daydreams and wishful thinking

With all this talk about what we might like to see in an in-game cash store, I’ve been thinking not just about that but also about what I’d like to see in the next expansion.

From BBB and commenters, I, too, would love a Cinder Kitten plushie, an RNG boost, tri-spec, a way to make a soulbound item BoA so that I can move something I have on character A that I really wish I had on character B instead, and a way to change faction without having to change race.

From Erinys, I, too, would love more character customizations (such as sub-race skins (e.g. Wildhammer Dwarf, Taunka), broader availability of hairstyles, more hairstyles, armor dyes), access to items that NPCs have but players can’t get (e.g., Master Shang Xi‘s lantern staff, that black & white robe worn by Jonathan Revah in Old Hillsbrad, Auctioneer Sowata‘s purple version of the Native Robe), and a year-round broomstick mount. Actually, I’d rather see a permanent broomstick mount be a Headless Horseman drop or purchasable with Hallow’s End currency, but if I had to pay real money for it — I would.
Well, really, that greater cross-race hairstyle availability, and more hairstyles in general (especially more curly and fancy braided ones), is something I’d rather see as an integrated part of the next expansion than as something in the cash store.

I’ve also had a few ideas of my own.
* An item that allows you to choose which boss(es) you get from a variable boss encounter such as the Karazhan Opera would be pretty nifty. I’ve been farming the Opera for an item that drops from Romulo & Julianne, and if I could guarantee that I’d get them and not Oz or Big Bad Wolf every week… yeah, I just might pay for that.
* An item that lets a max-level character bypass the once-a-day lockout system for Heroics from past expansions might be worth paying for, too — the item should let you run a given Heroic five times in a day, similar to how you can run five Normals within an hour before you hit the “you have entered too many instances recently” wall.
* I’d also like some kind of consumable that would let you track the locations of Dark Soil. I wouldn’t really want to pay real money cash for that, though. Perhaps after you become Honored with the Tillers, you could purchase a treasure detector from Gina Mudclaw for Justice Points that would let you track Dark Soil for twenty minutes (same duration as the Potion of Luck). Or maybe after you become Honored with the Tillers, Gina could give you a repeatable/daily quest to turn in a set of one of each of the gift items in exchange for the treasure detector.

In the longer term — in the next expansion — I’ll repeat some of my previous thoughts on the future of farming:

What I’d like to see for the next iteration of the farming-and-cooking mini-game would be something tied to the original factions & capital cities. I think that would be more easily expandable for further expansions than having to build a new farming hub on every new continent or world that we visit.

For the Horde, there are a couple of reasonable places to put a farming village. One is Tirisfal Glades — there are already farms there, so why not reclaim one of them (perhaps Cold Hearth Manor?) for players to use? Another is Mulgore — if Ahab Wheathoof is “The Old Rancher”, where is his ranch? I bet he’d love to have some young whippersnappers come help him with his farm, and maybe we could even get Kyle to settle down and come home for good!

For the Alliance, Elwynn Forest seems to be a natural choice for a farm. Perhaps Tommy Joe Stonefield and Maybell Maclure have finally succeeded in running off together to start their own farm, and they need us to help them get things going and prove themselves to their angry parents.

The corresponding markets could be extensions of the towns (Brill or Bloodhoof Village, Goldshire). Like Valley of the Four Winds, the dailies for max-level characters could be up in the nearby mountains, requiring a flying mount to access. Upgrading farms for a new expansion would then be fairly simple — add new vendors with new seeds and other materials to the market, either level up the mobs for the dailies or have the dailies be missions to bring back materials from the new zones, and expand the size of the farm by another row of plots. Centralizing the farms to the starting zones might also be a good opportunity to revamp the cooking profession and make it be integrated with farming from the beginning.

Beyond that, I’d be happy to see the class/race combinations expanded again. I don’t think that every race should have every class available, though — maybe each race should have exactly one forbidden class. For Tauren, the forbidden class should be Warlock (sorry, Navimie). There’s lore support for Tauren Rogues and Mages among the Grimtotem and also in the Tauren members of the Twilight’s Hammer and other shady organizations, but Tauren Warlocks would just be wrong (Tauren Shadow Priests already make me shudder). If Tauren were allowed to be Mages and Rogues in the next expansion, I’d most likely race-change existing characters. My Sin’dorei Farstrider Scout would become a Grimtotem Ruffian. Of my Mages, my Human, Kinevra, is the one who’d get changed into at Tauren, because, well, Theramore Arcanist’s Hat and Astral Knot Robe and Manaweave Robe and Crimson Tunic…. And I would roll a new Human Mage.