Every year we ask each other what we would wish for Christmas. For some of us it’s something sensible like a new computer chair, while for others it’s something crazy like a Nerf Havok. Either way, we all have something we’d love to get our hands on.
But what would you do if Blizzard asked you for your Christmas wishes? What would you say to Greg Street, Chris Metzen and Tom Chilton if they showed up at your door asking what you wanted for Winter Veil? That’s the idea behind this post: my top three things I’d ask Blizzard to give me for Christmas.
Major Mount Miniaturisation Machine
I’m tired of the mammoth mounts. People use them to stand on quest givers. They use them to stand on trainers. They use them to stand on mailboxes. If Warcraft had realistic physics and collision detection, your average flight master would be twenty-four feet wide and two inches thick, laminated to the ground under an avalanche of mammoth hooves.
Blizzard could fix it for me by giving us a device much like a train set that can be placed on the ground and shrinks all mounts to the size of a child’s tricycle. Flying mounts would be grounded under the strain of keeping their passenger airborne. Characters would en masse remember that feet can be used outside of combat.
Make it an engineering made item or an outrageous gold sink. I assure you it’ll sell. Just make it unusable in arenas and battlegrounds and you’ll be fine.
The ‘In Progress’ Toggle
As DPS, there’s nothing more tiring than joining a part-cleared heroic instance. It’s common for the group to fall apart shortly after you’ve joined, either because they’ve decided a boss can’t be defeated or they’re not prepare to make further attempts. This is made worse after waiting for up to an hour to get to the front of an instance queue.
In order to avoid these problems, I’d like the ability to avoid “in progress” dungeons through a tickbox or setting that I can set when I queue. It might take me longer to find a group, but I know that we’ll be starting a fresh run. I know that this creates problems for groups that lose someone after part of the instance is cleared, but frankly at the moment these groups tend to fall apart anyway.
I know these problems can be solved by running dungeons as a guild, which is what I try to do whenever possible. I also know that this is only a temporary problem, which is why I suggest the toggle. Frankly, having a system better than queueing for an hour, joining a group, watching it disband and having to reque is a bit crap. Especially when it happens multiple times in an evening.
The RealID Grouper
Not a name for a peculiar type of fish, this is all about helping friends to play together. We probably all know friends, relatives and co-workers that we’d like to be able to play the game with. That’s usually where it ends. I don’t want to transfer to their server – I have a good guild and a nice bunch of friends where I am – but I’d like to play with them occasionally.
I’d like to see RealID evolve to let me create groups for 5-man dungeons with my friends no matter what server they call home. I’d like to be able to band together with who I choose, instead of the random dungeon queue choosing for me. Heck, I’d even like to be able to throw larger groups together using the tool and let me pull in people I know when my guild is a little short on raid night.
Oh, and while you’re at it can you please make RealID global? Every other instant messaging and presence service I use works on a global scale, so why can’t this one?
That’s my top three, but how about you? Would you ask Blizzard for the same thing or do you have something else in mind? If you could have anything, anything in the world (of Warcraft) what would it be?
Number 1: Baby spice does the trick – occasional reward from the Dalaran cooking daily.
True, but I don’t go back to Dalaran any more š
Besides, i was thinking of something you could drop on the floor, like a trap from Ghostbusters that sucked in all the mounts. Or something š
Yes yes yes yes yes on the grouper! I have friends across like 5 servers. If we could just group up together using RealID, my life would be much, much simpler.
The third one would be huge for me! Even though many of my friends are playing the other faction – I’d still love to be able to get together with my fellow Alliance to run a 5-man. We know that cross-server instancing can occur – we’re doing it all the time! Now I’d like to have a bit more choice in the matter.
I love your idea of the in-progress toggle, but I’d use it the other way. I actually prefer joining in-progress dungeons. Less work for the shiny badges, hurray! Except for Grim Batol. I’ve only seen the last boss of Grim Batol, but I’ve seen him 4 times now.
I love the idea of the cross-server grouping. But I just don’t see Blizzard implementing it. They made the barrier between realms for a reason, and if you were able to pull from other realms for progression raiding, realm progression and the race for server and world firsts would be made irrelevant. After all, when I can go join an Ensidia raid (not that that would ever happen… but you get the picture), while playing on another server, what does it mean when I get the realm first for a realm I’m not on? Very cool idea though… and at least with five man dungeons I think it could certainly work.
Great wishlist, inspired me to create my own.
They’re all brilliant ideas (yeah I’m slow at keeping up on my reader, shush :p)!
It would be nice if when an in progress dungeon pops up, you could skip past it to the next one, but then again, as people who have had to replace a healer or a dps part way through an instance and managed fine once we got going again, it would suck from that side of things.. But if you’ve queued specifically for Blackrock Caverns HC and need something from the first boss, and have the choice to join for the third boss onwards or wait another 40 minutes, that also sucks. /flail.
The RealID grouper, on the other hand, FANTASTIC idea… but Blizzard would lose money on server transfers so that aint happenin’ anytime soon š
Blizzard implemented two options (beyond Baby Spice) that completely answer your first wish.
ESCAPE > Key Bindings > Scroll down to the ‘Targetting functions’ section > (details)
Details:
Interact with Mouseover = I set mine to ” ` ”
Interact with Target = I set mine to ” ~ ” (aka Shift+`)
/target ‘name of NPC’ targets the questgiver etc in question
In short it works.
Aye, it works, but it has two problems:
Firstly, you need to have the keybindings organised, which isn’t something that’s there by default. You also have to know what you’re trying to target.
Secondly, I’m looking for something that kinda ridicules the oversized mount campers. I don’t mind the large mounts, but I take issue with people who use them in an antisocial way. Replacing them with something like the sandbox tiger would work for me š
There already is a psudo dungeon in progress option. Choose specific dungeons and you’re guaranteed a fresh run. The only downside is you don’t get the daily reward and can’t choose locked dungeons.
The universal wow christmas wishes I think…
As a DPS I wish I could have the option of declining In Progress dungeons without being kicked out of the queue. I have not yet had a In Progress dungeon that I’ve had to join actually last more than 5 minutes. I spent 3 hours in queue…for 3 in progress dungeons in a row that disbanded shortly after. I finally had to resort to paying a tank and healer 200 gold each just to get through a random for my points.
Yeowch – I just flip to doing other things unless there are guild members online that I can bother to get a few runs organised.
That said, I think that heroics have a very short lifespan. I’ll be explaining more on that topic soon…