Ion Hazzikostas on leveling and pristine servers

[Deleted]

The Wow team have a meeting at Blizzard HQ... it goes something like this.

Blizzard boss - "So we have a situation right now where we close down the largest Vanilla illegal server and its generated a massive discussion on the subject of legacy realms. It looks like a very large section of the Wow fanbase really want to play older versions of Wow throughout its history"

Blizzard dev - "Yes boss, even players who no longer subscribe to the game anymore are showing interest in the game if there were official legacy realms"

Blizzard boss - "So how can we fix this problem and give them what they want?"

Blizzard dev - "We could rebuild the old realms as they request sir."

Blizzard boss - "Much too expensive... how can we give them something cheap thats easy to do and keeps them happy?"

Blizzard dev - "Well the main characteristic of Vanilla Wow is slow levelling. I reckon thats all they want, so lets create a realm where levelling is alot slower"

Blizzard boss - "Thats exactly what they want, slow levelling. Lets create a current realm and remove all levelling boosts... we can call them Pristine Realms"

Blizzard miss the point... as usual.

That's exactly what I'm afraid of. In recent years developers got more things wrong than right, them missing point yet again wouldn't be a big surprise.

[Morbownz]

It would make the game feel even more disjointed if leveling was altered to be more challenging or time consuming. Imagine a new player going through all that trouble, 3 weeks of traveling the world fighting the bad guys just to get to level 100 just to spend most of their time in their garrison queuing for LFD/R.

[Shinv]

They need to do 3 things to fix the pacing without messing up how fast you can get to max level

1. zone scaling anyone who's played guild wars 2 know that this feature is truly a feature and allows you to quest the way you want creating more replay ability in leveling. There is no way they can fix the pacing problem without implementing some kind of zone scaling. Also for those concerned you won't be able to one shot low level mobs at max level for farming reasons get real that is such a non-issue easy math problem. You'll be able to one shot them.

2. This one is going to confuse some of you. Make leveling gear function like heirlooms without the exp bonus. Just make it so the stats on the gear scale less then herilooms if green quality and if blue there the same stat wise as regular herilooms. Also the gear will only scale to respective expansion. This will allow blizzard to better balance questing and dungeons without leaving the newbie eating the dust of veterans smashing through dungeons. Low level gear will still retain there value as cosmetics items throughout leveling and I have some ideas regarding professions that ties into this to not make anything go to waste. Also for fun epic quality gear will out stat heriloom gear in the respective level bracket. Yes that allows some leveling of twinking to resurface but more ways to play the game is always better.

3. Having questing teach people how to play again. Let there be quests in world again that require grouping. With a heirloom stat based gearing system for leveling tuning these encounters becomes far easier without alienating a new player. Let casted abilities from mobs hurt teach players to interrupt. Let there be single player class quest scenarios to help teach players there class. I think this would be very easy and fun to make for a developer. Reward more gold for questing. I know there's a flood of gold in the market because of garrisons but that's no reason to punish returning/ new players. If blizzard is going to try to fix level, let players know you want them to enjoy your game and feel rewarded.

I know it sounds like a lot and it kind of is but its the only way I figure to fix the pacing while making questing more rewarding without making it take necessarily longer to level for those who want power through everything.

[Foj]

Wow, you really are quite delusional, huh?

How about we decouple the expansions with the boosts and get the old price again?

Barring that, how about we don't call the boosts you have to pay for "free" like imbeciles?

That said, I do like that you apparently accept the rest of my post as you being wrong and decided to argue what I can only hope is semantics. It's that, ignorance, or an attempt to dodge a losing argument.

I think you should find a game you can play for free. Can I recommend Dwarf Fortress.

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It would make the game feel even more disjointed if leveling was altered to be more challenging or time consuming. Imagine a new player going through all that trouble, 3 weeks of traveling the world fighting the bad guys just to get to level 100 just to spend most of their time in their garrison queuing for LFD/R.

Why would a new player not just push the "90" button?

[Quincey]

It would make the game feel even more disjointed if leveling was altered to be more challenging or time consuming. Imagine a new player going through all that trouble, 3 weeks of traveling the world fighting the bad guys just to get to level 100 just to spend most of their time in their garrison queuing for LFD/R.

Thats the worst argument I've ever heard.

The end game is currently bad so the leveling should be bad too?

[Voidism]

The Wow team have a meeting at Blizzard HQ... it goes something like this.

Blizzard boss - "So we have a situation right now where we close down the largest Vanilla illegal server and its generated a massive discussion on the subject of legacy realms. It looks like a very large section of the Wow fanbase really want to play older versions of Wow throughout its history"

Blizzard dev - "Yes boss, even players who no longer subscribe to the game anymore are showing interest in the game if there were official legacy realms"

Blizzard boss - "So how can we fix this problem and give them what they want?"

Blizzard dev - "We could rebuild the old realms as they request sir."

Blizzard boss - "Much too expensive... how can we give them something cheap thats easy to do and keeps them happy?"

Blizzard dev - "Well the main characteristic of Vanilla Wow is slow levelling. I reckon thats all they want, so lets create a realm where levelling is alot slower"

Blizzard boss - "Thats exactly what they want, slow levelling. Lets create a current realm and remove all levelling boosts... we can call them Pristine Realms"

Blizzard miss the point... as usual.

That's my fear. And in true Blizzard style it will probably be at the extreme end too.

[Daffan]

Or they could, y'know, just fix their motherfucking game.

We don't need fucking pristine servers, we don't need Nostalrius, we need them to fix the levelling process in normal WoW.

People don't want legacy servers or modified pristine servers just for leveling.

A lot of people don't like catchup mechanics. That's basically the exact same thing as fast leveling.

Just called "Fast gearing" where 90% of the end game is obsolete.

boost to 100/fast leveling = 705baleful/700-710 pvp gear

[Roamingstorm]

If they did the scaling thing I think it would solve a lot of problems to be honest. The reason why I hate leveling isn't the process, it's the fact that let's say for example recently going into Westfall I probably didn't even do half the zone and it was already telling me to move on. Which sucks because to be honest a lot of the low leveling zones are actually really fun and cool.

[Gasblossom]

Think people need to get over this legacy server crap though, technology and gaming in particular is all about moving forward, new designs, new features all that. Regressing backwards is pointless. Half of those complaining about the "good old days" aren't even subbed lol go play Runescape or something while the rest of us advance with more and better content.

This sentiment is misguided considering how many subs they have lost and how quickly the "expansion bump" erodes. A fleshed out leveling experience is what will get new people to play the game. Keeping the 30 year old + crowd engaged is not good enough. They need new players to fall in love with their characters and giving them all boosts makes the character a throw away thing that took no effort and is easier to abandon.

[Segus1992]

I think you should find a game you can play for free. Can I recommend Dwarf Fortress.

Well, thanks for confirming it, I guess.

[Rafoel]

Thats the worst argument I've ever heard.

The end game is currently bad so the leveling should be bad too?

I heard worse - "it's good that the game is bad as I don't have to play it and can focus on other things".

[Mofogo]

I despise leveling. I only have 2 main max level characters because of it. I'm trying to level but its either spam dungeon heals or when I try to quest get ganked on the PVP server that my friends are on (yes I know its a choice). And by ganked I mean random mage flying around ice lancing me out of the air repeatedly type ganked.

I would pay for a boost if it weren't $60. I would've done it in a heart beat if it was $25. I have a finite amount of time to 'dedicate' to playing, and that goes to 2 raid nights. Outside of that, maybe an hour here or there.

When I hear them say 'because we now have the boost mechanism' all I really here is 'activision is pushing us to make leveling slow again in order to boost sales'. I could understand this ONLY if they made leveling without looms slow enough to not outlevel zones while leveling with full looms would retain current rates. Anything else is just a ploy to get more boost money, which seems to be the way blizzard has approached this game since merging with Activision.

[Morbownz]

Why would a new player not just push the "90" button?

Well they could, once. But the point of the discussion was more aimed towards the benefit/hindrance of scaling the current leveling experience before level 90.

Thats the worst argument I've ever heard.

Since you've been on here since Sep 2009, I take that as a compliment, thank you.

The end game is currently bad so the leveling should be bad too?

Who said the game is bad? I was talking more about continuity, I have played this game since the very end of 2005 and I have always felt that the leveling pacing reflected the pacing of endgame character progression. It has gotten easier to level and easier to gear up.
Imagine the current game with no Tanaan, LFD/R and all heroics are significantly more challenging, raiding starts with Heroic difficulty. You are probably not going to have time to play 6 alts like you can now. The speed of leveling makes more sense now with the current endgame model, you can very easily get your character to a point where you can accomplish most things outside of raiding.

[Foj]

Well they could, once. But the point of the discussion was more aimed towards the benefit/hindrance of scaling the current leveling experience before level 90.

I honestly don't know who the leveling experience is intended for these days. Obviously for most of WoW's existence it was intended for new players. Until early in Cataclysm, MOST active players never got a character to max level.

Not knowing the audience for leveling, I'm not sure what the point of rebalancing it is. Low-level PvP is fun, sure, but I don't know, given that no one seems to give a shit about the "experience" any longer, maybe the best thing to do with leveling is to RADICALLY rework it, or just shoot it in the head.

[KyrtF]

Last night there was some talk about leveling pacing, and how Blizzard is aware that they've made it too
easy and too fast.
That's probably the reason they've dicussed pristine servers internally for a while now.

The whole need for leveling to max level fast is not needed any more since they've introduced ways
to boost a character, or so he says. Watch that part of the interview here:

Levelling is too fast...too easy...and worst of all, too boring.

Blizzard need to get rid of the XP bonus on heirlooms, and limit XP to quests and elite MoBs while ramping up the difficulty. If they want to do it right, they should do a level squish as well. But now that we have boosts, it shouldn't matter if levelling takes 1 week or 10....so long as it is fun and satisfying.