Tuesday, June 16, 2009
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In response to a post over at The Light’s Vanguard. This is all stream of consciousness, just throwing out ideas to see what sticks. Been a while since I did anything other than tweet, so bear with me. |
Can you imagine how far away the endgame in World of Warcraft will be after the next expansion or the one after that? Bringing a new Ninja or Rune Knight up to level 1000 in Disgaea is frightening enough, and you can get levels by the tens and twenties in the Cave of Trials. The fact is, I want to start a rogue or hunter. I feel like I should start sometime before there are 100+ levels to grind through.
I definitely see the point about marginalizing new characters at least, and definately new players. A new character still needs to do the Old World and Outlands before they are even slightly relevant, and OW Azeroth is the lion’s share of your play time. The huge amount of experience you get from questing in Outlands and Northrend make the run from 60-70 and 70-80 faster than the 1-60 grind, even though they individually require more experience for their ten level runs than the entirety of the run to 60. I’d like to see less begging and more genuine aid from older players to new ones, and I can only think of one way to really work that angle: appeal to the player’s greed. There needs to be some tangible reason for 80’s to be hanging out in the Old World, and some reason for them then to help people. To that end, I would support restructuring crafting to require old world mats at all skill levels, and adding level equivalent loot to each dungeon boss.
Changing crafting would get some higher level people back physically into the Old World. There would still need to be an increased relevance of crafting to the endgame. Would this lead to the oldschool reliance on Pots/flasks or the TBC thing with Drums? I don’t know. I love crafting though and would enjoy seeing it be a part of the game again. That would give players a reason to be back in Kalimdor/Eastern Kingdoms that benefits them directly and isn’t a title or mount. An example: remove Fel Iron and Cobalt bolts from the game and replace them with the low level Copper. This creates a market for Copper Bars and makes the previously useless after Skill Level 50 Bolts useful to players of all levels. There is a side point about the ease of Jewelcrafting, but I’ll make that a post for later. This would keep players coming back to the Old World.
Additionally, put in some kind of tangible reward for higher level players helping out lower levels. If I’m running somebody through the Hell-that-is-Gnomer, I want to be compensated for doing so, at least as much as I’d be getting for my dailies. A dude from the Horde Guild was on me to run him through SFK and what I wanted to say was “Forget low level dungeons. The Blues can be completely replaced in less than a session of playtime (even if you get them at the lowest level possible). That is how easy leveling is.” I said nothing, because I am a jerk. Blizzard need to add in some stuff where if you are in a party and you kill a low level boss then you get some kind of “Satchel of Spoils” that would hold world-drops/gold/gems/profession mats/badges/something good. Level appropriate for the person picking it up, no getting level 80 drops at 50 for helping some dude through Gnomer. This would require a per-day cap, or people would exploit the system. Something like “Kill a boss where another player in your party gets experience or honor and you get the bag, but only 20 a day.” sort of thing. I don’t know, it is an innaccurate solution.
What I don’t want to see is what Light’s Vanguard called “The Death Knight Solution” where you would start a character at an advanced level with good gear and bypass the entirety of the entry levels. The Old World is a great area. It has many varied zones, great writing, multiple seemingly unrelated plotlines that intersect and intertwine. You spend more time there than in Outland or Northrend. The fact that once you leave Westfall you never look back is a weakness not a strength. I would love to see more high level characters running around remembering how impressive BRD was, especially now that you have whole groups of people who never ran Mara or even Stratholme.
One problem I forsee, is that higher level players would be at an advantage versus lower levels in gathering and exploting resource nodes. The advantage over starting players lessens after level 20 with mounts being available shortly after your average person has run Deadmines/Wailing Caverns. Additionally, this would make leveling on a PVP server heinous beyond belief. I can only hope that people from both factions would be helpful to their respective Noobs. I’d love to see more World PVP. I actually enjoyed Southshore vs. Tarren Mill. Really enjoyed it, not just Rose Colored Glasses enjoyed it.
ASIDE: The Rogue looks like a fun class, but leveling him would be FAR harder than a hunter.
Tags:Old World,World of warcraft.
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