Blizzcon in One Week!

Happy Dia de los Muertos! (Ok, in fairness, I'm writing this on Halloween, so Samhain Sasta!)

It's now (when you're reading this... if you're reading right after it goes up) one week from Blizzcon 2013. We're all very excited to hear about the next WoW expansion, especially given how well things have been kept under wraps.

But rather than looking at the big picture now (since that's ground I've covered many times,) I thought I'd speculate more on the nitty-gritty features that will be coming with WoW 6.0.

New Character Models:

I don't know if they'll have all the new models for the vanilla races finished in time for Blizzcon, or possibly even in time for the expansion itself. This will, after all, be a total of sixteen new models (or twenty if the BC races get revamped,) with all the new faces and hairstyles and everything.

I think that we can expect to see equivalent options for all the old face-styles, skin colors, hair colors, and hair/beard styles, but I hope that, like they did in Wrath (with the introduction of the barber shop) they will add new ones.

We have heard that they had pretty much finished the Dwarf, so I think it's likely that this will be one of the first to be rolled out. Personally, I'm most excited to see how they revamp the Undead look, which I consider to be the most glaringly flawed vanilla model.

Scaled Content:

It's almost a guarantee that we're going to be getting some way to scale our levels down to do old content. My main question is whether they will take into account the difference between a raider decked out in purples versus someone in a mix of questing greens. Will the iLevel be set, or will it simply scale proportionally?

There is, also, the question of rewards, but I'm hoping that it will be something that helps with character progression without taking away from new content.

Talent System:

While the Cataclysm talent revamp seemed big at the time, it wasn't enough. The Mists revamp, though, was. I doubt we'll see a huge difference in the revamp beyond simple tweaking.

New Races or Classes Depend on the Subject Matter of the Expansion:

We could get playable Naga (though they'd have to figure out solutions to mounts, pants and shoes,) but only in an Azshara-specific expansion. We could get Demon Hunters, but only in a Burning Legion expansion. Without any idea what expansion we're going to get, I can't really make a call on any of those.

More Timeless Isle-style stuff:

The Timeless Isle isn't perfect, but it's a pretty successful experiment in providing undirected gameplay. If they could iterate on the ideas they came up with there, adding more unusual interactive events and a clearer reward structure (can we please put the kibosh on random-stat gear?) they could come up with a really cool kind of exploration-based gameplay.

Some Kind of Profession Revamp:

They haven't really said much about this, but I think professions are one of those aspects of the game that don't really work out as well as they could. Sure, some of the recipes you can make at the cap are pretty awesome, but for making leveling gear? Nah, pretty crappy.

There's also the problem where they think people are making alts just for the professions. If professions were made account-wide, you could do some crazy things, though you'd probably just have to get rid of the profession bonuses, like the gem sockets for blacksmiths. It might be a pain if everyone was expected to max out every profession.

At the very least, they need to make leveling the profession - while leveling - more rewarding.

Some Kind of Raid Difficulty Consolidation:

Most likely this means that Flex Raids will replace Normal Mode. Frankly, when the majority of the players don't raid on "normal," you're probably using the wrong word to describe the difficulty. It seems Heroic can be the soul-crushingly difficult type of raid, while Flex can be for more casual guilds, and LFR is for the people who can't fit organized raiding into their schedule. If there are any guilds whose feelings would be hurt because Flex is too below them in difficulty, they could simply try to step up and do heroics.

However, given that, I'd like to see Flex Mode work more like Normal and Heroic do now, where you can save the instance and work your way up through it. Maybe it's as simple as letting you keep going after completing whatever wing you queued for (unless it's the last one.)

Player Housing:

Sunsong Ranch proved that there's a decent justification for having a little solo-space in the world. I fully expect some sort of new farm to be introduced in the next expansion, as this was an excellent and popular feature in Mists.

I also think that player housing would be a great solution for Alts. I would love (love) if I could see my other characters hanging out in my player housing, allowing me to access their gold and non-soulbound inventory (and professions?) Throw in some trophies for big accomplishments (like displaying Legendary Items on weapon/clothing racks, or mementos from expansion-ending bosses.)

Transmog Revamp:

The Diablo 3 version of Transmog has quite a few improvements over the current iteration of WoW's. I'd love to see some of its ideas (like simply "unlocking" looks and not having to actually keep the item in your inventory anymore) brought over. It might mean getting rid of Void Storage, but I'd be fine with that if it meant not having to worry about the inventory anymore.

Toys Getting Their Own UI:

Mists gave us a ridiculous number of weird vanity items, like the Puntable Marmot or Mr. Smite's Compass. But apart from the super-pain-in-the-ass-to-make bag pattern off the August Celestials, we didn't really get much more in terms of inventory space, so now we've all got our bags clogged with this stuff. Getting rid of the physical objects in favor of a UI space, like they did for pets and mounts, would really solve this problem. Hell, with that and the aforementioned transmog revamp, I'd have an absurd amount of bank space (cannot wait to level up so I can just vendor all the timeless pieces I have.)

Crafting that War... World...

I think we're going to see a lot of this stuff, though I'll admit that the last couple things I mentioned were a little more wishful thinking than predictions. There are other big aspects of the game that I'm looking forward to (I'm really hoping we see more 5-man dungeons this time - like, back to the BC/Wrath levels,) but these things, which are mostly cosmetic or quality-of-life changes, seem pretty doable, and consistent with what I believe their thinking on the game is these days.

One week to go. Let's see how I did!