10-29-2005, 07:03 AM
Mirajj,Oct 29 2005, 05:05 AM Wrote:And how is this different than the current state? Have you seen a 15 man crew decked in BWL epics tear apart UBRS? Or even 5man Scholo? It's not pretty. The arguement is that people of a higher level will blow through this stuff....they already do. The folks who need this to progress to the higher levels will continue to go through them as they reach higher.
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Yes, leveling through itemization a manifestation of the same problem. What is Blizzard doing by providing this new content? They're just ratcheting up the numbers on the bad guys, and ratcheting up the numbers on the new items. People will always be forced to play in the newest content to "progress", and they'll continue to demand new content (read items) to advance further. That is the treadmill. It's not fundamentally different from the Wailing Caverns, except the numbers are bigger. Is this necessary?
Fundamentally, what are they adding by adding 10 levels? At level 60, decked in blues and purples, haven't you already shown that you understand the game? That your character doesn't have anything left to learn? Instead of being able to choose which new instances/quests/areas you want to tackle, you have to go through 10 levels of grinding. If you want to play a new race in these areas you have to go through the entire grind again. (Don't get me wrong, parts of the grind are pretty fun -- I still think the first 20-30 levels are worth it, but 30-60 is mostly redundant, more so for alts). But if you enjoy the grind, you can do just that, roll a new character and play it again.
By adding 10 levels they are diluting *everything*. The content that the non-leveler crowds are playing for is pushed 10 levels farther along. The "casual gamer" that just got to 60 that was having a blast in PvP will be behind as the level 70s have a new target to grief. The gatherers and crafters will have to advance another 10 levels to be able to play the economy. The battlegrounds will be stretched further.
If anything, compressing the levels and the range of power output of player-characters would be better. In an MMO you want to increase the interactions between players. They're doing the opposite; they've chosen the wrong mechanisms for character growth.