Timeless Isle as a Levelling Zone?

[Annarion]

I'm actually having a lot of fun with the Timeless Isle right now, although the speed with which I have geared my alts is a little silly. Nevertheless, it's not as if they're hit-capped or have set bonuses or anything. But, I had started to think as I rushed around to experience events and tag rares and find chests, what if they used the Timeless Isle model as a levelling zone? Imagine with me if you will,

You've just stepped through the Dark Portal, Hellfire Peninsula stretches away in front of you. A stream of Alliance and Horde troops pass by you as you take in the vista. Down the great stairs, conflict rages as demons smash against the temporary battlements and the troops holding the line.

A quest-giver stands nearby, the quest? Defence! Assist the troops fend off the demonic assault and destroy their commander. You plunge into battle, defeating demon after demon, each additional player helping to stem the flow and eventually turn the tide. If there aren’t enough players around, the npcs gain a damage buff that means that if the zone is deserted later on, you’d still be able to proceed. After the demon commander is defeated, you take a quest to head to your stronghold further into the zone. All the while, all over the zone, demons spawn from portals and head to random objectives, besieging the towns, ransacking ruins, casting great summoning spells to bring in elite monsters. Rather than going through a specific set of quests, you react to whatever is happening, and head there to fend it off. Defending villages of Mag’har or secondary profession events like an archeological dig or a cooking event to feed the troops or refugees. Each event you succeed in pushes forward an equivalent to a rep bar, which gives you access to more areas and different story events. Eventually the story culminates in a massive open-world boss battle, rewarding a powerful weapon, and unlocking the way into Zangarmarsh.

I truly feel like this model could replace the static quest model that we’ve seen until now. I’m interested in critiques and suggestions, so have at her.

[Coldhearth]

The problem with the "open world" model used with Battlefield Barrens and Timeless Isle is that it gets boring and stale incredibly fast. There's no real story or anything exciting going on. Just running around looting chests and killing things. On the servers I play on, the place is already becoming a ghost town as the grinders get their mounts and vacate the place. It has no lasting value.

[Aherooffools]

The problem with the "open world" model used with Battlefield Barrens and Timeless Isle is that it gets boring and stale incredibly fast. There's no real story or anything exciting going on. Just running around looting chests and killing things. On the servers I play on, the place is already becoming a ghost town as the grinders get their mounts and vacate the place. It has no lasting value.

^this
/10char

Don't post "This" posts

[Skorpionss]

The problem with the "open world" model used with Battlefield Barrens and Timeless Isle is that it gets boring and stale incredibly fast. There's no real story or anything exciting going on. Just running around looting chests and killing things. On the servers I play on, the place is already becoming a ghost town as the grinders get their mounts and vacate the place. It has no lasting value.

It's a leveling zone... it's supposed to get boring and stale... you're not supposed to be there more than a day till u outlevel it. And they could have a bit more quests for story

I'd rather have 10 voice acted quests with intense story than have 100 quests picking up boogers for w/e nobody npc.

[eschatological]

The problem with the "dynamic"-ness of zones like this is that they'll never be truly dynamic due to the fear on the part of devs to make near-permanent or permanent changes to a place based on the events which have taken place. Thus, because the event chain essentially swings back and forth on a pendulum (or outright resets), it becomes simply a grind with a flow through a zone. It happened in GW2, it happened in Battlefield: Barrens, it'll happen soon enough in Timeless Isles.

Now, a game like EQ Next is saying it'll have permanent events, and different servers may be completely different from each other - that might be fascinating, tbh.

[Monteverdi]

I'd love to see the timeless isle model be used in conjunction with traditional questing, but not as a replacement

[Jokubas]

I truly feel like this model could replace the static quest model that we’ve seen until now. I’m interested in critiques and suggestions, so have at her.

I really, really hope so (well, the current questing could remain an option). After doing Mists of Pandaria's leveling, I don't think I can do it again. I still love the game, but the on-rails, grindy nature of leveling has just gotten to me after these nine years. >_<

[hablix]

Leveling definitely needs more options. Should it "replace" questing? No, but it should be incorporated into the leveling experience. Dynamic events and rare hunting would be a diversion from the monotony of questing on rails if nothing else. WoW is actually behind the times compared to a number of other modern MMOs when it comes to leveling options, even if it has questing down to a science.

[Deleted]

Dear gods, I sure hope they won't do that. This sounds soo much like the stupid leveling in GW2 .. urgh.

Don't get me wrong, it sounds awesome and it will be awesome for.. a month? Maybe two? At which point it'll get annoying or anti-climatic when you're running around all by yourself? And have a dozen events pop up at the same time which you can't deal with all at the same time so they start disabling entrance to instances for hours, get rid of merchants, or other stuff.

[Outofmana]

So it'll just be like Guildwars 2 , running from event to event and after 1/2 days you are bored out of your mind and /uninstall. No thanks. (worst 60E ever spent).

[Grubjuice]

at first i got a several gear items for my characters, but then i stalled out, and have had no BoA gear drops for several days.

damn RNG.


also i like the structure of quests, so i would never want quests to be eliminated or even sidelined, but always play an important role in character progression.

[MoanaLisa]

I'm pretty much with Monteverdi on this one. Why everyone has to argue that a leveling zone should be all one thing or all another thing is curious. It can be a mix of both. In some ways, leveling zones are that way now since if you don't want to do quests you can grind mobs. All you'd really need to add would be some sort of small rep reward for the mobs and you'd be halfway there. The only problem is getting the story across that they want to tell about a zone. That's largely done through quests.

A mix of directed and undirected stuff would be fine by me. I'm not a fan of the current linearity.

[Okacz]

The problem with the "open world" model used with Battlefield Barrens and Timeless Isle is that it gets boring and stale incredibly fast. There's no real story or anything exciting going on. Just running around looting chests and killing things. On the servers I play on, the place is already becoming a ghost town as the grinders get their mounts and vacate the place. It has no lasting value.

Yeah, but first of all, it's leveling. Leveling content gets burned quickly anyway, since it's the same x quest chains you need to do. Having an open area where everything can be your source of exp doesn't seem to be something that can get boring quickly, especially if several of those are made.

Secondly, while making leveling zones based purely on Timeless Isle style of gaming, mixing it up with the current system could work wonders. Having a few quest chains created to bring you closer to the lore of the zone, while still having all those leveling features of Timeless Isle rockandroll style, and making one complete another.

Imagine a questing zone in the new expansion (let's assume it's a Burning Legion expansion, just for the sake of this case). This could be an area infested with demonic presence, with various hubs of your faction that struggle to defend themselves, and progressively more difficult areas where the demons live.

So, the open world reputation could be designed in such a way that you make your way up in reputation of local allies by completing various tasks, be it killing demons, disrupting their supplies and reinforcements, stealing their stuff, killing their champions (rares), sabotaging their structures - all those tied to one reputation, guided sometimes by a few long-term quests telling you what can be done at a time. Small quest hubs wirt traditional short quest chains could work as well. Basically, you're moving around helping your faction in a way you find the most fun at a time.

And there comes the story part - after gaining recognition (reputation) you will be allowed to take part in assaults on the bigger structures, fighting more organised armies, which would culminate with you leading the armies of the surviving inhabitants to the battle with the leader of the demons in the area. All through quest chains.

Such system also creates an opportunity for a replay value of the place. For an average 91 level player it would be impossible to reach highest ranks, but the top level players could be able to find themselves similiar experiance there to the one from Timeless Isle, without distupting the low levels questing and killing spree.

For me, that would be the best. The WoW quest-to-level model is reeking with age and makes leveling an alt quite boring nowadays. Free-to-have-fun zones around the continent could restore some joy to the alt creation system.

[Annarion]

I like these suggestions, that it'd be used in conjunction to questing, to give you options all over. As for the comment regarding failure options, there just wouldn't be any. As I said, if there aren't enough players around, the npcs would gain a buff to ensure that the good guys always win, even if you're alone. And the people talking about how it gets stale fast, that's why I wanted it in a levelling zone, so that you would really only repeat a few times before you moved on. Ideally there'd be enough going on that you really didn't need to repeat anything. And having 10 solid voiced quests to tie the story together would be perfect.

[Manabomb]

So it'll just be like Guildwars 2 , running from event to event and after 1/2 days you are bored out of your mind and /uninstall. No thanks. (worst 60E ever spent).

But imagine if they put questing in WoW? It will be just like wow, running from quest to quest and after 1/2 days you are bored out of your mind and /uninstall. No thanks. (worst 120$+ ever spent.)

[justinmccray111]

^this
/10char

Nope

Adding another way to level is good for the game.

[Deleted]

Nope

Adding another way to level is good for the game.

The problem is just that these events can have negative outcome. Imagine you're just chilling during leveling, have an hour off and just want to get some quests done, listen to some relaxed music and suddenly a hell rift of doom opens up somewhere close and spews a bunch of elite mobs your way that you can't kill yourself and since it's been implemented for longer than a month, it lost its novelty and nobody's doing these events anymore, you can just go ahead and log out or change the zone and wait until the event despawns or a high level player is bored enough while levelling gathering professions to slay the invasion and close the portal and you can continue questing on.

[bufferunderrun]

The only way i see something like that to work is to update every zone with new events every new xpack, once an xpack end all the storylines in each zone are concluded and then new one will be crated; but something like that never gonna happen for alot of reasons.

[Annarion]

The problem is just that these events can have negative outcome. Imagine you're just chilling during leveling, have an hour off and just want to get some quests done, listen to some relaxed music and suddenly a hell rift of doom opens up somewhere close and spews a bunch of elite mobs your way that you can't kill yourself and since it's been implemented for longer than a month, it lost its novelty and nobody's doing these events anymore, you can just go ahead and log out or change the zone and wait until the event despawns or a high level player is bored enough while levelling gathering professions to slay the invasion and close the portal and you can continue questing on.

Which is why I stipulated that when there aren't enough players around, the friendly npcs that assist with the event would gain a damage buff that would allow you to clear it solo.

- - - Updated - - -

The only way i see something like that to work is to update every zone with new events every new xpack, once an xpack end all the storylines in each zone are concluded and then new one will be crated; but something like that never gonna happen for alot of reasons.

Why would they need to stop the events happening? They don't shut off quests for old zones when a new expansion debuts. The events are there, like quests are now, to tell the story of the zone and guide you as you level up. Without either you just grind one million boars in Elwynn until level cap.

[bufferunderrun]

Why would they need to stop the events happening? They don't shut off quests for old zones when a new expansion debuts. The events are there, like quests are now, to tell the story of the zone and guide you as you level up. Without either you just grind one million boars in Elwynn until level cap.

quests =/= events, as other in this thread have pointed out events become old much faster than quest, if they keep repeating forever the sense of a dynamic world is completely null and also they potentially arise the same time jump problems we have now with outland and northrend but multiplied for every damn zone.

This is why i think the only way to make it work in wow is to tie all the event to the xpack and every time a new one is released all the zone are reworked to accomodate new event; for example right now ashenvale don't reflect the current story, lets immagine a dynamic ashenvale that in the next xpack horde side let the players who level there help the horde force packing their stuff and gtfo from there and alliance side give the player the job of helping the rebuilding and mending; then the xpack end and we are back to old ashenvale with other events showing the zone changing and updating it to the current world.