and when you return it to them, you can choose to ransom their thing (get more money or possibly fight the NPC when they get mad), or you can be generous and give it back (get like 2 reputation instead).
I feel like these little things wouldn’t be difficult to program into the game and would add a massive amount of roleplay value to playing a Rogue, and would be an Evergreen thing that could carry into future expansions easily, and could VERY easily be brought back into prior expansions too.
It would obviously be tuned to not make Rogues overpowered. Naturally, 10% Rep Gains from Humans was OP with Warbands existing and so if Rogues could even get 2 Rep with a faction for finding a lost wallet, people would see Rogues as OP in terms of rep gain, but hear me out.
Goblins get the best repair costs, Zandalar Trolls get 7% more gold from loot, we already have races that have advantages in terms of some kind of currency acquisition. On top of that, we have players who bought a dang Auction House mount who can very easily make millions if not billions of gold farming dungeons for BoEs and selling them on the spot. Then to add insult to injury, we got the WoW token giving anyone who has $20 to throw away 200k+ gold. I think we should stop with this whole “everything needs to be balanced” in the first place, and just let your class choice give you advantages in some aspect.
In Wildstar (remember that game?) you could pick a playstyle and whatever you picked would change how your character levels up as a primary means. You could be a person who builds outposts and collects resources to do so, you could be a person who just does combat, you could be a person who explores and finds secrets, and you could be a person who looks for lore objects in the world. Whatever you picked heavily changed your gameplay, HEAVILY, and opened entire zones up that only you and your party members could enter.
I think it’d be neat if a Rogue could pick a lock in a dungeon to make a shortcut, or if a Warrior could smash through a rock wall to skip a boss, or if a Druid could make a Worgen boss turn into an ally (dropping a loot chest instantly and becoming a mid-dungeon repair vendor), or if a Death Knight could go into a fight against two Undead bosses and force one of them to kill the other making the fight much easier. I feel like class fantasy is an extremely important thing, especially for WoW, and little things like that could take the game in an extremely huge fun direction.
Like, we have this whole “Take the player, not the class” philosophy, which has homogenized every class in the game, and now I barely notice a difference between a Feral Druid and an Assassination Rogue. Basically the exact same class.
I know, I know, “But Mythic parties who want to skip a boss will always want a Priest to use a Greater Shackle on an Undead boss to bypass it for the best time, that’s not fair!”
Sure it is. It just encourages people to play Priest. Like I get that people just wanna play one character and it’d be lame to be invited less because your class doesn’t do anything special in X dungeon, but maybe they do something special in Y dungeon and you can get in that one instead, y’know?
Sorry, rambled way off topic to explain why I want Pickpocket to be a more fun thing to do. I am still doing Cata Chromie Time and going around pickpocketing 1 silver 14 copper and a gray item that sells for 1 silver 1 copper off of every single enemy in Arathi Basin even though it is a complete waste of time. Why? Because my character is a thief. My character steals things. I want to steal from enemies. It is a thing I want to do.
I just think it’d be really nice for it to actually have a worthwhile feel to it, you know?
Also it’d be cool if Archaeology stopped being forgotten, I missed it in Shadowlands and DF, man. That’s neither here nor there.
Love y’guys.
Peace.
