The developers of World of Warcraft have lied – at least about one small thing that annoys Cortyn. Because something is bursting at the seams on the Dragon Isles.
World of Warcraft Dragonflight is a lot of fun for me. This is not only because I have made a ton of money fishing, but I also enjoyed every single quest in the game.
And although Dragonflight is a very big step forward and really good in most respects, there are still a few criticisms. One of them annoys me particularly – the stuffed inventory. Because the developers promised something different.
What kind of lie was that? Just in November, the Game Director Ion Hazzikostas spoke with Anne Fuchsia from wowhead about inventory management. When asked if they couldn’t be “a little nicer” to the players’ bags, Hazzikostas replied at the time:
Yes. Those are painful points that we have experienced ourselves. One of the ways we have to deliver progress, collections, and such is the inventory. The challenge is, when six or seven different systems and designers are working to pack something into your bag, you suddenly get overwhelmed.
We need to be careful with the systems we create, with things in the open world. You’re slaughtering your way through enemies, and before you know it, your bags are full again, and we’re back to square one. No matter how much inventory space we give you.
That was a few months ago and sounded good. The problem is: it’s not true.
Why was that “a lie”? It is true that World of Warcraft Dragonflight has considerably fewer systems that clutter the inventory with exchangeable “currency items” – but the inventory is still quite full.
This is mainly due to the overhaul of the crafting system. There are a variety of reagents for each profession, which almost always have 3 quality levels, each creating their own stacks and thus consuming an inventory slot.
In some respects, things have definitely improved in Dragonflight. There are several dozen different items that grant “resources of the Dragon Isles.” These items are immediately converted into resources upon pickup, so they can’t clog the inventory at all.
Also, most quest items in World of Warcraft no longer go into the inventory, except for “usable” items that you need to use during the quest or when you find a book that offers a bit more background on the current story.
Finally, there is the new bag slot for a reagent bag. This is certainly helpful, but it only feels like a drop in the bucket. Because the reality in the game world now looks like even the reagent bag is always stuffed full, as the reagent bank is bursting at the seams. This, in turn, causes new materials to fill up the “normal” inventory.
Yet these small improvements help little when World of Warcraft “tears down” the freed inventory space again with the crafting system that requires so many different materials with varying values.
Therefore, the problem is getting bigger: The problem will only get worse in the coming patches and possibly further expansions. Because if they stick to the new profession system, each patch requires new crafting materials in triplicate, and for a new expansion, it’s the same again.
It is then nearly impossible to have a “few materials from old expansions” without putting them on at least 7 bank alts, because right now the space is stretched thin if you only keep the current items.
There are many possibilities for improvement. For example, they could greatly increase the space in the reagent bank, perhaps with multiple tabs, like the guild bank. Or they could follow the example of other MMORPGs where crafting materials simply have a fixed place in a separate inventory that knows virtually no limits.
Do you also have such problems with the inventory? Or is the existing space more than enough for you?
