Another lost level 60

[Brista]

This post is all a pipe dream and really doesn't give any practical advice on the situation I'm responding to, feel free to skip it.  I just need to vent on something I think Blizzard really missed out on and it tangentially relates to the topic at hand.

You know this is where a robust crafting system could come in handy, at least for some people.  Though it would require a more dynamic world.

I'm not talking about the tacked on only really applies to combat crafting that we have now.  What about tier 3 crafting. Carpentry, Masonry, soul crafting.

You raid an enemy town, you damage the walls, the buildings, you destroy a bridge.  You need to build a massive bridge that takes server wide coordination to do to get to new content.  You must have a defense force to hold off the attacking mobs while the crafters actually work.  The crafters come in and actually do the work a bit at a time. You have structures that require magical components, you set it up so all 3 tiers can do something.  You have level restrictions on some of the stuff.  Bridges in Dust Wallow can only be worked on by L25-38 characters.  This gives the new players and alt people world crafting to do, it gives another outlet for high level characters, That bridge to get to northrend still needs some work, I can spend 30 minutes fighting through these mobs to get some granite to put in the stock piles.  Or I can spend 30 minutes fighting these mobs to defend the stockpile or protect that crafter while he works on the bridge. 

Not only would this give people more to do, it would connect them to the world more.    I helped work on this bridge that allows us to get to Northrend.  I helped creat the forge at this new settlement in Desolace. 

You add a whole new PvP aspect, you attract a whole new type of player, you provide more content, you connect players to the world more.  Even if it's all staged and controlled by the devs, it still adds it in.  You get server vs server competition too.  Stormrage got the bridge to Northrend done before Terenas did!

Ah well.  I'm done with my little rant on my pipe dream that won't happen.  But the game that does this right is the one that will pull me away from WoW very quickly.
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Actually Horizons did this

The game had some awful features but the crafting and the sense of creating stuff was excellent. The worst aspect of the game was the community. Not that they weren't pleasant people, they were exceedingly pleasant. But 99% of the community were hardcore crafters with no one to sell it to. Pretty much everything I could make after at month or at any time in the future was being dumped on the market for pennies by bored high level people. There was no pvp and high end content was very poor

But helping people make houses was a very interesting aspect. In WoW, I particularly would like to see a player built battleground, so the side with the hard-working crafters has stockades, steam tanks, minefields, and ramparts

[Treesh]

Actually Horizons did this

The game had some awful features but the crafting and the sense of creating stuff was excellent. The worst aspect of the game was the community. Not that they weren't pleasant people, they were exceedingly pleasant. But 99% of the community were hardcore crafters with no one to sell it to. Pretty much everything I could make after at month or at any time in the future was being dumped on the market for pennies by bored high level people. There was no pvp and high end content was very poor

But helping people make houses was a very interesting aspect. In WoW, I particularly would like to see a player built battleground, so the side with the hard-working crafters has stockades, steam tanks, minefields, and ramparts
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GG, Tal, and I all beta'd Horizons. The crafting was great (and that's where GG and I get a lot of our "WoW's crafting system sucks!" attitude from), but you're right about the community, no pvp and I never bothered to get to high end content because I didn't play release. I saw how things were in beta so I didn't buy release. I still wish for a game that has excellent crafting and excellent combat (along with good people), but it's just a dream. Never going to happen anytime soon. There are smaller companies out there trying to not just be a clone of other MMOs, but they just don't have the resources to pull it off. Mourning (used to be known as Realms of Torment) comes to mind on that score. Just not enough resources to put into it and so it comes off as half-assed.

I absolutely loved crafting in Horizons (the houses, buildings, real tailoring!) and I still miss it to this day, but the rest of the game just had too many problems for me to actually buy it.

[Kevin]

Actually Horizons did this

The game had some awful features but the crafting and the sense of creating stuff was excellent. The worst aspect of the game was the community. Not that they weren't pleasant people, they were exceedingly pleasant. But 99% of the community were hardcore crafters with no one to sell it to. Pretty much everything I could make after at month or at any time in the future was being dumped on the market for pennies by bored high level people. There was no pvp and high end content was very poor

But helping people make houses was a very interesting aspect. In WoW, I particularly would like to see a player built battleground, so the side with the hard-working crafters has stockades, steam tanks, minefields, and ramparts
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Yep, I played Horizons. When they fired the economists from the staff I knew there were going to be problems. They also had issues with low mob density and huge amounts of camping. The player driven ecomony didn't have any checks to help lowbies, the idea of local economies was broken when they caved and made travel way to easy, or forced travel to be able to anything so you had crafters flooding the consigners with stuff.

Horizons did crafting right (I helped build the machines at the end of beta at a low level even) but they believed they could add content faster than players could get to it. They didn't have stable enough servers for the world events they tried to pull off either. I don't think they ever delivered on the item customization either. The ability to make any weapon look the way you want it too without really changing the stats.

So yeah, I understand some of the reasoning behind WoW doing some of the stuff they did, if you keep the combat interesting you keep more of the hardcore around. But the only really worthwhile end game professions seem to be engineering, alchemy, and enchanting add in tailoring for the bags. The others seem very very marginal with high effort and low reward. I feel Blizzard designed them with a guild in mind. You have one armorsmith in the guild the rest of the guild feeds him. You have a couple of weaponsmiths who specialize in the right things, the rest of the guild feeds him. One tribal, one dragonscale, and one elemental leatherworker, the rest fo the guild feeds him. A casual player can't support those on their own, and having multiples in a guild doesn't seem to make a lot of sense either because of the high mat requirements. Sure some of the crafting is OK while leveling up, but most of it loses it's luster the farther into the game you get, and you can only get better at crafting by being fed or by engaging in high end combat to farm the stuff you need for it.

[Raelynn]

Next, and this may be intentional or it may be something they address before it goes Live, you can't pick teams. So if your pro 40 man raid joins a battle they won't all get into the same battleground. Now there are options in the join screen to pick a specific battle rather than just next available so you could probably get most of your people into the same battle if you accepted a longer wait
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It's been stated in the test realm forums I believe that they are working on implementing a way to at the very least join the instances in groups, and possibly moreso to create an entire instance for a guild. It'll start being more common at that point. At the very least, guilds will have strong 5-man groups always together.

[LochnarITB]

I'm not sure where to jump in with this, as several people have commented, so I'll put it here.

I do want to chime in though and say that it is just amazing how even just different talent point placement can make things play a lot differently for a lot of the classes.
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I think I now see why I might be struggling with this more than some people. I focus on the exploration and quest completion. To me, different classes and talent specs are just different mechanics for completing the same goals. I already know where the foozle is or that I need to speak to Joe Questguy. A different class/talent set just gives me another way of removing the obstacles. The only challenge is to understand how to control the new character and its limitations. It is not new content and I am very content driven. I am a small minded gamer, I guess, but I expect a subscription to be paying for new content, not to be allowed to repeat the same content.

[Treesh]

It is not new content and I am very content driven.  I am a small minded gamer, I guess, but I expect a subscription to be paying for new content, not to be allowed to repeat the same content.
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I don't consider you small minded. You paid your money the same as those who like to play alts, you're allowed to get just as much enjoyment from your money. If someone isn't enjoying the game, don't spend money on it. Hopefully for those who are content driven, Blizzard will get on the ball and get more content out quicker, but I certainly don't think badly of anyone who chooses to not pay while they wait for some distant promise of more fun that may or may not actually be what they're looking for.

[Kevin]

I think I now see why I might be struggling with this more than some people.  I focus on the exploration and quest completion.  To me, different classes and talent specs are just different mechanics for completing the same goals.  I already know where the foozle is or that I need to speak to Joe Questguy.  A different class/talent set just gives me another way of removing the obstacles.  The only challenge is to understand how to control the new character and its limitations.  It is not new content and I am very content driven.  I am a small minded gamer, I guess, but I expect a subscription to be paying for new content, not to be allowed to repeat the same content.
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I get that, it isn't an issue for me but I get it. I'm more about the journey and development of the character. Part of the reason that I don't really like the idea of doing a respec. I made Gnolack Arms/Fury on the test server once just to try some things, and I wasn't playing Gnolack anymore. I was playing a big version of Zhani (my arms/fury warrior). Some of my characters are even more explorers than others. I know I poke in corners more with Taranna than with Gnolack. Chatok I'm obsessed with mapping everything. So I get bonds with each alt I guess.

My other problem is that the Alliance storylines haven't really drawn me in. I'm at the point with a lot of my alliance chars that I just skim the meat and just read the basic objectives because I don't really care why they want me to do this. With horde the quests and story still engage me though, don't know why.

I think that it is a testament to how well the game was done that people can find enjoyment in so many different aspects. It does sadden me that the one aspect I really want just doesn't exist in the game but I talked about that in another post already.

Not sure how to address your issues just taking an opportunity to express my all important feelings again. :)

[Brista]

It's been stated in the test realm forums I believe that they are working on implementing a way to at the very least join the instances in groups, and possibly moreso to create an entire instance for a guild.  It'll start being more common at that point.  At the very least, guilds will have strong 5-man groups always together.
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Yes, there's a line about it in the new Test patch notes:
http://www.lurkerlounge.com/forums/index...topic=6003

When entering a battleground queue, the leader of a group may now use the "Join as Group" option (next to the "Join Battle" option). Joining as a Group causes all members of the group (up to the maximum number for that battleground) to be added to the queue simultaneously, and ensures that all members of the group will be added to the battle together.

There's a MMORTS called Shattered Galaxy which I play from time to time. In that game most battles are random collections of unccordinated players but sometimes a guild takes the field with an organised team of maxxed units. They go through the others like a hot knife through butter. As one of the uncoordinated individualists this doesn't actually affect my gameplay adversely. Most times I'm in an uncoordinated bunch against another uncoordinated bunch, sometimes I'm on the receiving end of a slick war machine and sometimes I'll happen to amble in to a slick war machine of our own that failed to exclude me in time. This adds diversity and makes the gameplay more interesting than if it were always random bunch of people vs random bunch of people

Unlike Shattered Galaxy, it won't be possible for a guild to create guild-only battlegrounds. Or at least not so effectively. OK, one could create a 40 person raid and then if no one was ld when you reached the front of the queue, get all 40 of your guildies into a battle but sooner or later one of the 40 is going to go afk and, as of today's patch afkers get booted freeing up a place for someone else. You can't bar people from entry other than by filling it with your own people and it's not realistic to expect to keep a 40 man raid going with no afks. So I think in practice we will fight as sometimes as an uncoordinated mob but often with a core of guild/friends groups who will elevate the play

Or to put it very simply you can play with your mates if you like, but you won't be excluded from ever playing with the pros. It's shaping up into a nice system

[Arnulf]

[...] Hopefully for those who are content driven, Blizzard will get on the ball and get more content out quicker, but I certainly don't think badly of anyone who chooses to not pay while they wait for some distant promise of more fun that may or may not actually be what they're looking for.
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But what is new content? More instanced dungeons? More areas to level in? Are all these holes in the map reserved for Battlegrounds? Maybe there will be a way to get to Draenor some day? But I'm certain this can get only so far. At some point it will become ridiculous...

Or Blizzard could go the way of D2: add a plethora of new items, recipes, special monsters that drop certain stuff.

Bolty's list of options oddly reminded me of the four player archetypes formulated by Richard Bartle: (a) explorers, (B) achievers, © socializers, and (d) killers.

Explorers like to discover new content. If there is nothing to discover anymore, they usually leave. Although new content does not have to be new maps, or dungeons. Achievers like to build up a character until it outshines everyone else's. Achievers are the hardcore players (and probably the livestock of MMORPGs). Socializers are self-evident. And killers, well they like to kill other players. There is usually a curious balance between achievers, socializers, and killers in a successful MMORPG.

And of course, people are not so easily categorized. Probably it is more like that some people are mostly achievers, but then also a bit of both socializers and killers.

I'll go out on a limb here and claim that the first explorers are leaving WoW. They've discovered everything. Battlegrounds is more of the same PvP for them. Nothing new to discover...

-Arnulf

[kandrathe]

Heh. I like it. High level characters could contract to have a cottage built.

However, think of the poor smoldering ruins of South Shore and Tauren Mill. You would need full time stone cutters, lumber jacks, and teamsters just to keep the builders supplied.

[Bolty]

Bolty's list of options oddly reminded me of the four player archetypes formulated by Richard Bartle: (a) explorers, (B) achievers, © socializers, and (d) killers.[right][snapback]78561[/snapback][/right]

Geez, looking back over my post, you're dead on. I guess that is further evidence for me that I can't identify with the achievers at all and have never seen the point of that playing style. It's too hard for me to wrap my head around the only-ever-play-one-character style - to me, it seems that such a player misses out on SO much of a game and really limits their enjoyment. I realize that it's just my point of view as an Explorer.

I suppose the question of this thread is then, if you are an Achiever (see Richard Bartle's thesis on MMO players at http://www.mud.co.uk/richard/hcds.htm), and you don't have the time blocks necessary to derive enjoyment from the game with your Achiever personality, what do you do? Your only real option is to quit and move on, but I would imagine that if you're a working adult with kids, being an Achiever personality in an MMORPG is simply a dead-end prospect. You can't beat the teenagers and college students, period. In the end, you just become frustrated.

-Bolty

[Mavfin]

Geez, looking back over my post, you're dead on.  I guess that is further evidence for me that I can't identify with the achievers at all and have never seen the point of that playing style.  It's too hard for me to wrap my head around the only-ever-play-one-character style - to me, it seems that such a player misses out on SO much of a game and really limits their enjoyment.  I realize that it's just my point of view as an Explorer.

I suppose the question of this thread is then, if you are an Achiever (see Richard Bartle's thesis on MMO players at http://www.mud.co.uk/richard/hcds.htm), and you don't have the time blocks necessary to derive enjoyment from the game with your Achiever personality, what do you do?  Your only real option is to quit and move on, but I would imagine that if you're a working adult with kids, being an Achiever personality in an MMORPG is simply a dead-end prospect.  You can't beat the teenagers and college students, period.  In the end, you just become frustrated.

-Bolty
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I'm seeing some of this in my Alliance guild. The 'Achiever' types with kids and a life are starting to not be seen anymore, while the rest of us who have our main over 50 are merrily making alts. We currently have the ~lvl 20 'squishy brigade' (a priest, a lock, and a mage' that group together all the time with various other 'less squishy' alts to do quests.

Yes, you can't beat the teens and the college students. If you inspect someone your level who has 4 epics and the rest blue items on them, and it frustrates you that you can't have all that, then, well, it may be time to do something different. People with lives will never get there.

[Icebird]

I just hit 60 last week with my warlock. I've been able to put off the "what do I do now?" question by working my epic mount quest. A warlock from another guild we work with has been waiting for me so we can complete the final step together.

Discovering new content for me has more appeal than doing the same content over and over for better loot. I did a 5 man Scholomance run last night (part of the mount quest requirements), and even though it went pretty smoothly up until the second to last battle (Alexi Barov), it still took the best part of 5 hours.

I'd like to try MC and Onyxia for a couple of reasons: to see what its like to be part of a 40 person group, and because just finishing the instances is a challenge. But because I'm part of a small guild, Blackrock Spire is probably what I have to look forward to for a while.

What I'd like to see in terms of end-game content is maybe a series of instances designed to be completed in 1-2 hours. They could be challenging, and the bosses would have large loot tables to make repeated visits interesting, but they would be much shorter than a lot of the current end-game instances.

The other gap is raid content pitched between UBRS and MC / Onyxia / Blackwing's Lair. Hopefully Zul'Gurab will address this somewhat.

In the meantime, I anticipate spending less time playing my warlock and more time playing my priest alt. I've noticed that almost all of the level 60s in my guild are working on alts of one level or another.

And after that I may play Horde characters for a bit. :)

Chris

[mjdoom]

What I'd like to see in terms of end-game content is maybe a series of instances designed to be completed in 1-2 hours. They could be challenging, and the bosses would have large loot tables to make repeated visits interesting, but they would be much shorter than a lot of the current end-game instances.
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Although this might not fit exactly what you want you might want to try more of Dire Maul, specifically the north instance and "tribute runs." These can be done relatively quickly (2 hours is reasonable) and have some great (and widely varied as far as I know) loot at the end. Once you learn how to do it they are not very challenging (you are intentionally skipping bosses) but they can still be fun and profitable. Also, if you do decide to kill some of the bosses they have some decent loot tables as well and some of them can give you a run for your money thanks to the ever fun Mortal Strike. Just a thought.

- mjdoom