War für das englischsprachige Forum gedacht, aber scheinbar kann ich dort nicht posten? … daher hier…
Dear Blizzard
In early WoW most players I knew had one single main character and identified with that char. Alts were not very common and if you had one it started in a whole different region of the world and large parts of leveling and questing were indeed different.
That was fine and I liked it, but things change and that’s not a bad thing. Evolution is normal and hopefully makes the game better.
But feels bad is if the playstyle of the player base changes, but game mechanics don’t adapt to that.
Today almost everyone has several alternative characters and identifies at least partially with more than one of them.
And while I really liked the Shadowlands main story line and the quests etc… doing it twelve times?! … Seriously? Meh… ok… let’s do that. I have to level anyways. But wait! I have to do the whole pact stuff not only once for every pact but like six times for Kyrians, four times for Night Fea and once for the two others? … Why Blizzard… why?!
But at least after that I’m good to go and can catch up with my alts… right?.. Of course not! Korthia grind! (I didn’t even grind till level 6 with my main character because it was so boring. And now I shall do that with twelve characters? That feels so utterly frustrating and meaningless…
So thanks Blizzard, but no thanks… I’m not going to play my alts
And that’s what I don’t get. Why don’t you want us to play your game? WoWs strength is the endgame content, not the leveling part. So let us enjoy the endgame without the annoying repetitions.
Please implement something like a “Hero Party” and a “Temporal Character Swap” feature.
Hero Party:
All your characters from one fraction on a specific realm form a party and the reputation and resources and quests and achievements and all that stuff is shared by all of them.
If there are choices like the pact feature you only have to play each pact once. Joining a pact with a second character → you have access to the same features as the first one as they are basically in the same instance of that pact.
Also, the professions should be available to every member of your group of heroes. Therefore, if you open the professions window you can access all professions which at least one of your characters has. Two characters with the same profession work together. Therefore, picking up herbs and flowers will increase your global herbalism skill for all.
When you’re in a raid or dungeon you can already decide for which specialization you want loot for. Extend that feature so that you can choose the character and specialization you want loot for. But only for those characters which fulfill the requirements to enter that raid or dungeon (Level 60 for example). And for raid bosses of course: you can only loot a boss once for every character per ID. If that character the loot was for could trade the item (had an item of at least the same ilvl equipped already) then you can also trade the item or send it via right click “sent to character xyz” to another one of your alts (if they were able to enter the raid / dungeon). If the character, the loot was for, would not have been able to trade it, then the item will go straight to the bag of this char (or mailbox if the bags are full).
Alone with that feature I would have so much more to do in the endgame and would enjoy playing the game a lot more. Equipping all alts and maxing all professions would still need a lot of time so I don’t think you would have to worry that players would play less. They would only have more fun because the annoying repetitive grinding parts would have been replaced by actual fun content.
For all time gating features like “you can only get 1000 of these things during the first week” change that to “you can only spend 1000 of these things with each character during the first week”. The time gating for every character would still work the same, but you could do something meaningful and play more and catch up with your alts.
As for the quests which are shared by the group: What if you want to play them again with your alt to level or because you just liked them? No worries! Make it like the quests for lower levels. Always the first quest of a questline is still offered by the NPC but they are shown in gray and you can toggle if you want to see them on your map or not. The quests will still grant you money and experience, so you can level, but they will not grant you any more reputation, as the reputation is already counted for that character as well.
Temporal Character Swap:
Everywhere where you can swap your specialization (so not Mythic+ but pretty much everywhere else) you should be able to temporarily swap your character with one of your alts. Also, that should only be possible with those alts which could in principle enter the area you are in right now. (Level requirement or pact etc.)
Swapping your character will teleport your alt to your local position and replaces you with your alt in all groups you’re currently in. After the loading screen you’re there with all addons and UI stuff from the other character.
That is only a temporal swap though. Therefore, after logging off and on with that said alt from before that alt will still be where it was before the swap. But your main character will be at the position where you logged of with the swapped alt.
Why would that be useful?
Imagine you are waiting in the Looking for Raid tool and have nothing to do? Worry not! Travel to the next leveling area and swap to your low lvl alt and level up a little bit while waiting. The invite comes, you hit accept, the loading screen comes and boom you’re in the raid with your original character you queued with.
During the raid one of the tanks leaves because… well he didn’t say anything but it’s late and waiting for a new tank will take some time. Unfortunately, you’re playing a mage and none of the other DDs which actually have a tank specialization want to tank. Again, don’t worry! Swap to your Demon Hunter and finish that raid.
And while we’re already talking about raids and dungeon finder: Allow to queue with several chars and roles simultaniously. For example: “LFR wing 1: Tank with my DH or Heal with my priest or DD with the mage.” – “LFR wing 2: Only Heal with my priest or DD with the mage. But no tank as I don’t know the boss mechanics well enough yet”.
That would shorten the required time to enter a raid or dungeon tremendously.
Also with an certain item level and an achievement allow LFR for normal and later heroic difficulty as well. Therefore, if you could beat Sylvanas already on normal mode and your alt is well equipped because you could change the loot table during your previous runs (luckily Blizzard introduced that amazing hero party feature, which let you do that), you can use the raid finder tool to get into the normal version instead of the LFR version.
And needles to say: remove the fraction borders between Horde and Alliance for guilds and raiding.
And last but not least (actually it is the least important): Your ingame feedback / suggestion form is way to small (500 characters?). Increase that to something like 10.000 or so…
And if there are people who don’t want all that and enjoy having distinct characters which are not connected to each other at all? Well in Stormwind and Orgrimmar is Chromie waiting for us. “Please Chromie, can you send me to my own timeline” – And wusshhh… that character is not part of the hero group. No character swapping, no loot table changing, no profession sharing, no reputations, no quests… you’re a single hero on your own… Everybody is happy
Okay… I think that’s it for now and I really hope those features will come someday. Preferably sooner than later. And despite of all the missing features above, thanks for constantly working on the game even if the players are always complaining. As far as I’m concerned, I really liked Shadowlands and the whole setting and stuff. Have a great weekend and best wishes,
Avalas