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Until very recently, the artists and designers behind Blizzard appeared to be completely ignoring the feedback such a large community of creative people worldwide could provide them. The recently announced '3D designers' contest' is but a small chunk of what would be possible if they would provide the community with an appropriate interface.
So the idea is generally twofold: first: the company should make a simplified designer application (what certainly exists in-house) to the community (something like the Warcraft 3 map editor), which would make fan-submitted sub-zones possible. The second branch of the same concept would be a simple item designer for fans!! This is nothing hard to produce: games like Neverwinter Nights or The Sims used such (feature combining/retexturing) modules several years before WOW actually came out.
The main costs and benefits of the map editor would be following:
The designers would have to make a simplified/restricted version of 3DMaya, or whatever 3D program they are utilizing currently. This would certainly take a lot of time/resource.
The editor would allow fans to design areas using all map textures, features and doodads contained in the WOW game.
Even if no one would have time enough to design as large areas as 'Eastern Plaguelands', fans would certainly have fun while spending countless hours polishing beautiful, picturesque landscapes.
Once the fans have (free?) access to this little add-on, Blizzard can start announcing competitions for new jigsaw-like pieces for the world map.
The fan-submitted landscapes could help a lot with filling in the missing pieces for the current (old) world map. The main problem, why we cannot use flying mounts in the world is just because it looks like cheese: full of undesigned spots that Blizzard employees had no time, nor resource to fill in. With hundreds of fan-submitted (custom) map-tiles?? Problem solved.
Even if the quality/features of the submitted work does not make direct application possible, they can still provide creative ideas/concepts
To avoid making 'pirated' WOW modules, the landscape editor would not make direct (in-game) testing possible, only viewing it.
The winners of the competitions would be honoured twofold: first, their map is going to become a tiny piece of the huge world map, second, they could receive numerous in-game bonuses for their characters (say: 500g and an epic mount of their choice.. or just an 'I <3 Blizzard' unique T-shirt-robe) Anyway, that would be ridiculously cheap for Blizzard to attract incredible numbers of talented fans offering their best...
The character feature/item editor would involve even less, namely:
The designers would have to make a 'dressing room' module, with the ability not only to view item models, but also to combine their features: you could add two spiked on your battle-axe, or a new rune-pattern onto your sword.
Again, the true power of this official fan-module would be the number of competitions Blizzard could launch. With a great number of amateur (or undiscovered?), but talented fans, literally hundreds of almost-new (customized) item models could be added to the game.
With the ability to change the texture (or just simply recolor) things, two things are solved: fans can now stop complaining about unique looks, and start designing them! And with some luck, they can even see their very creations spawn online!!
If the power of the module would allow, you could even design new features for characters (somehow The Sims-like) You can choose from a limited list (though still incredibly large) list of features and variables, and your job would be to create 'pretty-enough' faces, that could be added as a new choice at startup, when you create new characters. Of course, this would also involve a competition, where the winners would get their 'beauty-queens and kings' applied.
This kind of editor could utilize the same policy as the previously-mentioned one. No offline testing would be possible (no custom WOW), and participants of the competition would have to give all copyrights to Blizzard freely (but not exactly): They could win numerous and unique in-game gifts in turn...
So this would be entirely for contests, seeing as you can't just shove a custom dungeon into the game? Why not just use paper or photoshop? It'd be much less costly all around, and still be able to get the message across. Heck, I think it'd be fun to have a little writing contest to design the next instance.
I definately think that more... individuality? WOuld be nice in Wow. When designing your character there are not a heck of a lot of options to choose from... half a dozen hair styles, eyes, skin colours etc but that's it
Now if you look at City of Heroes / Villans the character generation there offers MUCH more in the way of design options, and I would love to see that, rather than have every other Pali look the same
Equipment would also be much cooler if it didn't all look the same. Some of the cooler looking weapons for instance are not actually all that great (Spirit on Warrior type weapons isn't exactly much use lol) and some of the truely great weapons barely look any different from the greens that drop, which has always seemed strange to me but there you go
It's not THAT much work to simply change the appearance of items and characters surely?
Map and item design contests!
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