There are a few common issues that just about all roleplayers would love to see fixed.
The language barrier of WoW has long been a huge obstacle for roleplayers that want to communicate with races on the other side. The barrier is there for the general playerbase whose application of being able to talk to their “enemies” would be to hurl foul language at them during PvP. The language barrier is not as much of an issue today, thanks to the addition of the Elixir of Tongues which when drunk by people on both sides allows them to comprehend the opposing factions common tongue. Orcish and Common. This is a fine solution, but it does come with the problem that a lower level player isn’t going to have these potions on them at all times, unless they’re a hardcore roleplayer who is ready to RP 24/7. This kills any chance for a leveling player with an interest in roleplay of having an early encounter when they stumble upon an enemy out in the wild. They can’t throw jabs, learn something about the enemy or even become friends due to this limitation. The elixir is a solution, but it misses the mark a little.
What would be nice if Blizzard allowed players to LEARN these in-game languages that our characters speak. Make it something you earn. This would keep trolling in control, or at least lessen it. It would probably have to be kept unavailable in PvP though. For obvious reasons.
Toys, toys, toys. We all love toys in WoW. They do such neat things. You have fishing chairs, ale kegs, fireworks, visual effects, and best of all… Transformation items. This is a big one. There are countless uses for toys that allow you to transform into other races. You could use them for exotic RP characters, NPCs in events, etc. These toys would add much to the immersion aspect of roleplaying as you could actually properly portray that thing that you want, without having to let people know what to imagine. It’s just one of those little things that would be a nice thing to have. The problem is that most of the actually useful toys have hours long cooldowns, making them nearly unusable. The transformation toys can be gotten around with Reflecting prisms, but the rest… Well. Tough luck, huh?
I’ll wrap this up with a thing I personally want the most.
Blizzard added a series of items into the game in Warlords of Draenor. The items in question are the Leatherworking tents that allowed you to deploy an actual tent into the world. In a world where all of us are homeless vagrants, thanks to a lack of player housing, the idea of having at least the ability to make a camp somewhere in the wilds is very comforting. These tents would have a multitude of obvious uses that would make roleplayers shriek in joy. Military bands would have the ability to build a camp. Merchants would be able to put up a stall in cities that they could sell their goods from. And that’s to say nothing about their uses with a little imagination. Caught an enemy character and need something to stand in for a cage? Use a tent. Boom. Need something to stand in for a stockpile that your party needs to dispose of? Use a tent. There are limitless possibilities.
My most recent character is an ice troll hunter who prowls around the frigid lands of Dun Morogh. Having the ability to set up a little hide tent up on some cliff, overlooking the dwarven roads below while I wait for some unsuspecting traveler to pass would add so much to this characters life.
The problem, again, is the limitations that have been placed on these items to combat exploitation. For one, they’re only available in WoD zones, making them useless. Second, they have a stack size limit of 5 tents of each type that are allowed to be in a characters inventory. Meaning that you’d need to live next to a mail box with letters full of tents for yourself if you wanted to use them, because of the following issue. THIRD. They have a five minute deployment time. Meaning that they remain spawned the same duration as a campfire. This means that altogether, a stack of five tents gives you 25 minutes of tent usage. Horrifying. Useless. The best case scenario would be if the tents were freed from their Draenor imprisonment, had their stack size upped (or just be made into toys) and had their duration increased.
Obviously, these tents were designed for PvE and PvP since they gave buffs, but it is clear to see how big of a deal tents would be for roleplayers. This is why, whenever I find some time, I send a suggestion to Blizzard about this very issue through the in-game suggestion box. I can only keep hoping that someone will read one of those messages and see my point.
I think I’ll wrap up here. There are many more issues that roleplay servers would benefit from, but these were the ones that came to mind immediately.
