Name 5 things that blizzard should add back.

[brunnor]

1. Single raid size/difficulty

2. Hard heroics, TBC style heroics.

3. Old talent trees

4. Professions that actually meant something to your class rather than what can make the most money

5. My realms population

[Vulcanasm]

1. Encouragement to Group with People from Your Server. The majority of gamers, casual and hardcore alike, are social gamers. They play primarily for social interaction. We must bring that back. No game lasts without the social element, and WoW has been squelching server communities since the debut of battlegroups.
--When queueing with a group for any content, increase all currency awards based on the total percentage of the instance in your premade. I'd say half the total percentage is an appropriate, fair award. (Example: LFR with 14 friends from your realm = 15/25 = 0.6 = +30% Valor).
--In LFR, specifically, increase drop rates based on the total percentage of the instance in your premade group. For example, if a boss drops an item 30% of the time, and your premade has 15 people, an increase to 30 * (1 + 0.3) = 39% is not game breaking, but noticeable enough to bring more single-realm groups into LFR.
--Set all size limits on queues equal to the instance size.

2. Non-Compartmentalized Game Play. Another huge part of stimulating social interaction is to participate in as many aspects of gameplay as possible. Back in Vanilla, there was no distinction between PVP rewards and PVE rewards. Some of the best gear was craftable and there was never a time when you didn't need crafted items. Make those Venn diagrams overlap again. Communities felt so much stronger!
--Make better craftable PVP and PVE items. Force people back out into the world to either farm for their items or interact with the community. (The current PVE craftables are *horrible* -- 100,000 gold in materials for one epic? Does your itemization team break bricks with their heads for fun?)
--PVP gear buyable with Valor. PVE gear buyable with Conquest. Justice and Honor interchangeable. Dividing this up served no purpose but to compartmentalize realm communities.
--PVP trinkets that are as useful in PVE as the PVE trinkets are useful in PVP. Every expansion has three tiers of trinkets that are the same Secondary Stat with the same Primary Stat proc. The itemization team is probably tired of naming them (coming up with names is hard when one spends days breaking bricks with one's head. so I hear). Just call them something like Arse-Ripper's Insignia of the Horde/Glorious Douchewaffle's Insignia of the Alliance, and increase their ilvl every season. 1800 Conquest points. Done and done.

By the way, I have an irrefutable two-word response to any whining of "b-b-but then people will feel they need to PVP for PVE gear!": So what. People *did* PVP for PVE gear in every expansion before Cataclysm. You know something? No one minded that. That was not a broken system. If people didn't care for Karazhan, they ran arenas. This upset nobody. In fact, given how quickly people burned through PVE content, and how seldom the loot they needed dropped -- does this sound familiar, dear reader? -- it might give players a much-needed change of pace.

3. World PVP. In Quel'danas 2.0 -- sometimes known as "Isle of Thunder" -- world PVP is a clumsy half measure. There's no incentive to do it. Wintergrasp was a superior model in every way. Bring back sieges. Make them less regular, this time around -- so that world PVP kills (by whichever faction goes on "offense" next) reduce the time remaining. [Tol Barad sucked because Cataclysm sucked. Don't remake Cataclysm and don't remake Tol Barad. "Lol let's stand on nodes til they cap lololol" fucking no.]

4. PVP Gear equal to PVE Gear. Right now, PVP is being strangled to death by a series of ham-handed decisions. The disparate ilvl of 5.3 may be the last nail in its coffin. That means more players lost. That means smaller communities. That means more players lost.

If PVP gear is *40 ilevels lower*, nobody will PVP. When some three-button PVE hero can three-shot you, why put the effort in? Left alone, PVP will quickly become the same situation as early BC -- the best PVP teams will be the best PVE raiders, just like back then, because that little Resilience (PVP power) you get can't stop teams in full T6 (heroic T15).

5. That's it. You only need 4.

---------- Post added 2013-05-12 at 09:08 PM ----------

3. Old talent tree. Out of all the talent tree incarnations, the Mists seem to be the one giving them the hardest time to balance. That and it's off the original point. There's only the illusion of choice when some talents are mandatory. Who cares if you can be a frost mage with living bomb? You'll pick frost bomb anyway.

How many classes do you play?

The reason I ask is that I don't think all talent trees are equal. Some (e.g. Shaman, Warlock) offer diverse, interesting options. There's room for a few idiotic builds, but one can't sanitize everything to be idiot proof. Rather, you can create options that suit your play style, without feeling like you're dead weight in a raid. The old trees felt *much* more mandatory -- an entire cottage industry of spreadsheet specialists and simulation bean-counters sprang up around optimizing whether e.g. 3/5 Crotch Rocketry beat 1/1 Pyroclastic Backhand and 2/5 Long-Range Wank.

If the new trees have one Achilles' heel, it's that they're all across the board: some offer diversity, some are mandatory. Of those I'm familiar with, I'd say Warlock and Death Knight have the fewest mandatory talents. Monk has the most. I can't even pretend they have talent choices.

[betsyross]

1. Heroic bosses drop gems & last boss dropped an epic.
2. Ulduar hardmode activation
3. Separate lockout for 10 & 25m
4. Specialized professions
5. Getting Keyed for a Raid

[SodiumChloride]

2. Non-Compartmentalized Game Play. Another huge part of stimulating social interaction is to participate in as many aspects of gameplay as possible. Back in Vanilla, there was no distinction between PVP rewards and PVE rewards. Some of the best gear was craftable and there was never a time when you didn't need crafted items. Make those Venn diagrams overlap again. Communities felt so much stronger!

Don't understand why there are 2 sets of gear ...

So what if Heroic raiders can blow up your ass in PVP. They bloody earned it. Vice versa. So what if R1 Arena players can top meters with the best of raiders. They earned it.

That said, there maybe be balance issues PVP wise. But that should be fixable by just scaling gear in rated PVP.

--Make better craftable PVP and PVE items. Force people back out into the world to either farm for their items or interact with the community. (The current PVE craftables are *horrible* -- 100,000 gold in materials for one epic? Does your itemization team break bricks with their heads for fun?)

This is a problem with WoW in general. There is no reason to go out into the open world. Everything "important" happens in instances.

Even when you do go out, there is no one there as everyone is up in the sky, landing to do what they came to do then back up into the solitude of the clouds.

The open world is as dead as a door nail.

Blizzard attempts to fix it are laughable. People not going out? Lets put the gear vendors at the most awkward of places for no reason other than to force people to travel.

--PVP trinkets that are as useful in PVE as the PVE trinkets are useful in PVP. Every expansion has three tiers of trinkets that are the same Secondary Stat with the same Primary Stat proc. The itemization team is probably tired of naming them (coming up with names is hard when one spends days breaking bricks with one's head. so I hear). Just call them something like Arse-Ripper's Insignia of the Horde/Glorious Douchewaffle's Insignia of the Alliance, and increase their ilvl every season. 1800 Conquest points. Done and done.

This could be problematic though. Procs of certain trinkets can break PVP. Not sure how to fix this other than what Blizzard is already doing, change the proc rates depending on target. Not very elegant though.

[Iseeyou]

1 - CRZ Everywhere.
2 - Legendaries with % chance of loot like WG
3 - Real Talent Trees
4 - Social stuff they completly destroyed
5 - World Pvp Ofc ffs

[Vulcanasm]

Don't understand why there are 2 sets of gear ...

So what if Heroic raiders can blow up your ass in PVP. They bloody earned it. Vice versa. So what if R1 Arena players can top meters with the best of raiders. They earned it.

Exactly. This was not a problem. I feel like WoW has fundamentally lost sight of the most important principle of human innovation: If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

This is a problem with WoW in general. There is no reason to go out into the open world. Everything "important" happens in instances.

Even when you do go out, there is no one there as everyone is up in the sky, landing to do what they came to do then back up into the solitude of the clouds.

The open world is as dead as a door nail.

Again: Exactly. That's a community problem. You log into a dead server, and hey, it's dead. You log out again. No one sees 3 people in Shrine of Two Moons and thinks "maybe there will be enough people for group content." That's just basic psychology.

Now, I don't want the days of standing in Ogrimmar spamming "DPS LFG". But I *do* miss interacting with the world. "Let's prevent flying mounts" is absolutely NOT the answer -- amateurish and overly restrictive. Can you imagine that kind of slap in the face? All those reward mounts we spent months farming achievements for? I'd unsubscribe immediately and permanently. Probably with ASCII middle finger spamming.

I think the answer lies in rewarding people to make same-server groups, and adding back some more non-instanced content. Summoned "world" bosses. Even Oondasta is a good "first step", though Blizzard should have done much more with the Isle of Giants.

This could be problematic though. Procs of certain trinkets can break PVP. Not sure how to fix this other than what Blizzard is already doing, change the proc rates depending on target. Not very elegant though.

That already happens now. Check the hotfix changes for the Str proc trinkets. Plus, it was just one suggestion for making PVP and PVE have *some* reason to overlap.

[Totle]

1. Vanilla style rooms/chambers/halls in raids - I feel like an ant everywhere I go. The halls in UBRS before the entrance to BWL make me feel like I'm storming a castle that was built to my size.
2. Learning skills from the class trainer
3. Class quests
4. Nights/darkness utilizing a torch mechanic (original Duskwood)
5. Quivers. Seriously.
....
....
6. Attunements. Doing the BT/SSC/TK Attunements now would be easy thanks to LFD/LFR. No reason to not reintroduce them. They were fun and made accessing a raid feel special.

[RicardoZ]

1. Keys/Attunement quests for heroics and raids
2. Reputation grinds via mob killings, dungeons, and stack gathering (no more gated daily quest grinds)
3. PvP titles
4. Night/day system
5. Have Group Will Travel

[Deleted]

For me would be simple, it all revolves around PvE as pvp has never effected me unless it brings nerfs to PvE.

1. Class quest chains + Specialization Chains i.e Warlock mounts, Paladin mounts, Shaman Totems etc etc.

2. Original Talent Trees and specs/abilities.

3. Profession Specialization Quests.

4. lvl40, lvl60 & lvl70+ Requirements for mounts/flying/ground.

5. Original Raid encounters like Naxx in plaguelands (remove from northrend), Onyxia lvl60, ZA/ZG, AQ20/AQ40 with the original attunement/key quests needed to enter them.

[Zooch]

1. Old alterac Valley, like many people said before me

2. Class Quests, but expand on them a bit. These have so much potential.

3. One raid difficulty that was challenging.

4. Heroics should be as difficult as they were at the start of cata

5. Original PvP titles.

[Durandro]

1. Heroic bosses drop gems & last boss dropped an epic.
2. Ulduar hardmode activation
3. Separate lockout for 10 & 25m
4. Specialized professions
5. Getting Keyed for a Raid

Five reasonable suggestions, finally. I agree that all these things would be nice, potentially.

1/ Having an epic drop at the end of a heroic dungeon was rather nice. Gave people a reason to stick around. Same with the gems back in TBC (though since they were all hybrids they were of limited use and getting one you wanted was tricky).
2/ Ulduar's hardmore activation was pretty cool, though I can see why they dumped it. Coming up with enough interesting methods to activate hardmore is a lot of hard work. I do approve of the 'elite' versions of fights though - i.e. Protectors. This is a nice idea, but having multiple examples per tier and having them do something different would be nice too.
3/ Sort of agree with this one, though gear needs to remain the same. It might cause burnout in players, though, aka ToC where many guilds were running the raid four times a week. And then again for alts. But having the option would be nice.
4/ Choosing Swordsmith as my Blacksmithing specialisation in TBC felt awesome. Having this back would be nice. Having them linked to upgradable equipment would be nice too, for each crafting profession (though I'd limit players to only using one such item at a time so people aren't 'forced' to roll two crafting professions).
5/ Attunements (I think)? So long as they aren't over the top and restrictive, I'm okay with this. Even if the attunement is something as simple as 'kill the last boss in the previous raid'. Would have to only effect the raid leader though, so people aren't punished for having to bring alts to replace missing people, or trials on people who haven't quite gotten the attunement yet. Think Kara in TBC - you didn't need the key yourself, just someone else to open the gate.

[leggomydairy]

bring back skirmishes and dishonorable kills

[Gothicshark]

Removed things, Vanilla Leveling trees. Vanilla PVP system. (I hate PVP gear the way it has evolved.) Pet Controls. Also the old leveling rate was good and made the story worth while.

[huth]

i like this, all except ysera wouldnt make it back out there,as shes lost her powers and no longer is immortal/dragon aspect as stated in the cutscene after killing deathwing

I think he got the wrong dragon there. I can't remember the fourth one, either, but Ysera was never one of them in the first place, so she can't "re-appear" as one.

[SodiumChloride]

Now, I don't want the days of standing in Ogrimmar spamming "DPS LFG". But I *do* miss interacting with the world. "Let's prevent flying mounts" is absolutely NOT the answer -- amateurish and overly restrictive. Can you imagine that kind of slap in the face? All those reward mounts we spent months farming achievements for? I'd unsubscribe immediately and permanently. Probably with ASCII middle finger spamming.

I never understood this line of reasoning. If you are flying, your ground mounts will be collecting dust. Things are being "wasted" all the same.

GC personally feels flying mounts should be used for long distance travel only. I agree. But that said, I feel we move too slowly in WoW. Roads should increase mount speed. Cities should give a movement speed buff like the shrine, maybe even have transportation to get you from one part to another quickly.

There needs to be areas in the game where you can't just fly over everything. I mean have you ever watched any fantasy film where the protagonists just fly to their destination? No. There are always on foot/horseback segments even if flight was possible in its world. Flying more or less makes you a god - you are invulnerable - and it's not very interesting.

I think it's a problem that traveling is so boring that everyone wants to just "get it over with". The world being dead is a large part of it IMHO.

[huth]

I mean have you ever watched any fantasy film where the protagonists just fly to their destination? No. There are always on foot/horseback segments even if flight was possible in its world.

While that is true, how many films do you know where they are shown for all of the way to their destination in the first place?
At best, you usually get a montage of some intermittent vistas.

Why? Well, because traveling is so boring people wouldn't want to watch it.

Making it more "interesting" in WoW would probably serve more to aggravate people than it would improve the situation. Travel is a necessity, not some great gameplay mechanic meant to engage players.

[Splenda]

1) Mass Summon
2) Divine Intervention
4) Ulduar-style HM engagement

Removed the ones I didn't agree with, otherwise this guy nails it for me! Can't think of another two to go with it.

[MOEEEE]

1. Old Orgrimmar.
2. Old Talent Tree.
3. When Azeroth could actually be in Nightime, and not only day time.
4. Old PvP system.
5. Dungeon rep, with tabards.

[rebecca191]

1. Five second rule & downranking (I guess this could be considered two things but I consider them part of the same healing style)
2. Mass summon
3. Different raids for different sizes like BC
4. Old talent trees
5. Divine intervention

[MOEEEE]

1. Five second rule & downranking (I guess this could be considered two things but I consider them part of the same healing style)
2. Mass summon
3. Different raids for different sizes like BC
4. Old talent trees
5. Divine intervention

She's got it right! These things are probably the ones i want back most!