After my rant about the weak sneak peek from the upcoming patch in WoW, I got dragged in a discussion about the merits, demerits and expectations. The result is that I wrote my own list of things I’d like to see and that seem gone forgotten at Blizzard.

This list doesn’t beg for “more content” (in fact I believe that it may damage the game). It just groups those “usability” fixes and features that were asked back in beta but fell ignored. It’s a list of minor problem and glitches that should extremely easy and fast to solve, but still improving directly the experience of the game without requiring too much pondering.

What I want is:

– Leet speak blocked at the root
– Server transfers from the overcrowded servers
– Possibility to join the european realms and vice versa
– A fucking server-wide LFG system (it existed in beta)
– AH in all the major cities, linked together (and get rid of the lag in one step)
– Fixes to the raid instances
– Fixes to the resurrection in instances porting you in 0.0 space
– Fixes to the ships dropping you in the ocean
– Possibility to ride a mount ON BRIDGES. I hate STV.
– *ALL* the class issues KNOWN and CONFIRMED fixed. Not a timid line for each. There are devs sticky posts with consistent changes, where are they?
– Fire damage to lock characters in combat. So that peoples will finally STOP to sit on the fireplaces to annoy others
– Fixes to the faction system so that you don’t finish to get locked in situations where you have to kill 2345123455462345 mobs to gain status
– Fixes to the PvP exploits where peoples are able to cast spells from unreachable places and kill NPC guards unaffected
– Fixes to the broken polygons of the cloaks on the dwarf model
– New raid interface with the features explained in a sticky post
– Tweaks to the most awful flight paths
– Trees blocking the LOS of range weapons and spells. AT LEAST IN PVP
– The possibility to change the tabard without disbanding/reforming the whole guild
– A quest log to categorize and archive already completed quests
– Possibility to see the loot mode used by the group without being the group leader

And

– At least a PLAN for a weather system to launch in the next months

But really, if I have to pick just one, I WANT LEET SPEAK OUT OF THE GAME.

Most of the stuff I listed above is already confirmed. A good part is trivial to implement. I’d like to see some goddamn commitment to this game. Not useless fluff like ripping an user interface to brag about it as a new feature.

I do not think I’m asking the moon.

As expected, after I pasted this list, I got flamed and mocked: “So which things on HRose’s list would you like fixed? The “Leet Speek” problem? The developers don’t share enough of the internal bugs with us? The sound when people stand in fire? Or about the broken polygons on the dwarf’s cloak? These sound terribly important.”

So I had to justify myself and at least explain two of the most stupid points (fire damage and the dwarf cloak) to demonstrate that they aren’t that stupid. You are the judge.

CASE #1
The point of my list is that half is about announced stuff, half is about usability stuff that improves the games flat out with no side-effects (like the mounts on the bridges), and the rest is about stuff that would require less than 10 minutes to code and test.

The example of the fire is one of those things that are trivial to do:
– Peoples can sit on fires for HOURS because the fire does like 10/20 damage per hit. The regeneration rate for every character is ABOVE that value.

Now. The solution is about locking you in combat if you are taking damage. If you are locked you don’t regenerate health. This means that after three minutes sittin on a fire… YOU DIE!

What? It makes too much sense?

At the end what’s the point of EVEN APPLY fire damage in a game when it just does ZERO since the damage is pointless?

Same as for the communication barrier: OR you fix it properly OR you remove it altogether.

CASE #2
This is the example of “the broken polygons of the cloaks on the dwarf model” (it happens with ALL the cloak models):

Now, considering that this game is supposed to be played in third person, that’s what I see on screen for about 90% of the time. And it’s both ugly and annoying.

Even more annoying because this is a bug on the back of the model (a misplaced polygon) that happened with the patch in June. It worked perfectly before. Since June is there and noone cared to spend, how much? An HOUR? I really don’t know how much time it would take to move back the vertex that was bugged back to its original position.

I have another proof of this “bug” but only from a frontal view, comparing the old, discared (and way better) models with the new ones. As you see on the right part of the back, the new models have a sharp “edge”. That’s that exact misplaced edge that is causing the cloak texture to melt.

This can be consider MINOR as MINOR is the time to fix it. And still it’s on my screen 90% of the time. Excuse me.

—
This last graphic bug was also discussed long ago on this website.

Still arguing:
What you don’t understand is that my list was made to not ask for “content”. Instead it pointed out things to fix that aren’t “arguable”. You don’t need a design team to ponder the pros and cons because those are just inconsistencies and usability fixes.

They ARE “high priority” because their relevance is a balance between “how many users they affect” and “time required to fix”.

They aren’t “emergencies”, but even a small team is supposed to fix all that rather quickly.

The point is that we will be here IN A YEAR and, as an example, both the problem of the fire damage and the polygon of the cloak will STILL REMAIN UNSOLVED. Again, that was stuff that worked perfectly in beta, was broken, and noone cared to fix again. While it would take only an extremely limited time to fix, these things will keep piling up unsolved. How hard is to address them quickly, put the result on the pool of stuff that will be patched and FORGET altogether about them? Problem solved forever, you’ll never need to go back to work on that.

It’s this way that you are able to keep these large projects clean and organized, by starting to address all the small (but relevant and diffused) problems so that, once fixed, they do not crowd anymore the list of priorities.

If you take a single element from that list alone it doesn’t add much to the game. But if you take the whole list and patch it you’ll see the overall quality of the game rise with zero loss. And once done you’ll see the pool of problems start to drain way more quickly. This will directly help the team to control and focus even the most problematic issues.

Moral: The time it took me to write and explain each point on that list is more than the time a developer would spend to actually fix it.