Well the end of the year creeps closer and so Christmas is just around the corner for most of us, so what better time than to put out my Warhammer Online christmas list much as I did last year. Now to make it a bit more constructive I've gone for fairly neutral things that would benefit people in Warhammer, not just me personally. It's in no particular order but I limited it to five of them. So without further ado...
OI SANTAAAAAGH!
HEY GIT FACE.... ITZ GETTIN' BLOODY COLD N ALL WHITE 'N' STUFF. MAKES IT EASIER TO SEE WHEN A STUNTIE IS DEAD OR SLEEPIN COZ RED STUFF SHOWS BETTER ON DA WHITE STUFF.
ANYWAY. GIMME STUFF OR I'LL SMASH YER FACE IN SINCE YER PROBABLY A BIG STUNTIE WITH THAT BEARDY THING ON YER GOB.
1. Weather Effects
I'm still a huge fan of weather in a game, it brings a world alive and adds variety to a bland landscape. It's odd that the Marshes of Madness has the exact same weather as Eataine. Yes there's a couple of zones with snowflakes falling, but that's the generic snow zones you get in MMO's. Give us rain through Praag, howling gales through Kadrin Valley and fog and damp in the mentioned Marshes of Madness. It doesn't have to be forced onto everyone, give us the option for weather but I still hold out for the day where the world feels alive and not trapped in a glass jar.
2. New RvR lakes
For two years we've been battling through the same 9 zones with the same look, the same places to 'hide' and the same bits of pathway to get stuck on inexplicably. There's four tier 4 zones unused, commonly known as the side zones, allowing some sort of zone capture mechanic could be nice, perhaps once the middle zone is captured it unlocks one of the others in the pairing randomly instead of the same ones each time. It's also be nice to visit some of the old RvR lakes for T4 battles. I liked Barak Varr in particular, maybe it's just good memories of battles there but I really liked the style and theme of it, kept the place interesting. Maybe we could get a special T4 version one day, just lock the warcamps so players can't get out to an empty zone and leave the only exit a portal back to IC/Alt or into the lake. T4 players only of course.
3. Mix up the scenarios
We've had the same ones repeated a lot and I think it's time to mix them up. When they first came out people thought we'd say the vast majority if not all the other scenarios pop up that didn't make the cut in the weekend warfront.. I think we've seen 4 not including the special ones and I know a lot of folks that don't queue for certain scenarios (Temple of Isha in particular) due to the length of time they can take even when dominating the opposition. Mythic also still need to look at guard ranges as some are very unbalanced in regards to aggro ranges. Praag seems the worst for this as I've seen Order within a few feet of the guards and not get touched where I've been a fair distance and still gotten whacked (and not because someone else pulled). Anyway Mythic.. Revisit what's there and bring back some others that never got a chance to come back. While going through them though, I'd also like to make a mechanic in scenarios to avoid one side spawn camping the utter hell out of the other one and ignoring the entire point of the scen (like capturing the flag) just to grind out renown. A quick win should benefit as much as a 15 minute grind on pugs.
4. Matchmaking in Scenarios
Cross server, visible ranking system and scenario only gear... It's a lot to ask but I am confident this would kick interest back into WAR for a lot of people. Allow servers to fight against other servers with a global and server ranking system, setup teams (small cost of course) and allow 6 players to register for a team, you can either queue for ranked scenarios against other teams from other servers in a 6v6 battle, or queue for general scenarios using a matchmaking system. The arena style (lets not mess around pretending it's anything else) would allow players to earn tokens for scenario only gear, it has unique looks so can be used in the appearance system but will not provide bonuses unless you're in a scenario to prevent the teams dominating ORvR and to keep the gear level from going crazy. It'd be a paid booster expansion but I bet a very popular one.
5. Re-itemisation
It's a lot of work, but there's a LOT of gear out there with dreadful or pointless stats on them. I think one of the early Black Orc chests you can pickup has more willpower on it than anything else if I remember rightly. Now it'll take forever to get through each quest and influence reward but I think they can start off with tier 4 sets. With the new establishment of offensive and defensive sets and each T4 set having a PvE equivalent (annihilator and ruin, sentinel and conqueror, invader and dark promise, warlord and (almost) tyrant) I think going back and itemizing the sets so that RvR could drop defensive sets and PvE offensive versions. Balance them out amongst all classes better and you then have a more comfortable level of gear progression and options for all classes.
