Q: Is it possible to let the players create/edit their own looks? - Zed Loft (Taiwan), Vysha (NA/ANZ), Ráchel (EU|German)A: As we said in an earlier Q&A, we definitely hear loud and clear from players that they want more customization for their character. This is something we want to provide, but we want to do it in the right way. Consider the Barber Shop feature. It lets you change your character's hair, but there’s not a lot of gameplay to it. We're not sure that feature really added a lot to the game in retrospect. Is WoW more fun for you now that you have a Barber Shop? Are you more likely to keep playing because of it? Maybe, but it wasn’t a cheap feature to add in terms of development time. Dumping a bunch of dyes on the game might have a similar effect, where some players might have fun playing around with the system for a bit, but a lot of players might change their colors once or twice and then forget about the feature after that. Now, not every aspect of the game needs a ton of depth and a lot of interesting decisions, but we tend to attract more players to a feature the more robust the feature is.We also think it's fair to argue that the game just needs more armor and weapon art. As we said above, we deliver a lot of art these days, but we also produce an enormous number of new items every expansion or patch and it’s understandably disappointing whenever items use the same art. It would be really cool if not every mage or priest converged on the same look after a given expansion or patch.
Q: Would it be possible for city quartermasters to sell the same equipment that guards wear? Stats wouldn't matter. - Pokemonmasta (EU|English), Tajit (NA/ANZ)A: Cool idea. We'll talk about it.
Q: Any chance we can start heading away from WWE-esque belts? - Catriona (NA/ANZ)A: Azeroth is stricken by a terrible plague that inflates the size of shoulders and belts over time. Our artists like the belts because they have more room for detail when they’re larger. That said, your concern is duly noted.
Q: Is there any chance we could have caster weapons involved in casting animations? It would look cool to be holding a staff and casting a spell through it, at least as a customization option. - Dromanthis (NA/ANZ)A: This is something we would dearly love to do. We agree that melee specs get to see their weapons a lot more often in combat while it's easy for casters to forget about them. It's definitely on the list, but understand that we have so many races now (and two sexes for all existing races) that the animations take more time to do right/well.
Q: Will enchanters be getting back the ability to make wands? - Trustybee (Taiwan)A: We have been discussing what role in the game wands are supposed to fill. We generally consider it a failure these days if a caster ever wants to wand for dps instead of using their spells. Working the wand into the cast animation (as in the question above) is one idea. In any event, we want to figure out what we want wands to do before we give them any more prominence.
Thing is: there are so many ways to improve MMORPG gaming experience and there are no strict rules of how to do everything, yet most MMOs are completely the same - because they are greedy for money.The way these MMOs work right now are simply focused on addicting players and pumping the most money out of each player they can - see monthly fees etc. In my opinion anybody who pays on a monthly fee for games is a very stupid person. Maybe that's because I grew up with no-monthly-fees-games (also MMOs, not in the too long gone past) but it still stands valid, I will not once pay a monthly fee for a game.The recent developments (especially in WoW) are seriously ridiculous. Over at our all-time favourite site MMOwned there was a discussion about this latest patch that re-uses old content and it was written on a more against-it kind of view - I totally had to agree with it.The funny thing were the comments. Nearly ALL of the comments were defending the way Blizzard creates their new stuff lately (HURR DURR COLOR CHANGE + NAME CHANGE or HURR DURR MODELSWAP). I mean god damnit think about it! They are paying MONTHLY FEEs for this shit. They are paying lots of money each month to be able to play and -if it was me- I would be expecting new content updates, but not ones with fucking shit I have seen tons of times before!(For all you MMO-noobs out there -and I know out of experience that WoW gamers are in fact the most MMO-noobs (probably this is why they dont complain about it as much or stopped playing years ago...) at the time WoW came live I was playing a MMO with most of the features WoW had until BC, no monthly fees and yet free of charge content updates, new content - I must add.)So you might think I've gotten a little off topic now but I'm not.Recent trends in gaming have shown: don't expect a game which is running for a few years to be good, it will only get worse (because of the greed)On the other hand, indie developers are most of the time players themselves and what to create a game that is fun, their drive is fun, not nescessarily money (of course money but fun is more important to most). Just wanting to mention Minecraft and Magicka here
yes you do because if you give people 200 ways of customizing their characters right at the start, they can create the person they want to play and then have fun for a few weeks and be through with it.Acquiring the same stuff through grinding makes the player play for a few months to get what he wants.More time playing = more time paying yaaayI'd rather enjoy games based on RP as well (especially since the genre was once called MMORPG, but I don't agree on the RPG that much anymore, these times it's more like MMOGRIND) but I don't believe this will be happening anytime soon. Or maybe anytime at all.
