07-24-2005, 07:58 PM
Just a couple of fast comments before I have to leave:
1. Of course, Blizzard is working on an expansion. "Everyone" seems to know that it has something to do with Northrend. I don't know if there's been an official announcement about it, but at least that bit of information has leaked out and is pervasive enough that it's probably true.
2. There were some comments here about how an expansion might increase the character level to 65 or something like it. This comes from the fact that this is what Everquest and other MMORPG's have done -- every time an expansion came out, they increased the level cap. It is entirely possible that World of Warcraft will do this, since it works well as a nice big slashy announcement. However, it needs to be pointed out that such a move would not be that big of a deal for World of Warcaft. With Everquest and other such MMORPG's, it took an enormous amount of time and effort to be level capped and one's level largely determined how powerful you are. WoW, however, was designed to make it fairly easy for the general player to become level capped. As the game designers have said, (paraphrasing) the journey to level 60 is only the first stage of your character. Once you reach level 60, one continues to level through the items one finds.
As I said, it's entirely possible that the level cap will be raised, but in many ways I think doing so would be more trouble than it's worth. The way WoW is designed, it'll take about a week for the everyday player to go from level 60 to level 65 and a couple of weeks for the weekend warriors. Meanwhile, lots of things will suddenly become unbalanced. Do we get talent points with those extra levels? If so, lots of careful balancing of talents will have to be redone. Will raid level bosses like Onyxia and those in the Molten Core get a big level and power boost to reflect the much more powerful player opponents they'll be facing? What about all those high end instances like Dire Maul, Stratholme, and Scholomance? Are they going to be thrown into the dustbin like the Sunken Temple, because they're too low of a level for anyone to bother with anymore?
Like I said, the level cap might very well be raised simply for the publicity value of it, but doing so doesn't seem worth it to me.
1. Of course, Blizzard is working on an expansion. "Everyone" seems to know that it has something to do with Northrend. I don't know if there's been an official announcement about it, but at least that bit of information has leaked out and is pervasive enough that it's probably true.
2. There were some comments here about how an expansion might increase the character level to 65 or something like it. This comes from the fact that this is what Everquest and other MMORPG's have done -- every time an expansion came out, they increased the level cap. It is entirely possible that World of Warcraft will do this, since it works well as a nice big slashy announcement. However, it needs to be pointed out that such a move would not be that big of a deal for World of Warcaft. With Everquest and other such MMORPG's, it took an enormous amount of time and effort to be level capped and one's level largely determined how powerful you are. WoW, however, was designed to make it fairly easy for the general player to become level capped. As the game designers have said, (paraphrasing) the journey to level 60 is only the first stage of your character. Once you reach level 60, one continues to level through the items one finds.
As I said, it's entirely possible that the level cap will be raised, but in many ways I think doing so would be more trouble than it's worth. The way WoW is designed, it'll take about a week for the everyday player to go from level 60 to level 65 and a couple of weeks for the weekend warriors. Meanwhile, lots of things will suddenly become unbalanced. Do we get talent points with those extra levels? If so, lots of careful balancing of talents will have to be redone. Will raid level bosses like Onyxia and those in the Molten Core get a big level and power boost to reflect the much more powerful player opponents they'll be facing? What about all those high end instances like Dire Maul, Stratholme, and Scholomance? Are they going to be thrown into the dustbin like the Sunken Temple, because they're too low of a level for anyone to bother with anymore?
Like I said, the level cap might very well be raised simply for the publicity value of it, but doing so doesn't seem worth it to me.