Four requests, null nerfs

I was having a discussion with a mate who plays WoW the other day about changes we would like to see in the game. I had a nice list going, so I thought I should post the ideas here and see what people think. Some of these have made the rounds before and some are new, to me at least.

New Druid Forms

Since I have a druid main, my first wish is some change to the druid forms. I have been the same ugly cat since I hit level 20, and the dire bear form is getting pretty old at this point too. I would love new elite textures and models for our forms, especially if there were several new ones to choose from. Additional models and textures only available to feral druids for cat and bear would be icing on the cake. I would love for all of these forms to have unique quest lines, but that might be asking too much since we already have a 70 class quest line for epic flying form. A different approach would be craftable, or vendor available, cosmetic armor for use on our current forms.

Gear Colors

I have always wanted some sort of color changing options for gear, be it dye or multiple selectable looks for a specific armor piece. I am tired of looking like a rainbow and getting an awesome piece of gear that makes it worse isn’t a huge let down. I have looked at other MMORPGs and been jealous of their gear dying options. The solution EQ2 has implemented, with a paper doll for looks and a separate one for stats, seems like a good middle option. I believe that Blizzard prefers to maintain control over the colors so that each item is easily recognizable compared to similar textured and modeled items, and so they can maintain the artistic look of the game. Making people with the best gear visually recognizable makes it more of an achievement to have that gear. There have been arguments that for pvp you need to be able to recognize gear to react correctly to different situations. I think none of these arguments really stand up. The models for the epic gear should be unique and then the colors don’t matter as much. The colors available can be limited to disallow too much artistic license, although, they already have pink shirts and tabards available now, so what more harm could be done?

Languages

The first time I realized that my Night Elf hunter could speak in Darnassian I was very excited. I thought, as you would, that eventually through a quest or a trainer I could learn other languages and possibly learn to speak to the other faction. I was sad to learn that this was not possible, and over my time in WoW this has always been something I hoped would be patched in. I think this is an opportunity for a new profession or secondary profession. The languages could require long quest lines, and would allow you to trade with any race whose language you know. I think this offers a lot of potential benefits and fun that are missing from the game.

Cross Faction Interaction

With the increase in cooperation between the Horde and the Alliance in the Burning Crusade, it is time for cross faction interaction and grouping. The language changes I suggested above could be the beginning of this integration. Eventually allowing cross faction access to cities and auction house, and linking all auctions. This would allow servers with low populations, or imbalanced Alliance to Horde ratios, to have better access to buy and sell. The integration should also allow cross faction instance groups. This would assist all levels in finding groups easier, and allow for more diversity in grouping. This would be a huge change, and would require a lot of work to sort out, but I think it would be worth it for playability reasons. There are lore repercussions and pvp issues, but I think it could be done. With the advent of Horde vs. Horde arena matches the pvp based arguments are void. World pvp is dead anyway, and if you really wanted to you could integrate the battleground teams also, with a little lore tweaking. This request has nothing to do with my two alliance 60 characters rotting away unplayed on the same server as my horde mains and guild, nothing at all, I swear.

I have some other requests as well, cross server instances, new low level zones, new classes, and new races, but I am out of time to write today. I may post about them another time. What do you think of the ones I have detailed or mentioned? Should Blizzard look to implement them? If not, why not?