Warcraft has one overriding source of stress and annoyance, and it isn’t farmers driving the prices of primals through the roof. It is loot. Right now you get 5, 10, or 25 (or 40 if you’re nasty) people together and you go kill between one and twenty boss monsters (along with an avalanche of trash mobs, but who cares about them) and get something like three pieces of loot per boss. Then you’ve got to split those pieces between the people who may or may not be able to use them, and who may get greedy for off-spec items. Right now there is one big system to clear up a lot of the annoyance and confusion. It goes like this: a token drops and is then used to purchase from a vendor the loot that you like. Basically Archimonde drops a Helm of the Forgotten Conqueror, and all the priests, warlocks and paladins roll on it. They then take it to Tydormu who lets them pick between any of the three Lightbringer Helms (if they are paladins). With this, Blizzard has made a single drop work for nine specs of players, cutting down on loot drama. They are pretty certain they’ve created a decent system to make look work.

I’d agree with that. But, an even more comprehensive token system would certainly cut down further on the “Dang, no BP of Many Graces” problems I ran through with my Holy Pally’s many SLabs runs. The only problem is that the token system delays gratification: you don’t get any loot, you get currency that helps you buy things. I’d like to see a system where you’d get “Blue Boots of Tanking” that could be worn (and would actually be decent on their own) but could be “transformed” into more usable items by non-tanks, to continue the example above.

I’d see several ways of transforming loot. First, you could turn them into faction NPCs along with some other resource (IE Sunmotes) and just get the boots you want. This is pretty good, but still somewhat un-interactive. Otherwise you can use them as crafting mats, sort of like the Broken Blade of Heroes from Old World Azeroth. This is pretty cool, and it gets crafters in on it. The only problem is you’d have to have the specialized crafting skill, though there is a way around that. I’ll get to that later. Finally there is an idea I’m borrowing from D&D. Back in the Book of Exalted Deeds there was a system where you’d take the Big Bad Evil Guy’s suit of Demon Armor and perform rites of purification on them and transform them into Hound Archon Armor. Sort of a “This Item Begins a Quest” system where you can wear the boots however long you want them, then do the quest for the off-spec you want to transform them too.

The way I came up with around having specific crafting requirements would involve a third party environmental object. Say you could “Use” an anvil at the same time as your crafter friend, allowing them to craft using soulbound equipment that isn’t bound to the crafter. Sort of a giant “Will not be traded” area that counts as part of both player’s inventories for the purposes of crafting. Hopefully there wouldn’t be a way to dupe items, or we’d all be up to our baldrics in Obsidian Rings of the Zodiac three weeks after introducing the new loot system.

I can think of one problem with the questing idea. First, that the quests would all devolve into “Bring the boots + these three rare drops to the head of the Mithril Order in STV” over and over again. This basically accomplishes what the crafting system does, it just does it solo. I’m pretty sure that we wouldn’t want that, but if the quests could be used sparingly and more interestingly than “Dip this staff in the Moonwell, just like your did with your last seven Evil Staves” then it could be a cool addition.

Finally, I’d imagine that people would resent turning their tanking boots into DPS boots eventually when they wanted to PVP or respec or whatever. This brings the token vendor guy back, I suppose. Personally if I could be assured of having one set of “Tier 9″ gear that I could swap from Ret to Prot to Holy at will providing I have enough Sunmotes (or whatever) would make my bags quite a bit slimmer.

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The fact that he thought to video this, or the fake gangsta nicks for his friends.

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If you have any hope of reading Walking Dead unspoiled, please skip this post.

*SPOILER*

When I said I wanted Kirkman to kill off a major character or I wouldn’t take him seriously, I didn’t think he’d actually DO it. Jeezus. And Tyreese. I mean he could have killed a more annoying character, like Patricia or something. He still had a lot of story to tell with Tyreese. OK, so it wasn’t a member of the Grimes family, or Andrea. But still, I don’t think I’ll be able to look at the group the same way again. Killing Andrea would break my heart though, that girl is a badass.

That is all. I’m going to go drink to the memory of one bad mother.

*/SPOILER*

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Y’all remember the old Molten Bore. I know Tim and Sandy were there. I wish I knew what I was doing back then, but the Paladin class was such a mess that I don’t think that I could have done anything worthwhile without going full on clothadin. Anyhow. Blizzard’s April Fools rules all.

And I have stuff for March, just give me a minute.

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