The plight of the prot warrior and other tanks in PvP has been lamented for ages on the forums. DPSers can, of course, kill their opponents in PvP, and healers can help out their team, but the effectiveness of tanks depends entirely on a non-sentient opponent. Illidan and Archimonde apparently can't see beyond attacking the shiny person in the nice thick armor, but even the dumbest player knows not to go for the guy in plate with 15k health. Making taunt work on players is a commonly-mentioned idea, but it would take away a lot of the fun and strategy from PvP.

Prius of Blade's Edge has a new idea for helping out our protection buddies in PvP. He would like WoW to implement collision mechanics in PvP. That way, a prot warrior could "tank" by physically preventing enemy players from getting to his squishies. Warhammer Online is already implementing such a system, whenever it finally comes out (probably bundled with Duke Nukem Forever.)

There are a lot of problems with body collision in general, most of which are aptly summed up in this thread. Total body collision would allow WoW's infinite supply of jerks to block off access to banks, inns, dungeons and whatnot. PvE collision would turn raids into a group of tauren warriors standing around a boss while ranged DPS nukes it down. And, like everything, collision would add lag to the servers.

But a pure PvP collision, done only in battlegrounds or if two players are PvP-enabled or dueling, sounds like it could be a neat mechanic. Of course, I'd feel sorry for the gnomes, but maybe they could get some ankle-biting collision abilities.

Do you think PvP collision could be a viable new mechanic for WoW PVP? What problems would you forsee?

You could probably fill a library with the number of stupid things game developers say about their competitors, but here's one more. In an interview with Shacknews, former Mythic co-founder Matt Firor, charged with putting together a brand-new MMO, says this about World of Warcraft:

... Any MMO starting development today isn't going to have to worry too much about competing with WoW--it'll be in its decline by the time any new game launches.

Think so? From what we've heard from Blizzard, they don't. Even if Blizz only goes two more expansions (and Everquest, the most popular MMO until WoW, went for fourteen), WoW is sticking around for five or six years. And yes, there are those folks who are done now, but Azeroth's population hasn't stopped going up yet-- does Firor really think they won't be a competitor in just a few years?

That doesn't mean Blizzard is unbeatable, but it does mean that they're competition. As Firor's former employer says (EA Mythic is now working on Warhammer Online, which some say is WoW's biggest threat in the MMO market), you have to play a different game.

WoW is The Beatles, who changed music forever. You can't be the Beatles; they already exist. You can't copy them. If you try, you become The Monkees. You've got no chance. We're not The Beatles. We're Led Zeppelin.

Staking your new game on WoW's decline is a bad idea, and predicting that decline to be just a few years off is a worse one. WoW won't last forever, but Blizzard's monster MMO isn't done yet.

[ via WorldofWar ]

Mystic Worlds has a post up about some cool features coming in Warhammer Online that she wishes were in WoW. Basically, it boils down to the fact that WAR will reward you for killing quest targets even if you haven't actually grabbed the quest yet.

That would be darn helpful-- there have been times in Azeroth where I've killed 20 boars (for example) and then found out there was a quest to kill them that I just hadn't grabbed yet. MW says she worries that a system like this will mean random, indiscriminate killing across the landscape, but I already kill stuff indiscriminately as I'm wandering around-- it'd be nice to get an extra reward for it.

And while we're on the subject, I'd love to see some player-driven quests in the game. Something like 5-10k XP per week that can be awarded by your guildleader, just to keep you busy. Say, "win 3 AVs" or "run Shadow Labyrinth five times." Not only would it let GLs guide what their guildies were up to, but it would be another nice bonus for people leveling up, and considering there's 70 levels to get through now, quicker leveling is always good.

Finally, Mystic Worlds says she's also excited about their XP handouts for exploration, which Blizzard already does to an extent, but it'll be interesting to see how it's done in WAR. On one more (kind of) related note, someone in the guild recently suggested an awesome idea: see how far you could get a character just by finding all the discovery XP in the game. He said level 20, I say no more than 15. Anyone want to find out?