What If: Phasing Was More Useful

Phasing in game has been around a while and continues to get better.  While there are still some serious misses out there that were never fixed, like trying to gather herbs in twilight highlands after you have done all the quests or capture pets near your farm and they phase out, but over all phasing has gotten better.

There is so much more phasing can be used for that has not even had the surface touched and I think using phasing in quests for certain objectives would not only make sense but could add more to it.

What if they started using phasing more liberally when it comes to some parts of the game?

Wouldn't it be nice if we, the heroes of azeroth, when sent on a mission to rescue 10 prisoners rescued all of them?  Never made sense to me that there are 30 people in cages, we can easily handle the mobs, but we only rescue 10.  We are some really mean people, just letting those other 20 rot.  So phasing, while it might seem a waste of resources to many in this case, would make sense that once you rescue 10 prisoners, there are no more prisoners caught in cages.  You saved them all, so once you have, they are not sitting around in cages any more.

Little things like that would make it feel as if the game changed around the world with you.  Even if in little pieces here and there like that it would make the game feel more, real, for lack of a better word.  As if the things you do have an impact on the world you live in because let face it, the way the game is now nothing we do matters.  No matter how many times we save Corky every time we go back that stupid Fer has found a way to get caught in the same cage we just got him out of less than 5 minutes ago.

How about mob phasing for quests?  They already have some sort of basis for it, like with the could serpents when you need to kill the glowfly things.  If you are not on the quest to kill them they are friendly and you can not kill them but when you have the quest you can attack them.  They also have it, in a way, in the golden lotus area.  When it is the stone mogu day you can kill them and other days you can not, same with the quillen, they can only be hunted on their day.

So why not make these things active all the time, so they walk around and make the zone more active and you can only target them when you are on the quest for them, or in a group with someone that is on the quest for them.  This would allow for making mobs just for you, so to speak, and mixing up heavy quest zones like the lotus area.  Give some of the daily doers one quest and some the other.  So you split up who is killing what and thus make it easier and quicker for everyone to complete their quests.  That type of phasing is only a hop, skip and a jump away as they already have them as only active when it is their quest day, it is just a matter of making them active all the time and how they react would only be based on what quest you are on, while everyone mingles together.

There are so many things that could be done with phasing.

How about raid watching?  They mentioned adding something like that and it could be done with phasing.  You could invite someone to view your raid and they would be there, as if they were phased.  They could see everything but could not interact with anything.  Same could be done with PvP, to watch battlegrounds or arena.

It would give a chance for people to learn or teach from it.  I know I would not mind peaking in on some battlegrounds to use it as a learning tool.  Or maybe sitting out of the raid one night and just watching and letting other people learn the fights.  It would also be an awesome way to teach from and to call out things from.

I've heard some people have some really extreme ideas for phasing but the only thing that really makes them extreme is the fact we do not have them.  Maybe they aren't really all that extreme.

Like making nodes, mining and herb ones, phased to the player they are meant for.  As someone mentioned, this would stop bots right in their track, or at least make them have more bots.  If the game decides that you should only get 2 stacks of ghost ore per hour, it would only show you enough that you can get 2 stacks of ghost ore per hour.

There is the plus size to that for some, less competition, or none really, as no one can pick your herbs, but there is the down side that the people that are willing to put in more effort can not benefit from putting in that effort.  Unless they want to have a whole crew of miners they will always be limited by what the game says they should have.

But could that become a future use of phasing?  Nodes just for you.

The lost and found items are like that, at least the grey ones are.  They are always there but only one per character.  Perhaps nodes could become something like that.  They are where they are, but you can only pick or mine them once per hour.  Something like that is a type of phasing.  Then when you already grabbed it, it does not show for you in your phase.  The marmot stomping and weed killing quests already have just for your things, so can something like this really be that much of a stretch?

How many of you ever noticed the implications of something as simple as those 95 gold grey items and what that could mean to the future of the game and how we play it and see things?

As it is, phasing is getting better but is still a pain in the ass most of the time.  Like when trying to heal for a friend on the legendary quest line when my healer had not opened the quest line in the wilds yet, or killing a rare and the person I was grouped with could not see it.

Phasing still needs a lot of work, but it is getting better, and we have only touched the surface.

What if phasing were more useful and played a bigger part in how we play the game.   As in letting the game evolve around us so once we rescue Corky he will never be in that cage again.  Hey, it might not mean anything to you, but little things like that bug me.  I would like to see the world change around me, even if only in tiny bits like that and phasing is the only way it will happen.