The Toybox: the most powerful items in the game?

Dearest Blizzard, may i call you Blizzard? I’m going to call you Blizzard. Today I lend my voice to the outcry regarding the egregious cooldown timers that seem to be arbitrarily assigned to those most powerful of cosmetic items: the toybox. Recently I traversed the digital landscape to farm up 500 fireflowers (not to be confused with the kind used by our beloved plumber) and with my flaming spoils I sought to purchase, on the 4th of July of all days, that which we all crave. Explosives. With much vigor and gusto I procured my flaming ring of flashiness, intent on showing all of azeroth just how cool I am.

And cool I was. For roughly three glorious seconds I became a swirling kaleidoscope of color, culminating in a whistling joyous burst of light above mine own head. Again! Again! I did shout to myself as I watched on in glee. But alas, I would have to wait the equivalent of cooking 30 hot pockets back to back (per the manufacturers recommended settings) to see the dazzling array of color grace my brow once more.
One hour. 3600 seconds. Two episodes of friends with commercial interruption. Thats how long I would be forced to wait.

Which begs the question Blizzard, just what raw hidden power are you not telling us about? How mighty is such a device that it requires twice the cooldown of a reincarnation? What manner of boon do I receive while waiting for six bloodlusts?
How potent is the strength of my technicolor dream coat that I should have to fight Kael’thas in his prime roughly thrice. After all this curio didn’t even come with a blind half night elf mongrel for a nemesis.
What sort of cosmic armament is this “toy” that it requires a full interview by none other than Mike Wallace while our so-called combat trinkets need merely two minutes at most to refresh their death granting capacity.

Is it the untethered power of joy that you seek to rein in? Does the smile which graces my visage spurn you so that you must ration it, slowly leeching the joy from my brain as to not use it up wholesale?
Does giving such an artefact a minute long cooldown invite doom upon us? Would the ear splitting cacophony of whistles and the awesome shimmering visual brought about in tandem risk crashing the servers?

Worse still, are you simply a capricious overlord oh Blizzard? Are these numbers merely arbitrary, thrown about with reckless abandon. Are we subject to the wheel of chance you thrust upon us? Madness strikes this author as equally possible as cruel method, an uncaring and unhearing master whose aims are unknown to me.
What then fair Blizzard must I do to appease you? I have already offered up my monthly tithe for nigh two decade. I have purchased thy sparkling store mounts, dusty and unused as they are. Miniature ragnaros has long been my companion and each new compatriot joins him in time. Is it blood? Must I give of myself to you oh Blizzard, lord of the multitudes? What arcane truths are you secreting away with these long wait times?!

Or… could the answer be far more simple? Is this just an ongoing punishment for the art department because of paladin Tier 1. If it is I can respect it, even if I’m not happy about it.

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The toy box is a great way to lag out other players.

This is likely the primary reason for the long cooldowns.

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It also happens to be a reason that makes zero sense. You could cut all the CDs on all the toys in the game by 50-75% and still achieve the same affect.

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While I understand the idea behind latency issues, as I alluded to in the original post, the argument is weak at best. Blizzard has already proven that they can program in a global cooldown, there’s no reason that using a toy from the toybox cant set off a 15 second global delay for using any other toy. Beyond that it’s absurd to suggest that a three second animation should require a cooldown 1200x longer than the uptime of the device. If we’re going to argue spam via pixel count I can make more problems slamming flash heal than setting off a sparkler once a minute, or multiple toys at 15 second intervals.

That is a longwinded way of saying you want to annoy people with toy spam.

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Is there any meaningful latency issues with toys?
I’ve seen that used as an argument a lot… And I do recognize that not everyone has the same service providers and bandwidth…

But i just don’t see it. I see latency issues with more players… But never because they put toys down

I know theoretically it won’t increase latency and it should do something… But isn’t it so miniscule you wouldn’t tell a difference?

I can see putting in a minor cooldown. But the Flamin’ Ring of Flashiness in particular doesn’t have an effect that’s any more disruptive than another firework toy, and the other firework toys have cooldowns from 30 seconds (Perpetual Purple Firework) to 3 minutes (most of the others) to 10 minutes (Azerite Firework).

And yet the cooldown is an hour for a single use. It’s complete nonsense and out of proportion to any kind of balance between preventing griefing and being accessible.

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I think it’s more like half a second. :slightly_frowning_face:

And yet a 5 or 15 minute cooldown would suffice. Not an hour.

No, people want to enjoy their toys, not annoy people. An hour cooldown for a half second effect is nonsensical.

I can dance around with flaming fire and sparkles all over my hands every five minutes, but I can’t shoot a firework in the air more than once an hour, while during Lunar Festival we can continually shoot them off.

Tell me the logic behind that.

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