Should WoW have taken the D&D approach to monster power?

[mogulkhan]

/SIGN

I couldn't agree with you more. I played WC3 the other night for some nostalgia and the same thing popped into my head.

this

[Lycann]

Let me qualify this statement first. In Dungeons & Dragons the race , class or a combination of both would determine the difficulty of the adversary. You would never find, for instance, level 1 players fighting Liches, Drow, Mindflayers and other powerful creatures. This is simply because these creatures are fierce adversaries and only experienced adventurers can take them down.

Vanilla WoW used to have a sense of that, I think. Abominations were powerful units in WC3, and the first two aboms that Alliance players encountered in classic WoW were elites, one in Duskwood and one in Andorhal. Attempting to solo them was suicide - attempting to take them down with a group that wasn't appropriate level was also difficult.

Skip ahead to Cata and we see that Blizzard have creatures with a huge range in levels. Trolls encounter a Naga Sea Witch at level 5ish, Forsaken kill many Alliance 7th Legion troopers (the elite of the Alliance army) etc.

Now, maybe I'm too old school, but I would think that a certain type of creature, for example Doom Guards, should never appear at low levels. I remember playing Baldur's Gate 2 that seeing a Beholder or Mindflayer was a crap-your-pants experience - just looking at the model you knew you're in for a rough ride.

I know that they are completely different types of game, and that Blizz do it for variety and excitement at low levels, but I was just wondering if anyone shared my views that certain monsters should have levels indicative of their power in lore.

mobs get bigger the higher level they! Does that count?

[Richtea]

I must say I disagree, and I think you've fallen into the "levels actually mean something" trap. Or do you actually believe even at level 60 (let alone 70, 80), the Gnomes couldn't spare a single character to clear out Gnomeregan? Or the Trolls the Echo Isles?
DnD really gets it wrong with monsters of certain minimum level IMO. The point of playing is to be a hero, and as a hero you vanquish powerful foes wherever you find them. If you were relegated to fighting off lesser foes for the first 2/3 of your game, far fewer people would ever get to the end-game.

[meckeard]

I like seeing similar mobs.

Also, it allows Blizz to re-use models. As long as they don't do it too often I don't mind.

[Rakkam]

Oh man back in EQ2 there were certain mobtypes that as soon as you saw them you didnt need to look at the level, you were allready dead or trying to run away (but you were allready dead).

I like this idea.

[shadowkras]

You would never find, for instance, level 1 players fighting Liches, Drow, Mindflayers and other powerful creatures. This is simply because these creatures are fierce adversaries and only experienced adventurers can take them down.

Thats not correct, encounters are either completely random or strictly chosen by the game master, and even being random is a choice of the game master in trusting the tables that put sea monsters in the middle of a desert.

That being said, a less arbitrary gamemaster (i always gave players the freedom to do whatever they wanted, with consequences) will let lv1 players fight a red dragon if they put effort on locating one and getting to her lair. And eventually die, of course.
Unless you control your players like a eletronic RPG does (include wow into that), there is no way you will always make encounters to be on same difficult as the player's strenght. Even wow will let lv1 players take the zepelin to northrend and get owned by the first lv68 trash mob there. Lore wise, the bears of northrend and 50 times stronger than the bears of ironforge?

Alternativelly, a really good game master will use the monster's mannual(s) as reference, not rule of thumb. I could and would put a lv1 mindflayer in the game for the sake of the story and lore, players would have to defeat him (or not, so story goes on), and he obviously wouldnt have the same hitdices as the example in the monster's mannual, he would be adjusted so a group of lv1 adventurers can defeat him (or not, and story goes on...).
Iv put players against a lv12 green dragon when they were all lv5-6, by the GM tables, thats a suicide encounter. But they had a gimmick, they were helped by an npc and had extra resistance to the breath attacks and one of players was taught how to make potions of fly, so they planned the battle used them in a smart way to fight the dragon. I did account their tactics and made the dragon fight them accordingly, they managed to beat him by being smart. Certainly a difficult and engaging encounter, but far from impossible.

Level means very little to the RPG part of the game, pretty much doesnt mean a thing. Its just a mechanic created for us, players, not for our characters. Experience is a term used to measure increase in power for the mechanic part of the game.
We could effectivelly be lv1 forever, as long as we learned new spells, talents and got more health/mana, and all monsters would be the same level as we are (or not, following the GM rule i previously explained). Some RPGs adopt that kind of mechanic, and it works great for them.

You would never find, for instance, level 1 players fighting Liches, Drow, Mindflayers and other powerful creatures. This is simply because these creatures are fierce adversaries and only experienced adventurers can take them down.

And thats ONLY because you know the creatures from somewhere else, probably by reading the monster mannual. Otherwise you wouldnt have a clue of their power in the game mechanics.
First time i played neverwinter nights, i saw that devourer of minds (the brain with legs), i had no clue what their power was, so i totally didnt know what to expect, if they were easy or impossible at lv3-4, it surprised me when the thing started jumping from npc to npc and trying to kill me.

Best RPG experience comes when players arent advocate of rules and/or dont know everything about the game yet.

[Shinoashi]

Another prime example of "people will complain about anything and everything".

I personally like this new addition. It makes me feel like I am actually apart of something while leveling another alt. Instead of the humdrum basic crap I dealt with while leveling 4 other characters to 80. Hell, I used to only dungeon or pvp level, because I hated questing. Now I'm so wrapped up in the quests I level much faster and are enjoying it completely.

Stop complaining and enjoy the fact that you actually get sucked into the stories now.

also what guy above me said

[mysticx]

No thanks, spending up to level 40 or so (Just an arbitrary number there :P ) killing spiders, boars and the occasional few defias bandits would be boring as hell, "World of pestcontrol-craft" anybody?

Let Blizz shake things up a bit with cool-looking mobs in levelling quests, it beats old Nesingwary quests in the "Kill 30 tigers, ok thanks, now kill 30 slightly bigger tigers"-front, granted when you get a "Kill 10 dreadlords"-quest at level 20 or so, the sparkle is going to wear off (Don't get to chainkill dreadlords until L58 in Hellfire peninsula :P ), but we're a long way from that yet...

[Gumdb]

Couldnt agree more with the OP.

[FengHouzi]

You have to suspend reality a little bit. In "reality" all the boars in the game are the same level. A boar is a boar is a boar. If they scaled with your level or level didn't matter, people would simply grind in elwynn forest until they were max level, or immediately go to ICC and attempt to raid. Levels are just a way to gate the content so you learn, take your time, and have fun.

[rantus]

To a certain extent, this would be a good idea, but I wouldn't want it to be always in place. Levels don't mean much in lore, hence why level 5 murlocs and gnolls can still pose a threat to farming in Elwynn when level 80 guards from SW could otherwise pwn them.

For example, wolves in Borean Tundra obviously aren't really thousands of times stronger than Elwynn wolves, its just for the purposes of the game.

[Rukh]

I agree that it does remove a certain sense of immersion from the game, but on the other hand, I'm not sure how you'd fit accurate power levels in to a game such as this. I don't think it would work all that well.

[Deleted]

Another prime example of "people will complain about anything and everything".

I personally like this new addition. It makes me feel like I am actually apart of something while leveling another alt. Instead of the humdrum basic crap I dealt with while leveling 4 other characters to 80. Hell, I used to only dungeon or pvp level, because I hated questing. Now I'm so wrapped up in the quests I level much faster and are enjoying it completely.

Stop complaining and enjoy the fact that you actually get sucked into the stories now.

also what guy above me said

I fear people are misinterpreting my original post a little bit. I totally appreciate comments about gameplay and keeping low level quests interesting. My only problem is seeing a creature that is in-lore incredibly powerful being defeated by a character with a whopping 2 to 5 abilities on their bar.

And to just qualify that further, I'm only talking about a select few creatures. Doom Guards, Infernals, 7th Legion, Kor'Kron ... anything that is supposed to be elite, the best of the best.