My Take Away from Warcraft Classic

Full Disclosure: I have not played Warcraft Classic, but I have been listening attentively to those playing it, trying to understand why they like about it.  It sound like there are two things about it that really get people excited, community, and difficulty.

Difficulty:  Leveling in Warcraft Classic requires you to be more alert, and talent points make levels feel more impactful.  The raids are much easier, because 15 years of honing players against ever increasing bosses has led to a situation where a group of not even level 60 characters in green armor can clear Molten Core in less than a week.

Everyone knows that leveling in World of Warcraft has gotten onerous and wonky. I’m excited to see how the Devs take the information gained from Classic and use it in the impending level squish.

A while ago, I posted this about incorporating the Ironman Challenge as a feature that would be selected at character creation, or built into a special class, but now having a custom challenge server seems like the obvious solution.  “Extremophile” servers where things like, permanent death, disabled quests, NPC damage and health are increased, could be done.  It would have the advantage of putting everyone together in the same boat.  Right now if you are running the Ironman Challenge, most likely no one around you is, but if it’s a dedicated server, literally every other character would be playing by the same rules.

Warmode was a great addition to Normal Servers, but it seems to have taken something away from PvP servers.  I think removing the PvP flag from those servers was a step in the wrong direction.  Even if nothing mechanically was changed at this point, those servers have a strong cultural difference from normal servers that should be acknowledged.

Community: “With the LFG and LFR tools removed, people have to talk to each other.” is what I keep hearing about what makes the Classic community better, but what seems to really excite people are drive by buffs.  Getting Powerword: Fortitude, and Mark of The Wild cast on you as someone runs by is genuinely a great feel I remember back from Vanilla WoW.  I would not be surprised if weak “handshake” buffs were added for each class in the next expansion, so that walking past another PC means getting a little buff to say “Hi”.

Like the difficulty issues, these community issues could be addressed with specialty servers.  Removing the servers from CRZ and the disabling the LFG/LFR would be easy.  What else could be done to promote community at the server level?  What if “Lone Wolf” servers were created, a server where the character max is 1.  If you can only have one character on the server, and the barbershop is disabled, everyone will quickly become recognizable.  This would mean that you only have 2 professions on that server, so no making an alt for each profession and mailing yourself materials.  No bank alts would mean that the cities would not be full of low level characters standing around ignoring everyone.

What would all this lead to?  I don’t think I’m too far outside the realm of possibility when I suggest Private Servers.  Not the illicit pirate servers that people create, but a monthly fee to Blizzard for a server that people can join by invite only.  This is how Minecraft has operated for years.  When you’re paying for the server, you could set any number of options, disable features, set character limits, permanent death, or whatever settings are deemed acceptable by Blizzard.  If Private Servers happened, I imagine they would mostly be used by streamers to create servers for just their fans, and very VERY large guilds. These servers would probably not contribute to account wide collections either.

What do you think?  What kinds of challenges would you like to see added to retail?  Would you be turned off if Private Servers became an option?  What are the best parts of classic that could be brought to retail?

I CAN’T Be Wrong, so YOU Must Be!

Well my poll closed, and I can’t believe the results! 112 people LIKE to level? only 65 people would skip leveling every time.  Well a good gnome knows when to admit he is wrong, but I am not that gnome!

Most of the comments were about how people would like the ability to skip one expansion (usually BC)  I will admit, Outland is the reason I’ve never played a Death Knight.  Honestly it made no sense for DKs to drop in to Outland instead of going to Northrend for their revenge on the Lich King.  I’m glad they are sending Demon Hunters straight to the Broken Isles.

Fine, I’ll just equip my heirlooms, close my eyes and try not to be OCD about finishing every quest in a zone before I leave.

Do you prefer leveling or would you rather skip to current content every time? #Warcraft #DeathToLeveling

— Sicco Thermaplugg (@SiccoThermaplug) January 27, 2016

People Like to level from 1 to 100?

I got a lot of push back on my “Leveling is Outdated” post.

The biggest point people seemed to have is that leveling teaches you how top play your class.  I’m all for people learning how to play before they group up.  But I don’t think the current process of grinding your way up from level 1 teaches you much.  If anything it lets players form bad habits, because those low levels are so easy.

I also get that it is quick now to level with heirlooms and stuff.  But honestly, it still takes weeks that don’t amount to much once you’ve completed them.  If you play one race, it’s really easy to end up doing the exact same path as you level up.

The old world will be empty.  it will be COMPLETELY empty.  Except for people going back for loremaster or Transmog gear.  I’m ok with that, because if those old levels are not being used for leveling content, they can be used for FUTURE content.  If all characters are boosted to 100 then all those old world leveling zones are free to be reinvented in to new end game zones.

I know people were not happy with Cata.  With Cata we got ~7 new zones to play in, and ~40 reworked old zones, that people were largely indifferent to, because nobody wants to level. We are at that age again where the old leveling zone are painfully monotonous to level through.

Once 8.0 launches I would like to see every character boosted to level 100. we can level though the ‘old content’ of Legion, do a proving ground and move on to the story in 8.0.

8.0 could hit even closer to home that legion is.  Any zone could go through a change as massive as the vale of eternal blossoms.  Imagine Westfall or Silverpine as endgame zones.

Let me know what you think!

Is leveling good for the game/player?

What old world zone would make an awesome endgame zone?

Note: I know I referenced Cataclysm and The vale of Eternal Blossoms, but I would rather see the zones built up, rather than torn down. My personal preference would be more Lakeshire Bridge, less Stormwind Park.

 

Leveling is Outdated

I don’t think we’ll ever see a new standard class added to World of Warcraft again.  Legion comes with both a Level 100 Boost and Demon Hunters start at ~100.  You can start Warcraft fresh, on a new account and begin play with two level 100 characters.

Once we are leveling from level 110 to ???  asking someone to level from 1 to (lets say) 120 won’t really be expected anymore.  People will either race change or boost their characters.  When you consider that most people want to play end game.  It’s just another barrier to entry for people to have to spend X amount of time putting in leg work to get a character up to where they can participate in the fun new exciting aspects of an expansion.

Honestly thought, It might be time that ALL new characters start at level 40, or 60, or 80 (perhaps new characters start at the max level of the latest ‘free’/bundled expansion).  I don’t know how much work that would be to do, if it would even be possible to do at all.  But I think it would be a boon to the game.

It could even be done one or two classes at a time.  An expansion that focus heavily on an existing class could ‘upgrade’ that class to a hero class.  Give it another spec, open it up to all races and start it at level 100.