Mall Update: What comes next?
Posted: 09 Dec 2016, 18:48
The Mall Update has been released, and the Winter’s Veil Event has also begun! (don't forget your daily gift from The Henry in the mall!) Now that this update has come out, we need to discuss what we have planned next…
Once again we would like to hear your suggestions on our ideas. Within a month for few of those, you will get:
Staircase Event
An event made by Awoth a long time ago, it still needs a daily quest, all the involved maps made as Sanctuary (no PvP) and a proper way to deal with falls and death. It's made of many parts, so you may not have to restart all over again if you fall mid run. The estimated time to finish it is 30+ minutes.
http://imgur.com/a/DXNJ5
New Duel Area
It's difficult to find a good location for a duel area. It's not about finding an empty zone; there are many in Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms. But it needs to be a closed one, with few obstacles, but not too many.
The main issue of the current one is the lack of lighting, and we have chosen a new location to relocate the neutral dueling area to which has better visibility, and a much larger open space.
PvP Area
Hyjal and Azshara Crater are currently our two PvP areas. However, they're way too large for the current population. Sometimes a dozen of players go there to PvP but it's rare and mainly a way to get Badges of Justice, or more (Malviris). We’re thinking about having a new PvP area at Stonewrought Dam, which would be accessible at a specific hour of the day. Grael already modified it and added everything to avoid camping. It still needs graveyards next to Alliance and Horde base, in addition to a daily quest.
http://imgur.com/a/GeH35
Legendary Weapon Models
It seems there are many models left that Awoth and/or Grael originally planned to make when these items first came out… however we were limited to only 150 due to vendors capping at that amount of items. Thanks to our multivendor system that is heavily being used in the new mall update, we are able to sort items better into separate vendor windows, thus allowing us to go beyond 150 now. Due to this, we will create new Legendaries based on these models.
More Mounts
We still plan to add more mounts, but we need to find appropriate currencies for them. It will be mounts that are either impossible to get or armorless ones boosted from 60% to 100% (exactly like we did with the very fast Riding Turtle). Speaking of vanity items, you may notice paper planes on the mall soon!
Minor Mall Improvements
Once again thanks to the Multivendor and Multitrainer system, we will be able to improve even more the mall, such as having only one NPC per profession on the Profession Area. We wanted to have this done on release, as well as some other minor changes, but due to time we wanted to push the update out as soon as possible, and spend time on the minor things later.
By the way if you notice any issue with the new mall or have suggestions, please let us know.
Mass Unban
Many may not agree with this idea, and we understand this concern, but let us explain: Many servers (including much, much larger ones than ours) do occasional grants of amnesty, and perform mass unbans of their entire player-base. While we have granted “unwanted” players this personally in the past to little success, the purpose is to grant everyone a do-over, and not keep thousands of accounts closed, and their owners deprived of the work and time they have invested into the game. There is some pay off for staff having to review ban appeals from years ago constantly, and try to decide if it’s valid or not, when we usually grant them anyway if enough time has gone by. If players return that are incredibly toxic, or problematic, they will of course be removed again from the game. That is the point, a test, if you will. We hope this will allow some to return to Smolderforge with a different attitude, or change. Some will, some won’t. We’ll deal with it, simple as that.
Once again we would like to hear your suggestions on our ideas. Within a month for few of those, you will get:
Staircase Event
An event made by Awoth a long time ago, it still needs a daily quest, all the involved maps made as Sanctuary (no PvP) and a proper way to deal with falls and death. It's made of many parts, so you may not have to restart all over again if you fall mid run. The estimated time to finish it is 30+ minutes.
http://imgur.com/a/DXNJ5
New Duel Area
It's difficult to find a good location for a duel area. It's not about finding an empty zone; there are many in Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms. But it needs to be a closed one, with few obstacles, but not too many.
The main issue of the current one is the lack of lighting, and we have chosen a new location to relocate the neutral dueling area to which has better visibility, and a much larger open space.
PvP Area
Hyjal and Azshara Crater are currently our two PvP areas. However, they're way too large for the current population. Sometimes a dozen of players go there to PvP but it's rare and mainly a way to get Badges of Justice, or more (Malviris). We’re thinking about having a new PvP area at Stonewrought Dam, which would be accessible at a specific hour of the day. Grael already modified it and added everything to avoid camping. It still needs graveyards next to Alliance and Horde base, in addition to a daily quest.
http://imgur.com/a/GeH35
Legendary Weapon Models
It seems there are many models left that Awoth and/or Grael originally planned to make when these items first came out… however we were limited to only 150 due to vendors capping at that amount of items. Thanks to our multivendor system that is heavily being used in the new mall update, we are able to sort items better into separate vendor windows, thus allowing us to go beyond 150 now. Due to this, we will create new Legendaries based on these models.
More Mounts
We still plan to add more mounts, but we need to find appropriate currencies for them. It will be mounts that are either impossible to get or armorless ones boosted from 60% to 100% (exactly like we did with the very fast Riding Turtle). Speaking of vanity items, you may notice paper planes on the mall soon!
Minor Mall Improvements
Once again thanks to the Multivendor and Multitrainer system, we will be able to improve even more the mall, such as having only one NPC per profession on the Profession Area. We wanted to have this done on release, as well as some other minor changes, but due to time we wanted to push the update out as soon as possible, and spend time on the minor things later.
By the way if you notice any issue with the new mall or have suggestions, please let us know.
Mass Unban
Many may not agree with this idea, and we understand this concern, but let us explain: Many servers (including much, much larger ones than ours) do occasional grants of amnesty, and perform mass unbans of their entire player-base. While we have granted “unwanted” players this personally in the past to little success, the purpose is to grant everyone a do-over, and not keep thousands of accounts closed, and their owners deprived of the work and time they have invested into the game. There is some pay off for staff having to review ban appeals from years ago constantly, and try to decide if it’s valid or not, when we usually grant them anyway if enough time has gone by. If players return that are incredibly toxic, or problematic, they will of course be removed again from the game. That is the point, a test, if you will. We hope this will allow some to return to Smolderforge with a different attitude, or change. Some will, some won’t. We’ll deal with it, simple as that.