BEFORE YOU JUMP INTO MY WALL OF WORDS!
Ahead of you await a good three thousand words.
If you do not wish to read all of it, you can jump to the end and read a short summary.
I have read a couple of the replies to this topic, and I agree with some of them. Though I can not say if someone already posted this or not. But I'm gonna post a few suggestions, and I hope you're gonna agree with at least some of them.
Lordaeron will be a hardcore server that appeals to fans of the normal Wrath of the Lich King expansion, and it will offer something new. And a coin shop. Shame on you. Since when was hardcore about money?
I'm all exited about the hardcore and dense feeling of games. And since Wrath of the Lich King was released back in the day, I never really felt like the game was as 'hardcore' as it used to be. I've been playing the game for 10 years. I have been wandering the lands of Azeroth for a long time.
I'm an absolute fan of playing a game, being a little afraid of what's hiding out in the open world, just waiting for me to explore!
I loved the 'hardcore' (but a little basic) feeling of vanilla where fighting an elite was actually hard. You'd have to find a couple of friends, or another wanderer of Azeroth, and be able to kill the strong enemy for a great reward.
How awesome would it be to bring back those things? You have to fight for it instead of just using a dungeon finder, farming emblems.
This might not appeal to everyone, and I understand if some of you disagree. So no need to go insane, telling me I'm wrong, or it wouldn't work. These are just suggestions that would (for me) make the game a whole lot better. And yes, I do understand that this will require dedication, and hard work. But it's possible.
Read? Let's just dive right in.
CASH SHOP (Coins and Points)
You can NOT buy any kind of gear using the coin shop. You'll need to work hard for every item. This way we can keep down the amount of fully geared people for a long time. The best players on the server should be those that dedicate the time and effort needed, not those willing to spend hundreds of dollars on gear. I myself am a great donator of the server, and I have donated on several of accounts to support Warmane. But if you want the Blizzlike (or even harder) experience on the server - for Gods sake - don't make a coin shop.
Now on the other hand, the coin shop could be used in a different way. It could be better balanced. How about creating something like a chest, that would have a low chance of dropping a rare mount (like 1%), but mostly it would drop rare materials like gems. Profession materials. Again, it's random. You could get nothing.
This chest should of course not only drop a single rare mount. Adding several rare mounts that might not even be obtainable in-game would make the chest worth the money. It could also drop random companions. Anything from a chicken to a Mini Diablo.
So the normal drops would still be rare, but the chance of getting an awesome item like a cool mount, or even something like the Carved Ogre Idol. This way we can make sure that the coin shop is not used to make you stronger. But instead, it's used to get some fun and rare items that do not actually make your character stronger. To be fair, I would say the players who would donate for this can have a discount on the chest the first month or two. I suggest 20 coins per chest.
HEIRLOOMS ARE ALSO GEAR. Remove it!
The Point shop, on the other hand, should also be fixed.
Remove everything, besides maybe the 60% speed mounts. And a couple of funny pets that you just can't obtain anymore. I'm not saying the rare pets should cost 7 Vote Points. I would rather see them at 300 Vote Points. Why? Because this shows that you could actually spent the time voting for a long time. That makes you stand a little out, without being overpowered, for playing for a long time.
Do you wish to change your character's appearance? Look further down and see my suggestion on how to change either name or appearance on your beloved character. The point shop is not a way of changing your character's look.
That's just a little bit about the shop. Let's move on to the more important and interesting matters.
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IN-GAME MECHANICS
LEVELING
1x rates are good as they are, however, I am deeply in love with the feeling of finally hitting the max level, ready to start my journey into raiding, so I honestly think it should be lowered. Personally I would go for 0.5x - 0.8x Blizzard experience rates. Because leveling is also important in this game. This is when you get to know the world you're living in.
I will also ask that you consider buffing all the enemies around the world. I'm not talking about adding zombies everywhere. Really look at the stats: damage, health, armor, resistance, abilities and spells. If this world is supposed to be hardcore, make it so.
Make them hit harder, and let them laugh in our faces when we try to damage them. Let us know that they're not there to ****ing help us level up; they're there to kill us!
Make us work for it to truly EARN the kill. Punish us when we're being arrogant enough to take on more or tougher enemies than we should be able to handle. This is hardcore.
DUNGEONS
Make the experience rates of doing dungeons a little higher. I'm not asking for 20x rates in dungeons, but if normal rates are 0.6x, leveling is hard and it will take time. Especially alone. Give the player an incentive to explore the dungeons with their friends by buffing rates from 0.6x to 0.8x.
So finding a group of other players in the game, or even playing with friends will benefit you. That will make a big difference. Not only are dungeons amazing, they're also rewarding. You're fighting stronger monsters that drops better items and more experience, and you're challenging players to come up with useful group tactics. In a hardcore world where leveling is hard, the rewards are your motivation to keep going - both in-game rewards like items and experience but certainly as well the feeling of success.
What about the dungeon finger? Is that really necessary? You stand in the middle of the world, you get ported into a dungeon that is MILES away from where you actually are. You're playing with complete strangers that you've never met before and might never meet again. And you're just doing it for the extra rewards. Once you're done, you'll be teleported straight back into the world without even considering how the hell that happened.
Well. Some people might think of it that way. But when I do dungeons, I do it for the experience. The experience of working harder, to kill this one guy, compared to a normal RDF HC. I solo that stuff at the moment (on my shaman). That's how easy it is. Fighting stronger mobs makes an item that is just a little stronger than the item you already have worth the time it takes to kill that one guy.
Now that we're at it, let's take a look at dungeon loot. Make the loot table harder. This guy might not drop this item. He might not even drop an item at all. The 5 gold he used to drop might just be 72 silver. Gold will be a lot harder to come by. 20,000 gold in this or any other RPG should not be pocket money. 20,000 gold should be a lot of money. This will create a more realistic and healthy economy. Some awesome item might normally sell for 50,000 gold. Now it will sell for 5,000 instead. The value is still the same; gold is simply worth a lot more.
Having 10,000 gold, or even 5,000 gold is what we would call being rich. On Deathwing I earned my first 200,000 gold within the first week, after the wipe. That's not right.
QUESTS
Have you ever felt that quests are boring as ever? You're picking it up, not reading what it actually says. You're moving to the area that is highlighted on the map, do whatever the quest tracker tells you, and you go back to get your reward.
Now making the amount of the money you earn through questing in the world pay a little less, makes it a little harder to earn gold.
Let's make the questing rewarding in a little different way. You earn more experience than you do by killing monsters. But you earn less gold. This sounds okay. Now this is a little twist, to what we're all used to. But I like the idea, myself. Remove the quest tracker. Now we have to actually go into the journal to see what kind of quest we're about to do. Or how about removing all those yellow dots away from the map? Removing them completely would make us have a little harder questing. It would take a little more, to read the quest, to find the spot, and kill the enemies. But you do get the amount of experience that you work for. Even turn the experience a little up, from the server rates actually are. That would make it harder, but still rewarding. Don't you think?
Why would a quest giver want to give you more gold, because you can't become stronger? Forget that. Make the gold amount you get at max level stay as it is, while leveling. This way doing a quest at level 78 or 80 will be the same.
But instead! You could actually do so that doing a quest within a certain amount of time give a little more. The quest giver would now reward you for your speed of doing the quest, from the time you obtain it, to the time you return Hogger's head. Or even increase the amount of experience you earn, from doing a quick job.
I would personally add more quests to the different zones in the game, if the rates would go as low, as I've mentioned earlier in this post. Make every zone more attractive to level in. Considering the amount of experience you earn in the dense world of Azeroth, you would like a few more quests to do, right? So that you wont hit level 77, and just can't find another quest.
TRAVELING
Traveling the world should take time. It should take a long time. BUT I'm not telling you to remove mounts in the game, or even making the leveling restriction worse than it already is. I suggest you remove the level restriction on mounts and on the riding skill completely.
The amount of gold cost learning the riding skill in the first place should be raised. It should cost even more than it already does. I wouldn't mind saying 500 gold for a 60% mount - with the rates I've suggested for gold from enemies and quest rewards this would take time to get, unless you already have a level 80. But 500 gold is a lot of money. Even at level 80 it would still be a big deal. You wouldn't just create a character and throw 500 gold away on a mount, and then delete the character.
What about the mount itself, and not only the training? I would say it should cost the same. I mean, it's an animal that you ride on. Like a horse in real life. They should cost more than they already do. I.e. I would say 400 gold for 60% mount.
What about level 40 mounts? Or an epic mount? That would also cost money. But even more. The level restriction shouldn't be high, if even there. I would say level 20 is the level restriction, unless you decide to completely remove it. But the amount of gold is getting serious. Just like back in the vanilla game. I would say 800 gold for the epic riding skill, but even more for the mount itself. This time it could be i.e. 1400 gold for an epic mount. That makes mount collecting hard. It would take time, and an extreme amount of gold, to collect all mounts. But when you finally have 10 mounts, it would definitely be a rewarding achievement.
And running around the world now seems even more rewarding. Even if you use a mount, it still feels like a big deal. Because you've paid BIG money just to be able to do it.
THE MARKET
This market is a little different than the marketplace on the homepage, but also different than the in-game auction house.
It's a place that should be existing in the game. But in a zone that people normally don't go to. That could be Everlook or Gadgetzan.
What does the market sell? It sells exclusive items. That could be rare items, like Raging Behemoth's Shoulderplates. This could also be rare mounts and pets, or even funny items like the fishing chair.
These items should have a starting price. It could be 1,500 or 2,000 gold, and everyone should be able to bid on them. Every week 10 new items would be added to the market, and last weeks items that didn't get a bid on would be removed. The market will not have a buyout button. There should only be a bid button so that people who have the money can actually have some fun with it. And even get exclusive items. Now remember that these items should shuffle around, so that it's not always the same items. But not "best in slot" gear either. We don't want to be able to simply buy the very best gear.
This is the same idea as the Black Marketplace, which was introduced for the first time in Mists of Pandaria.
EXPANSIONS/UPDATES
You mentioned that you'd have a delay of 1 - 2 months before you release new content. How would you want people to have a chance of getting gear, if you release Outland a month after release? That month later would just be a tiny waste of time. I'd say you should wait 3+ months between updates. This also requires you to fix all the current bugs. That would be places like Ulduar.
This way you can release a raid or two every 3rd month. Now, this time people can actually follow the flow of how the expansion is growing. But don't forget! We don't want a new level 80 to start raiding. So make sure that all the raids have an item level/gear score restriction. This will keep you from just skipping to the end. This also makes sure that you do all the dungeons, and raids that leads to Icecrown Citadel, at the end of the expansion. Let's say if you want to run Naxxramas, you need a certain amount of gear level, before you can get through the portal.
If you wish to join an Ulduar raid, you'll need certain gear and/or achievements/titles to even get through the portal. This way you can secure that we progress through the whole expansion, feeling the game as it should be played, instead of seeing most players skipping most of the content, just to get through the hard work that it should take to gear up.
CONTENT
Consider adding more content in a differet way than adding a zone. That would be rare spawns like bosses, chests and elite mobs.
Adding this kind of content will also give people and incentive to explore the world instead of just transporting yourself from one place to another.
What if a rare world boss would drop an item that is close to some of the best gear, but the chance of dropping it is a little lower. This gives people a chance of finding a rare boss that might even drop some serious gear for their class. These bosses could spawn once a week, or once every day. That gives people a reason to leave the main cities and travel the world, getting to know what world we live in. I bet most people on this server barely knows what Silicious looks like.
Add chests that spawn with rare loot (not a rare drop every time, but a chance of a rare drop). Might be a good bag of gold. But these chests will only spawn a couple of times a week so that it wont be too easy to farm them.
RACE/NAME/APPEARANCE
Since this is a hardcore game, and we want a little different content, I would suggest adding a few features to the barber. Or adding a few NPCs in the world that will give us the option to either change our name or character appearance.
You should remove the tool for faction change, to make the game feel more immersive. That also influences in your decisions, when creating your character. You will have to think, before making a character.
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SUMMARY
If you wish to comment on this, please read the whole post instead of the summary. It goes into more detail. I might have already answered your question.
CASH SHOP
Remove the cash shop. Both Coin and Point shop. Or at least remove any type of gear with stats that you can buy.
LEVELING
Make the leveling harder. Lower experience gain (0.5x-0.8x rates is my suggestion). Make the enemies stronger.
DUNGEONS
Make dungeons more rewarding. Remove the Random Dungeon Finder. Also give the bosses a good boost in both damage, health & resistance, and give them some new abilities. I personally would want to work a little harder for the gear, that I can get. Also make loot tables drop less.
QUESTS
Give us rewards. Remove the built-in quest helper. Make us spend the time it actually takes to read the quest description. Reward us with less gold, especially at max level.
TRAVELING
Traveling should be what an RPG is all about. Feeling the world. Make us feel it!
MARKET
Add a "Black Market" to the game so that we can obtain very rare items like mounts that are not otherwise obtainable, or even hard-to-get items (NO STATS PLEASE) that we can bid on. Cross faction!
EXPANSIONS/UPDATES
Please don't release Outland a month after release. Either you release it at the server release, or you wait several months. Give us time to gear up, even at level 60 and 70.
Kind Regards
Kripp
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Member since 2010, player since 2005
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