Will We See Bigger Bags?

With the chances coming in warlords it has me thinking, will we be getting bigger bags?  Or how about this one, will we even need them?

Over the course of the years I have mentioned that I would like bigger bags or more storage space.  It often comes up in nearly every topic I can squeeze it into.  Things I think can use an update?  The starting bag.  Things they missed this expansion?  A new bag from the basic cloth.  What changes would I like to see to gathering professions?  Stack going to 50 or 100 or 200.  Easy additions that would make life easier?  A second row of purchasable bag slots in our bank.   What would I be willing to buy from a cash shop?  Bigger bags.

See, no matter what and were and when we talk about anything that has a way I can connect it with storage space I will find a way to fit "we need more bag space" into the conversation.  It has been a huge talking point of mine for as long as I have been writing here and even longer, as long as I have been playing games.  Storage is always the single most important little thing in any game.

So with all that said, lets talk about our bag space come warlords and what will, or will not, be in them as there are a lot of changes that impact them coming with the new expansion.  Maybe even some things we have not heard of yet.

What is being added to decrease our need for bag space?

Stack sizes are being increased.

I could not even guess how many players have asked for this change.  The only thing that might be harder to guess is why it took them so long to make a change like this.  Now lets not get all excited and think there were be 1000 count stacks like they finally made arrows stack to before they removed them for hunters, even if that would be awesome.  For all we know we could only be moving up to a 50 stack for our ores, herbs and leather.

Now do not get me wrong at all, even a change to a 50 count stack would be a very welcome change but you know what would be better, a change to a 100 count stack like many items seem already stack to.  Or maybe even a 200 stack like they already did for one type of ore this expansion but not all.  Why not all?

If I were a betting elf, which I am not, I would say we are looking at stacks of 100 coming in warlords.  I hope I am wrong and it is more, 200 really does have a nice ring to it.

The only thing I do still wonder about more than stack size is what they will consider stacking higher.  There are still things in game that could stack but don't.  There are also many items that only stack to 5 even at this stage in the game and it makes you wonder why.

Will cloth be included.  It is as much a gathering material as ore or herbs or leather is.  So I hope, really hope, that cloth will be included.  But will finished products be increased as well.  Bars made from that ore, will they still be at 20 or will they stack higher.  Bolts of cloth, heavy or magnificent versions of leather, the products from milling, gems from prospecting, all that same questions.

So yes, hearing increased stack sizes will be welcome no matter how much they are increased or how many things they are increased for, but we can not really say that increased stack sizes will save us vast amounts of space.  At least not yet.  But we can be sure it will be saving us space and could save us massive amounts of space depending on how high they decided to stack things.

Gear is being simplified.

First off, who out there is looking at this in the same way I am?  Let me explain before so you will know what the heck I am talking about.

I will still end up having 2 sets of gear, 2 full sets of gear.  Just because I can heal in my guardian leather body pieces doesn't mean I will.  When first gearing up my off spec of healing, for example, it will be fine to use the bear gear to get into content but I will surely want a different chest piece for my bear set and for my tree set.  I would want the ones with the best secondary stats for that spec on it.  So perhaps a chest piece with crit will be my bear piece while a chest piece with haste will be my tree chest piece.  Nice that my agility will change to intellect when I change specs, but that is all it will do.  It will not change to the gems I want for the spec.  It will not change to the enchant I want for that spec.  It will not change for the secondary stats I want for that spec.  While there might be a few cases here and there where two specs use the same secondary stats and I get the perfect piece with no gem slots that can not be enchanted and it could really be used by both specs, that will be extremely rare.  We will not really be having pieces that switch with our specs, at least not if we want to gear those specs up to be the best they can be.

Lets say that piece had a gem slot and it could be enchanted.  I am not going to regem the chest piece each time I switch specs.  I am not going to reenchant the chest piece each time I switch specs.  I am going to get a second chest piece done up correctly for the spec I am in.  If anything, this ability to test out other specs because the pieces change has more likelihood to make me use more bag space, should I keep the second spec to play it seriously, then to reduced bag space.

In the case of my priest and my shaman where I play disc/shadow and elemental/resto I just DPS when questing and do not have separate DPS pieces, not even trinkets, I use my healing trinkets, they do enough DPS to kill everything, even rares solo, so no need.  With the removal of hit and the gear changing, I might actually get some extra trinkets just for DPS even if now I just do not care about it.  Because now I say I am a healer only, but when this change comes, I really can be both without much effort, so I will need more pieces, not fewer.

Now back to the question I asked, who else it looking at it the same way as I am?

With the exception of the OCD weirdos like myself (and you if you agreed with me) over all this will greatly decrease the need for gear space for many people and that means more bag space for them.  So while this change might increase the need for bag space for the few, like myself, for the majority it will most likely be a nice little decrease in the need for bag space.

The Toy Box is being added.

I almost wanted to shed a tear when I heard this was being added.  I had a wide smile and a slight chuckle escaped even if a tear didn't quite make it.  As a self proclaimed junk collector I have so many toys.  Most of those toys I never use or intend to use but I still refuse to throw them away as I have already lost more toys than I can count because they were removed from the game and I wish I still had them.

When this change comes this will not only clear out so much space in the bags of my main who has most of those toys but on all my alts who kept toys because they too wished to have them to play with from time to time.

Like the sky mirror or smites compass.  They are toys and as such will be put in our toy box which will be accessible from all our characters so they will no longer take up space.  This means I save two spaces on my main for these two pieces and one or two spaces on many alts that might have one or both of them.  So the toy box is not only clearing up one space in one characters bag for each toy that goes into it, it could be saving 5 or 10 or 20 spaces if you have multiple characters with that toy.

Lots of space for many players will be saved by this change and of all the changes I mention here it will probably (depending on how far they go with stacks and what stacks) be the biggest impact on freeing up bag space for me.

There will be an heirloom tab.

Now for some this will not save any space.  For others it will save a fair deal of space.  For everyone that has even one, it will at least save a little space.

Quite honestly the biggest asset to this change in my opinion is that I will no longer need to wonder "where the hell are my heirlooms" or "which character did I leave them on".  Even if you have every single heirloom in the game you usually send them to the character that needs them and as that is most likely the character you are leveling, meaning a new character, they not only have more bag space because they have not reached the point of being cluttered down collecting junk yet, but they are wearing said items so they are really not taking up any bag space in that sense.

However, not having to find bag space for them when not using them is indeed saving bag space.  So even if it is not a lot, it is saving bag space.

Quest items are no longer stored in your bag.

Uh, yeah, I said the game needed this ages ago.  It is nice to see blizzard added it finally.  While it is true that quest items disappear when you turn in the quest they can still clutter up a lot of space.  Ever been on a server with only the starting bag and they send you on a bunch of quests, one to collect 2 different items, another they give you one item to use on something and a third tells you to collect four different flowers, or something like that.

So you have this lame ass starting 16 slot bag and lets say you have your stone and a little food, once you add that to the 7 additional quest things that will be taking up space then 9 of your 16 slots are already gone.  Ouch.  Not very user friendly.

I can't tell you the number of times I had to throw stuff away because of some damn quest item taking up space in my bag.  They are just clutter and I am glad they will no longer be cluttering my bag up thank you very much.

Yes, I realize the game has changed and we can usually snag a tiny bag or two in the starting zone.  But still, when first starting bag space, and how you handle it, is a vital part of game play.  It will be nice not to have to deal with quest items in the mix any longer.

And then there are the cases, like on a few of my characters, where I have quest items taking up space in my bank.  This will be bank space cleared up.  Oh, why would I do that you ask?

One example would be the "eat all cataclysm food" achievement.  There are two pieces of food you can only get while on a quest (unless they changed it, been a while since I tried to sell any).  Before you do the quest the vendor is not there, when you are done with the quest line the vendor becomes hostile.  So I have one character sitting on that quest, which just happens to have a quest item associated with it.  So one more open space for her, booya, and I can still keep buying those 2 food items and selling them way over priced on the auction house to people that are achievement hunting.  So yes, I do have quest items taking up space in my bags for a prolonged period of time on a few characters for various reasons like that one.

Added ability to craft from materials in your bank.

This is a huge plus for the bag space issue in my opinion.  On so many characters I carry materials on me just in case someone needs something made for them while we are in a raid.  Such as a stack of each raw gem type on my bear who is a jewelcrafter.  Now I can just throw those babies in my gem bag in my bank.  That opens up some more space in my traveling bag while going into a space in my bank that only gems can go into anyway so having those empty spaces are a waste if nothing is in them.  So I fill those empty spaces with gems and make empty spaces in my every day bag.  Double win.

There are so many little plus like things that come from them making this change, but this post is about bag space so that is all I am going to mention and for bag space this change will be a huge plus because you do not need to carry all that stuff around with you any longer.

They might add a transmog like diablo.

While this is not on the table for the release of warlords it is surely on their radar and they are considering it, they have said so much.  For people that like to collect armor sets for mog purposes or just for collection purposes, this would free up more space than anything else.

For a certain sub set of players this would be a dream and a half come true.  Even if not the mog fanatic myself I can respect the people that really get into it and their issues with bag space being there are thousands and thousands of pieces for each slot and lots of slots that show.  It means they have a lot to choose from in a very little collection of places to store them.  Their bag issues have to be 10 times worse than mine and if I am always complaining about it I feel really bad for them and how screw they must feel when deciding what to keep and what to toss.

While this is not something that will be happening when warlords is released, I do see it happening, perhaps not even by the end of warlords but surely no further than whatever the expansion after it is when that is released.

So with all those things being changed in reference to bag space and how we use it, no matter who you are or how you play there will be some free spaces to come when warlords comes out.  Maybe even a lot of spaces, like for me with my toys being put into their toy box.

So I would have to ask again, will we be getting bigger bags in warlords, or will we even need them?

But..

There always is a but isn't there?  If they do not keep increasing bag size what will tailors have to make to sell?  They can not just keep releasing the same size with the new cloth.  It would be quicker and easier and cheaper to just go farm old cloth to make a bag than to get new cloth to make it if that were the case.  Effectively this would destroy the bag market over time.  It is bad enough that mists was the first expansion ever to not even have a basic bag to make, do you think they will screw over tailors two expansions in a row?

And what about crafting bags?  Do you think we have seen the end of them?  I have been suggesting that crafting bags held larger stacks for awhile, as part of their selling point, maybe they will make ore stack higher but only in a mining bag.  Who is to know just yet.  But if they are the same as they are now, will we ever see bigger ones of them?

And again, will we need bigger ones with all that space being filled up.

As someone who seems to have everything, in large quantities, I can tell you one thing for sure about bigger bags.  If they make it, we will fill it.

But with all the changes being made an all the space being freed up will we really need it, will we finally be done with the bag space issue?