Today I was reading an article over at dc-mmo. The article talks about World of Warcrafts new forum policy…

The first and most significant change is that in the near future, anyone posting or replying to a post on official Blizzard forums will be doing so using their Real ID — that is, their real-life first and last name — with the option to also display the name of their primary in-game character alongside it. These changes will go into effect on all StarCraft II forums with the launch of the new community site prior to the July 27 release of the game, with the World of Warcraft site and forums following suit near the launch of Cataclysm. Certain classic forums, including the classic Battle.net forums, will remain unchanged.

Anyone who has EVER spent any amount of time on a forum has experience dealing with assholes. Im not sure why forum boards tend to bring out the freaks, but they do. As I was reading the article I started thinking about my own personal experience with World of Warcraft. I go in cycles of loving, liking, and then hating the game. I usually at some point during this cycle will cancel my account for some reason or another. I am currently in such a place.

One of the main reasons I go up and down in my love, like, and hatred for WoW are the players themselves. In WoW one of the major parts of the game are instances. Unlike a mission or quest, you CAN Not complete an instance by yourself. You have to play with other players! Unless you are blessed to have friends you know and trust who can help you fill a full group, you will eventually have to play with complete strangers.

Playing an instance, as I said before, is not something you can do by yourself. So when you choose to go through an instance, which for some can be a several hour process from start to finish, its important to make sure you have a group of good players that are with you to the end. Right now however there is no way to tell if the player you are teamed with is any good or not. For all you know the player next to you could be planning on going after one thing in the instance and ditching as soon as they have what they want, leaving the party high and dry.

What I would love to see is the ability to rate members of a party, and add comments. How much better of an experience would it be, when running an instance, if everyone was trying to play their best so they get a good rating at the end. The way I see it would be simple. Any time a group is formed, when someone leaves the group, all members have a pop up asking them to rate and comment on the player. Then when someone is putting a group together the group leader can see each players rating and decide to either keep that player or kick him out do to a bad rating. The rating could also include what instances the player has gone through, and how many times they have gone through. How useful and helpful would such a system be? I see it as a complete game changer.

The question is will it ever happen?