I can see that also being a opportunity to let people choose which expacs to do, such that if they want to not do one as its not their style they can do that.
Oh yeah, and capital city revamps would be incredible. Make some allied race capitals (Shadowforge and Suramar, for instance) proper capitals with auction houses and such. Then also an Orgrimmar/Stormwind revamp. I think there’s a lot of prime real estate on the cliffs above Orgrimmar. Making it a terraced style city using Hordified Iron Horde assets would be slick. I drew a picture a few years ago of a revamped Orgrimmar. Working on a cleaned up version and I might post it when/if it’s finished.
7 Likes
I’ve spent a good long while thinking about what I’d want from a roleplay perspective, and my biggest wish would be this:
Imagine with me traveling to the Caverns of Time, and next to the vendors is a brand new one! What would their stock be? Transmog that have been in the game for NPCs since vanilla, but were never made available to players. I’m talking the Night Watch outfits, I’m talking the Dark Ranger outfits, I’m talking guard outfits, grunt outfits, tabards, weapons, shields, ways to make yourself look authentically like a character from the world. It could cost timewalking tokens if you really want, but a way to access previously inaccessible items that are already programmed into the game would take away from no one’s fun, be stupidly easy, and give the players more options and more creativity.
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I’d like to see every race have a town. A town that can be accessed by everyone, has npcs and vendors, and actual buildings. It doesn’t need to be big, it doesn’t need to be a city in terms of functionality. I suppose I’m thinking of something akin to Theramore and Bilgewater Harbour… Just for thematic and RP purposes, and also to make the races feel like a part of the world. I’d especially like to see a Void Elf town pop up somewhere, with purple, silver and black variations of Blood Elf architecture. But I think this principle could be applied to all races.
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Finally have time to post this:
Transmog restrictions are a major dampener on creativity. White/gray named items, armor type restrictions, etc. Best example I can think of is the Orc clan outfits. I associate Warsong with warriors, but you have to play a Hunter or a Shaman to use their armor. Thunderlords are hunters, but you can’t actually be a Hunter and wear their transmog - you have to play a leather class. Lifting some of these restrictions would give players more creative freedom and incentivize mog hunting in the game.
Toy restrictions are just awful right now. Most items that let you take the appearance of something else, such as the Ashtongue Broken, only last 5 minutes and have a 30 minute cooldown. What’s the point? That’s not very fun to use. The store item that let’s you turn into bosses lasts 20 minutes, why was this never applied to other toys?
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I’ll die on this transmog hill. Die, I say!
Most (if not all) of the restrictions and limitations on transmog are just flat out BS at this point.
Blizz lost any argument they had when they released the Grunt and SW Soldier items. They kept ranting that they wanted ‘class identity’ to remain part of transmog. We are far past it at this point. I regularly mog one of my hunters in the Shaman T10.5 that you can get as drops. There’s thousands of other examples that can be created. They kept ranting that they didn’t want people looking “silly” and yet they allow people to run around almost completely naked by hiding clothes, or using a ‘fish’ or a ‘rolling pin’ as a weapon.
Their side of the argument no longer exists. Period.
If they aren’t going to do it, it’s either out of stubbornness or laziness. There is no other reason. None.
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i think all arguments were lost when we can effectively hide pieces of gear
not to mention the mogs that get released on the store
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Agreeing with the other posts that toy restrictions are abysmal. Cooldowns and buff times aside, most are wildly inconsistent with where and how they work, too. I’ve never understood why a toy like the Rotten Apple from horrific visions is only visible party side. But the Infected Arachnid Casing is visible to everyone, and can be interacted with by everyone. Turkey gun, etc. I’ve found some potions, drinks, and foods have this same issue to an extent, and the shadowlands changes to how potions work and stop effectiveness, for the sake of pve, kind of hampered some of the rp of both the game and rp servers.
I’ll write a bigger, indepth post on this sometime, but the crux of this is that these visual effects add a lot of unique flavor that’s by and large appreciated the most by the rp community. So when these effects get restricted, or removed with no options, we have a part of our fun taken away.
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Then don’t try to have a total revamp ready for expansion launch.
Xpac launches and 4-5 zones have been updated, with new quests, storylines, and thats as far as the story takes us. Add dungeons, raids…
And then 6 months in, 10.1 could come out and add 2 more zones, and continues the story.
Rinse and repeat.
Sure it might mean a 3 year expansion before they get it all done, but as long as there’s new story to go along with the new zones every patch, I’m happy!
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I’d love to see that picture!
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One of the worst toy restrictions I came across recently was a toy that worked in oppisite of the inky black potion. Is the Jar of Sunwarmed Sands. It’s only obtained with timewalking currency , works for two hours but has a 24 Hour Cooldown.
That completely baffled me, because sometimes events or RP may be rped at a different time of day narratively, and it makes no sense to supply the night time potion, but completely bar a day time potion should you want the sun to be out for what ever you are doing.
I do wish you could see the moon though with the inky black potion…
8 Likes
Since this seems to be the place, hello from Emerald Dream. Got a few ideas that I/we have thrown around and discussed for years in various forms. Since many other ideas have already been touched on, big focus here is sharding, rp-pvp, and cities.
Remove War Mode and Sharding for RP servers. The largest issues we've experienced have been directly related to sharding and War Mode. Removing these is likely the largest obstacle and least likely outcome.
For those that were not around or in the know even just 4/5 years ago, Emerald Dream was an RP-PvP server that had a reputation (for better or worse) of being the RP-PvP server. It was who are and what we loved. There was a reason many of us went there, and why many also left once War Mode and sharding made it almost impossible to continue despite some of our best efforts. It, similar to WrA and MG, split community members into War Mode shards, and even into shards within those shards, while also combining servers and their players with each other who have close to 0 connection to one another.
If I could ask for one thing to look into and hopefully implement, is reversing all sharding and War Mode on RP realms. Of course issues of faction balance will always be a thing, but RP servers are about community first and foremost. Basically revert MG, WrA, and ED back into pre-legion states.
Removing these also brings back World Defense, giving us an idea where people are at, offering incentives for going back out into the world, and gives us RP-PvPers another chance at life in a way. I’m certainly not letting any dwarf into the Barrens again!
At the very least, I would ask that all sharding is removed in all major cities like it is in Stormwind and Orgimmar. This allows us to use Silvermoon, Iron Forge, the Dalarans, ect. without worrying about which shard people are on, who else is on them, and needing to turn on/off War Mode.
Update major cities, make them accessible, and fill them with most to all amenities of the capitals.
Similar to the sharding idea, people coalesce where things are practical and accessible. People gather in Stormwind and Orgrimmar not because they are necessarily the best cities, but because they have been flooded with game play resources. The portal rooms, transmog, gear venders, graphic and narrative updates, quest hubs and starting points. Places like Iron Forge, Silvermoon, Darnassus (RIP) were amazing RP spots where people could gather and use as hubs or high traffic areas. Compounding the issue is as more resources are allocated to the capitals over and over again, it reduces the spaces and areas that are left open or accessible for roleplayers to gather.
Of course not all things need to be transferred over, or some transferred in differing ways. The embassy for allied races does not need to be replicated everywhere but a transmog vender, item upgrader, and portal room would need to be (though it would be neat to have a Maghar post in Orgimmar, Highmountain in Thunder Bluff, Nightborne in Silvermoon, ect).
Again, sharding would need to be turned off as well. It would be silly to put in all this work just for half of the target population not to see each other.
Lastly as a hot take - remove flying in all major cities. They’re suppose to feel lived in and crowded. Not open stalls and spaces with 100 players afk up in the air. Emptiness also adds a deflating atmosphere to the game, especially in its “big” cities and hubs.
World Update/Narrative Direction. Keep RPers "grounded" to the story and Azeroth.
This is far more of a game play and expansion thing, but a lot people overlook how an expansion, its narrative, and where we are going effects the RP community. A significant number of us have quit, moved to classic, or have at least stopped RPing due to narrative directions and jarring experiences in the world. You can still walk into Orgrimmar and see Warchief Garrosh, Vol’jin, and Sylvannas all standing there if you pick up the quests just right. There was a reference to Warchief Thrall (as current) I remember finding even a few years ago in Ashenvale. We’re still fighting in Southern Barrens, the Cataclysm seems to be actively happening all across the world still, Gilneas is super under utilized, and Vol’jin is still going to pierce Garrosh’s black heart. We’re 10 years in the past as we go out, or even just begin.
Further, the ‘big bad is going to destroy all of time and space’ does not resonate with us. Us as in those I’ve at least spoken to. We can’t get into it. We can hardly use it for our RP and it elevates our characters to a position we don’t play them as. Gives us stories at the people level, not the cosmic level. We can work with that.
"Suramar" each city. Make everyone its own, truly, filled out zone.
Replace Suramar with Zuldazar, or Boralus. Any work for this example. While very similar to the above, this is specifically improving city design and usage. Make these capitals/major cities their own zones with quest hubs, story progression, exploration, and open spaces. This was already half way done, though through different methods, in BC with Silvermoon and has been shown to be incredibly loved and useful in the three cities mentioned at the start. More questing can be added, a whole new zone type, urban, is added to the game on a grander scale. This is something RPers and non RPers are really missing out on.
More class/cosmetic glyphs. Further character expression.
A Blood Knight is not a Knight of the Silver Hand, is not a Sunwalker, is not a Vindcator. Yet, all are expressed effectively as the same. There are small differences that matter, like their class mounts, but through armor sets, spell abilities, and even in class halls they seem homogenized. We can use glyphs for different auras for paladin that better reflect their race, as an example.
Same goes for say warlocks who want verdant spheres back (maybe give them to mages too for they can stop complaining), more hex options, more polymorph options, ghost wolf/insert new animal here options, loa specific looks for classes, tidesage looks for classes, necromancer looks, the list goes on.
9 Likes
Can someone get on the phone with Ion and tell him since 9.1.5 about 50% of all hats on nightborne women hide their eyebrows and make them look like aliens? Trying to wear my cool HD Winter Veil hat but the only one that works is the 2004 red one.
Thanks.
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Yes, while I like the concept for War Mode people want PVP to be between servers. People want to recognize names and fight the people they know. People want rivalries to develop, commanders to know each other and adapt to each others strategies.
That won’t change things like bringing in massive off server groups to harass and camp, like what happened to Stormwind in the 1st half of 2020, but it is a good start.
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Right, and that is a technical solution that would need to be solved or addressed rather than an RP community issue. It effects us, sure, but not nearly as much as not having the capability to foster and create community. I still remember calling out targets at GMs because I knew once they were down it was almost done for. Of course they’d be like a prot pali or blood DK too 
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I agree! Sharding and warmode suck!!
I know I’ve shared this story multiple times before but I’m going to do it again!
Back during BfA friends and I were running around in a five man group doing the invasion WQs in Stormsong. However an Alliance raid full of off-server randos was camping the objectives so we followed Blizzard’s suggestion of dealing with a PVP situation with a PVP solution by forming our own counter raid. However as our raid started to fill up we got pushed into another shard with no Alliance raid to fight???
Well now since we’re in a raid we can’t get credit for the WQs and since the Alliance isn’t here anymore, lets reform our 5 man except we got pushed back into the shard with the Alliance raid and got camped again. So we tried to reform our raid but got pushed back into the empty shard again and PVP did not happen lololol.
We wanted to PVP!! Yet the sharding was making it impossible to form a reasonable counter raid and we just gave up and went home lmao. What’s even the point?
Unrelated to my rant but I do like the suggestion some of you put forward about an RP mode for RP servers. I think that could alleviate some of the PVP trolling that happens and could come with a breath of cool unique RP features that the devs won’t nerf or take away because something something PVE or PVP.
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IDK if you all ever had similar things on WrA, but on ED we’d claim entire zones or bases of operation out in the world. Guilds would dedicate themselves to defending it (of course RPing there too for events and campaigns) setting their hearthstones there, or a nearby major city, rally everyone online if it was some major thing, or purposefully afk/dungeon queue there hoping that it would entice someone to try and kill them. One or two people could turn into 4, 6, 20, 80 even. Ashenvale was a constant war zone, Hinterlands would get constant pings, back and forth attacks from Stormwind and Stonard would be common place. It hardly ever seriously disrupted RP too. If anything, it encouraged it further.
It would be great to have fewer stories like yours, and more of what I just described.
I can’t get onboard with an RP mode though. Feel as if it would further separate communities. It would be unwise to remove something like war mode which looks to specifically separate players, and then introduce RP mode, which has a goal of specifically separating players
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I’m with Abra. Less putting up walls and more tearing them down
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I can’t agree more with everything in this post. Especially about flying in cities. I hate what flying has done to the game. Arguably nothing has had as big an impact on feeling disengaged from the world. It makes the world feel so much smaller. You never have to see anyone. And it reduces world PvP to simply flying into cities to troll people.
It is one of the few cases in which I seem to agree with the developers and disagree with the majority of the playerbase. It is absolutely a case of “you think you want it, but you don’t”: a shiny new toy that we all thought was so cool at first, and then didn’t realize over time how it made the game feel so lifeless and dead. And now no one wants to give it up, not because anyone is actually happier, but simply because the goalposts have moved. What was once normal is now slow and inconvenient, and instant gratification is now the new normal. That’s how I feel about most “quality of life” changes. They’ve turned this game into barely more than a start menu from which to enter dungeons, raids, and battlegrounds. I want my RPG back.
This sounds amazing. I want this.
3 Likes