Quality of Life Upgrades

I wrote a post yesterday about wanting the call stable master function back for hunters now that there is a need for it again.  It is not really needed, we can work well without it but it would most definitely be a quality of life upgrade for the hunters of the world, that is for sure.

It got me thinking about what other little things could be added to the game that would make for excellent quality of life additions for all classes, not just hunters.  They are already adding one that would have been on my list and that is AoE looting.  I am very happy about that one.

That actually is the definition of a quality of life upgrade.  We could very easily bend over 6 times to loot 6 bodies but it is much nicer to be able to lean over once to get them all.  So what other quality of life additions would you like to see?

Gathering Node Tapping
This is something that I think is long over due.  If you are picking an herb, mining a node or skinning a beast when someone or something interrupts your gathering and someone else comes and collects what you had already been working on it is a general annoyance.  Worse even if when you start picking an herb and a tauren druid sweeps in and picks the herb before you even finish gathering it.

Node tapping would be a great quality of life addition.  If you started the gathering procedure and get interrupted the node is tapped to you for 30 seconds.  That should be more than ample to beat any mob that interrupted you and it is more than ample on a PvP server to get your fight on.

In the PvE world, or same faction PvP world, it would assure you do not have to deal with people node jumping on you and you not being able to do anything about it  In the PvP world it would mean no more stop the person, stun them, steal the node and then fight it out (which I must admit I've been guilty of doing on a PvP server), that is if you do not get away right after you stole their booty.  It would mean that node can only be worked on by the person you interrupted so you actually have to keep them busy for 30 seconds.  You actually have to fight for it.  How original of an idea.

This would be a quality of life addition in many ways.  For people that get upset with people stealing their nodes they no longer will get stressed out.  For people that just like to greif others by doing it, like one tauren druid on my server who brags about doing it to people, it would stop them from doing something that is against game rules anyway.  For people on PvP servers it would inspire more open world battle instead of steal the node and run, which happens most of the time now.

Remove Hit/Expertise
I keep reading ghostcrawler using lines like "we want to make decisions fun".  Okay, I can go with that, decisions should be fun.  The decision for hit or expertise is not fun.  It is annoying.  Not saying it is hard to cap because it isn't, even more so since the introduction of reforging.  What I am saying is that missing is not fun.  Thus you have to get to hit and expertise capped if you do not want to miss.  Doing something because you have to do it is not a fun choice it is a no choice.

They are continually trying to make things easier for everyone, well, removing hit and expertise would make it much easier for many people.  I think, outside of the "what gems should I use for a xxx", "what should I have for hit cap" is the most asked question in the game.

It shows on your character profile now and people still ask in trade 100s of times per day it seems.  Hit just confuses anyone that is not a part of the reading community.  You read, I'm guessing being you are reading this, I read, most the people on the forums read, we all know what we need for hit so it might be easy for us to label those that do not know as people that are not even trying.

See, part of the reason for the new talent trees is blizzard is attempting to remove the need to read for some things.  Just like there was a right spec and a wrong spec there is hit capped and not hit capped.  There are no more wrong specs and there should be no more hit cap.


We are max level warriors for good, fighters of all injustice, defenders of our faction and protectors of our world yet we can still miss something standing inches in front of us that is the size of a house?  Sorry, I don't buy that.  It is time we said goodbye to hit and expertise.  It servers no purpose other then separating the people who read from the people who don't.

BTW, this would also mean things like spell penetration would go bye bye as well.  They are removing resistances anyway, so this removal makes sense to begin with.

Reset Quests Option
With the addition of transmog there are a lot of people looking for items that can only be attained through quests.  Once done a quest is gone forever.  A nice little quality of life addition to the game would be a quest reset option that could reset all the quests you have completed in a given area.

It does not need to be complex where you pick a quest, it could be a lump sum thing.  If you completed only three in an area your option is to reset all three whereas if you completed all 72 in an area when you reset it resets all 72.  No pick and choose options here, it is always a full area reset.

They could easily hang a price on this option that would be based on the level of the area you are resetting.  Perhaps if you are resetting a level 30 questing area it would cost 30 silver per quest being reset.  If its a level 84 area it might cost 5 gold per quest to reset the area.  The amount is really not much of an issue because you will make gold back by doing the quests again but you now have the option to do those quests you might want to get transmog things from.

This would also have the added benefit of giving solo players something to do if they so wish.  It would also allows people to reset and redo the quests as a way to make money, to gather enchanting materials, etc.  For those achievement hunters it might even help attain a higher number of quests completed because resetting them would not lower the count but doing them again would up it.  They could then add a 10K quests done, 25K quests done and 50K quests done achievement. (I'd already have the 10K one the second they added it, which shows you I would probably use this for those boring days)

It would be a quality of life addition in a few ways.  Transmog, making money, doing something for solo players and I am sure others would find good reasons to reset certain areas.  I know I would have reset twilight highlands when the game first came out.  Sucked that I finished the area on day one and could not pick herbs because of phasing issues for what seemed like months.  If you liked a area before you passed a phase, just reset it to a previous phase.  There we go, another quality of life bonus quest resetting would add.

Better and Larger Ignore/Friends Lists
Personally I currently have no people on ignore.  Yeap, zero.  However, I see the use for it and people should be able to have better and larger ignore/friends lists.

Ignore/friends lists should be battle.net bound so to speak, covering all accounts and all characters on all accounts.  This means if you friend or ignore that hunter you also have his mage, his priest and his death knight on your ignore/friends list as well.  No more will you need to waste 4 spots on that one person.

This would also stop something I see happen all the time.  People you meet in looking for raid that want to trade you when you win and you say no.  They seem to love to make level one characters on your server to curse you out and when you ignore them they make another and another and another.  If you ignore them once it should cover any character they ever make from that account and any other accounts they might have linked to the same battle.net account.

With the looking for systems out there and many people adding people that they run into doing them to their ignore lists so they do not get grouped with them again it is becoming needed a lot more to extend those lists.  I choose not to ignore anyone, it is a personal choice, but most people like to use it so they are not grouped with bad players again and this could fill up a list really fast.

Better and larger ignore/friends lists would be a very nice quality of life change and is something I think I have seen asked for more than anything else ever in the game except for maybe...

Bags and Stacking
They made one nice upgrade in this department already this expansion.  Gems stacking has been pure heaven.  There are some other things that need work however.  Many items in the game only stack to 5 for some reason, like voodoo skulls.  I have a friend that collects them and he says they take up so much space for no reason other than a fun item and I agree.  At the very least it should stack to 20 like most everything else in game.

Speaking of 20 stacks, it is about time they extended them.  At least for some items like cloth.  As someone who loves to solo I usually end up with massive amounts of cloth and it is not something I plan to throw away or vendor so I keep it and it really fills up the bags quickly.  They upped ammo stacking for hunters to 1000 arrows back when we still used them, why not 1000 pieces of cloth.

Heck, remember when leveling up, what was one of the biggest bag space hogs you ran into?  Cloth.  And it is something you will never throw away.  Even if you do not plan to level first aid and are not a tailor cloth is the one thing that always seems to sell fairly well, even more so for a new player just starting it can be their main source of cash flow.

Speaking of cloth, how about a tailoring bag blizzard.  Heck, we have a bag just to hold fish but we do not have one to hold cloth and bolts.  How about an archeology bag too that can hold anything you found while digging.  I have three bags filled with that crap.  I don't want to throw it away, so at least let me have a place to use as a catch all that is bigger then the average bag.

Besides making stacks stack higher and adding a few new profession bags I think the time has really come to finally address our starting bags.  You have redone the old world, redone our talent systems a few times, redone how so many other things work but we are still stuck with a 16 slot main bag.

There should be a quest somewhere in each expansion to up your starter bag.  BC could have a quest to increase it to 18.  Wrath, 20, cataclysm, 22 and soon to be 24 in mists.  Next time you are redesigning things, try redesigning something that has been asked for since the first expansion came out.  Heck, probably before that even, don't know, wasn't there for that.

I think the time has come to get some more bank space too.  Another row of bags, 7 more, 500 gold each to extend them, a minor gold sink and more space for those of us that need it.

This would all amount to an incredible quality of life change.  Bigger starter bags, better stacking, two missing profession bags and more bank bag space.  That is a quality of life change I can support 110%.

None of these things are gaming breaking, none of these things are even really needed but every single one of them would be a nice quality of life change.  Not everything need to be the next big thing to be a good change for the game.  Sometimes some small quality of life upgrades could be just what the doctor ordered for an ailing game.

What quality of life additions to the game would you like to see?