Sunday 27 October 2013

Two Wow features i dislike part 1.

I have read a number of blogs recently that deal with new features people would like to see added to wow. These vary from adding addon functionality to account wide storage and other odd and ends. Some of these features i agree with however many are just wishful thinking on the parts of many people. I believe the future of Wow is the adaption of existing game features to streamline the game and make it more user friendly, ie flexi raiding etc.

Linked to this i am also against adding both new races and even another new class, i dont think the game has room or even space for either of these. Instead i favour continued work on the existing races, new models, Broken Draenei, Dark Iron Dwarves, Mecha-Gnomes and a Cenarius style avatar/shapeshift for druids etc etc. After the break i will attempt to justify why i dislike this feature and how it could be changed.


Ok so the feature that i dislike is ............................... Reforging, it has become so mandatory and important that there exist now both addons and websites that show how to gem, enchant and reforge your charecter to the optimum level. While i am not trying to knock the stunning work the creators of these sites/addons do, i my self use them. Because i cant be bothered to sit down and work out the stat percentages and were i can gain the most bang for my buck. To emphasise the point i have got lazy recently i wait till i get 2 or 3 gear upgrades before i commit to a regem/reforge session as its a pin to reforge n regem for one minor upgrade.

I think the core concept behind reforging is sound, it as very annoying back in the day to acquire new gear upgrades but the find by equipping them you would be so heinously over hit cap you could hit a needle in a haystack. But there was only really two options suck it up or not take the upgrade. There was only so little that could be done by changing gems etc to help balance the numbers. Reforging does solve this problem, so if your like me your are arcane mage and all you get is Crit trinkets. I have the option to get rid of that hideous crit for sweet sweet Mastery. Its not a perfect solution but it does help to alleviate the problem of unwanted loot.

However it does create a similar issue to what happened when they removed the daily cap, the cap served a very useful purpose it prevented players from gong mad running dailies. While 25 a day is still a massive amount it is far more manageable than 50 or more. However if you allow the players the option to do something they will if they deem it to be a advantage. This is what happened to reforging because you can reforge every item, why would you not reforge them? (i kinda get the feeling the daily cap may return in the next expac)

Fortunately there is a fairly simple solution, limit the slots that you can reforge, to say 4 or maybe 5. This should help create a slightly more meaningful reason to reforge were you access your gear looking for the best pieces to reforge. While i do understand that people will still use sites to do this for them hopefully, after all humanity is lazy we don't bother to create our own methods if we can simply copy what somebody else tells us. However if it gets people to focus on the class stats even a little and removes some of the tedium of reforging then this is a good move in my book. After understanding the way in which a character uses/interacts with stats an go a long way towards helping to improve your performance in whatever role you play.

The whole area of character customisation and optimisation could be streamlined not just reforging. This has something that has happened recently with the removal of stat sticks (wands, relics and librams) as well the loss of head enchants. I would love to see this taken further create a real reason and lore based idea for item customisation for example. Make reforging about weapons only. after all isn't that what reforging  means. Offer a wider range of customisation on the weapon and thus remove weapon enchants. I like the way wrist and leg enchants work at the moment it feels right that a tailor or leather working is able to imbue your items with power. I would love to continue in this vein across all the item slots ensuring there is a varied range of improvements but also they exist for a real reason not just to add gem slots to everything. (I am looking at you dragonsoul gear. my mage had like 90 gems slots all gemmed int what is the point?)

This started out as a article on reforging bat i am ending up with a overview of item optimisation, i wonder if it could all be tied into the professions better as well. For example if you want to reforge your weapon you need a a Blacksmith because that's what they do. Hell you could even bring back the weapon smith perks, after all if you want a cloak you go to a tailor if you want gems you find a Jewelcrafter so if you want your weapon fixed why not find a Blacksmith. It would create a far better us and reason for many of the professions than what currently exists in game.

Ok so wrapping it up for know, i have a 2nd feature i want to talk about hence the title. But i shall leave that to a later point have some other ideas swirling in my mind at the moment that are slightly more pressing to talk about. :) peace out y'all


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