Mike Morhaime no doubt has done a superb job in leading Blizzard - but I could do it better! Okay, maybe not…but I still think I could make improvements, even if ever so slight. World of Warcraft is no doubt a great success and has many great features. Obviously, we’ve all played it at one point in time and most of us MMO fans have had to fight an WoW addiction. But with all those great features, there is still room for improvement. Here’s a couple things, although minor, that I’d like to see changed.
Sale Pending
First, let’s talk about two things that irritate me. The most irritating feature that somehow made it into WoW actually fairly recently is the Auction House delay. When you sell items on the AH, there is always an hour delay before you get paid. Now, I know Blizzard didn’t just throw this in to irritate it’s population of players. In fact I’m quite certain that it’s a mechanic put in place to help fight the gold farmers taking advantage of AH exploits to move gold around in-game without Blizzard being able to track it, but come on. There has to be a better way!
True, this better way may require more man hours of programming and some creative thought, but it must be possible. They should be able to add a way to track AH transactions just as well as mail or face to face trade transactions. If the delay in getting paid is just meant as a minor annoyance or a delay to allow some sort of transaction scan to run, who knows. Blizzard certainly isn’t going to tell, but if they can just keep track of transactions and have them scanned seemlessly later - then what’s the problem?
You would think it would be simple enough to create a system that would throw up red flags that would alert Blizzard to gold farm trades. If an item is selling for 1k+ gold - despite it’s quality - chances are the trade is not legit. There are always going to be ways for farmers to get around the system, but hindering the 99.9% of trades that are legit is annoying.
I know, it’s only an hour but there are times when you need the money. For example, I had several hundred gold from Adamantite sales just tonight sitting in limbo while I watched a bidding war on an item I wanted. I could have afforded to just put down the buyout, if my gold wasn’t tied up but ended up losing the item because my money was inaccessible to me. That’s annoying.
Do Not Trade for Enchant Materials
This isn’t normally a problem and I know there are ways to report someone for doing this but has it ever happened to you? I’m talking about an enchanter taking mats from you to do an enchant and logging out? Or losing connection or whatever - before you get the enchant? For goodness sake, I hope you weren’t dumb enough to trade him the item you wanted enchanted too! At least they have a do not trade window so you can have items enchanted.
But what about creating a new interface for enchantments? I don’t know exactly how the mechanics would have to work (that’s what programmers are for, after all) but you would think it would be possible for a safe way to bring your own mats to the table.
In my minds eye, I see it working something like this. You want an enchant on your item and you have the mats handy. You open the trade window up with the enchanter just like now, but instead of trading away your mats to the stranger to have them use them to put an enchant on your item, why not have it work like this. When you put your item in the do not trade window and the enchanter selects the enchant and puts it on the item, a secondary window should pop up with enough slots for the mats. Simply put the mats in the slots and when the enchant is processed it will use those mats. If no mats are put in, just use the enchanters mats. Trust me, he’s not going to hit trade until enough gold to compensate for his mats is a part of the trade.
Flying Mounts - Everywhere
You know, this is one thing I don’t understand why it wasn’t done. I know Blizzard said that the original continent wasn’t designed for flying mounts. That you would be able to get places you shouldn’t be able to get. If you ask me, that’s just a cop out. This is just another example of not wanting to put in the man hours of programming necessary to get it done. Instead, just take the easy way out and say ‘no’.
There are several legitimate concerns for not including flying mounts. One of them is obvious - ganking. This isn’t to much of a concern as level 70 players already should have epic riding mounts, so it’s not like lower level players are going to get away anyway. NPC flying guards can easily be added to cities, villages and towns such as they are in Outlands, keeping gankers from swooping in and terrorizing players in safe zones.
Zones that don’t mesh well together and may cause asthetic problems could be corrected to mesh together better. Places players just shouldn’t be flying could have an invisible barrier put in place, like to far out in the water or near developer island. This would also be just like in Outlands. There are places you can’t fly and get pushed away from - they are few but they are there. If you put down the five grand of gold necessary to get an epic flying mount you should be able to use it everywhere! It sucks going slow when you aren’t in the Outlands.
