We are able to hear the screams now, Silence, heretic! Perfection can't be improved upon! Over 10,000,000 players, thousands of quests, quintillions in WoW gold, and you talk of improvement? Begone! Hold up, we aren't advising in any fashion, form or shape, that Blizzard's magnum opus is anything apart from an astonishing attainment, and a very fantastic massively multiplayer online game. All we are announcing is that, you know, there are areas that might be improved on.
First - Better Graphics : World of Warcraft is a pretty game, but it is a pretty game despite the technology driving it, not due to it. Even if it was launched in 2005, WoW failed to precisely set the world land with its pragmatic or detailed visuals, which honor went to EverQuest II, which afterwards tanked. Perhaps Blizzard was on to something? Of course they were, World of Warcraft was purposely engineered to be a less graphically thorough game than its peers, depending essentially on a bold art style, attractive color palette, and a wonderfully realized world. Why the simple graphical display? Simple, the more PCs the game could run on, the more people could subscribe.
To play games like EverQuest II and Age of Conan, especially at anywhere near to the highest graphical settings, you have got to have a reasonably beefy rig, but you can play WoW on an iPad... Think about that. So why do we'd like better graphics for WoW again? Well... It has been just about half ten years, and graphically speaking, WoW's beginning to get a little long in the tooth. Sure, there were tiny enhancements in stuff like texture quality over the course of Burning Crusade and Lich King, and the approaching World of Warcraft : Calamity , but we are looking for more dramatic changes. Maybe a rather more galvanizing dynamic lighting system and some more sophisticated shaders. We aren't asking the game be made unplayable for those with low end systems, these features may be switched off via toggle. Is it certain to occur though? No, at least, not unless fans uproar for these kind of changes and enhancements en masse.
Two - Full Voice Acting: once more, it is important to indicate to WoW's age and consider the indisputable fact that at the time it launched, voice acting in massively multi player games was, to put it gently, rare. EverQuest II sported partial voice acting, but then EQII was keen on flash, and a substantial amount of eqII plat could have been spent on that game's knobs and whistles. Even now, the amount of MMO's that boast a reasonable quantity of voice acting can doubtless be counted on one hand, the previously mentioned EverQuest II, and Age of Conan outstanding for their efforts.
Nonetheless it's 2010, in under a year ( we are hoping ) EA and Bioware will launch likely the most important attack on WoW's throne as king of the MMO's that we've ever seen with Star Wars : The Old Republic. In a number of ways TOR is looked on as what might become the next evolution of the MMO genus, ranking high among its many engaging features is the promise of full voice acting to dunk the player. It is a big undertaking, and one we will not truly expect Blizzard to replicate in its totality, but would it hurt to splatter some voice acting here and there for particularly important quests?
Three - A Free to Play Option : To Play Free Game is giant at this time, and the stigma it once carried, it was the domain of dodgy and obscure Korean efforts, or MMO's at last chance bar, is swiftly vanishing. Current efforts in the F2P space, including SOE's Free Realms, Turbine's Dungeons and Dragons Online, and approaching projects like EverQuest II Extended, Star Wars : The Clone Wars journeys, and Lord of The Rings Online, have helped convince people that games operating on a free to play, or freemium model can be quality, and worth their time. If you have been concentrating, you get the way that Blizzard's been testing the marketplace for some type of freemium or real money trade model lately. They have offered items, pets and more in return for real money. It's one step short of offering things like search packs, but the ground work is being laid.
World of Warcraft switching to a freemium model would most likely open the flood gates as a deluge of new players who can not afford the or can't rationalise the $14.99 a month investment give the game a try.
Is it likely to happen though? At some point, probably, but not right now - and not for the foreseeable future. WoW still enjoys huge success and generates massive income from players willing to pay a monthly fee, there's simply no need for them to switch models. However, in the future, should subscriber numbers start to dip, either as a result of competition from something like The Old Republic, or perhaps even Blizzard's own next MMO, then it's a definite possibility that the company might look to inject some new blood into the old gal by exploring such an option. And there you have it, 3 sure-fire ways to make World of Warcraft even better. Now... if we could just do something about that incessant patching...
