As Knabble points out several times, Collectors aren't a monolith - what might work for him and his community may not be what another collector community wants, or vice-versa. The challenge with collecting is how broad the appeal is: while some people might want to just collect mounts or pets, others may only be interested in one armor type transmog, while still more might be true All The Things die-hard collectors.
The big takeaway, however, is that if Blizzard is truly looking to create content with collectors in mind, there are some definite quality-of-life changes that should happen. Between repeatedly having to re-grind the same content over and over, to solo-character friendliness, Knabble points out tons of opportunities for Blizzard to show a massive portion of the playerbase that their style of gameplay matters too.
Video Recap
The Zone Locked collector community is a bit different than others - while the goal is to collect everything in the game one zone at a time, there are quirks to the challenge that have highlighted some frustrating parts of Blizzard's game design. Knabble suggests several ways to fix problems that many collectors have run into (in some cases, dozens of times on dozens of characters).
Not having to repeat grinds on multiple characters to collect BoP drops, like patterns that can only be used with specific professions.
Allowing everything, or at least older things, to be done solo on a single character. Battle for Azeroth Warfronts and PvP Expeditions are major examples of activities that practically can't be done anymore, much less actively farmed, because they require many extra players rerunning eight-year-old content over and over again.
Removing lockouts from legacy content or at least making them shorter, instead of just circumventing them with an army of alts. If players are going to run them multiple times per day anyway, why not just let them do it on the same character?
Enable legacy loot with the release of each new expansion, instead of waiting for the next two.
Making more legacy currency transferable between characters.
Adding legacy raid skips for things, especially for lengthy older raids like Ice Crown Citadel and Black Temple.
Lowering old expansion world boss respawn timers.
Creating better filters for achievements and collections tabs, such as filtering by dungeon, raid, or expansion.
Adding more "returns," so players can get back to the beginning of legacy dungeons and raids after finishing them.
There's more on the wish list, however, and while not all collectors may agree with some of the suggestions, others are wildly popular suggestions that have been made for years within collector communities.
Bringing back old versions of content that have since been reworked, such as vanilla dungeons that have been replaced over time, similar to longstanding requests to make pre-Cataclysm version quests and zones accessible again.
More "chase" items for housing, such as rare drop decor or patterns, instead of most decor coming from guaranteed drops and vendors. It should be noted that Blizzard has already started to do this, with some Midnight raid bosses having only a chance to drop unique decor, though not for any previous content.
Randomly dropped Clue Scrolls, sending players on treasure hunts, completing various tasks to earn materials, gear, pets, mounts, and so on.
More collection-related Achievements, which do get added over time, but not nearly equal to the pace of new things to collect. The Joy of Toy is a good example, as there are around twice as many toys in the game.
Giving more clarity on item drops, where they come from, and their drop rates, instead of using player-submitted data to guess at them.
Watch the full video for more details - and let us know what your collecting wish-list is in the comments below.
