Lost Pages of Taborea: It's the little things

As we wait in rapt anticipation for the final volley of Chapter 3 goodness, I find myself speculating about other possible additions and changes that could go into Runes of Magic. Now that the pet system is up and running and the relationship system is on the horizon, will there be a myriad of balances made to classes? Or, will Runewaker and Frogster spring any fun surprises on us? I'm not sure what it is about the time right before a patch, but it gets my neurons firing and makes me want to play amateur designer.

Besides trying to figure out exactly how the relationship system is going to work, I've been thinking about how I'd add my own changes to some of RoM's current features. The door is wide open for speculation in this department, but I wanted to look at what I thought would be possible for pre-existing areas in the near future. Follow along after the jump and see whether you agree with what I'd do to the lore, battlegrounds, crafting, and a handful of random features.
More lore please

It seems like I'm shooting for a mythical personal record: how many times I can bring up Michael T. Bhatty. I'm sure you're getting sick of hearing me spout his name like a personal advertiser, but I think it would pay off in spades to have a dedicated writer expanding and building RoM's story. The game really has a lot of good story ideas to springboard off of, so it's mostly beefing up ideas that already exist. Not only that, but we Western players love us some story. Just look at how much work En Masse Entertainment is putting toward story as part of westernizing TERA. I think RoM's been around long enough and it grows at a fast enough pace for Frogster to not only add more lore, but also start branching out into books and other media.

Battlegrounds

RoM's arena and battlegrounds are varied and cool to witness first-hand, but the one thing that seems to be the chain holding back the popularity beast is the lack of a system to match players of equal strengths. If Runewaker could implement a server-side gearscore, I think RoM would see an explosion in the popularity of battlegrounds and attract a lot of new players. I rarely enter any battlegrounds, but if I knew I'd be matched to someone my level I'd be playing a lot more. The only downside I see in utilizing a system based on gear is the current ability to switch between two whole gear sets. A player could easily sign up dressed in one gear set — or with no gear on at all — and switch to a powerful set after he entered. Perhaps Runewaker could add a gear registration window when a player signs up to a battleground.

Crafting

Sorry, all you raiders and min-maxers; I'm one of those social crafters. Yes, I love crafting and will always be happy to see new additions to it in RoM. I loved it when the developers added a chance to produce higher-quality items, but there are still ways I think crafting could be even more enjoyable.

I've mentioned this before — give disenchanting a life! This lonely skill has a ton of potential to make crafting more useful, add to the economy, and be more fun. The possibility of having drops disenchant into a number of other items could fill in disparaging value gaps. Given the ability to disenchant crafted armor into new materials, we might see a rise in cost for all the current crafted armor that is next to worthless to auction off.

A more incidental craft-related feature I'd like to see is the ability to have items labeled with the names of the players who created them. For players who love to craft, it's a very nice thing to see other players wearing armor that says it was crafted by them. I wouldn't even care if it were monetized in some way. Give it a Transmutor Charge or Phirius Token cost. I don't care. Seeing "Crafted by..." on weapons and armor is worth it to me.

Almost incidental

I'm not just a casual crafter; I'm an explorer too. It's thrilling to jump into RoM and realize how many bodies of water there are to explore. The one detractor to this is that most bodies of water are devoid of life. Unless you organize a swimming party with other players, you aren't going to spend much of your time in the deep. I would see it as a major plus if RoM had a variety of underwater critters and some quests to give us another reason to take the plunge. Adding in a breathing meter wouldn't hurt either.

There's a lot that I can do to suspend my disbelief, but there are a few areas of RoM that just seem like Transformers in My Little Pony land. I remember the first time I saw floating balloon monsters that looked like the disembodied heads of the Powerpuff Girls. OK, I can deal with floating anime heads. Then came the little devil and little angel pets. Well, I thought, that seems a bit more of a stretch, but I can live with it. It wasn't until they added the Capra pet that I felt it was finally beginning to degrade the story and world. It might sound like less of an issue than the floating balloon monsters, until you find out that the Capra are a sentient race in Sacilia Steppes. If I want to immerse myself in the world and enjoy the story, it just seems a little weird to have a pet Capra while the goat-like race is trying to rebuild its destroyed way of life.

The Elves moved into RoM back when Chapter 2 was released, but since then we still haven't seen any homes for them. Let's see some of that amazing Elven architecture brought into player-housing. I'll stretch this idea a bit and add that I'd like to see a new selection of elven furniture as well.

Conclusion

It's very easy — and fun — to get carried away with the possibilities of what could be added to RoM. I just wanted to keep my ideas close to the here and now. By all means, you can go crazy with your ideas on what you'd like to see added or changed in RoM.