Remove Character Levels and Gear Stats

[-Superman-]

I've got it figured out. Remove character levels and gear stats. I know, sounds crazy right? Well then, let me explain.

Everyone interested in buying a boost is willing to do so because they hate leveling. Others who love leveling, may be getting tired of the linear content and design. I say, SANDBOX. Are you a new character? Would you rather jump right into current content? Perfect. Head for the new zone, and do some questing to get your experience. Once you are comfortable with your class, and each of your spells, go see your local Itemizer. The Itemizer will tell you which items in your gear can be socketed, and gemmed, which can be enchanted, and which can be enhanced with additional armor.

Everything works on base stats. You, mobs, bosses. The only thing that changes is the number. If a mob has a number on it, that it the number of characters it actually takes to defeat it. If you enter in normal mode, it requires 10. In Heroic, 25. In Flex, the number will scale to meet the size of your group and the boss' power adjusts accordingly. Depending on your modifications only will determine how likely you are to succeed when working as a team.

Dungeon difficulty will adjust from 1-5 in normal and heroic mode. Of course, a 3 person heroic will be more technical than a 3 person normal. A solo dungeon will still pose a challenge, but NPCs will not be elites in normal dungeons, thus removing their more difficult rating. This means you can still solo older content in dungeons and raids for transmogs and they will scale to hit your level, or slightly above for a challenge.

This is the same as scaling content to match lvl 90s in Elwynn or lvl 1s in Pandaria. Every bit of the technical difficulty would still exist, but in this sandbox environment, you could go anywhere, do anything, quest with anyone. Experience bars would be converted to wisdom bars. The more content you complete, the more wisdom you gain. Wisdom is then converted to currency and provides you access to things you would have previously purchased with HP/JP/VP/CP.

You would still have to earn the gold to pay for respeccing, for flying, for itemizing. Professions would remain unchanged as would classes. You would still have to go to outlands to get cloth to level First Aid, or go to Dalaran for your JC Dailies. The only thing we are doing is changing the order in which you do things. You wanna start in Northrend and end in Silithus? Go for it. This sandbox element would make the content feel far different than it had in the past.

For those who just want to farm an area (ex - 90s farming rep at Timbermaw hold with 1 shotting mobs), you can simply toggle your wisdom to 5x. This means you hit 5 times harder than you normally do while content is scaled. Once you leave that zone, you are reverted back to normal. It may just be me, but something like THIS would keep me from buying a boost to 90 and allow me to jump right in wherever I like.

*** Please note: This is just my opinion. It was a random idea I had in response as to why I would rather purchase a boost to 90 than to quest for 90 levels. For me, this sounded like an alternative. Now, is it practical or probable for WoW? No. Will it ever be implemented? No. Am I asking for it to be implemented? No. Do I need to go find another game to play? No. I am very happy with WoW and love the end game content. Again, this was more of a pondered response to another thread. If you are a Lore Knight and are taking this thread too seriously, please find the nearest exit. I am happy to discuss opinions, but I will not argue with fanatics. ***

[-Superman-]

Wow, not a single rebuttal. Maybe I should email this idea to Blizz.

[Baracuda]

I'm a pvper so I would love to jump straight into full gear, everything else seems kinda weird though.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

This is just too much. Way too much.

[-Superman-]

This is just too much. Way too much.

How so? I think it would be a perfect fit to move past the squish and give the RPG an open world feel again.

[tss]

It would trivialize old content even further than it already is.

[-Superman-]

It would trivialize old content even further than it already is.

Not really. If you hated getting through Pandaria, this could give you an action plan to use another zone as a means to your ends. Imagine, instead of your last zone being Dread Wastes, it could be Silithus, or even Westfall.

[Arrashi]

No, i think not.

[snackfeat]

Seriously.. Why did you even bother writing this post? Surely you can't be stupid enough to believe that there is any chance in hell that blizzard will make such a massive change to the core of the game. They even recently said that making drastic changes to an almost 10 year old game is not a good idea.

[Durantye]

Completely change everything about a game with 8 million players, I'm sure share holders wouldn't argue at all against that...

[foxHeart]

I don't really see the relevancy of being able to quest anywhere you like. The meat of the game is endgame/raiding and I don't think many people are flipping over tables because they didn't get to level in a particular zone on the way to 90. I mean, sure, you could make old content relevant again and allow people to benefit from it in some way by rewarding them with currency for gear, but would just turn into completing the Loremaster achievement on every character trying to max out your "wisdom". And if gear stats are gone, why then how/why would they buy new items from a vendor?

As for the "go anywhere, do anything" philosophy - how is that supposed to work? You can't have character progression, which is the backbone of any MMO, and be able to do anything you want. There needs to be things to work toward - things you can't do. And since any successful MMO has longevity, getting to that point will take a lot of time. So yeah, you wouldn't be spending your time leveling, but you would instead be spending your time buying gear to make your character better so you can actually get brought along for raids. So, in reality the rift would still be there, and while you could say "hey this game has no levels, jump right in!", that wouldn't be true at all. The "levels" would still be levels, but under a different name (iLevel, really) and people would still be discriminated against and you wouldn't actually be able to do anything of value unless your friends felt like carrying you through content and funneling gear your way.

[-Superman-]

Seriously.. Why did you even bother writing this post? Surely you can't be stupid enough to believe that there is any chance in hell that blizzard will make such a massive change to the core of the game. They even recently said that making drastic changes to an almost 10 year old game is not a good idea.

The purpose was not to change WoW. The idea was to explore other possibilities. Anyone who writes something in a fan forum and expects Blizz to take it seriously is an idiot. I think we all know that. My point was, should they do a sequel, or when they think about setting up Titan, there are alternatives which could prevent them from hitting the same ceiling they are seeing in WoW.

[Itisamuh]

You're not the first to wish for such a thing (I'm right there with you, at least on the gear thing) but it simply isn't going to happen.

[hrugner]

I like the idea, it's pretty similar to GW2's method of making all content valuable throughout game-play; it's no surprise that they developed the game with the idea that there wouldn't be levels.

That said, a lot of long time WoW players I've talked to really hate that aspect of GW2. The words people use to describe what they don't like about it are all over the place and laced with hyperbole, but mostly boil down to feeling like the progress is directionless and meaningless.

So, if something like this was done with WoW's current set up, Blizzard would need to take care to use their whole map for new events and make those events very public in order to give those who aren't interested in self directed play something to grab on to.

Generally, it just isn't WoW though. People who play the game are really used to the treadmill, some even point to the content spamming portions of the game as the only relevant portions of the game; in that sort of fan environment, I don't think variety in play experience is going to win any points.

[grexly75]

I fthis sort of thing was done to WoW back when it was first created and released then maybe.. But doing such a big change in the way the game plays 10 years later would not work and possibly piss off a lot of people I mean folks QQ enough now with the game as it is..

[sociald1077]

To get more powerful, there has to be a path to follow. Something that starts out low power and moves to higher power.

[Venziir]

Nope, nope and nope. With a sidedish of nope and a large steaming hot cuppa nope.

[grexly75]

I like the idea, it's pretty similar to GW2's method of making all content valuable throughout game-play; it's no surprise that they developed the game with the idea that there wouldn't be levels.

That said, a lot of long time WoW players I've talked to really hate that aspect of GW2. The words people use to describe what they don't like about it are all over the place and laced with hyperbole, but mostly boil down to feeling like the progress is directionless and meaningless.

So, if something like this was done with WoW's current set up, Blizzard would need to take care to use their whole map for new events and make those events very public in order to give those who aren't interested in self directed play something to grab on to.

Generally, it just isn't WoW though. People who play the game are really used to the treadmill, some even point to the content spamming portions of the game as the only relevant portions of the game; in that sort of fan environment, I don't think variety in play experience is going to win any points.

Here is a good article of what is wrong with GW2 http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/12...-2-goes-wrong/ very interesting read and what the writer found what is wrong with it..

[hrugner]

Here is a good article of what is wrong with GW2 http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/12...-2-goes-wrong/ very interesting read and what the writer found what is wrong with it..

Just skimming through, the author has been trained to play MMOs like WoW and doesn't know it. He falls exactly into the group of people I mentioned in my post who need some additional hand holding; all of his post points to this, his commentary on crafting perhaps most of all. Thanks for the link though.

[Edds]

would like to jump into pvp without having to collect every pvp piece. but it wont happen.