8 Things I'd Like to See Updated

They are adding a great deal of new stuff for mists.  They have continuously added new stuff each expansion and will likely always be adding more.  Each time they add something new something old gets left in its previous space and either becomes forgotten about or becomes something that people need to research to find.  Like people that never played BC trying to find the vendors to turn the BC tokens in is always an adventure.

With each addition there is old stuff left behind and some of that old stuff is really in need of being updated.  I know some people will say why waste the resources to update outdated content and to that I say, because it makes the game more fluid over all and just because we know where to turn in the BC tokens doesn't mean someone that starts today will.  We, the ones that know, are not the only players.  So old content should be updated for better game flow and design.

With that in mind I have a little list of 8 things I would like to see updated in game.

1) Justice and Token Vendors.

The time has come to create catch all vendors.  With the new vendor search options being added they could go a step further with it and allow more search options.  Instead of just looking for hunter loot, you should be able to check for hunter loot from BC.  No more telling people they need to go to the caverns of time and into a raid for some tokens and to shat for others.  Just go to the vendor and it is there.

While some of us might remember first hand where to turn in some things others have never had to turn them in and have no clue where to go.  For them it could get frustrating trying to find where to turn these things in or where to go to spend their justice points for transmog gear.  Just simplify it.  Leave the original ones where they are but in the main city with the search enabled vendor you should be able to trade them in there as well.

2) Exodar and Silvermoon are not second class cities.

They might be considered BC content but guess what folks, they are main members of the factions.  I think it is about time they are treated as such.  Add cooking and fishing dailies to each city.  Have them connected to the rest of the world as they should be and not just after thoughts.

Just because they were added in an expansion does not mean that they should be thought of as only that expansions content.  As main members of the factions they should get some attention as if they where actually main members of the factions.

They wasted tons of development time on making flying in the old world yet they completely ignored both areas.  Why?  You did dozens of zones, four more would not have been that much of a problem would it?  They need to stop thinking of those areas as BC areas and start treating them as part of the main world.  As part of the updated old world.  They should not be looked at as BC content.  Updating them should have fit into the updating of the old world no matter what expansion they were added in.

3) SW and Org are all that matters.

They complain people do not get out in the world yet they make it so you have no choice but to make SW and Org your home cities.  The portals are only in SW and Org.  You can only get to TB from SW or Org.  Originally the fishing and cooking dailies were only in SW and Org and even now they are still not in the second class cities of Exodar and Silvermoon.  Valor vendors are only in SW and Org.  Justice vendors are only in SW and Org.  Deathchins chin is only in SW or Org.  You get the idea.

Hey blizzard, I have an interesting idea for you.  If you don't want people in only two cities how about giving them a reason to be in other cities.  At least make it so they do not feel penalized for making another city their home of choice.

Put the vendors in all cities, the portals in all cities, the dailies in all cities, you name it, if they make it, make it in all cities.  Give people a choice instead of herding people like cattle into one city on each side and than complaining that everyone is in one city on each side.  Don't you think it is about time to spread the world out some?

4) Ditch or Update the useless items.

Things such as warbear leather, wildvine and the like.  Sure, there are still a select few patterns that require these items but they are also usually rare drop patterns or patterns you need to go out of your way to get.  The streamlined fast as you can go new leveling speed means that you will usually never see the drops and quite likely will never get to the area that sells these patterns.

Either ditch the wasted crafting items like them or make the patterns that use them trainable by the trainer so these things actually hold some value again.  Most servers you are better off vendoring things like this because it would cost you more to list them at auction than you could get for them.

Admittedly the addition of transmog has made some of the things that need weird items like this popular again but the fact you can end up with so much of it without even trying, it is not enough to keep a demand for it.

Lets face it, at the speed people level now there will never be any reason to make that awesome caster chest that needs 6 wildvine for your level 40.  So why make stuff like that so hard to make?  The days where getting something like that meant it would last a while and it was worth it are long gone and the crafting materials and patterns that require them either need to be removed or updated to fit today's world.

5) Crafting Professions.

They need a new old world update too.  They adjusted the speed at which you level which means you out level professions way to quickly.  It is almost as if blizzard only wants people to go back and power level the crafting professions now.  They are no longer something that is supposed to level with you and in my opinion that takes away from the leveling experience, even more so for the new player.

Not even all that far back, before the redesign of the old world and faster leveling, your crafting professions could level up with you without any issues.  Since the changes it is completely 100% impossible for that to happen now unless you plan to spend a fair deal of time grinding grey, no experience, stuff.  Killing no experience animals for skins is horrible, even more so when you need to do it for 6 or 8 hours just to catch up.  At least with mining or herbalism you still get some experience when mining or picking no skill nodes.

People do not spend countless hours at single levels any more.  They level faster which means they skin fewer mobs, pick fewer herbs, mine fewer nodes and loot less cloth.  The crafting professions, as such, lag behind a lot.

The outdated content that was sped up to make leveling faster should also have their crafting professions sped up as well.  Instead of needed 6 iron bars, make it 2.  Instead of needing 12 heavy leather, make it 4.  Simple adjustments that would allow for players to level their crafting professions as they go.

For the experienced player like myself I either level with gathering professions or no professions and power level when I get to max but for the new player, not being able to level a profession as they go really takes away something from the game.  Crafting professions need to be updated.

6) Stop being stingy with the bag space.

The game keeps giving us goodies to collect.  Archaeology stuff, quest rewards, reputation stuff we can buy, fun food and elixirs, you name it and the game gives us things we can collect and then penalizes us for collecting all of it by not allowing us as much space as we need to keep it all.

Make the starting bag larger.  Add another bag slot or two to the line of bags.  Add anther row of 7 bag slots to our bank.  Make profession bags a separate thing so they do not count as taking one of our normal bag slots.  Make things stack higher.  Anything really.

The limited space concept in RPGs is as old as RPGs are but the time has come and past.  It makes sense when leveling.  It makes sense that getting more space should take some sort of effort like buying it or earning it or whatever.  It makes sense that you should not be given unlimited space instantly.  What makes no sense is that when you get to the end game and you start collecting things you can never have enough space to keep it all.

Take my shaman for example.  I have my resto gear, my enhancement gear, my PvP resto gear, my PvP enhancement gear, some fun gear items, some fun toy type items, my food for resto, my food for enhancment, my flasks and potions for resto, my flasks and potions for enhancement, my mining bag and blackmithing supplies and so much more.

Do you know how much space that leaves me?  None.  I have to keep my mining bag in my bank which makes things a pain when I am making stuff because I have to keep running back and forth.  When it comes time to do some crafting I trade one of my bags for that one and then go back and trade it back when I am done just because I have no space.

How exactly is having this bag space issue fun game play?  I think bags and bag space need a huge update.  Stop being stingy with the space.

7) Currency.

Make outdated currency go away.  Seriously.  When an expansion moves into the past so should the currencies that where meant for that expansion only.  You could collapse it like they are going to do with the cooking awards in mists.  So all of the dalaran awards and chef awards become the same thing and everything that you could buy with either you can now buy with the new collapsed version.  We get ironpaw ones now in mists and when the next expansion comes out the ironpaw ones will move down to the level the dalaran and chef ones will be on.  So they showed with that change that they can do something about the situation.  So why stop there?

Jewelcrafting tokens?  Mark of the world tree? Champion Seal? Spirit Shard?  What is being done with them?  Nice of them to do something with the cooking ones but what about everything else in game.  Are the Motes from deathwing going to clutter up our currency page for the rest of eternity once mists comes?

They need to make more effort to clean up the outdated currency when the content moves on.  I understand I still get champion seals from the argent tournament to get things from there, so it is not useless, but that is one case, and it is still not suitable for everything.

So they want you to work for the mounts and pets still but why does the gear still require you to have those to buy it?  Just make that reputation dependent.  It is not like anything you buy for your level 80 is going to last more than a few quests into cataclysm content.

Update it, update everything that has a currency tied to it that is now old content.  Even the champion seals which I still personally collect.  How about when something becomes outdated you give it a justice point price and let people earn it that way.  So you get rid of your old tokens that are no longer useable and now give a use to justice points which you end up swimming in anyway because for the most part they are useless at end game.

8) Flight Paths.

The days when you went from path to path and landed each time and needed to get back on and choose your next stop are long gone.  When they made it so paths connected it made sense that it still needed to pass by each and every fight path on the way because that is how it was coded.  So it made for some really odd trips sometimes because of that coding, but that is the way it was.

All this time and effort spent on redesigning the old world.  All these new flight paths added.  All the updates to the landscape meaning there was no longer a reason to make us fly a certain way as to not see an area that had no overhead design. All of that and they did not change how flights work?

You still need to go all around the world sometimes to get to a fight that you could have just gone directly across too.  Come on, are you seriously kidding me?  This company is capable of making this great game with so many different things we can do and all this complex coding and they still not not figure out that the shortest distance between two points is a direct line?  Update the flight paths already.

Not all updates to the game need to be huge to be good.  These would all be little changes but I think they would all be good for the game over all.  I'd like to see some of these changes personally but I won't exactly hold my breath for any of them.  Blizzard does not have a great track record with doing anything in game that people might like just because it sounds like a good idea.  If they can not spin it into making people think it is a groundbreaking awesome addition to the game they won't waste their time on it.