In with the new, flashy epics, and out with the old, obsolete gear, no matter how much time or effort was invested into acquiring them.  It’s a cycle that any experienced WoW player has become accustomed to, as each expansion brings new rewards and invalidates all of your previous gear at some point.  Those warglaives from Illidan that you raided for over a year to acquire?  Old news now.  How about that old green sword (or fish, in my case…) that you kept for so long, yet still could not bear to throw out due to the naga slaying memories?  It just sits in the bank, for nostalgic purposes.

The whole system is boring, bland and in desperate need of seasoning.  What if something could be done to make these items meaningful today, while at the same time providing players with something else to do at max level?

A Solution:  Item Experience and Levels

Every item in WoW has an item level (iLvl) already associated with it.  As new content is released, new items are created with increasingly greater item levels.  A system could be created that would allow older items with lower item levels to “catch up” to newly released raid/PVP gear.  This could be extended to allow for further item level advancement of all items, perhaps up to a certain item level cap based on the current content patch.

Items could be leveled in a couple of ways:

Re-direct experience values to increase item levels. At max level, you could apply any experience gained to an item of your choosing, at some conversion rate.  Maybe it takes 100k XP in order to gain a single item level.  So, in order to level an iLvl 230 item from an iLvl 100 item, it would require 13,000,000 XP.  That’s quite a bit, but it should take a good amount of effort.  These numbers could easily be adjusted. Since quests reward gold instead of experience at max level, player could be given a choice regarding the reward instead.

Dropped tokens that increase item levels. Level items by getting other consumable items.  This seems to be the direction that Blizzard typically takes, but I can’t say that I’m too fond of it.  It does nothing to make experience useful, and the drop tables for most monsters would need to be adjusted.  There is an advantage in that you could save up tokens over time to apply to future items.  Even still, maybe dropped tokens could just be a bonus…

Re-directed experience and token drops. There’s no reason why we can’t combine both of the above solutions.  Item level tokens become a nice bonus when grinding, while the steady flow of experience provides a constant reward for the player.  Dungeon bosses could even drop more powerful tokens in order to reward groups and raids.  Everyone wins.

When items are created by Blizzard, each item, based on its iLvl, retains a certain number of item points that are distributed by the item designers.  Once an item levels up, it is granted a certain number of additional “item points”.   It is then up to the player to spend the additional item points on stats such as attack power, spell power or crit rating.

In order to preserve the original item flavor, perhaps the base item stats and properties should not be changed.  So for example, in an iLvl 100 item, only item levels 101 and up would generate additional item points.  Special use or proc abilities could be tied to the item level in order to keep pace.  Maybe just the special abilities could be retained, but the allocated item points could be wiped.

It’s all about choice.  A player could go back and level the same gear they used at level 10, or they could acquire new gear for new unique abilities, set bonuses or looks.  In the end, both avenues can be rewarding, but one is probably a lot less time consuming.

Ultimately, it should be up to Blizzard to become less lazy and create gear that’s meaningful for reasons other than just stats.  There should be innovative gear that gives players a unique reason to acquire it.  For example, what if some new rogue armor granted the ability to use an instant heal-over-time spell (think druids) that scaled with the armor’s item level?  A tank could try to acquire damage shield abilities on as many armor pieces as possible for their new porcupine spec.  The possibilities are endless, just be creative.

Make some of the gear available only through raid drops, and some people will certainly still do it.  If that’s not enticing enough, then maybe the raid content is the problem.  If it’s not fun on its own merits, why is it in the game?  Players should be able to take different avenues for equivalent (but not necessarily equal) rewards, given equivalent effort.

This is just one way to make things a bit more exciting at max level, while allowing everyone to keep the gear that they truly love and feel attached to.  Besides, who wouldn’t want a level 500 rotting bear carcass?

A Solution: Cooler achievements, Cooler loot

Yeah, this one’s pretty obvious. If the problem is lack of rewards that affect your character, add rewards that do so.

Learn new abilities. For example, take the trinket for teleporting to respective sides in Alterac Valley. Maybe after so many kills/wins/losses you’ll gain the achievement “Don’t tell me where to go!” with a new skill in your general tab “Teleport: [Dun Baldar/Frostwolf Keep].” Another example might be a passive skill to add 1% to some gathering proc rate. Maybe killing bosses will give additional hate rating on a diminishing return basis: 10=5hr, 25=10hr, 50=15hr, 100=20hr, etc. Of course, you’d have to scale that by level, but it’s a solid example – call it “Not you again!”

Loot quest items in the mail. I’m not too hot for this idea – I’d rather see characters advance by ways other than loot – but it’s still a valid solution. Gaining certain achievements should send you a quest item that you could turn in somewhere to claim a reward. Maybe if you pickpocket 1000 items, you’ll get mail from Ravenholdt (another rant entirely) with a quest item that you can turn in for some cool gloves with a property to increase pickpocketing range (like the glyph). Get creative with it.

Access to secrets. Maybe there’s a secret room in Dalaran for people who’ve completed every heroic dungeon, a room where they sell discounted Emblem of Heroism items (like 10% discount). Maybe completing all the lore-related quests would grant you access to a library with all of the game’s books – nothing you can’t do anyway with legwork, but all in one place. Little secret locations /exclusive content that anyone can get to with a bit of work, but make you feel like the achievement was really worth the effort.

I’m sure that all the Blizzard folks can think of even more enjoyable rewards if they can get over the “achievement rewards should not affect gameplay” nonsense they seem to have in the rulebook. You can always disable the bonuses in arena if the character advancements are a threat to the (laughable) PVP balance.

25 Ulduar: Emblems of Conquest
10 Ulduar & 25 Naxx: Emblems of Valor
10 Naxx & Heroics: Emblems of Heroism

What this implies: Next major raid content patch will drop Conquests in the 10-man and something new in the 25′s. Don’t have enough people to run a 25? Your options are either a) abandon your friends in favor of an impersonal “pro” raiding guild, or b) wait half a year for the next raid patch so you can get your hands on that next set of emblems.

Adding insult to injury, you can convert emblems downward, (Conquest -> Valor -> Heroism) but not upward. Cutting off folks from these rewards ultimately just sours the game for them and shows preferential treatment toward raiding.

A Solution: Make the Exchange Work Both Ways

You can already convert Conquest to Valor and Valor to Heroism on a 1-to-1 basis. What could be the harm in allowing the reverse with a steeper price tag? Say, 5 to 1? Let’s examine the prices that’s result from this.

Breastplate of the Wayward Vanquisher (T 8.5 chest)
Cost: 58 Emblems of Conquest

For a 5:1 upward exchange rate, that’d be 290 Emblems of Valor. That might even be a bit too much. Let’s make it 3:1, or 174 Emblems of Valor. Woould it be worth making a lot of 10-man raiders happy at the cost of a few 25-man raiders getting a little bit less exclusive content? It’s not like they’d be losing all the dropped content, and it’d even give ‘em a good reason to do that old content. 174 is pretty steep, but those that feel stunted by that 25-man barrier would probably be glad for the opportunity.

It’s easy to implement (2 item entries in a couple vendors – that’s like, what, 30 seconds of work?), and potentially makes a lot more people happy than it angers. It should result in more heroic runs, and more low-end raiding. That’s a good solution in my book.

I realize a lot of these solutions are obvious, probably even implemented elsewhere (as I’ve been informed), but it just baffles me that they aren’t implemented in an MMO with such vast resources as WoW’s.

Forcing people to do absolutely nothing for extended periods of time is an odd choice. I’m not saying it shouldn’t be a choice, but rather that it shouldn’t be the only choice. We all know how irritating it is when you have to take that flight from Winterspring to Silithus (or whatever the Northrend equivalent might be). “Gee, what shall I do while in flight? Perhaps discover usable cold fusion?”

Seriously. It’s boring. Offer some alternatives to just waiting it out.

A Few Solutions: Free Hands, In-Flight Entertainment & the Express Lane

Solution one: Allow crafting and such stationary things mid-flight.

Solution two: Add an optional mini-game to the flight. Maybe if you help the (gryphon/wyvern/…copter?) catch some snacks mid-flight (…or motes?), it’ll refund some of your fare when you land. It might still be boring, but at least it adds some sort of control to the situation, even if it’s just to save a few silver. Maybe add an achievement for amount of gold saved / things snacked, which would yield the BOE recipe for…

Solution three: A gnomish air-fueled wormhole generator (or, FlightZapper 9001). Equip this trinket before flight, and it starts casting when you take off, and after 10 seconds it creates a wormhole that teleports you to your destination, about 10 seconds before you land. Maybe even have a Stargate-esque animation between locations. For a mere 2,000 gold, your flights can go from 6 minutes to 20-30 seconds. Make it 3,000 gold for an heirloom version so the player can switch mains / use it on new characters.

Man, that third solution would be higher priority than dual spec, flying mounts, and northrend flying combined. It’d probably even save on bandwidth from the servers having to send the player every single item on the route…

The thing I hate about blogging about this stuff is that I end up craving the solutions I post. It’s kind of like discussing donuts, and thereafter having a deep and almost spiritual need for tasty donut goodness.

If a creature drops 3 kinds of trash loot, I should have 3 stacks of trash loot after an hour of farming. I should not have 35 stacks and an unwanted trip to go vendor it all, just so I can go fill my packs with vendor trash again to get a few more items.

Warlocks know this pain all to well, in a much more acute form: Soul shards. They already have a unique tag, limiting the number you can have at once, yet they still don’t stack. Hunters can stack arrows up to 1000, but soul shards? One to a slot. I could understand this if the shards had some unique properties: “Contains Soul of PVPBob, a Warrior” would be pretty cool, particularly if you could use that to influence the spells that consume the shard.

No such luck. Your pack is full of a bunch of little pink crystals, each one the same as the last.

A Solution: New Stacking Rules

If it stacks, it should really stack. None of this 5/10/20 junk. Set a standard stack maximum of 250, and let the Unique tag take care of any special cases. This should free up your pack for loot you actually want, like magic items.

“But, Seditia,” you say, “Wouldn’t people stop buying larger bags?”

Probably not. With dual spec added, some folks need to carry 2, maybe even 3 armor sets. Then there’s quest items, a few hundred kinds of crafting ingredients, and flavor items. I don’t know about you, but my priest doesn’t go anywhere without her Bloodsail Pirate outfit (complete with dual tankards, and Corsair’s Overshirt ’cause red is superior to white).

Freeing up inventory slots means freeing up space so the player can have more fun with it.

Because, as much as it wants to be, inventory management will never be Tetris.

Then there’s pieces you just wish were something—ANYTHING—else. As I primarily play a rogue, the most relevant example is the Terrorblade Helmet. I saw this item and was immediately baffled, and shortly thereafter progressed to horrified. The same butt-ugly model is used for the lore-related Garona’s Guise, which just makes my inner rogue weep. Other examples are very easy to find.

C’mon guys, I know you’re aware of the “don’t show helmet” option, but why on earth would you make it mandatory?

To be fair, taste obviously varies from person to person. There are most likely people out there that actually want to wear a screaming bald zombie head as a helmet. For those that don’t, they’re screwed.

A Solution: the Illusionist NPC

Here’s a solution: Create an NPC or skill that will bring up an interface with 2 slots: the Target item, and the Source item. Pay a hefty sum (say, 500 gold) to copy the model and skin of the source item to the target item. Reverting to the original look is free.

All of the sudden you’ve got a very attractive gold sink, and players can look however they want. I can stop wearing this flaming piece of junk in favor of, say, something a little more fashionable – assuming I have the original item to throw in the Source slot.

I’d be first in line to cough up a few grand to make my outfit look the way I want it to.

And this guy wouldn’t have to wear a dress.