The New Rest System

[Bolty]

With this new push, Blizzard has introduced the Rest system into World of Warcraft. I have found this fascinating and I can't wait to see it in action. I'll quote Blizzard's patch "readme":

To broaden and balance some of the gameplay elements, we've incorporated a few new features. One of them is the Rest State modifier, which gives players a time-limited bonus to combat (PvE) experience. This frees up time for exploring other aspects of the game without penalty, such as tradeskilling and social activities, and helps players avoid level-grinding. We've also added Inns, which serve as a good place to hang up your sword or staff for the night because they confer special bonuses. Inns also act as home locations, which our third new feature, Hearthstones, take advantage of. Hearthstones provide a speedy way to travel back to an Inn when you need to take care of business in town or when you're ready to check in and call it a night. The basics of these new features are covered below.

The Rest state modifier only affects experience earned from killing monsters. It does not affect experience earned from quest rewards or other experience rewards in the game (such as future PvP experience rewards).

As players kill monsters and gain experience points, they become increasingly tired. Their rest level reflects this tiredness in five tiers: well rested, rested, normal, fatigued and exhausted.

Well-rested players receive bonus experience points for killing monsters. Rested players receive a smaller bonus. At the normal rest level, players receive no bonus experience points for killing monsters. Fatigued players receive half of the normal experience points from their kills, and when exhausted they will receive a quarter of normal experience from a kill.

To become well rested and start earning bonus experience from killing monsters again, players must either log out or rest online at an Inn (see below) for several hours.

Thanks to the comforts of a warm bed and a hearty meal, players who rest or log out at an Inn can regain energy up to the maximum level: well rested (it takes 8 hours to go from exhausted back to well rested). Players who log out anywhere else in the world will only regain energy up to the normal level.

Note that while your character is resting at an Inn, you can play other characters on your account. The rest state is per character only.

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Players use Hearthstones (an inventory item) to cast a spell that teleports them back to their "home locations." Casting the spell will take a reasonable amount of time, to prevent it from being used as an escape mechanism from combat.

"Checking in" with an Innkeeper will make that Inn the player's current home location, and the player's Hearthstone will then take the player back to that Inn (as opposed to any previous home locations). If the player doesn't have a Hearthstone, the Innkeeper will provide one at no cost.

Because Hearthstones let players quickly return to town, players can easily log off from within an Inn when they're done playing for the night (or day). If they so choose, players can also use Hearthstones just to return to town to sell items, trade, or train. However, Hearthstones can only be used once per hour.

This is kinda nifty. When I read it yesterday, my first thought was "oh boy, people aren't going to like this," and there is quite a bit of screaming going on. Many players who haven't tried this new Rest system out are already saying it stinks. Clearly this is geared toward the casual player (someone who plays maybe 5 hours a week) and semi-casual player (someone who plays perhaps 2-3 hours a night). It's designed to put a stop to shared-character power-leveling 24/7 that is done by gaming "sweatshops" to build up uber characters for sale quickly.

The experience differential and exhaustion level is based on your experience gained while killing monsters. All other forms of experience are not factored in (quests, etc). This is clearly designed to promote questing, as well. When performing quests, not all of them involve killing mobs. On an average session performing quests, you won't see a drop in the experience gain until you've been at it for a few (3-4) hours (from early posts on the Blizzard forums). What this Rest system discourages is hanging out in an area, killing mobs over and over for exp. They want us out there questing, running around, getting a good chunk of our exp from quests and not monsters. I gathered that this was their goal from my phase 1 play, but now they're really enforcing it big time.

If you have multiple characters, this likely won't be an issue at all. Just switch characters if you've been playing for 6+ hours on one and the exp drop is starting to get annoying. However, if you're still questing, you're still getting significant exp from the quests and "normal" exp from the monsters at that 6 hour point (haven't tried this - just basing this info on some posts in the Blizzard forums already).

Anyway, Blizzard's intentions are clear: powerleveling, exp-grinding play is not supported. You can still do it, but advancement will be slow. Go questing. Also, while you will still fall behind the 24-hours-a-day players, the difference won't be nearly as drastic as in other MMORPGs. This is a win for the casual gamers and a massive hindrance to the power teams. Since the power players tend to be the most vocal, expect a LOT of opposition to this plan.

Hearthstones: hey, kids! Town portals! You can use them only once per hour, but that should be plenty in my opinion. No longer to Mages solely own the ability to zip out of a tough spot (when not in combat) in order to avoid a long, tough battle back to town. It also reduces travel times after a trip out killing mobs and gathering loot. I'll bet that they leave the Mages' teleport ability in, to allow them to travel to any Inn from anywhere (thus allowing you to travel across the world in seconds - something I enjoyed greatly in phase 1).

If you've played other MMORPGs, what do you think of this Rest system that Blizzard implemented? Is there any precedent to it out there?

-Bolty