marc.nottke

It would be great if Blizzard invented a way to upgrade a gear set rather than just replace it. I think socketed items and enchants somewhat address this issue; but what if they took it a step further. Suppose you could keep the gear you acquired in a major instance and then add to or enhance it with gear packs. The gear you got in those old instances would serve a foundation for future gear packs that you acquire in newer instances.

Adding to the old gear could not just enhance the stats, but also change the gear a bit visually so that people can immediately recognize your accomplishment. Perhaps players that bothered to get the original gear would then have a slight edge over players who got gear only by running the newest instance. That might be incentive enough for people to even return to old instances and keep them alive and valid.

Proximity based eavesdropping is a really cool idea Brian! Of course, I think you’ll always want to be able to send a buddy a private message – that’s actually useful in setting up RP situations too. But back to the eavesdropping. What if, in addition to text, you could actually overhear conversation in voice chat – just like you can overhear people in “real life.” What if when you walked into a town you could hear the conversations of anyone around you if you were close enough to that person or group of people. This might help limit the overall chatter when entering a massive city, but also allow for unique RP opportunities. Imagine walking down a street in Stormwind and you gradually hear a heated debate from a nearby alleyway. Maybe you stealth, sneak up and listen in on an elaborate RP plot to kill a guild master.

Then again, standing around a mailbox in Stormwind listening to 25 people yacking about Dancing with the Stars would suck. Maybe if, like you are saying, we have more tools and options for RP it would work better. Like you could filter out OOC chat if you wanted and only hear RP chat; or something similar. I’d love it if devs took RP into account, because, like Akela said, it’s hard to go back to text based when you’ve been spoiled by all the shiny graphical yumminess.

Thanks for sharing that story Spiral. Those types of bizarre RP events and RP interactions definitely remind me of my time in Elendor MUSH and Amber MUSH.

Do you think policing a modern MMOG for breaking OOC rules is possible in today's gaming environment? I'm guessing it would have to be community driven, just like in your case.