The below text illustrates how new funny changes to the game could make the game more exciting.
The new changes and new items in this text are highlighted in bold the first time they are mentioned, and are explained in details in this post here.
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It begins…
– Arriving at the Light’s Hope Chapel in the Eastern Plaguelands, you notice the billboard near the inn. Billboards are advertisement space updated weekly that are sold to the highest bidder player in-game. This one has 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 that take place on slippery frozen lakes.
– 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. Frozen lakes are slippery and players have a random chance of falling whenever they move, especially when running. Whenever they fall, they waste 1 second.
– 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 out of stealth by slipping on the ice alone like an idiot. A warrior from the opponent team notices him and charges at him, but slips on the ice at completion of his charge right in front of the rogue. The rogue, not believing his luck, uses sprint to get away, crossing the path of an enemy priest with an almost empty life bar running in the opposite direction. 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 : a specific armor slot in which players can equip one of their bags allowing other players who inspect them to see the content of that bag. He owns a very expensive and beautiful painting. Paintings can only be crafted by characters level 60, using a basic in-game interface with painting regents. Each character can only craft a lifetime maximum of 10 paintings, which they can sign with their name, after what the painting ability is greyed-out forever, making each painting unique and part of a limited edition. This particular painting is from a talented famous artist who only ever crafted 9 paintings before seemingly disappearing, 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 : a publicly accessible book where each guild can have its own page where they have the freedom to display any text they want for any purpose. You are 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 play music and 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 signature, 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. Market Stalls are summoned items, similar to the repair-bot, they act as a shop that can be interacted with by other players but the items that are sold are exclusively from the owner’s bag. Just like characters appearances change when they equip different gear, Market Stall appearances also change depending on the type of items that are being sold, and this room now looks like an art gallery.
– 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 warlock and two of his 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 as this particular one isn’t signed. 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 is crazy enough to venture too close to the bottomless abyss. 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 all over the oceans. 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 depths, 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 just as your underwater breathing buff expires. Here in the distant and profound depths of the ocean, isolated and stuck, the city feels both like a sanctuary and a prison. 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 rich 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. What had originally started as small gatherings of players inside Orgrimmar, summoning market stalls to show-off their fancy collections every month, gradually attracted more and more players, and the sellers of newly introduced regents that have a «Duration: 14 days (real time)» saw the gathering as an opportunity to find more buyers and sell off their stock more efficiently, especially since limited-duration items can neither be sold at the AH nor sent by post. Nowadays the monthly market sees all kind of merchants and buyers coming to try their luck, both from the Horde and from the Alliance, which is why the market has since then moved to outside Orgrimmar in order to avoid guards. Buyers from the Alliance are usually safe to come spend their gold on items sold by Horde players. Much less so for Alliance merchants, as the Horde doesn’t do well with competition.
– Apparently that flowers merchant who used his painting as collateral 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 limited-duration flowers at the monthly market and slowly making back the money to reimburse his loan. Only specific areas of the world, mainly farmlands, allow seeds to be planted. The flowers emerge several days later at a random time, and can be gathered by any player, making the flowers business a rigorous and tiring business that only a few players have the courage to conduct. Flowers can be used directly as decoration, but are also reagents for other purposes.
– 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, and units who are in the dark in the distance appear as unknown blurry shapes. 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, allowing them to clearly see all units within 41m, they seem organised and thirsty for blood. You glimpse 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 who will aggro both Alliance players and Horde players who attack fellow Horde players.
– 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…
To Be Continued…
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I hope you liked the story. There are other changes in this post here that I didn’t include to keep it short, click to have a look !
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