Posted by iTZKooPA on Friday, October 16th, 2009 - 13 Comments
Tags: backpack, bag sorting, bag space, columns, gnomestrosity, inventory, inventory management, slap wrap, trapper keeper, wishful thinking
Wishful Thinking is a column for the theorycrafting behind World of Warcraft. No, not the number crunching madness perfected by the folks at ElitistJerks, but the features, abilities, and design ideas that the Project Lore writers conjure from their squishy pink stuff.
There’s no denying it, World of Warcraft’s inventory is one of the most archaic system’s remaining in the title. I’m not 100% sure, but I believe it may be the only part of the User Interface experience that hasn’t been modified in the near five-year lifespan of the MMORPG. And it’s getting incredibly annoying.
Look Blizzard, I know I complain a fair amount in this column, but when a free-to-play game like Runes of Magic contains a feature that multi-billion dollar generating game doesn’t, it’s time to wake up. RoM features a simple button called ‘Sort’ that organizes bags. It’s by no means perfect, you can’t chose how to sort, but it helps. Especially when looking for quest items. Blizzard, we, the paying customers of WoW, implore you to redesign the inventory system so we can stop looking to add-ons for such basic functionality.
Of course, we won’t let Blizzard get away with copying a basic feature that Runewaker designed for its WoW-a-like. Oh no, we expect far more than that.
Allow us to select what to sort by, name, ilvl, color, worth. There are a ton of different categories that would be handy to select, depending on the situation. The catch 22 is that we may not want the loot to stay sorted in such a fashion, I know my bags are in a particular order (raid, gathering, pot bags). Being able to flip back to a default profile would be nice. How to go about keeping a default profile? Simple, allow us to label bags and items with categories (like raid, potions, gathering, unlabeled) and automatically put like items together. For example, I’d have Saronite Ore labeled as Gathering, the same label as one of my Glacial Bags.
While you are at it Mr. Developer, make the last bag be the top of the order for sorting. Meaning, the bag that occupies the F8 keybind should be filled first, down to your backpack. That way new stuff doesn’t get mixed in with sorted items, unless you have only a few free spaces.
Don’t even get me started on that 16 slot gnomestrosity. Every time I open that Trapper Keeper I expect a pocket full of neon markers to be dumped on me, and my wrists assaulted by slap bracelets.
Naturally, all of these ideas should be applied to our personal banks, and guild banks, as well.
Related Posts: Wishful Thinking: Boss Mob Rotation For 5-Man Flavor, Wishful Thinking: WoW On A Netbook, Wishful Thinking: Fewer-Than-Five-Player Dungeons, Wishful Thinking: Giving Praise For Quest Design, Wishful Thinking: Repair Bill Reduction,
By Rogue4Life on Friday, October 16th, 2009 at 4:34 pm
i couldn’t agree more on the bag interface. I use Bagnon for my add on. It is a little easier to keep things organized myself.
Also, please let us upgrade our back pack. I know it is a “free” 12 slot bag, but really 12 slots is small now. Hell its practically half of all the bags I use and even have in the bank. I’ll even pay a lil (very lil) fee to do so. Just so it is at least can last thru the first few lvl of a new alt. I have the worse luck in getting bags to drop, and I just don’t feel like paying a chunk of gold to purchase the bags from my main. he has better things to spend his gold on then bags he isn’t going to use.
I like the sort thing/idea. and even being able to label something to go to a specific spot would be cool.
By Hashmal on Friday, October 16th, 2009 at 5:20 pm
I use arkinventory thanks to juggs. best bag addon i’ve ever used.
By Riss on Friday, October 16th, 2009 at 5:43 pm
I’ve adjusted my play-style to reflect the game’s limitations. In most things, I sure as hell use Atlas and such (why no dungeon maps, blizz? why!?!)
So on each character, I know which bag holds which stuff. backpack = crap I pick up while doing stuff. sell this first.
f11 = food, pots, scrolls, buffs
f10 = character gear. reagants, profession tools, hearthstone, etc
f9 = usually gathered profession/crafting items. This bag is more often than not specifically a huge bag FOR that profession.
f8 = quest things.
Sure, this requires a lot of click-dragging when quest items drop, but I allow myself to not get so uppitty that in playing a game there’s not SOMETHING TO DO.
If I wanted a game that played itself I’d install a bot and dance naked on mailboxes.
By Alayea on Saturday, October 17th, 2009 at 1:15 am
@Rogue4Life
It’s actually a 16-slot bag, but I still agree with you.
By Daemonbane on Saturday, October 17th, 2009 at 3:42 am
I kinda like the Bags system, I have no beef with it, exept running out of room with my Alt Gear in it. Just my opinion.
By cocopuff on Saturday, October 17th, 2009 at 8:09 am
i really believe this is an unneccery addition i do like my bags organized pvp stuff in one bag pve stuff in another mats in a 3rd so on and so forth but it doesnt take taht long to sert your stuff out minet or 2 max. but i do have a problem with is not being able to change teh bag you start with thats extra 10 bag slots we are missing out on for strait dps class like me doesnt have a problem with gear taking up to much space but what about a hybrid class when its all said and done you dont even have enough space in your bag for the daily quest items let along the trash you get from doing the quest which worth quite a bunndle if you loot everything you kill.if they wanto improve inventory then they should increase the items stack capacity
By Staffan on Saturday, October 17th, 2009 at 5:17 pm
I recommend an addon named Baud Manifest. It transforms your bags into a *list*, rather than just a graphical interface. Saves a lot on hunting through your bags for that quest item you need or whatever. It also lets you sort or filter items by various criteria. It might just be my favorite addon in the whole game.
By Egma on Saturday, October 17th, 2009 at 11:21 pm
Daemonbane, he is not saying the current bag system is “bad” in anyway, just that it could use a few functions to make finding an item you need easier when you have 96 slots all full of instance drops, a sort feature that sorts food/water/potions/cloth/leather/mail/plate/weapons/quest items/white mats/ green mats… or even something as simple as sorting grey/white/green/… or Vendor value so when you are farming enchant mats for an alt you can find what can be trashed easier
I fully agree, I don’t think its needed per say but would be usefull, maybe an idea for 4.0 of adding a not auto but optional sort of by value/rarity/type that when you select one of the 3 types of sorts it sorts it to make things easier to find… I mean those are the 3 sort filters rarity being grey/white/green… not oh this has .01% drop rate this has .015% drop rate, just the general ranks… vendor value, well thats obvious, and then already stated type sort of food/water/cloth/…
By francois on Sunday, October 18th, 2009 at 3:47 am
I personally like the Aion inventory system, especially the “sell all junk” button to clear your inventory of grey items saves so much time. Is there a wow addon with this feature ?
By Andrew on Sunday, October 18th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
There used to be at least. OneBag used to be my inventory of choice, mostly because it worked with closetgnome so I could stow away my set items in some other part of my bag window. That and the insane amount of filtering and organising I eventually managed to set up and didn’t want to let go of.
Anywho, somewhere in there was a “sell all junk at vendor” option. It promptly sold all items of a predetermined quality to any vendor you opened.
By Bronte on Sunday, October 18th, 2009 at 7:16 pm
To be fair, bags have seen some love. The BG tokens are now stored in a separate window, and you don’t have to manage the space those may take. Same is the case with Emblems and Badges.
A while back they also shifted all the keys from the backpack onto the keyring, which was a HUGE improvement considering vanilla WoW’s penchant for instance attunements.
By Lawkes on Monday, October 19th, 2009 at 10:35 am
I sort my own bags.. It’s fine the way it is.
By l33tadin on Monday, October 19th, 2009 at 11:46 am
@riss
WOTLK dungeons as raids have maps when you enter thm tht evn tells you where the bosses are