[WoW] 2.3 Levelling changes - some details released

[Horse]

It'd be interesting for a game to finally move out of the denial that playing alts are part of the progression for a single player (gotta catch 'em all!) Yeah, making a game where everyone depends on each other is "ideal."

But power players will level alts to not need to rely on others, and nothing stretches out the game replayability like an alt - cash in pocket for the powers that be.

We're seeing signs of that with the alts getting insta items through the mail.

Something that reduces exp needed per level based on # of chars meeting a certain criteria would be great. Unlocking legacy quests for alts (hi there deathknight dynamic applied to all alts). IE, you've cleared Dire Maul, so all of the chars you make on your account will get the quest or flag Royal Family that grants something extra every time you clear DM.

Essentially take the title concept and have that title grant all of your alts something. Tabula Rasa is interesting where all of your chars share the same last name. Expand on that idea somehow. Family wouldn't make sense with the races in WoW, but perhaps you can have your own "Eternal Order of _____" that is basically a gang consisting of you and your alts.

[TheCutlery]

Originally Posted by yknits

And as long as I am on a rant about wow...... tell me this..... why are there 45 fucking zones to level to 60?

Wow should have had 6 zones and then an instance in each zone. That makes 12 zones to level to 60 in. The rest of the zones in wow should have been max level. There is way too much wasted realestate in wow.

Yeah, I totally want 2000 people in my zone killing the shit I'm trying to kill. That would make for a much better gaming experience.

Stick to posting about games and stay away from designing them. You don't know shit.

[Samflam]

Originally Posted by yknits

The one thing I miss was sitting in DL, Seb for hours killing the same shit.

That's funny; that's one thing I don't miss from EQ at all.
BUT WHO IS RIGHT

[Horse]

Originally Posted by yknits

I really dont know why they refuse to increase group xp in nearly every MMO. think of faster group xp as a means to a community. Wow, for example, would still be incredibly solo friendly if they stopped cutting the group XP and then adding a joke of a group bonus. How about each person gets max XP from the mob AND then add a group bonus on top of it.

Yea, it's true that making the hardest thing to pull off (grouping in wow) should be the most rewarding. The issue is that there is a misbalance between the time it takes to obtain a group and the ease of everything once you're in a group.

All of the sudden grouping is the way of ZEN. The wow community is loosely held together. If grouping were the prefered method from the start, the community would be tighter knit.

What about the idea that people will find the community if they want it? I personally don't want WoW to be my social hub, and don't need it to make friends.

I think it is a better move to not require a tightly knit community to progress -if you think WoW is a graveyard you should recall those games where grouping was mandatory for certain classes at a low level. They didn't encourage new people at all.

The one thing I miss was sitting in DL, Seb for hours killing the same shit.

Funny, that's the one thing that kept a couple million people from playing EQ.

It wasn't that killing the same shit was as fun as wow is now, but the group aspect was much better. EQ forced you to group. Now Wow could entice people to group instead of force and it would achieve nearly the same result.

It's just a different experience. When I'm playing the game I prefer the lack of downtime and repetition. I like the linear plow through a dungeon. I wish there was more. I want a dungeon that's 1 gigantic suppression room where after a fevered 30 mins you look at the pile of corpses and realize you were holding your breath at the end when mana was low. That existed in EQ at times, it made all the shitty slow garbage worth it. So I don't really think monotonous boredom is a valid mechanic for making the rest of the game seem more exiting ;P

I've already been subjected to

"Pulling.........................." "Incoming!........................"
"Attacking......................................... ....................."
"Medding........................................... ......................................"

Zzz.

And as long as I am on a rant about wow...... tell me this..... why are there 45 fucking zones to level to 60?

Wow should have had 6 zones and then an instance in each zone. That makes 12 zones to level to 60 in. The rest of the zones in wow should have been max level. There is way too much wasted realestate in wow.

Today's wasted real estate is tomorrow's LDoN.

It is still a rather epic experience to level up in WoW for the first time. The only part that is sorely, sorely lacking is doing things as a group and getting that real sense of "I could not do this alone, but the group has enabled me to." And it has totally frontloaded 1-70 as being a dps grinder. It is no surprise that healer dropoff is where it is with newer players.

If it was compressed the way you're claiming it would have been far more congested 1-60. Just like Outlands was at launch, permanently. So basically you'd be sacrificing the initial experience for making the newbie experience better when 90%+ of your server is near or at cap.

Besides, how would they cram that much more into the zones without making the quests and NPCs on top of each other? I would vomit if every 5 levels was a zone like STV. One of those is enough.

Future MMO makers need to treat 1-max as a tutorial and then have the rest of the game revolve around gear. You can still have fun killing shit without leveling. That xp bar hasn't moved on my character since I hit 70. I still find myself logging in to get gear. I still pay my dues.

It's just impossible to make a raidboss tutorial, or to expect people to utilize a spec that could mean massive downtime.

(Of course speccing should be a nonissue. Gotta love turning down one of the rare dungeon crawl invites you get while levelling because you're "not a heal spec.")

Maybe give healers a tank pet that can taunt, and tank multiple mobs. You could control it like MC by pressing a button. That'd train them to heal ;P

[Dis]

The reason why you could grind endless on a "camp" spot, killing the same shit over and over again was because of AAs plain and simple. It was nearly impossibly to come to a point in EQ where you could not progress your character any further. So grinding the same mobs was tolerable because it progressed your character further through AAs. If WoW had a similar AA design you would see a lot more people LFG I bet.

[Horse]

I'm going to continue harping on my "levelling a healer" gripe:


Healers should get a pet that can tank / dps.

Two dps classes get this so that they can do dps. Why isn't there something that enables levelling as a healing spec?

Those pets, in PVP, allow people to prevent damage / action from enemies. The same could be the case for healers. This would also train newer players in what their endgame roles will be, rather than have them take (and then rabidly justify) their dps roles from 1-60+ then suddenly switch.

It is also obnoxious to basically level up as this DPS spec and kill 1-70 getting dps items instead of healing items.

I wonder if this is what that leaked out "champion" stuff was. I'm about to hit outlands on my paladin. And Holy is not an option simply because I will not find anyone to group with at any decent rate, and the game is mostly solo.

So I'll get some quest reward and see "yes, clear upgrade that will help me level faster" vs. "item that makes me a more viable healer at this point." And I will always choose the dps item.

Sucks.

[Pyros]

Never found healing spec not being able to level as efficiently to be an issue, because contrary to other games before, you can actually spec for dps and do good(or even better depending on class, such as ferals or shadow priests). You gear yourself with green crap you'll replace in your first 5 runs into a max lvl instance. The only thing that might be worth keeping, you'll get it from 68+ quests, and at this point you can spec holy and just level in groups with pugs and stuff. It's not like you can't level as a healing spec either, it's just slower, but it's still doable. It sucks probably more for priests than other classes, but well you try to level with a prot warrior, it's just as bad.

If you don't have a a set group to run instances with, just don't spec healing for leveling, the only thing you'd save from having a specific set of rule with a pet and whatelse so healing specs are equal at leveling would be the 1-5g for the respec once you hit cap(cost might vary if you need to respec a few times during leveling to adjust templates). Is that really worth it?

[Horse]

Right - but if I'm playing the game to be a healer, what you're saying adds up to me starting this at level 68.

Couple this 1-68 "experience" with the newfound awesome utility/viability of all of the offspecs you'd use to level up instead of your healer, it is a hard sell. I just think there's a way to promote healing from 1 to 70. Not promote some dps version of a healer from 1 to 68 and having people "discover" that it might be easier to find a group as a pure healer somewhere relatively late into the game.

[Twobit Whore]

Holy priests can solo just fine. Yes, it's slow. And it's boring, but if you didn't know any better it would all be new to you.

[Horse]

Sure, but it would take someone special to be casting 99% pew pew spells/abilities and 1% healing spells and decide "I'm going to enhance the HELL out of that 1%, even though I've played the game for three weeks and haven't even seen another person."

Especially when the shadow tree is so well made and easy to parse the benefits of immediately (or the prot, ret, feral, balance, ele, enh etc.)

Someone intentionally levelling as holy sounds like they need parental supervision to tell them to stop fucking around or else they won't get a game card next month.

When I first levelled, I was able to do nothing but group, from the moment I logged on to logging off, at around 45 as a healer. I've probably not even gotten 3 invites total since with alts.

[Samflam]

Originally Posted by Twobit Whore

Holy priests can solo just fine. Yes, it's slow. And it's boring, but if you didn't know any better it would all be new to you.

Having done exactly this I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

[dak]

If every 5-man in WoW from level 20 to 70 was accessible at any level, scaled in difficulty according to players in the instance(like CoH), had a new loot table every 5 levels and could all be accessed from a central hub in every major city would WoW be a better game?

Or would having all content at once = less content in the end?

[Jabberwhacky]

All content at once at the release of a game? Bad.

All content at once 3 years in? OK.

[Pyros]

Well considering the game is sitll a mmo, you can always decide to level with someone else as a healing spec healer, just leveling during certain hours and such with your friend(who'd have to not be a healer I guess ^^). Obviously if you're gonna duo to 70, it's still better to have a dps spec on your healer, but at least you can level rather efficiently as a healer if you group with a rogue a warrior or someone like that, and you can do elite quests on the way too.
But I don't really understand your problem with it, you're not forced into a shitty spec to level(and even then, you can solo, it blows, but holy priest/paladin isn't all that terrible compared to older games), if you find a friend you can play full healer(grouping being the concept of mmos and all), so while it might be cool to have a tanking pet you can heal, it sounds like a waste of ressources time to make it, especially since leveling in wow is so fast(hell even with a healing spec I'm sure you can hit 70 in 2-3weeks real time). Also I don't think a tank would help that much, you'd probably want a dps pet to compensate for your lack of dps, and then you'd have serious balance issues if the best healer spec in the game also has awesome dps in the form of a pet that doesn't require gear.

As for the instances unlocked and such, it's cool to recycle your old content and maybe they should think about it, but well I think it'd be a pain to scale all instances and loot. Same point as the healing spec stuff, leveling is so fast, investing ressources to redesign how instances work just so people can level alt a bit faster doesn't feel worth it.

Back when I was playing wow, my last char I lvled(BE paladin at BC release) was the 14th char I got to 60(counting beta). It never was hard or long(well I guess warrior without twinking gear somewhat sucked), it was taking from 4 to 6days played everytime, and I got to do every instance at least once, even the terrible ones like blackfathom deeps. The only instance which I think would benefit from scaling would be uldaman, it's rare you find a group that's able to finish it(mainly because monsters at entrance are like 36, and the end is like 47) and the final fight is probably the first cool fight in all wow. Hell there's raiding bosses that are more boring than this one ^^.

[Draegan]

Can you reformat that post please?