The End is Near

The end is near, the Lich King has already been killed by a handful of guilds with more to follow. Blizzard’s even removed the limited attempts mechanic from the normal modes. So it’s only a matter of time before everyone is farming the instance from start to finish, and only a matter of time before they get bored and stopd. To reiterate, the end is near…

The Beginning of the End
The fall of the Lich King marks the end of our time in the expansion, it’s been the primary goal of many a player since they set foot on the shores Northrend. For many, even longer: since playing Warcraft III and WCIII: The Frozen Throne. Looking ahead to Cataclysm, there’s a new enemy to face and with that the promise of new adventures and new ways to play the game. While considering the possibilities of the expansion I stumbled across this wow.com post by resident Hunter aficionado Brian Wood. In the article, Wood poses the quest should veteran players really be expected to level from one when they make an alt? That set my mind in motion about Cataclysm, and what I would like to see happen.

Making the Case for Veteran Players
First, let me be clear here: my intent is to outline what I personally think would be a great solution to veterans of the game rolling new alts. In other words, this is how I would do it…

Let’s begin with the reasons for and against established players getting a “leg up” on a new alt. There is an idea that skipping over low levels means you learn less about your class. Second, it’s held by some that by skipping those levels you’re skipping content that you should experience.

Let’s deal with the first one, leveling from 1 to 60 teaches you one thing really… how to level from 1-60. You learn to grind levels, you build up professions (maybe) and that’s about it. There’s generally not much if any interaction with other players, because the lion’s share of players are not interested in grouping up for old content that was designed for a completely different set of talents/spells. Let’s face it, the mechanics of these old instances are not up to par with current class mechanics. So, even if you were to find a group willing to run these old instances, you’d only be learning to faceroll your way through outdated content. I say, this is not learning to play your class. This is not even learning to play well with others, in fact I feel if you DID learn how to group from running instances like Scarlet Monastery with friends you would have a LOT to learn come raid time.

Most players who are going to be leveling especially veterans are just going to grind their way through quests anyway. They’re not missing much by skipping the content that many of us have seen multiple times already to start at a higher level. I’ve been playing for a very long time myself, and sometimes I DO get nostalgic and I may get a wild hair someday to suffer through the first 20 levels of being a Druid *shudder* … when and if that time ever comes, I’ll do it. If not, I would like the option to skip it if I choose.

Obviously, there’s a precedent in place for allowing established players a chance to roll a new alt with level appropriate gear at an advanced level; I’m referring of course to my beloved Death Knights. This gives us a solid framework to build on so we’ll start from there.

Veteran of War Program
The Basic Description: Accounts with a character of level 55 or higher will now have the option to create a character of any class starting at level 55.

Since there are those who may want to eschew the “insta-fifty” and go from level one on, it’s necessary to have the option available. Luckily, there’s another feature Blizzard already uses that is perfect for our purposes. Character Copy has been around for a long time, it allows you to make a premade character on the PTRs of any class. So simply adding the feature to the Account Management page would be the best bet, this would allow those who don’t want to participate the option to do so while still allowing the veteran option.

Implementation

With Cataclysm we have Deathwing to worry about, and there’s obviously going to be a lot of build up for it. But what about the new Worgen and Goblin characters? And what about those who decided they want to be class X for Cata? Well, my solution would be quite simple and a great way of kicking off the lore of the expansion. Chromie along with other ambassadors of the various allied dragonflights are building an army to neutralize the threat of Deathwing. The threat however is sufficient that they need to move to advanced training as quickly as possible. Your new fifty-five character starts out in the training grounds, much like those of the Death Knight starting area. Quests give you access to more talents, gold, and blue starter gear.

There’s a lot of possibilities with an approach like this. The fate of the dragonflights hangs in the balance, Chromie needs our help!

Final Thoughts
For those of you sitting there saying, Blizzard would never do anything remotely like this… They said they wouldn’t. Blizzard has said a lot of things, and as is often the case those who make declarative statements tend to look foolish in retrospect. For example, back when I played a Mage in vanilla one of the things that had me pulling my hair out was the inability to summon more than a meager handful of water per cast. This was over four years ago, and Conjure Water (Rank 7) was a staple of every raid and group. If you were a Mage and didn’t have the spell you were a useless noob. And … it only summoned four water per cast. Mages rabbled about it repeatedly, and we were told “We are aware of your concern, but it has been decided that allowing mages to conjure more than four at a time would be imbalance the class and raid dynamics”. A week later this response to the Mage community was deleted, along with all of the angry responses provoked by it, and replaced with “upcoming changes to Conjure Water (Rank 7) in patch 1.9, will now create ten Conjured Crystal Water per cast, up from four.”

This of course was only my first experience with Blizzard flip flopping on these types of things, and the guy who said one thing then deleted the evidence and posted something else: and then banned people from the forums for calling him on it/deleted their posts, etc. Well, it’s ok… a Shaman told me he got hit by a bus sometime during BC. Anyhow, the point is there’s precedent for Blizzard changing stances on things, look at micro transactions: race, gender, name changes. All of these things were once unheard of in MMOs, and Blizzard for a long time said an emphatic “no” to each of them. Now we have them, it’s a brave new world friends. Time to evolve ideas if you want the game to continue to be engaging and exciting. In my humble opinion, cutting out the boring parts at the beginning for those of us who’ve already experienced them one or more times already is a step in the right direction…