Alternative ideas: drunk players can fight each-other, underwater neutral city, ...and MORE

[Drastezar-hydraxian-waterlords]

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TLDR - Read the first few words of each idea, if you don’t like it, stop reading and jump to the next idea.

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This is a list of ideas that are not controversial: they do not involve raising the level cap, do not involve new high-level gear, and do not involve changing any class gameplay. Just fun ideas that everyone can agree on!

Some of these ideas could potentially already exist in retail (no idea, never played it).

Fun small quick changes that can be implemented very quickly:

1. Make mail letters not soul-bound (opening plenty of possibilities allowing to create a lot of fun things for various use, including contracts between players, banking, etc… won’t say more to keep it as a surprise, use your imagination). This is an extremely quick change.
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2. In every capital, near bank or AH, an official public book repertory on which each existing guild can choose to have its own page on which they can write whatever they want, publicly visible (example of use: news agencies, event calendars, market prices of the day, interest rate, etc)
   More details on the mechanics of this public book at the bottom of this post.
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3. New armor slot: publicly viewable bag (does not add extra bag space, similar to equipping arrows). If a bag is “equipped” in that slot, then all items inside that bag are viewable and clickable by other players who inspect inside the bag , allowing players to show-off some rare or funny items they have and carry around in their bag. Sharing the fun.
   Readable items that can be “read” (such as letters) can be read by other players who are inspecting the bag.
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4. Be able to chop woods from trees (to make fire). Chopping lumber has always been part of Warcraft games. The chopped tree does not fall, nothing happens, keep it simple.
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5. Classes that have fire spells should be able to light a campfire just using wood and their own fire magic (and if they can chop wood then they don’t need reagents anymore)
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6. Crafting a campfire : should be able to target the fire spawn position (similar to flamestrike), this will make it easier to set up decoration for events.
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7. Add decorative fishes (not even targetable monsters, just decoration) and decorative plants under water in deep oceans everywhere (currently entirely devoid of anything except near a few beaches.) This is very quick to fix.
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8. The deeper under the ocean, the darker it should be.
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9. Able to wear weapons in hands while riding a mount without moving (for photos).
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10. Include all Azeroth festive events that existed through BC (Oktoberfest, etc).
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11. Include all toys from BC release 2.0 (toys that were obtainable before the opening of the portal, such as picnic basket, Oktoberfest rewards, etc).
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12. Add several small decorative objects that can be summoned in-world for a short amount of time (similar to "Brewfest Pony Keg”), such as potted flowers, glowing crystals, candles,… simple things. But those items must be consumables, and rare, they must not be sold by any permanent shop but rather be crafted, looted or gathered with some difficulty. Also, all those new decorative items must have a limited duration, their description must contain the words «Duration: 14 days (real time)» to make them even more rare, and incentivise direct trading interaction between players.
    More details on those items at the end of this post

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Fun changes with no competitive impact:

13. New item: Market Stall (consumable). It allows the user to summon a static merchant’s Market Stall, sort of a table (1 hour duration) that can be interacted with as if it were a shop (similar to repair-bot), but where other players can only purchase limited stocks items from the owner of the stall (items from the owner’s bags). We might see the creation of some markets by players, with some players doing commerce, some others displaying their collection of fancy items. The cosmetic appearance of the stall will depend on the items that are sold. A flower market will look like a flower market, a fish market will look like a fish market, etc. To avoid spam, crafting the stall should require very expensive components. Using that item should be perceived as a rare luxury.
    More details on the mechanics of this item at the bottom of this post.
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14. New secondary profession: musician. This should have no competitive use (no useful buff, no nothing) but it will incentivise some players to be “in-game” for another reason, and also add background music to in-world events (Sunday markets, tournaments, holiday parties…). Music instruments should be crafted by other professions.
    Higher skill level allows to use better instruments, and allow to play some instruments (not all) while mounted (for example a drum). This will add some fancy fun to world-PvP raids. Specific mechanics make it impossible to spam playing music as it will require rare consumables. Undecided: whether or not to allow players to play their own composition (as opposed automatic music recipes).
    More details on the mechanics of this profession at the bottom of this post.
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15. New ability: painting. Simple basic painting on canvas, some sort of in-game very basic “paint” software with nothing complicated (colors could require basic ingredients), but crafting a painting requires level 60 (to avoid spam). No skill point, not a profession.
    Maximum of 10 crafts per character. After 10, ability greyed out forever.
    A fun secondary market will be created by players, with paintings from famous players/painters being more expensive. Players can either sign their paintings or leave them anonymous. Anonymous paintings will be exposed to the risk of “faux” versions and imitations, and experts will be needed to identify originals.
    It is worth keeping in mind that each painting will be an item that is truly unique, which never happened in WoW before.
    Players will be able to show off their painting collection with their publicly viewable bag (see suggestion number 3), or using Market Stalls (see suggestion number 13).
    More details on the mechanics of this painting ability at the bottom of this post.
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16. New ability: seeding. Everyone can seed some basic seeds. Some seeds require herbalist skills. New in-world plants: some decorative flowers with no competitive use.
    Mechanism: seeding is a spell that consumes seeds items and targets an area on the floor. There will be specific defined areas where plants can be seeded, with the constraint that those areas must be in contested zones. The list of these areas will at least include every farm in every contested zone (such as “Dabyrie’s Farmstead” in Arathi Highlands, all the farms in Hillsbrad Foothills, Western Plagueland, etc…) and may include other specific areas where it makes logical sense, or for specific plants.
    The spell fails or succeed depending on the area, the floor (you cannot seed inside a house, but you could potentially seed inside a cave if it’s a mushroom for example), and also some seeds could require the player to be “swimming” (underwater plants). The spell has 1 meter range. Plants will grow/spawn several days after seeding, and can be gathered for flowers and for their own seeds. Flowers/plants obtained this way could either be used directly or be ‘reagents’ needed to craft other new fun items.
    This fun ability will increase traffic in-world, increase PvP, and allow for new immersive way to obtain decorative items. Some decorative flowers seeds will be obtainable from holiday events.
    More details on the mechanics of this seeding ability at the bottom of this post.

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Fun changes with some limited game-play impact:

17. Drunk players that are drunk to the maximum degree can attack other drunk same-faction-players that are max-drunk as well without the need to ask for duel, but they cannot kill each-other.
    This will allow massive brawls of teams of drunk people vs drunk people. It will also make events and parties much more interesting. In cities, drunk players who initiate an attack on another player from the same faction will aggro guards in a similar fashion than they would when initiating PvP in neutral cities.
    More details on the drunk-vs-drunk mechanics at the bottom of this post.
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18. Players can attack players from same faction one night a month during a Darker/black «new moon» night when there is no moon in the sky. Units outside (monsters, players, everything) are visible only if within short distance by default, requiring torches or other light-emitting objects (or spells) to see clearly further away outside.
    ■ㅤSimilar to Gurubashi arena, on such nights the entire world is PvP, players can attack players from same faction (who will appear yellow/neutral and both attackable and healable). Team vs team tournaments events could take place on such nights.
    ■ㅤOutside, every unit or player is either in the “shadow” (default) or under a “torch effect” (displayed as a debuff)
    ■ㅤShadow can be removed by torch (new item), lamp (new item), campfire, or “flare” hunter spell. The word “torch effect” will refer to the lighting effect of such items or spells. Units within the range of a torch effect appear normally (with the cosmetic light reflection of the light source).
    ■ㅤThe “torch effect” range is 41m (except for hunter flare spell that remains 10m).
    ■ㅤThe landscape relief, ground, walls, trees etc… that is “in the shadow” is not only cosmetically darker but also appears with blurred texture similarly to the way distant mountains texture is blurred when far away in the landscape. It really feels likes it’s dark!
    EVEN BETTER: all units within more than 15m away but less than 41m away appear only with their silhouette. You see there is a unit, but you don’t know what it is! «It looks small, is that a Dwarf? Oh it looks like a bear, it’s just a monster. Or is it a druid? He’s going away… damn he disappeared into the night»
    More details on the mechanics of this monthly black night at the bottom of this post
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19. Underwater World PvP: Lure players underwater and create the opportunity for PvP under water.
    Deep Underwater caves with thorium veins and other rare veins, to attract players. As well as the occasional elite monsters that inhabit them (octopus, giant eels, etc).
    ■ㅤThe caves must be mostly without monsters, much less monsters than the usual caves, and monsters must be rare but strong, to create a sense or fear inside the caves. The fear of “seeing” a monster.
    ■ㅤThe caves must contain some breathing bubbles in order not to entirely discourage races/classes with no underwater breathing abilities.
    ■ㅤCaves must be filled with neutral high level elite monsters whose diet is made of sea-lions, and thus are only hostile to sea-lions. They would aggro any druid that is morphed into a sea-lion, and once the aggro is triggered then morphing out of the lion form would not stop the aggro. This would be in order to balance-out the classes and avoid the underwater caves to be the monopole of druids. Alternatively those monsters could potentially just be carnivorous plants everywhere on the cave walls with tentacles that only detect fast-swimming sea lions.
    UNDECIDED: underwater caves must not contain pockets of dry air, they must be 100% filled. This is in order to create the actual fear of drowning with no escape.
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20. New neutral city: an underwater city.
    ■ㅤNo flight path (or equivalent), there should be no easy way to go there or to leave from there. It should feel very remote and isolated in the depths.
    ■ㅤIndividual houses can have pocket of air, or their own small private air dome, but otherwise the city itself is fully immersed, with some “breathing bubbles” here and there outside.
    ■ㅤThe usual gnomes / goblins guards wearing astronaut-like diving suits. All units are swimming, it feels like everyone is flying.
    ■ㅤThe usual inn, AH, Bank, repair shops, component shop etc… Some fun and cool decoration here and there, and around the city.
    ■ㅤThat’s it. The city is just a stop-over to have a break when playing underwater.
    ■ㅤThere should be no teleporter. The city must be accessible only by swimming very far and deep. That’s the fun of it!
    ■ㅤThe city must be so deep that a human would die out-of-breath if trying to escape the city and go back to the surface using only normal swimming without potion. This is an important point that makes the underwater city feel like a sanctuary in the depths of the underwater world, and at the same time feels like a prison too.
    ■ㅤIn order to increase the demand for Thorium and Stranglekelp, and thus incentivise players to go underwater, we could decide that many of the newly introduced items (such as the Market Stall, Torch, Lamp… but also items that would logical not need Thorium or Stranglekelp such as candles or Glowing Crystals) could require a specific reagent only obtainable from some NPC who would provide the reagent in exchange for a lot of Thorium or Stranglekelp (similar to repeatable quests in Alterac Valley battleground).
    ■ㅤFor example the “miniaturisation” technology that allows the Market Stall item to be miniaturised in your bag would only be possible thanks to some crazy engineer found only in the underwater city, and who craves thorium and Stranglekelp for his crazy experiments (that’s why he lives there), and would happily help you if you give him more thorium and more Stranglekelp, more! Maybe that repeatable quest could provide a quest item (soulbound) which is in turn exchanged for something else in Gadgetzan before the final reagent is finally obtained, forcing players to physically go back and forth in-and-out of the underwater city (quests items cannot be sent by post) and creating an increased traffic in the water, with a constant amount of players risking the dangers of the high seas swimming back and forth to the underwater city.
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21. On each continent, add one or two massively gigantic elite monster carnivorous wale (or giant Octopus) roaming the oceans far from the coast (including in ‘Fatigue’ areas), such that any swimmer would feel actual fear whenever swimming far away from the coast, always looking behind their back, above their head and under them.
    ■ㅤThe monster should either be level 69 elite or WorldBoss, with a huge aggro range (more than 41m) such that the fact of “seeing” the monster should be synonymous with quick death (unless in a group). No loot, or at least nothing useful (could have some fun loot such as leftover players corpses parts from previous meals).
    ■ㅤIt must be gigantic in size, when its gigantic shape appears… you are already doomed, all hope is lost.
    ■ㅤThis must not be a shark in order to preserve the uniqueness of Maws, but rather a carnivorous whale-like monster or giant Octopus (but in any case much bigger than Maws).
    ■ㅤOne of those colossal gigantic monsters must patrol near the underwater city, and specifically also in between the new underwater city and the coast, such that players who swim to the underwater city have a good reason to be scared. And another monster could simply patrol around the entire continent going everywhere (around Teldrassil etc.) just so that anyone swimming in the high seas anywhere «knows» they could be killed, thus giving everyone a reason to be scared in the deep high seas, wherever they are. In the dark depths of the ocean… you should never feel safe…
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    Below are 4 AI-generated images to give a rough idea of how the gigantic roaming monster could feel like. Have a look!
    https://i.ibb.co/qp6V8H9/Ocean-depths-monster.png

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22. On each continent, add one gigantic “hole” monster on the deep ocean floor, some sort of dark abyss entrance, that essentially is a frightening black hole of 200m diameter in the floor, seemingly bottomless, and:
    ■ㅤIt has the ability to attract/pull every units toward its hole (similar to deathkinght’s deathgrip) as if the water currents were strong and water was siphoning pouring into the hole when the abyss awakes!
    ■ㅤAny player who enters the whole too deep dies instantly (even under divine shield, even as a ghost, similar to falling off the edge in Outland) by being sucked into the dark abyss. This must be done in such a way that nobody can ever see nor know what is inside of the abyssal hole, to keep a feeling of mystery and fear. (This can be achieved with players dying similarly to players falling off the edge of the world in Outland, the camera does not follow the player falling and the player does not see where the body goes.)
    ■ㅤIt needs to feel like this abyssal hole is the end of the world, sort of the bottom “drain” of the ocean, a pulling abyss from where nobody can ever escape. An unconceivable horror from the forgotten depth of the world.
    ■ㅤWhen the hole pulls and siphons everything toward it, there is a visual earthquake where everything underwater shakes (similar to the Fel Reaver approaching in the Hellfire Peninsula).
    ■ㅤThe hole should be more like a feature of the area than an actual monster: it should not be targetable (and therefore not killable). Just like a campfire damages players without itself being a targetable monster. Just like falling off the edge of the world in Outland kills you without “damaging” you.
    ■ㅤThere must be strong incentives for players to attempt crossing above the abyssal hole (for example to reach rich Thorium veins on the other side, or anything else). This is achieved by putting the hole monster inside a “fatigue” area with the area above the hole is the only place without fatigue. This way, if a player attempts to reach the other side by any other path or go around the hole (on the left, or on the right) the fatigue will kill the player, and the only way for the player to avoid being killed by fatigue is to pass above the abyssal hole, and hope it won’t wake up.
    ■ㅤThe abyssal hole is always inactive unless a player is within the range of awakening of the hole. When a player within that range, the hole will randomly wake-up and siphon water into it for a duration of a few seconds, draining players with it (similar to deathkinght’s deathgrip). This siphoning affects all players nearby even if they are on the side not directly above the hole, even if they are close to the floor, they will be siphoned toward the hole. If the player was too close to the “event horizon” and was siphoned too deep into the hole, it dies instantly. If the player was sufficiently far then the siphoning will pull the player toward the whole but not enough to pull him deep inside it, the player will have a chance to swim away before another random siphoning occurs. Quick !
    ■ㅤThe area of triggering/awakening is infinite vertically above the hole: any player swimming above the hole will awaken the hole and will be randomly siphoned by the hole, even if extremely far away swimming at the surface of the ocean. If not vertically above the hole then the area of awakening is within 100 meters away from the edges of the hole. The area of awakening, and the area of effect of the siphoning, are the same. If you are not in the area of awakening, then even if the hole is awakened by other players you are safe.
    ■ㅤIdeally the distance traveled by the player when it is siphoned by the hole depends on the position of the player when the siphoning started: if the player is close to the hole then the siphoning is strong and the distance traveled is high, if the player is far away from the hole then the siphoning is weaker and the distance traveled is shorter (except if vertically above the hole where the distance traveled does not decrease). If this is too technically complicated to implement then this can be approximated by splitting the siphoning range into 3 area: if a player is vertically above the hole then it travels 50 meters each time the hole awakes and siphoning occurs, else if a player is not vertically above the hole but is within 50 meters away from the edge of the hole then the the distance traveled is 50 meters as well (toward the center of the hole), else if the player is beyond 50 meters away from the edges (but less than 100 meters) then the distance traveled is 25 meters. If beyond 100m away form the edge and not vertically above the hole, nothing happens.
    ■ㅤThe “event horizon” beyond which every player instantly dies is 50 meters deep inside the hole. In other words if you are actually inside the hole, you can still survive, as long as you do not go too deep inside it. If you go too deep beyond 50 meters deep inside, you are suddenly sucked into the abyss with a “earthquake” animation. Players who do PvP fights nearby the hole will have to keep an eye on their distance to the hole, if they get too close they will be siphoned toward it, and if they get siphoned and survive, they should try to get away as quickly as possible. Players who are already inside the hole will die if a siphoning happens (because the distance traveled will pull them beyond the event horizon).
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    Players who are more than 50m away from the edges outside the hole will survive at least 1 siphoning, and should make every effort to quickly escape the inside of the hole before a second random siphoning happens, or they will not make it alive.
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    UNDECIDED: somehow we could make the hole spawn at different positions. It could “open” in areas where players often swim, to force them to “want to know” what is below them, constantly in fear.
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    Below are 4 AI-generated images to give a rough idea of how the abyssal hole could feel like. Have a look!
    https://i.ibb.co/QCd0D0K/Abyssal-hole.png

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Fun seasonal changes that only apply 3 months per year during a specific season.

Winter

23. Iced pounds and lakes: many ponds of water, and parts of many lakes, become frozen in winter (such as 50% of the large lake in Tirisfal Glades, or the small pond in Hillsbrad Foothills below Tarren MIll, and in Ashenvale below Astranaar… but not in “hot” areas such as Stranglethorn Vale or The Barrens obviously).
    ■ㅤOn frozen ponds, players have a debuff called “slippery”: players have a % chance to fall every 0.5 second of movement (sort of knocked-out with falling animation), with that percentage lower when you walk and higher when you run.
    ■ㅤ25% chance to fall at the beginning of every 0.5 seconds “tick” of continued movement when running. Whenever you stop moving, as soon as you start moving again you could fall immediately (first “tick”) or if you don’t then you can fall at the second “tick” 0.5 seconds later. If you run a total of 0.6 seconds you had 2 ticks (one at 0s, one at 0.5s). On a straight line you would fall on average once every 2 seconds when running.
    ■ㅤ5% chance to fall every 0.5sec if walking meaning you would fall on average once every 10 seconds when walking.
    ■ㅤ3.33% chance to fall every 0.5sec if slowed by stealth, meaning you would fall on average once every 15 seconds “Falling” last for 1sec, each time you fall you waste 1 second.
    ■ㅤ“Falling” automatically dismount you if you were mounted.
    ■ㅤ“Falling” removes stealth !
    ■ㅤ“Falling” while under fear removes the fear !
    ■ㅤWarrior’s “Charge” triggers the equivalent of 1 second of running (2 running ticks), if a fall is triggered the warrior falls after having reached its target (good laughs).
    ■ㅤMage’s “Blink” triggers the equivalent of 1 second of running as well (2 running ticks), if a fall is triggered then the mage falls immediately after completion of the blink.
    ■ㅤThat would create some fun duels, with player having to decide whether to run and try their luck not falling, or walk and try to run away walking. It would be fun to watch other players duel on ice, quite comical. Just for good laughs. It would also increase in-world traffic near the frozen ponds, and give players something fun to “look forward to” as it is seasonal only.

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Spring

24. Chaotic whether creates thunder storms. When in a thunder storm, units (both players and monsters) receive a bonus in mana regeneration (including in combat), energy regeneration, and rage generation. The effect must be significant enough for it to be fun, without exaggeration.
    ■ㅤSuch thunder storms appear at random times, lasting around 20-30 minutes. They should be very rare, maybe twice a day only (and only in Spring anyway). They are zone-wide, and appear randomly in contested areas only.
    ■ㅤThis will give one additional reason for players to hang out in contested areas for PvP, thus increasing the opportunities for wild-PvP.
    ■ㅤJust like in real life, once a thunder storm has appeared, it can move from zone to zone, so for example if a thunder storm appears in Stranglethorn Vale, instead of disappearing after 20-30 minutes, the storm will randomly move to either Duskwood or Deadwind Pass or Blasted Lands (but not Westfall which is not contested) where it will continue for another 20-30 minutes, and you will see players rushing on their mount to go and follow the storm in the other zone, some of them getting ambushed on the way, etc. Good fun times ahead.
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25. Plants seeded by players growing faster in Spring (assuming the seeding is implemented). The spawn time is reduced by 1 day. This will incentive players to go in-world and will increase in-world traffic.

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Summer

26. Daily fishing quests, with the usual reward “Bag of Fishing Treasures” which would contain the same fun items than in TBC and WotLK.
    ■ㅤRemember “Noble’s Monocle” for your bank mule in TBC? Remember the useless-grey “Porcelain Bell” worth 100 gold in WotLK? Those useless items could be re-introduced in Classic+ with no harm at all (lowering their gold value). No game-play impact, no nothing. They are useless and only fun. Let’s add them back, it’s so quick and easy.
    ■ㅤThe daily fishing quests should only be in summer in order to create some “fear of missing out” with players knowing the time is running out and if they don’t do the quest, then they will have to wait next year (otherwise players will think “nah, I can always do it tomorrow, who cares”)
    ■ㅤThis will significantly increase the in-world traffic near water, creating more opportunities for wild-PvP. It will create specific summer memories in-game with wild-PvP mixing up with fishing, resulting in players having another reason to be “looking forward to” summer
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27. Beach-combing! Only around sand beaches of Stranglethorn Vale (facing ocean, not the rivers), and the sand beaches of the East cost of Tanaris (not the south coast).
    ■ㅤThose beaches would have some small, very small objects that spawn on the ground (similar to “Half-Burried Bottle”), both on the beach and underwater within 200 meters away from the coast. Those objects must be difficult to see with colors that match the ground and very small in size (ideally only appearing when within 5 meters if technically possible, but not an essential feature).
    ■ㅤThose objects would contain useless grey or white items that can be sold for gold for example. Similar to the items inside “Bag of Fishing Treasures” (the TBC version and the WotLK version), and of course some useless “Shiny Seashell”.
    ■ㅤThe objects on the beaches should spawn rarely, but sufficiently often for players to decide to try their luck and hang around /swim at beaches to spot some of them.
    ■ㅤThe objects should all be the same object in the sand, such that players cannot recognise what item is hidden. Players have to open the object in order to discover what is the item that was hidden in the sand (and loot it).
    ■ㅤSuch beach-combing could be the only way to obtain some funny items. Because it would only be available 3 months per year, players will be strongly incentivised to have a go at it while they still can. This means in-world traffic will increase near sand beaches, creating more opportunities for wild-PvP (around water), and creating specific beach memories in-game precisely when it is summer in real life (North hemisphere).
    ■ㅤSome bored players will probably spend their whole time on the beaches, almost camping, hanging out in and out of the water looting items they find in the sand. (It will feel like holidays when you spent the whole day doing nothing at the beach, looking for pretty seashells in the sand, going for a swim and then stay in the water for hours playing with the waves and snorkelling searching for pretty things in the water). And some other players will patrol beaches precisely in search for those campers! For wild-PvP.
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    UNDECIDED: It could be made available only to players above a minimum level (various ways to achieve that, via quests that unblock the items, or via required item “Gnomish Metal Detector” with a required level). Similar to the quest “Rocket Car Parts” in the Shimmering Flats, if you cannot interact with the objects, you can still see them, you just can’t click them.)

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Fall

28. Enigmatic fogs to various contested zones, limiting the range of vision.
    The fog would have 2 elements:
    – A visual weather effect, there actually is a fog and everything at a distance is hidden by the fog, landscape at a medium distance is foggy.
    – The fog would give an undispellable debuff to all units (players, NPCs, monsters, players’ pets…), granting them a special kind of stealth. That specific stealth will be special because:
    ■ㅤthe stealth remains all the time, even in combat, even when attacking, eating, casting a spell, etc…
    ■ㅤthe stealth remains even when mounted
    ■ㅤthe stealth does NOT remove your movement sounds and battle sounds, players can still hear you walk even if they cannot see you, and they can hear you fight.
    ■ㅤthe stealth has no impact on your movement speed
    ■ㅤthe stealth does not trigger any ‘stealth noise’ when detected
    ■ㅤthe stealth does not provide transparent appearance when visible, you are opaque to those who can see you
    ■ㅤthe stealth is not removed by hunter’s “Flare” spell (if you ever have driven a car in a thick fog, you will understand why a flare does not remove fog at all, it actually makes the visibility even worse)
    ■ㅤthe distance of stealth detection does not depend on the level of the units. A player level 1 will be invisible to another player level 60 in just the same way as other players level 60.
    ■ㅤthe range of detection is 41 meters, meaning the distance at which other stealthy units are detected is 41 meters (although units can still appear foggy and blurry for cosmetic purpose, but they are clickable/targetable and identifiable as normal)
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    NOTE: the fog can happen at night as well
    NOTE: contrary to the “black night” idea, the world does not become a giant Gurubashi Arena during a fog. It’s just a stealth buff.
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29. Increased yield of harvested seeds from player-seeded plants (assuming the seeding feature is implemented).
    A reasonable increase in yield, providing a good chance to loot more seeds when gathering, would incentivise players to go around and seed some plants, and also go around and gather the plants planted by other players. Or simply ambush players when they come back to gather their crops. This will increase in-world traffic and create more opportunities for world-PvP.

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Things that must NOT change (even more important)

30. Every single “inaccessible” area must remain unchanged, and must neither be made “more” accessible nor “less” accessible. Including the unused “unfinished” areas with trees floating in the air. Small areas…or big areas… All of them.
    Blizzard has long been struggling trying to understand what exactly are the things that make Classic so special. One of those tings (not all of them but definitely one) is the existence of those areas.
    ■ㅤThose areas have a huge impact on the unconscious. You look at the map, and unconsciously you know ㅤyou have not been everywhere. Mount Hyjal for example, it’s right there in the middle of the map, and it’s huge. You never went there. You might go there someday but it is very difficult to access it. Same for the area south of Silithus and Un’Goro Crater, big chunk of the map you never went to. Same for many areas in between areas, both Kalimdor and Easter Kingdom, so many large chunks of map that you have never visited, and for some of them probably never will. You can “feel” it. It’s not a conscious thought “oh look I have never been there”, no. Instead it is a subtle feeling in the background, a quiet feeling that comes without words, subtly, unconsciously, unspoken.
    ■ㅤThe unconscious feeling is: «there are plenty places I have never set foot on, I have only discovered part of this large and mysterious world»
    ■ㅤThis, is precisely what provides the feeling that the World is large and vast. And mysterious. If for whatever reason every part of the map was accessible… the map would feel so small. Ridiculously small. Smaller than a village. Everywhere your eyes go on the map you would know exactly what is there, how many decorative houses there are, you would almost be able to mentally see the position of every building on the map, every NPC. The world in WoW Classic is actually very small… Blizzard did a very good job at adding “fuzzy” distant fog for landscapes that are far away to make it feel that the mountains far away are super far. They also did a good job at making the map blurry and just brown when you zoom-out, it gives a feeling that Kalimdor is as big as the American continent and gives a feeling that Easter Kingdom is as big as Africa. But if you could see the positions of the buildings, if you could see the map as a satellite photo, you would feel so ridiculous. The world is so small…… And that is exactly what would mentally happen if all the areas became accessible
    ■ㅤThe only thing that is unconsciously preventing you right now from thinking of the map as a ridiculously small satellite photo (mentally speaking) is because there are many areas that you don’t know about, that are still mysterious, and those “undiscovered mysterious areas” are essentially unconsciously telling you that you don’t have enough data in your mind to properly imagine the map as a satellite photo. You can’t. And so the magic continues… If you did know every single square of the map, the magic would die.
    ■ㅤYou may “want” to go to Mont Hijal, you were a fan of Warcraft III, you grew up in awe of the legends of that place, and that’s your dream to go there. It is my dream too. That dream is beautiful. That “wanting” is delicious… keep it! Nurture it, cherish that feeling…. if tomorrow they opened mont Hijal and every player were going there, to do some stupid farming, with bots around, some boring blizzard power-leveling, and commenting the latest pop-star album, with zero respect and appreciation for the place… It would be like sullying the place, lacking respect, it will feel like everyone is trespassing the holy temple and ruining it. Ruining any little magic Classic still has. After a year it would become just another stupid area, except you will be left without a dream, the magic sensation of mystery would be gone, both in game, and in your heart. They would have killed the dream. Cherish the mystery, cherish your dream. Let it forever be a mysterious inaccessible area.
    ■ㅤIf all you want is to visit the place to satisfy your curiosity, nothing wrong with that, you can fully visit it in retail. Have a look around (I personally never did), satisfy your curiosity for a few hours, then come back to Classic where the place is holy and inaccessible. Where the magic is intact.
    ■ㅤSome will argue “But the developers had in mind to develop that area with raids donjons etc, it’s only natural if they finally do it….” NO. Ever thought that maybe it was a chance that they never did? That maybe Classic was so good… out of luck? If they did develop it then maybe it would have felt like every other expansion. Maybe Classic was so good out of luck, because they didn’t finish all areas and the world felt mysterious this way. In any case, today, those developers are not working at blizzard anymore. Do you trust the current blizzard employees with the holy Hijal? I know, me neither. No, don’t let them touch anything.
    ■ㅤ“Ok but what about other areas? There is an unused unfinished area here and there, that could be recycled into something we could use…” NO. Doing so would kill it. Those areas are essential, just the way they are (unfinished, unused), part of Classic subtle magic. When I walk down Silverpine Forest and I see a gigantic closed gate just south of Pyrwood Village, my first feeling is “I want to go there”, and that’s exactly the feeling we want in a video game, the feeling of «wanting» to be immersed in more of it. But you can never «want» something you already «have». And so in order not to remove that feeling of «wanting» you need to keep that gate closed, and cherish it. The game absolutely needs some places like that.
    ■ㅤEven small things like «I have never been on the top of that mountain, I don’t know what’s behind it» are beautiful feelings to have, beautiful realistic feelings of being in an unknown world.
    ■ㅤIf you want to expand the world with new content, that’s fine, yes please do, but do it elsewhere, there is infinite unused space on water: you can create more solid land, create islands, extend the continents, or create underground areas under the existing land, or even create underwater underground areas. But leave the existing unfinished unused inaccessible areas in peace, untouched. Intact.
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    Like everyone else, there are many things that I do not want to see on Classic+ but that I could accept to live with, and I would still play it.
    But “changing the inaccessible areas” is not one of them. This acts as a “veto” (in fact that’s why I stopped my subscription after WotLK back then). If they revamp the unfinished unused inaccessible areas, or make them either ’more’ or ‘less’ accessible, then I will not play Classic+. It would feel like a knife in the heart on what I cherish most. There are many things I could accept and live with, but this… is not one of them unfortunately. Those unfinished unused areas are an integral part of the Soul of Classic, of its identity.
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31. In Classic+ (or maybe Classic-Era+) Level 60 must remain the maximum level, and any new gear/weapon (if any) must fulfil the below 2 criteria:
    – it must be strictly less good than Naxramas gear/weapons (not “at tie”, but strictly less good)
    – it must be strictly less good than Rank 14 PvP gear/weapons (not “at tie”, but strictly less good)
    This is because Classic-era players mentality is one where your achievements are obtained forever, without the insecure feeling of someday losing all your hard work that took years to obtain… because some new content means you will have to grind again…. No.
    Just like Arthas after having merged with the Lich King into one over-powerful perfect being: he sat on his throne in perfection, motionless, eternal, his clothes gently moving in the wind… That’s the Classic-era spirit… once you reach perfection you enjoy it, you are proud, you bath in your glory, and rejoice in the knowledge that it is forever.
    There could be many exciting things to do, PvP for example is a never-ending source of fun.
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    Some people say they want new levels because they love levelling. But for most of them what they enjoy is not “levelling”, but instead the joy of doing something new. Most of those people told me they would find it boring to level-up the same class/race more than twice, precisely because “levelling” is not what they actually enjoy: they enjoy discovering new things. It’s doing something new that they enjoy.
    It’s good news, it means we can satisfy everyone by introducing new exciting content that neither raises the level cap nor introduces any new high-level gear better than Naxx or Rank14.
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    The problem is Blizzard is lazy, and they always choose the easy solution of adding new levels instead of doing some proper work finding new enjoyable and fun content that can be a fun “discovery” even at the same level. But it is possible to do it… and I hope the above lists of suggestions will provide you, at the very least, with some inspiration!
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CONCLUSION:

Let’s illustrate with examples, imagine…

– Passing through the Western Plaguelands you notice a beautiful field of fully grown blue tulips ready to be gathered on the last farm field before Eastern Plaguelands. That’s unusual… Quick, instead of getting closer to it you immediately get away from it: it’s an Alliance bait trap, a few more steps in that direction and several stealthed enemies would have finished you before you had time to even dismount.

– Arriving at the Light’s Hope Chapel in the Eastern Plaguelands, you notice on the “billboard” near the inn an announcement: there is a Horde team tournament starting soon that has been organised by the “Championship League” guild. The Championship League organises all sorts of tournaments, its most prestigious formats being «1-vs-1» organised only twice a year (once without line-of-sight obstacles, once with some). But its most popular format, that takes place only in winter, is the «5-vs-5 on ice» team battle: a delightful format for the crowd who enjoys the sheer violence, chaos, and sometimes delightfully grotesque encounters.

– It is too late to participate but for a small fee the “Championship League” guild member contact indicated on the billboard will invite you into a raid group and have you teleported to the tournament to spectate it.

– You find yourself in the middle of a crowd on the partially frozen lake of Tirisfal Glade. Two teams of 5 players each are already confronting each-other: the way it works is the players must be entirely drunk, drunk to the maximum, at which point they are able to attack other equally-drunk players of the same faction.

– You are witnessing a quite comical battle. Not only all the fighters are unable to walk in a straight line (drunk), they slip on the ice and fall on themselves every now and then. Out of nowhere, a stealthed rogue suddenly reveals himself by slipping on the ice by himself alone like an idiot. A warrior from the opponent team seizes the opportunity and charges at him, but slips on the ice at completion of his charge in front of the rogue. The rogue, not believing his luck, uses sprint to get away from it, crossing the path of an enemy priest running away from another side. The priest fears the rogue to keep him away, but the feared rogue immediately falls on the ice while under the fear, which snaps him out of the fear. Hah! The tables have turned!

– While in the cheering crowd you notice several other spectators abnormally gathered, they all seem to be inspecting some full T3 BiS player who is in the crowd as well, not for his gear but for the content of his “publicly viewable” bag: he owns a very expensive and beautiful painting from a famous artist who has seemingly disappeared and has never been seen online for years.

– You decide to purchase a painting as well, if you choose it well it might become very valuable with time. You remember one you liked that was named “Spade Apple”, a simplistic representation of an apple with spade card symbols, that you know exists, but you don’t know how much it costs nor who currently owns it.

– You go to a capital to access the public book repertory, looking for the page of the “Painting Federation” guild which maintains an updated list of valuable paintings, their last known owner, and at what price they bought it. You find the painting you had in mind but its last recorded price is way too high, that painting is out of your league.

– You read at the top of the page that the Painting Federation holds an invite-only event, once every 3 months, where they display new paintings that they have selected from new creators, for potential investors who want to invest in new quality-paintings before their author becomes famous. The next event is this weekend. The event ticket is free, but you need to be either full T3 to be invited (which you are not), or have the musician profession level “Artisan”, probably some sort of elite class bullshіt club. Fair enough. You happen to be an Artisan-level musician, which is quite rare because music scrolls (required to increase music skills) are quite rare. There are not many musician artisans around. So you send a /whisp to the mentioned contact name telling him you meet the criteria and you want to be invited.

– He tells you that he needs proof that you are Artisan musician. But the problem is that in order to prove it you need to play music in front of him, which requires a consumable music scroll, which is rare and precious and that would be a waste to use such a scroll just for that.

– You tell him that you are registered at the Musician Academy and he can go on the Musician Academy guild page on the official repertory and he will find your name written there in the list. He finds your name and he believes you because the Musician Academy is famous, it is a serious institution that keeps a trusted list of active Artisan musicians that make themselves available to play for various in-game events. In fact, you have been making some gold money lately thanks to the Musician Academy, some guilds have hired you to play music at their events.

– He sends you a mailbox invitation. You copy the mail in your bag. Every mail is always signed at the bottom with “Written by [name]” and this is not falsifiable, therefore this mail letter acts as a trusted ticket.

– Finally the weekend is there and you go attend the event but the location is kept secret in order to keep it invite-only. The location changes every time. You meet a Painting Federation member in Orgrimmar next to the painting reagents shop, he doesn’t know you but you open the trading pane and you give him your ticket (letters are not souldbound anymore). He recognises the invitation, instantly invites you into a raid group, and after a few seconds you receive a warlock summoning invitation, which you accept.

– You find yourself in some Alliance building, they probably killed all the Alliance NPCs to clear the space for the event. With character levelling having become more and more efficient, many levelling areas have become abandoned, and guilds from both factions have learned how to discreetly re-purpose those empty areas for their events, sometimes even inside an abandoned area of an enemy capital.

– Several «Market Stall» items have been summoned, each of them containing beautiful paintings, each with a different price. The room is crowded with full-T3 BiS players, they have essentially “finished” the game and are now enjoying the game in a totally different way. Each of them is wearing a «publicly viewable bag» full of wonders, you are blown away by the mixture of rare items and how most players seem to have perfected a ‘theme’ in the collection they own. One of them has a beautiful collection of lightsaber-looking weapons of various colors, and a famous painting that must be incredibly expensive. You notice two musicians are playing background music, you wonder how much they were paid to play here, maybe you should offer your own services for the next event.

– A quarrel breaks out: three of the guests, a freshly full T3 warlock and two of his full T3 friends, have summoned another friend of theirs who was not invited and who does not meet the invitation criteria. The quarrel quickly quiets down but you will understand later that the names of those 4 players who transgressed the invitation-only rule will be added to the “Invitation-Only Black List”, a trusted list maintained on the official repertory page of the eponym guild. Those 4 players will never be invited to invite-only events ever again, neither by the Painting Federation guild nor by any other guild. Apparently rich elite players clubs are very serious with rules.

– Back to the paintings, you browse through the gallery, walking through the room and inspecting each separate «Market Stall». All paintings are too expensive but there is one with a moderate price that caught your eye. You enquire about that one, asking the name of the artist. You figured that he probably loses a commission fee when he sells his paintings via the Painting Federation and you hope that by contacting him directly you might obtain a lower price.

– You have the name of the artist, he is online, you are in luck. You /whisp him and ask him how much he would sell it to you directly. He quickly replies that he cannot bypass the Painting Federation or else his transaction will not be officially recognised by the federation and his painting will not appear on the Painting Federation public listing. This is how the Painting Federation makes money, they act as a trusted agent that records transactions and ensure that the transactions prices are genuine which prevents market prices from being artificially inflated by fake transactions between friends. In exchange, the federation takes a commission fee on each sale, and that commission fee is exactly what keeps fraudsters away.

– However he suggests you come see his other paintings that he did not submit to the Painting Federation yet. Paintings are items that can be linked via chat (just like letters), but they can only be “read” or “viewed” directly in person, so in order to see his paintings you need to go meet him. You realise your luck was short-lived : he is farming Thorium in the deep ocean and asks you to meet him in the underwater city.

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– The underwater city is similar to Gadgetzan in size. It is located almost at the bottom of the ocean at the limit of a “Fatigue” area and on the edge of an underwater precipice that leads to even darker depths, where a giant abyssal hole would swallow any player that ventures too close to it. The city serves as a base for players who have chosen to play underwater: there are no quick ways out of here, there are no flights, no portals, and most players there have their hearthstone linked to the underwater city’s inn. Even swimming vertically back to the surface requires potions in order not to drawn. «Who the hell would want to go there» you think to yourself while purchasing underwater breathing potions at the Auction House before heading to the coast, you will need those in order to reach that city.

– With the arrival of new items in the game that require an unusually high amount of thorium, and with the increase in wild-pvp (thorium grenades) from full-T3 BiS players who do not need to PVE anymore, the demand and consumption of thorium exploded. The underwater depths of the oceans provided a very welcome additional amount of thorium which helped keep the price of thorium at acceptable levels. Some players even specialised in farming the “Ooze Covered Rich Thorium Veins” in the underwater caverns where the elite monsters and carnivorous algae are not their biggest problem: the underwater caverns have become trendy wild-PvP areas.

– Arrived at the coast, rushing into the water, the automatic dismounting “noise” feels like a dire reminder that you are not in your element anymore. For the first few hundred meters near the coast, nothing much changed since before Classic+ except for the plants and fish critters that are a nice addition. But when you reach the deep water and the ocean floor disappears in the depths, this is when you realise you entered a different world, from now on, you are the prey, and you are extremely far away from the nearest graveyard. Far out at sea, there are not many signs of life, monsters are rare and players seldom see any, but on each continent the oceans contain two giant roaming monsters that…… Oh… it is here… It’s happening, right here 100 meters under your feet, yet its size takes half your screen. You know its aggro range is extremely long, it is passing beneath you, you are stuck floating on the surface not knowing in which direction to swim to get away from it, it’s too late anyway it is now passing under you and it will be over soon one way or another. You feel you want to retract your legs to avoid being noticed. Has it seen you? It is not targeting you, yet. What should you do. You don’t move. It is now slowly swimming away from you……. you smile realising your heartbeat went up a little. That thing is entirely quiet and swims quite quickly without a sound. It has now disappeared from your vision. You take a moment to ponder what just happened, it is the first time you ever saw it, and you wait immobile a moment to make sure it is gone for good.

– You resume your journey to the abyss, noticing a few players corpse floating in the water along the way. You wonder what happened to them. You reach the underwater city somehow managing to avoid troubles. You meet the mysterious artist, he tells you he has been farming for months in the underwater caves and is making good money with the occasional “Arcane Crystal” that have become very coveted for the crafting of the popular “Glowing crystals” used by lots of guilds as decoration for their events. «But I actually do it for the PvP, I would do it for free, I just love it here» he tells you. Most underwater famers are ranged classes, since moving underwater (swimming) is slow and melee players find themselves at a disadvantage. «I am a PvP magnet, they see a warrior they think it’s a free meal and can’t resist, they don’t know I am an alchemist and do my own Swim Speed potions for cheap, once I get to them, it is them who cannot swim away!».

– You have a look at his paintings in his publicly viewable bag, nothing is as special as you would have hoped, except one that shows a stylised sword with lots of colours in Andy Warhol style. It turns out this particular painting is not one of his, he is keeping it as a collateral for a loan, he lent gold money to a player who only connects online on Sundays, and who holds a Flowers&Seeds stand at the monthly market that takes place just outside the Bridge of Orgrimmar near Ashenvale. Apparently that flowers merchant needed the money in order to make an initial investment purchasing a lot of seeds, which are quite rare and therefore expensive, and he used those seeds to grow and farm his own flowers and seeds, selling the flowers at the monthly market and slowly making back the money to reimburse his loan.

– The amount of money of the loan is reasonable, if that’s the price of the painting then you would purchase it, you need to talk to its author at the market, which happens to be tomorrow. There is no way you are going to risk the trip back home crossing the ocean again, you decide it’s time to have a break and wait for your hearthstone to reload, to teleport back to Orgrimmar.

– You reconnect later and teleport back to Orgrimmar. It’s new-moon night. The entire world is a PvP Gurubashi arena. It all feels like a gigantic “Purge”, even inside capitals. Players from the same faction usually do not attack each other but in the dark nobody trusts nobody. A group of full-T3 players is walking with torches, they seem organised and thirsty for blood. You see and hear players dying in the street 30 meters away but you can’t distinguish who is who in the dark. Another group of players holding a torch is running toward High Overlord Saurfang, their life bar is almost empty and you understand they are seeking refuge near the 62 Elite guard.

– You head toward the Valley of Wisdom where you will be able to find refuge. On new-moon nights, the Valley of Wisdom, where Thrall is, is the most crowded part of Orgrimmar, especially inside Thrall’s hall. The elites guards and the two world-bosses (Thrall and Vol’Jin) provide significant deterrent to keep most trouble away, and allow players to continue doing commerce in peace. You are not the only one in the street heading toward there, 3 other players who disconnected near the Bank before nightfall and only came back online now are rushing toward there for refuge as well. …Or are they following you? You passed the nearest guard a few seconds ago and you enter a dark section of the street without any other guard, you have a bad feeling about it. Quick. You immediately disconnect. You wait a few seconds… they might be waiting for you to reconnect, you wait another few seconds just in case… You reconnect, it’s empty. But you recognise a fresh corpse on the floor, it belongs to one of the 3 players who were running with you. What happened? Was it the other 2 players or…. Better not stay here to find out, you continue your trip quickly, another patrolling guard provides you with a false sense of security, you know it won’t be of any help against one of those Alliance teams of rogues. On new-moon nights, teams of rogues from both factions are notorious for taking advantage of the empty streets in capitals and the general ‘every-man-for-himself’ feeling in order to prey on the lonely passerby.

– You finally reach the hall, you’ve never felt this happy to see Thrall. Apparently a raid-group invasion of Stormwind is being prepared, players are being discreetly teleported into various dark streets of Stormwind, slowly infiltrating the enemy city. You are asked if you want to participate, and invited into the raid group for teleportation. You accept. The paintings will wait tomorrow. Tonight’s the night, it’s time to use your blades again…

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MORE DETAILS

2. In every capital, near bank or AH, an official public book repertory. Each existing guild can choose to have its own page on which they can write whatever they want, publicly visible. Works as follows:

• The user opens the book, there is a search bar on which the user can type a guild name or key words to find a guild name, if the searched text matches only one guild name then it directly opens that guild page (to go quicker), if not then it provides a list of matching results and the user clicks on the chosen guild name in the list of results.
• There is also an option to go through the whole list of guilds, which acts as a repertory of all existing guilds that have chosen to write something in the book (if a guild chooses not to write anything then it won’t appear and that guild can remain anonymous or ‘secret’, no problem)
• Just like for guild chat daily announcement messages, the guild master will be able to choose which ranks can edit the guild’s page specifically.
• Example of purpose: news agencies, event calendars, market daly prices, interest rates, etc…ㅤ

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12. Add several small decorative objects that can be summoned in-world for a short amount of time (similar to "Brewfest Pony Keg”)

• Potted flowers (that require flowers seeded by players)
• Glowing crystals (floating above the floor, requiring an “Arcane Crystal” as part of their creation)
• Candles, that are hold with a candle holder crafter with metals. Similar to how several “Lesser essences” are turned into one unique “Greater essence”, here a combination of one candle and one candle holder would be used to become a lighted candle on its holder, which can be summoned on the floor. The candle holder would require expensive metals
• Chandelier, which is made of several candles and a metal chandelier that needs to be crafted with expensive metals, plus some transmuted or enchanted metal of some sort, requiring a long cooldown.
• etc… simple small things that fit in the game. But those items must be consumables, and rare, they must not change the look of the game, and only occasionally be seen. They must not be sold by any shop but rather be crafted, looted or gathered with some difficulty.
  Also, all those new decorative items must have a limited duration, their description must contain the words «Duration: 14 days (real time)» to make them more rare, and to prevent those items from being traded on the Auction House. This way, players will need to interact in-person (for example via monthly markets).
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13. New item: Market Stall (consumable).

• It allows the user to summon a static merchant’s Market Stall (an oblique table with merchandise on it, no roof) (1 hour duration) that can be interacted with as if it were a shop (similar to repair-bot), but where other players can only purchase limited stocks items from the owner of the stall (items from the owner’s bags).
• To avoid spam, crafting the stall should require very expensive and rare components. That item should be perceived as a very expensive luxury. To justify the massive amount of thorium needed (as well as other rare items) the description can include yellow flavour text: «Able to withstand goods of any size of any weight».
• The stall is deactivated (items in display but nothing can be sold) if the owner is more than 10 meters away from the stall. Be careful not to die far away !
• The owner can choose which items (from his bags) are sold, the price, the stock (obviously cannot be more than the users’s stock in his bags). Maximum number of items on display sufficiently large to have fun, but not too large so that players sometimes need a second Market Stall. So maybe around 15 or 20 slots.
• The user can also choose to put items on “display-only” that cannot be purchased, including soul-bound items for display only.
• For as long as the stall is active (owner within 10 meters) the owner can choose and change the items and their prices and stock. – The stall is a consumable item that last 1 hour when used, no cooldown, maximum 3 live stalls per user (allowing the user to have stalls with different themes. But it’s an expensive item to craft!)
• The stall disappears before the end of its duration if the owner is not within 10 meters for a consecutive 5 minutes. When the owner is more then 10 meters away, a warning countdown appears on the screen to alert the owner that he is about to lose his Market Stall (similar to the countdown warning alerting you that you are about to lose your duel if you stay too far away for too long)
• The stall appearance can revet different skins, depending on the type of items that are being sold via the stall. If the player sells only fishes, then the market stall table will have a fishes “skin”, and only fishes. But the stall table appearance can be divided into a maximum of 4 parts, and for example if the player sells flowers, tissue armor, weapons, and fishes then the market stall appearance “skin” will display some random flowers in the top left corner, some random clothes on the top right corner, some random swords and knives in the bottom left corner, and some random fishes on the bottom right corner. If however the market stall only sells flowers and fishes, then the entire stall will be dived in 2 (instead of 4) and will display the flowers ‘skin’ and fishes ‘skin’. The purpose is basically to allow other players who walk in front of the stall to have a quick understanding of what is being sold without having to click on each and every stall. It also serves to set the mood: a flower market should look like a flower market, and art gallery should look like an art gallery !
  Technically for Blizzard it is no different than a player character wearing different armor, and thus displaying a different appearance depending on what armor is worn. Here the market stall is sort-of “equipped” with items and its appearance changes depending on what items are sold.
• Even though the market stall appearance will display a maximum of 4 different skins, the total number of possible skins is much higher, and can include: flowers/herbs, clothes, fishes, weapons/shields, shiny enchanting components, music instruments, scrolls/books, paintings, etc… but it must definitely include a special chaotic “mixed mess” category with an appearance that is recognisable. This appearance category is used when you sell more than 4 type of items. The categories of your items are ranked by number of items, if you sell 10 different herbs, 9 different weapons, 8 different scrolls, 7 different fishes, 6 different pets and 5 different bottles of alcohol, then the market stall will display flowers/herbs on top left corner, weapons/shields top right corner, scrolls/books bottom left corner, and “mixed mess” bottom right corner. This is important because this “mixed mess” appearance signals to other players that they should click on your market stands in order to see what are the other categories of items that you sell, it means “click to see more inside”.
• Ideally players from both factions should be able to interact with Market Stalls. So if you are an Alliance player and you know that there is an interesting monthly market taking place near Orgrimmar, maybe you can try your luck and go see what they sell…. hopping they won’t kill you, at least not before you buy something… You could even try to put your own Market Stall next to theirs and sell your stuff, although I don’t think you’ll come out of this alive…. the Horde doesn’t do well with competition.
  We might see the creation of some monthly markets by players, with some players doing commerce, some others displaying their collection of fancy items.
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  UNDECIDED : maybe it is best to limit it to one stall per player, 1-day cooldown. But then 2 hours duration? 3 hours? On monthly markets the stall needs to be up for several hours.
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14. New secondary profession: musician.

• This should have no competitive use (no useful buff, no nothing) but it will incentivise some players to be “in-game” for another reason, and also add background music to in-world events (Sunday markets, tournaments, new year eve parties…). Music instruments should be crafted by other professions. Higher skill level allows to use better instruments, and allow to play some instruments (not all) while mounted (for example a drum). This will add some fancy fun to world-PvP raids. Specific mechanics make it impossible to spam playing music as it will require rare consumables. Musical skill points are gained by training with looted consumable music scrolls.
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  The skills/crafting mechanics is as follows:
• A scroll is a consumable that requires a specific skill level in order to be used – Using the scroll casts a profession spell (similar to enchanting). Profession skill points are earned accordingly once that spell has finished casting (with the usual red/orange/green/grey difficulties)
• The result of the spell (the craft) is a buff applied on the player who used the scroll. Buff is named “inspired : [name of music]”. That buff is a requirement (a component/reagent) required to use musical instruments items. The buff persists through death and is undispellable. So to be clear a player who owns an instrument cannot play it unless they obtain an “inspired” buff (which is obtained by consuming a music scroll).
• Not all instruments can be used under all “inspired” buffs, each buff allows to play a specific music on a specific type of instrument
• Type of instruments are : drums, flutes, etc…
• Instruments have a level, such that a complicated high skill drum music cannot be played on a low level drum instrument, but the contrary is possible: a low skill drum music can be played on a high level drum instrument. So if you use a high skill scroll but you don’t have any suitable instrument, you will still get the buff and earn profession skill points, but wont be able to play that music (one would argue it is better to make the scroll itself require a specific instrument before the spell can be cast, but then it would mean the user cannot use a low level scroll while possessing only a high level instrument)
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  The requirement of a consumable scroll in order to play any pre-recorded automatic music is essential in order to make “playing music” something rare and avoid spam.
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• There should never be any pre-recorded music playable without something of value being consumed (the music scroll for example).
• A separate “music-muted” list will be created specifically for music (players muted on the music list can still message each others). Anyone can right-click on another player and music-mute /unmute them.
• As an additional safeguard, for those who do not wish to hear any unsolicited music played by others, a settings option in the menu will allow to disable hearing music from other players entirely. If players music is enabled, an extra option will allow to automatically turn off WoW native in-game music if a player is playing music within hearing range (in order to listen quietly).
• scrolls should have a limited duration («Duration: 14 days (real time)») in order to prevent them from being sellable at the Auction House and incentivise players to interact in person (via markets for example)
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  UNDECIDED: playing while mounted could potentially only work while mounted but not moving, or while mounted and either not moving or walking but not running.
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  UNDECIDED: decrease the music volume by 50% whenever the playing character is not in line of sight (on top of volume decreasing with distance). This would allow parties with different rooms ambiances, where entering a room greatly reduces the volume of the music from the player in the other rooms (not in line of sight), while increasing the volume of the music in the current room (enters line of sight)
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  UNDECIDED: Should players be also able to play their own music? Allowing players to play their own compositions would lure creative players in-world (rehearsals, orchestra groups, etc). This could be achieved by allowing players to compose and write down their own pre-recorded music composition for a specific instrument (players could have limited control over the performance of their own composition, such as tempo adjustments, which are needed when playing together with an orchestra). A special kind of rare scroll gives an “inspired” buff that unlocks/allows the player to play their own music (either live manually or pre-recorded personal composition) for the duration of the buff.
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  Example of music instrument: Drum, crafted by Leatherwork, when “Used” it allows to play music via auto-play on specific melodies depending on the “inspired” buff. Ideal for parties/events background in-world ambiance music
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  UNDECIDED: mechanism to prevent unwanted musicians. Idea 1: blacklist specific for music (not chat). Idea 2: music listenable only within 5meters unless part of same group/raid in which case hearable as far as targetable with decreasing volume. Idea 3: different hearing range if manual music vs automatic song (assuming we decide that some buffs allow players to play manually).
  ㅤ

15. New ability: painting.

• Simple basic painting on canvas, some sort of in-game very basic “paint” software with nothing complicated (unlocking colors requires basic ingredients). Crafting a painting requires level 60 (to avoid spam). No skill point, not a profession.
• Maximum of 10 crafts per character. After 10, ability greyed-out forever. As a result, paintings will be quite rare items since players will be hesitant to waste their 10 counts away by crafting bad paintings.
• A painting is an item that players can “Read”. Players right-click on the item and it opens, just like a letter item, except it shows an image instead of text.
• A fun secondary market will be created by players, with paintings from famous players/painters being more expensive.
• Players can either sign their paintings («Created by:») or leave them anonymous. Anonymous paintings will be exposed to the risk of “faux” versions and imitations, and experts will be needed to identify originals.
• Ability to choose a title for the painting, or not (letting the fans choose an unofficial title for it, shared by word-of-mouth).
• The “Paint” ability unlocks at level 60. The player has access to one draft, which is one painting that the player is painting. The draft is automatically saved, so the player can continue the painting another time. But there is only one draft, the player cannot have 2 ongoing drafts, which makes it even harder to paint and makes good paintings items even more rare.
• Crafting is done first by painting the draft, and then by clicking “Finished” after having chosen a title (if any) and whether to sign it or leave it anonymous. Once the button “Finished” is clicked, the painting item is crafted and appears in the bag, and the draft is deleted and replaced by a new blank one. Maximum 10 crafts per life, per character. Once crafted, the painting cannot be modified anymore, forever.
• The rules are the same than for chats, or mail letters: nothing obscene, no hate symbol. Players can report paintings just like they can report chats or mail, as usual. If your painting got reported and got destroyed, the destroyed painting will still count as a crafted painting toward your maximum of 10, you wasted it.
• Many colors are painting pigments that require specific plants/flowers to be crafted (see “seeding” suggestion number 16 where players can grow their own flowers/plants) After 10 crafts, the only way to paint again is to destroy the existing paintings (which can be difficult if you already sold them, you may have to buy them back). It is worth keeping in mind that each painting will be an item that is truly unique, which never happened in WoW before.
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  UNDECIDED: instead of limiting the number of crafted painting to 10 per character, we could instead limit the number of “canvas” obtainable per players, but the canvas can be exchanged between players. This way, the maximum number of paintings that exist is still limited (10 times the number of level 60 players), but now players who want to paint more than 10 paintings will be able to do so by purchasing canvas from other players who accept to sell their precious canvas. Also, obtaining the 10 canvas per player would be a lengthy process as canvas would be obtainable via quests (potentially lengthy and boring quests that require to loot a lot of low % loot quest items, or timed 40raid quests with difficult timer criteria) which means that even just selling your canvas is not easy because it’s not easy to get all 10 canvas in the first place. And once you finally get your canvas, you might decide you don’t want to sell it anymore!
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  ㅤ

16. New ability: seeding.

• Everyone can seed some basic seeds. Some seeds require herbalist skills.
• New in-world plant objects: some decorative flowers with no competitive use, but that can be gathered, and allow to loot some flower items (which can be used decoratively elsewhere) and seeds.
  ㅤ
  Mechanism:
• seeding is a spell that consumes seeds items and targets an area on the floor.
• There will be specific areas defined where plants can be seeded, with the constraint that those areas must be in contested zones. The list of these areas will at least include every farm in every contested zone (such as “Dabyrie’s Farmstead” in Arathi Highlands, all the farms in Hillsbrad Foothills, Western Plagueland, etc…) and may include other specific areas where it makes logical sense, or for specific plants.
• The spell fails or succeed depending on the area, the floor (you cannot seed inside a house, but you could potentially seed inside a cave if it’s a mushroom for example), and also some seeds could require the player to be “swimming” (underwater plants). The spell has 1 meter range.
• Seeds for normal existing herbalist plants will spawn (grow) their respective plant after a random period of time between 5 to 7 days, and disappear after a random period of 1 to 3 days if not gathered. The randomness is to avoid players who seeded the plant to know exactly when it will spawn and gathering it without giving any chance to other players who do not know when the plant was seeded.
• Seeds for useless decorative plants will spawn (grow) after a random period of time between 4.5 days and 5.5 days (and can be gathered immediately when grown). The random window is narrower for those useless decorative plants because they have no competitive use and it doesn’t matter if the player who seeded them is the only one to gather them. If not gathered, those decorative plants will disappear 5 days after having spawned.
• The game will prevent a plant to be seeded within 0.2 meter of where another seed has been seeded (even by someone else) or of another grown plant. 0.2 meter is very little, but this is to make sure players do not purposefully seed all their seeds in the same spot (attempting to hide their crops, making the crops looks smaller). This small distance of 0.2 meter will make sure anyone looking at grown spawned plants can quickly understand wether or not there are many plants or just one. This distance must be small because there are not many areas where plants can be seeded, and there must be enough space to seed for everyone. In the unlikely scenario where the entire area of a farm is 100% already seeded and there is no available spot for a player to seed anything new, then that player must either seek another farm, or wait for the existing crops to grow and gather them to create some space. Just like in real life.
• If two plants are seeded adjacent to each-other, they might partially overlap visually once they grow. This is not a problem. Overlapping plants and overlapping flowers can make some beautiful gardens.
• Seeds are obtained with a low % loot by herbalists from farming usual plants. Also, holiday events provide special decorative plants seeds (either by merchant or by quest rewards)
• Useless decorative plants can be “gathered” by everyone (not just herbalists) above a minimum level (to avoid abuse). When gathered, each of those plants loot the flower itself (as an item) and also between 0, 1 or 2 seeds (their own seeds, so they can be planted again).
  This means that a perseverant player can “farm” its own seeds and grow the number of seeds he owns (only works for useless decorative plants as the % chance to loot seeds on normal herbalist plants is very low). He can then sell his seeds (as well as the flowers items he gathered) on the market. But the random timing of the plants becoming “gather-able”, the fact that they disappear anyway if you don’t gather them, and the fact other players can gather those plants too, will make it difficult.
• Decorative plants that have grown/spawned cannot be detected on the minimap by herbalists. When it comes to decorative plants, everyone is equal. But other usual herbalist herbs will of course be detected on the minimap after they spawn, even if planted by another player.
• The flower or plant item looted when gathering a decorative plant is an item that has a limited duration life in game, its description includes the key words «Duration: 14 days (real time)». This means it cannot be sold at the Auction House, and this will force players to interact with each other if they want to do commerce of such decorative plants.
• These flower/plant items (looted by gathering decorative plants) can be used for various non-competitive purposes, for example to create in-game decoration (potentially in a small vase or pot), but such decoration is very short-lived (maybe 10 or 30 minutes, maybe an hour). It needs to be long enough for an event to happen without having to renew the decoration too often, but short enough for it not to create too much visual pollution to other players. It’s similar to "Brewfest Pony Keg”, except the flower is consumed when used. Several plants can be combined into one single vase to summon a floral arrangement. Flowers are temporary items and can be held in off-hand (just like “Black Rose”) and several flowers can be combined to create temporary bouquets, which can also either be held in off-hand (just like “Bouquet of Black Roses”) or put into a vase to be summoned as a flower arrangement. Some professions can craft flower head crowns, or garland necklace flowers to wear on chest slot armor on top of your shirt. In ay case, all those items, all of them, must be temporary and disappear by themselves. Some of those items could be “summoned items”, disappearing after 15 minutes offline, or maybe they can be cosmetic buffs instead of items (so that you don’t have to sacrifice any armor slot to wear your flower necklace). Keeping in mind any of those things should be a rare luxury seldom seen in game.
• Other usage of the flowers/plants: used as reagents for the creation of new items. For example, specific flowers/plants/mushrooms are needed to craft specific colour pigment / coloured paint (used to craft paintings). Or maybe specific flowers are needed as “currency” to be given to some NPC in exchange for some other reagents needed for something else. This way, even the Market Stand item, which should logically not require any flower in order to be crafted, could still require specific reagents that some new NPC would be happy to provide in exchange for one of his favourite mushroom. Etc… some sort of repeatable quest like in Alterac Valley battleground, some new NPC could provide new reagents in exchange for flowers/plants/mushrooms.
• NOTE: New items must never allow to replicate any existing item such as “Black Rose” or “Perfume Bottle” or “Handful of Rose Petals” etc… those existing items (and the buff they provide) must remain irreplicable, obtainable only in the same way they have always been obtainable, no new way. Even just the buff they provide must never be replicable. New items must not decrease the rarity and uniqueness of existing items, which must be preserved.
• Initially, the first seeds are obtained during a seasonal quest in Fall/Autumn season each year, where each player can obtain just a few seeds of their choice (maybe just 1 seed, maybe 5, something like that). Seeds are not soul-bound, and can be sold to other players.
  ㅤ
  Overall, in-world traffic and wild-pvp will increase near those crops areas. Some players will forget their crops, some players will gather crops seeded by others, as a result some abandoned areas of the game will finally see traffic again. And of course it’s an immersive fun and original way to obtain new decorative items!
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  UNDECIDED: There is a balance between 5 parameters: 1) how many seeds are obtained yearly at the seasonal event quest, 2) the time it takes for crops to grow, 3) the % chance of looting 0 or 1 or 2 seeds, 4) how long the summoned decorative potted-flower stays before it disappears, 5) the cooldown for summoning such potted-flower.
  The most important parameter is the % chance of looting 0 or 1 or 2 seeds (keeping in mind some crops will sometimes be lost when nobody gather them) because this is the parameter that will dictate whether or not players can increase the number of seeds, or keep the number of seeds constant, or will see the number of seeds decrease until they run out of seeds.
  The choice should be made with the following objectives in mind: the decorative summonable potted flowers items should be a fancy rare luxury, sufficiently rare so that there is no need for any cooldown on the item (because there is no risk for anyone to repeatedly spam them anyway) but it should be made possible for a very perseverant player to farm his flowers and keep his number of personal seeds constant year after year (loosing some seeds during the year, but getting new seeds at the seasonal event again).
  Therefore, the suggested set-up is: 1 seed only per player per year at the seasonal holiday event (player choose one seed among a choice of various seeds), crops grow in around 5 days, gathered crops always loot exactly 1 seed (not 0, not 2), grown decorative plants survive 5 days before disappearing if not gathered, no cooldown on the decorative potted flower item. Most players will not “dare” using their one-and-only seed and will instead keep it in their bank, hoping to steal the seed from someone else’s plant. Overall, flowers will be very rare.
  Those 5 parameters can be adjusted by blizzard after a trial period, to see how it goes. After the first year if the number of seeds increases too much, they can slightly decrease the % chance of looting seeds. If the number of “active” seeds (counting only the seeds from players with an active-subscription) decreases too quickly compared to the sever population, then the % chance of looting 2 seeds can be increased.
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  UNDECIDED: if technically possible, some seeds could have different spawning time, some much longer and some quicker than average. This will create flowers/plants with different rarity and different market prices.
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  UNDECIDED: maybe some seeds should only grow/spawn on a specific day of the week, for example some seeds could only spawn on Sunday mornings, right when most players can log-in, to create even more wild-PvP!
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17. Drunk players that are drunk to the maximum degree can attack other drunk same-faction-players that are max-drunk as well, but cannot kill them (to avoid too much hatred among players from the same faction)

• Similar to duels, once a max drunk player reaches 1 HP it kneels and snap-out of the max-drunk status (still drunk but not max, meaning he cannot attack or be attacked), with some emote like “[name] comes back to his senses and apologises”.
• In cities, drunk players who initiate an attack on another player from the same faction will aggro guards in a similar fashion than they would when initiating PvP in neutral cities.
• Non-drunk players from the same faction perceive the max-drunk players in yellow but not attackable, indicating that they are max-drunk and potentially dangerous if you become drunk yourself.
• From the point of view of a max-drunk player, non drunk players are yellow non-attackable, other max-drunk players are red.
• Guards are green or yellow but not attackable unless an attack is initiated against another same-faction player in which case guards appear red (just like when you pvp in neutral cities, guards turn red) Guards that have been aggroed will kill the aggroing players (will not stop at 1 HP) so try not to mess around in front of guards!
• Bring your alcohol and be ready to brawl! But if guards pass by, behave!
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  UNDECIDED: max-drunk players can understand the language from players from the opposite faction. When you’re drunk you speak foreign languages at your best!
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18. Dark/black night once a month, sort of «new moon» night when there is no moon in the sky.

• Units outside (monsters, players, everything) appear clearly only if within a short distance by default, requiring torches or other light-emitting objects (or spells) to see clearly further away when outside, and special quests that create the opportunity for World PvP in the dark.
• Similar to Gurubashi arena, on such nights the entire world is PvP, players can attack players from same faction (who will appear yellow/neutral and both attackable and healable). This will allow team vs team tournaments events to take place on such nights.
• If you initiate a fight against a player from the same faction, you will aggro guards from your own faction (similar to pvp in neutral cities) if there are any nearby.
• Outside, every unit or player is either in the “shadow” (default) or under a “torch effect” (displayed as a debuff)
  ㅤ
  There are 2 different ways to create a black dark night, one way is more basic and easily implementable by Blizzard with current game mechanics (just a few tweaks here and there), the second way is even more fun but require some coding.
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  ︎ First basic way:
  Outside, an undispallable debuff named “Shadow” is applied to all units (players, NPCs, monsters, players’ pets…), granting them a special kind of stealth, unless those units are within the area of effect of a torch effect.
  That specific stealth will be special because:
• the stealth remains all the time, even in combat, even when attacking, eating, casting a spell, etc… except when within the area of effect of a torch effect, or when inside (not outside).
• the stealth remains even when mounted the stealth does NOT remove your movement sounds and battle sounds, players can still hear you walk even if they cannot see you, and they can hear you fight.
• the stealth has no impact on your movement speed
• the stealth does not trigger any ‘stealth noise’ when detected
• the stealth does not provide transparent appearance when visible, you are opaque to those who can see you
• the distance of stealth detection does not depend on the level of the units. A player level 1 will be invisible to another player level 60 in just the same way as other players level 60.
• the range of detection is 15 meters, meaning the distance at which other stealthy units are detected is 15 meters (although units still appear darker for cosmetic purpose, but they are clickable/targetable and identifiable as normal)
• This shadow stealth can be removed by torch (new item), lamp (new item), campfire, or “flare” hunter spell. The word “torch effect” will refer to the lighting effect of such items or spells. Units within the range of a torch effect appear normally (with the cosmetic light reflection of the fire light source).
• The “torch effect” range is 41m (except for hunter flare spell which is 10m as usual). Any unit beyond 41m from a player is in the “shadow” from the point of view of the player, even if a torch/lamp is held by the player. Unless that unit is itself within the “torch effect” range (41m) of another torch effect. As a result, any player holding a torch will always be exposed and visible by every other player at any distance (but not vice-versa). When in the shadow, you can see distant players who hold torches without them seeing you.
• The “torch effect” is a line-of-sight effect. If you are not in the line-of-sight of a nearby torch (assuming you are not holding one yourself), then you are in the shadow.
• Torch and lamp items can be held in any hand by any player, it is not a weapon, it is extinguished by default and needs to be lighted with a buff
• Players need reagent oil and the usual “flint and tinder” to light the torch, for 30 minutes (similar to sorcerer oil or fishing lure)
• For the lamp, players need an enchanting-crafted oil (new item) + reagent candle , 30 minutes as well.
• The oil reagents needed to light Torches and Lamps should be «Unique(5)» but not souldbound. If you are outside in the wild and you run out of oil, you’re in the dark !
• Torches / Lamps are Unique(1), you can only have 1 of them.
• Torch does not work while swimming, but the lamp does work (underwater), which is the key difference, but requires more expensive consumable reagents.
• Torches / Lamps do not work when held by players who morphed into animals (druids in animal forms…. or players sheeped by a mage). However, when a player holding a Torch/Lamp is morphing into an animal, the «torch effect» continues to be fully active for 3 seconds, this it to avoid druids exploiting morphing to quickly turn-on/turn-off torches repeatedly.
• If a player holding a lighted torch unequips the torch (puts it back into the bag) the Torch Effect will remain active for 3 seconds after the Torch has been unequipped. This is to avoid exploits and abuses where players would turn-on/turn-off their torches excessively quickly by equipping/unequipping them.
• The landscape relief, ground, walls, trees etc. “in the shadow” is not only cosmetically darker but also appears with blurred texture similarly to the way distant mountains texture is blurred when far away in the landscape. It really feels likes it’s dark !
• “Eye of the beast” works as intended, detecting other units within 15m around the beast from the point of view of the user.
• Exception: any weapon that is specifically cosmetically designed as a light emitting object (such as torch weapon or off-hand held items lamps that already exist) will apply a torch-effect to their holder, bu only the holder, not the units around it. This is for fun and for increased realism, it would not make sense for the existing lamps to make no light at all. And it is fun because it allows you to reveal yourself, make yourself visible…. maybe as a bait, with your friends in the shadow around you….
• Note: group members / raid members that are far away in the shadow are invisible to you, for increased realism. It’s dark, you don’t know where your friends are! (you can still see them on mini map)
• Note: for increased realism, Blizzard developers must attach a «torch effect» source to all decorative lamps and fires. For example in Stormwind, if a street doesn’t have a lamp, it is a dark street and you should be careful walking in that street… maybe use a street that has torches instead.
• Note: anywhere “inside” (caves, cities, small houses) appears as normal without shadow/torch mechanics (which only applies outside), but on that night once a month the world is still a Gurubashi-pvp area. So even inside Ironforge or Undercity, you still need to be careful that night, stay close to the guards.
• Note: a hunter who uses the flare spell will apply a “torch effect” debuff to himself and every unit within 10m around himself for a duration of 3 seconds immediately after casting the spell. This is to avoid an imbalance where hunters can reveal their opponents out of the shadow while remaining in the shadow themselves. This way, a hunter will always reveal his side for a few seconds when casting flare. You could argue this is because the flare is lighting his area when it is cast.
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  UNDECIDED: allow players to “throw” the torch similar to hunter flare spell. The torch falls on the ground at a distance and the area of effect (range of the “torch effect”) is reduced to 10m just like for flare spell, lasting 30 seconds on the ground. The throwing spell has the same cooldown as the flare spell, requires the torch to be lit, and applies the torch-effect to the user and all units around him for 3 seconds as well immediately after the torch is thrown just like with flare. The thrown torch will not reveal invisible units, only the flare spell does that. Remember that torches/lamps are Unique(1), if you throw your torch away, you won’t have any torch left !
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  UNDECIDED: allow players to put down their lamp on the floor, the lamp then becomes similar to a camp fire, except it is a lamp and its “torch-effect” range is reduced to 10 meters, and lasts as long as a camp fire. Lamps that are on the floor are in-game objects that can be gathered by other players. Similar to treasure chest, the item it contains (a lamp) can be looted, and if looted then the object disappears. Once 10 minutes have passed and the lamp on the floor turns off, the lamp object on the floor becomes a new object, an extinguished lamp object, that can be looted such that its original owner can get his lamp back, if not then the object disappears after 10 minutes and the lamp is lost. For technical reasons, looted lamps always are extinguished. You can put a lamp on the floor at the entrance of a narrow street to detect approaching players, but other players can come and steal / destroy it. Lamps can be put on the floor underwater.
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  ︎ Second way for dark night, with added fun:
  Same as before but instead of units being invisible when more than 15 meters away, the distance is shortened to 10 meters (unless there is a torch as usual), but in exchange every unit in between 10 meters and 41 meters away (including mounts) appear only with their silhouette: they all have black texture, black thumbnail face, unknown faction, unavailable name/race/level, and unknown health / energy bar. They appear yellow attackable. Players will have to guess who is the unit by looking at the size/shape and behaviour. In other words, when you see a unit far away in the shadow, you see where it is, but you can’t see clearly who or what they are. You don’t even know if it is a NPC/monster or a player. «Is that a Dwarf? Oh it looks like a bear, it’s a monster. Or is it a druid? He’s going away… damn he disappeared in the night.»
• this means the “stealth” debuff must be special, it has 2 ranges of effect: 50 meters and 10 meters. (Or it can be split into 2 different buffs). This will require some coding from Blizzard. Beyond 41 meters, units are invisible just like usual stealth, but in-between 10m and 41m units are visible but all black (black skin, black clothes, black hair, black thumbnail, unknown health bar, unknown energy/mana bar, unknown faction, unknown race, name, etc…)…. you know there is someone there, but it’s too dark you can’t see who that is !
• to avoid problems, friendly NPCs retain their “non-attackable” feature even if they are “all black” more than 10 meters away. They still appear black and you still don’t know which NPC it is, but you can’t damage it. Of course if the friendly NPC is a guard, it will become red and attackable if you initiate a fight against a same-faction player. Every non-friendly NPC or monster will be subject to shadow just like real players, and you will not be able to distinguish among: same-faction player, enemy faction player, enemy faction NPC, neutral attackable NPC, monsters, pets, critters. All those appear “yellow attackable/healable” when in shadow more than 10 meters away from you. You will have to guess by their shape and behaviour in the dark.
• those existing torch-like weapons and held-in-off-hand lamps that already exist in the game do not provide a “torch-effect” to their holder, instead they provide a “dim-light” effect which removes the invisibility of the stealth, removes the “all-black” features of their body and clothes, but does not remove the “all-black” feature of their thumbnail/name/race/health etc. This means you can see them with your eyes but cannot access any written information. This is for fun and for increased realism. And it is fun because even though other players can see your appearance with their eyes far away, they still can’t see your level, health, etc… so still mysterious. It’s sort-of a way to only reveal part of yourself, and also maybe try to bait other players to approach you…

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That’s all for now!

There are more ideas but this post is already long enough.
There is so much fun that can be had ! …with just very simple things that make the game more immersive …that are inter-connected with each other in a fun way, as long as it doesn’t disturb other players by remaining a rarity, or by not happening often (one night per month), or by being uselessly optional (nobody ever has to go to the underwater city), or by happening only between consenting players (drunk battles), etc… Soft changes… but with strong fun

[Cunix-turalyon]

Too much info don’t even wanna read

[Друди-stitches]

A bunch of cool ideas.

And it seems to me that with the implementation of these ideas - the game would definitely become better.

BUT. It seems to me that you are focusing on things that do not solve the problem of a game that operates on a subscription basis.

From the point of view of a hypothetical Blizzard project manager - his task is to keep the player in the game - so that they continue to pay the subscription.

If to generalize your suggestions very roughly - instead of chasing its own tail - you propose players engage in casual gameplay that is not related to the development of the combat characteristics of characters.

It seems to me this will only be interesting to certain players and even then not for long - because, one way or another, everything becomes boring.

Chasing its own tail is not something bad, and why should achievements be set in stone? It seems to me that resetting players’ achievements to a certain extent - could be acceptable, fun, and interesting (as it is now in hardcore)

[Azorka-firemaw]

Woah, that’s a lot of words

[Drastezar-hydraxian-waterlords]

Yes I understand the feeling (I don’t share the feeling, I don’t have it, but I understand it).

But that’s why we have retail, isn’t it? The forever chasing of “more” leads to… level 70,… 80, … 90, …more? ok more… level 100… level 110… 120… that’s what happens when someone is never satisfied with what they have.

About what you wrote:

It seems to me this will only be interesting to certain players

Yes I agree, 100%, it will be only interesting to certain players. And those players are: Classic-Era players. They exist, and ever since they connected the realms the population is quite high. Do a quick log-in on EU pvp on Classic-Era, it’s crowded. Lots of players in starting zone (like the old days), lot of everything, it’s buzzing with life.

and even then not for long

Not sure, how long has it been since Classic-Era? It’s been some time now.
Or let me put it differently, remember back when Cassic remake didn’t exist, and there were illegal private servers for the community who wanted to play Vanilla? That went on for how many years? A very long time… 10 years? And they didn’t “stop” they simply came back on official servers to continue, so if you look from the beginning of Vanilla in 2004 this community has been playing the same game for 20 years, and still playing it, still counting.

In fact, it is precisely this community, those players who enjoy playing the same game again and again, who pulled-it off and managed to have Blizzard create Classic in the first place. I guess in a sense you could say they are the «real» Classic community.

I guess we could solve the problem by splitting Classic+ into two: «Classic-further+» and «Classic-Era+». That would solve it, wouldn’t it?

Let me know if that would solve it. So we solved point 31) in the list.

How about the other 30 points, especially from 1 to 29 any suggestion or improvement idea?

[Черница-flamegor]

TLDR: OP just mashed all ideas from any MO, Survival and RPG games out there (especially from single ones) and desided they all fit in WoW.

[Drastezar-hydraxian-waterlords]

Haha some yes, some no, such as the “public repertory” in capitals, and the mails letters not being soulbound.

What do you think of the idea of max-drunk players being able to fight each other?
What do you think of adding an underwater city and underwater monsters?

How about the iced lakes in winter on which people slip and fall, could it add some winter fun? Let me know your thoughts

[Dkann-pyrewood-village]

I find the drunk idea awesome

[Darkath-amnennar]

The drunk battle idea, and the once-a-month “darker night” idea are absolute must-have.

The underwater world is absolutely unused right now, there is so much that can be done indeed. An underwater city and some valuable underwater farming could effectively create very refreshing new areas, pun intended.

We should add underground world content as well. The key is to add content where there was no map at all (oceans, new islands, underground) in order to avoid modifying the current map which is holy and sacred

[Drastezar-hydraxian-waterlords]

The only question with underground world is the map and minimap. I guess they would have to either create a separate map for underground, or simply don’t put it on the map at all! I really don’t mind any solution.

Some underground world has a lot of potential. Especially if underground underwater… Not for claustrophobic that’s for sure!

[Vincentbbc-mograine]

hooooly wall of text broooo, you cannot be real this is how you spend hours of your free time

[Thalissa-dragonfang]

This would be a seasonal I like play!

[Midtvik-firemaw]

didn’t read

[Drastezar-hydraxian-waterlords]

@Thalissa-dragonfang

This would be a seasonal I like play!

Glad you like it! By “seasonal” you mean the seasonal changes (winter, spring, summer, fall) I suggested, or do you mean playing this on seasonal server that becomes fresh every few years?

[Darkath-amnennar]

Now that SOD is out, which of these suggestions could be implemented in SOD?
The first 12 suggestions could easily be implemented in SOD ?

The once-a-month Gurubashi-like “The Purge” night could be in SOD too