Improving the Warcraft Franchise
August 10, 2007, by xKarma The Warcraft franchise is my favorite. It now consists of the legendary real-time strategy games, the time-sink massively-multiplayer online game, an upcoming movie, a trading card game, a pen-and-paper RPG, and books. The best part of the Warcraft franchise is the rich history and story. There is, however, room for improvement.
The balance in Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne is finally to a point that you do not want to mess with it too much. However, it's tempting to call for the inclusion of new heroes for the the neutral tavern and each of the four factions.
New Heroes
Neutral: As far as neutral heroes are concerned, it only makes sense to add a Murloc and Furbolg hero to the tavern. The Murloc and Furbolg races are very established in the Warcraft setting and would make for sensible additions. The Murloc leader responsible for the death of the Troll Sen'jin, leader of the Darkspear tribe until his untimely death, is the perfect choice for a Murloc hero and fits into the time-frame. The Furbolg race fought against the Burning Crusade and all tribes except one were corrupted during this conflict. The uncorrupted tribe is known as the Timbermaw. The leader of the Timbermaw tribe is undoubtedly a hero.Alliance: What could possibly be better than a heroic Gnome rogue? And whom better than Torbeb Bombbuzzle? Having killed several of the Hordes leaders he is simply the greatest assassin alive.
Horde: The Ogre brute known as Mok'Morokk. Rexxar, the half-ogre better known as the "Beastmaster", personally made Mok’Morokk the leader of the Stonemaul ogre clan. Though the Stonemaul clan has since severed their ties with the Horde, they were allied with them during the Warcraft III setting.
Night Elves: A Night-Elf druid known as Fandral Staghelm is one of Malfurion Stormrage's top lieutenants. He was also the leader of the druids who planted the new and ultimately corrupt World Tree. For game balance, it would make it interesting for Staghelm to have a tanking role.
Undead: High-Elf traitor Dar'Khan Drathir would make for a formidable Undead hero. Drathir was a traitor to the Kingdom of Quel'Thalas for it was he who opened the way for the Scourge to resurrect Kel'Thuzad by granting them access to the Sunwell.
Defense of the Ancients
In addition to adding new heroes, Blizzard needs to finally acknowledge the popularity of DoTa (Defense of the Ancients) by adding a true DoTa ladder system. A DoTa ladder system is long overdue and would revive interest in Warcraft III in general.
Responsible adults certainly must find it impossible to enjoy World of Warcraft. Unlike previous Warcraft titles, World of Warcraft more closely resembles a glorified chatroom than a video game in its current form. Demanding of players their precious time, and lots of it, in order to partake in an experience that only remotely resembles gaming, make no mistake about it: World of Warcraft is hugely successful - as in 10 million+ subscribers worldwide. It is due to this success that it is difficult to imagine Blizzard would actually make any drastic changes. However, there is a whole market of people like me out there, people who like the Warcraft franchise but not the idea of obsessively collecting items, boosting stats, and making virtual friends. If Blizzard is at all interested in taking advantage of this market of people then they'd better listen up.
Player vs. Player: Skills Only
Create a PvP only system whereby players can create top-level and top-geared characters that can only engage in PvP mode and only with other PvP-only characters. These characters would have no ability to interact with the World and would in no way be capable of bothering the current userbase. This would be the fairest and surest way of changing World of Warcraft from a competitive job into a competitive game.Solo Stylee
Add bots. Being able to team up with bots means that a player can solo the game. Sure, some people would be turned off by the idea of allowing players to team up with bots to run instances but there is a solution to that: make it a niche server. A bots-allowed server. Being able to team up with bots would somewhat improve the experience for players on low population servers or people who can only play at odd times and are never able to find groups. It would also boost the experience for those of us who would rather avoid spending our precious time forming groups full of strangers that may or may not even function.Why Blizzard uses the World of Warcraft game engine for nothing besides the standard World of Warcraft deal is a mystery.
Warcraft: the Movie
Scrap all progress up until now. Start from the beginning because none of us want a live-action Warcraft movie; we want CGI! We want an entire film that resembles all of the classic cut-scenes we've come to expect from a Warcrat title. Perhaps Blizzard needs to make a new friend in Hollywood. "Blizzard, meet Pixar. Pixar, Blizzard." One can at least dream.
Since the aforementioned won't happen how about a more serious suggestion: Very little story, tons and tons of war. And most importantly, the film should not be bias towards a particular faction. With rabid fans of each of the unique Warcraft factions, a neutral perspective of the war would not only be unique it would be appreciated.
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