Thursday 19 March 2009

And with my bajillion gold pieces, I can buy Altdorf

OK, I'm a poor Orc I have to admit. Too much respeccing, flight paths and wipes and not enough actual earning money makes the bank balance look a little pale these days. I'm well enough off that I don't have to scrabble in the drops to find a shinie to sell to pay for a re spec (well not yet anyway) but if I don't actually occasionally grind then I find myself looking at a dipping balance.

But then apart from re specs and wipe bills what outgoing expenses do we need? Is there really a point in making money once you get your 15 gold to buy your mount at level 20? I know Mythic don't really want you worrying about gold when you can be out there smashing skulls and breaking bones but with the ever growing influx of gold into the economy (quite unlike real life really) any attempt in the future to at least balance the cash flow could be impossible.

Gold sink rewards are good (mmmmm) and gold sink punishments are bad (dat 'urtz!). Mythic wants to keep the game flowing without it being a grind so putting in a gold sink punishment such as repair bills is not really an option. So what do we have? Well naturally it leads to the gold sink rewards, but again you don't want it to become a grind to get better gear so a reward shouldn't give you an advantage over another player who is more casual or just spends his teef like a good Orc. So what could we spend our shinies on?

Weapon & Armour Models: Much as we can get rare heads in the dye slots, how about paying a bucket load of gold for very unique looking pieces of armour and weapons? Pay 150g for one, slap it in the special dye slot and it will change the model of your stick to a model of a a shiny, pointy stick. Keep the dyes unusable until rank 40 to avoid level 1's running around looking like the Emperor after a good buffing from, one of his little priests.

More mounts: Instead of a re-hue, how about an actual new model? Give Orcs a wolf or Cyboar, Dark Elves could get the dark mounts, High Elves unicorns and Dwarfs can get a donkey... Just something different to ride on would be nice, but I guess it helps the silhouette point that WAR had (you should be able to recognise the class from it's silhouette) if all classes generally have one mount.

Emotes: It might sound silly (and WAR is actually a silly game really, but good silly) but add a few more emotes but make you have to pay to learn them. Not just generic ones, but emotes that come with animation, sounds and.. uhmm. flashy lights and jingley bells. OK maybe not the lights and bells...

Bank Slots: Obvious one really, lets us buy, say six extra bank slots for a 100g or whatever, can never have enough crap taking up space in your bank.... Especially me..

Of course, there will always be the people who scream "ZOMG FIX XYZ CLASS THEY ARE OP AND I R NERFED!!!!!1111eleventyonezomgbbqlol", but a game cannot exist on fixing perceived imbalances and purely career changes. A successful game adds the little bits of content at the same time to give everyone something to benefit from (and after all WAR has a content team for live events etc).

Well that's me off to the WAR-Europe dev chat. Wonder how it will go... Determined to get my "Make black orcs da biggest again!" question in... Hur hur hur