Easy leveling & Player vs. Player-Who really wants that?Follow

(Disclaimer: This thread is based off information I have gathered from several newsgroups, magazines, game previews. The following situations may, or may not occur given changes to World Of Warcraft by Blizzard's game designers).

Hello all,

I am a FFXI player, been so for a year. Some of my friends already sold their accounts to get ready to play this game. (I don't condone the selling of accounts, in fact, it should be forbidden by law). I thought about playing WoW myself, but, there are some issues that stop me from playing, yet.

1.Easy leveling- At first I heard leveling in WoW to the level cap would be comparable to attaining level 30 in FFXI, bad. Some people attain level 30 in a week, or 2 in FFXI, only after level 50 people realize it takes awhile, not my experience). Now, I hear it's getting changed, to last longer, but, still not even close to Everquest's leveling rate. This is an issue that, unless resolved, stops me from considering a purchase. My solution would be this: Let everyone level up fast, but, make the quests for the high-level equipment very tough. Also, make high-level monsters impossible to defeat without decent gear equipped on every player in a group.

2.Player vs player- I heard it wasn't gonna happen, now it is. Basically, you can engage anyone of the other faction in open areas. You can attack enemy-faction players in areas under your control. And you can be attacked when on enemy-controlled areas. This is something that's plain wrong, why?

I imagine a nation attaining complete control of an area, and not getting attacked. This nation would just slay their enemies one-at-a-time, cleaning said area. Then, proceed to do a raid on the next closest non-conquered area, rinse, repeat. This scenario would happen on the first few hours of existence of each server. Once a nation has more areas under control, it will be almost impossible for the other faction to even level in those areas. This would make the game unfair for the losing faction players, based solely on their chosen alliance.

Once the servers are established all the new players will just gravitate towards becoming members of the reigning faction in each individual server, to be able to level more easily, and doing quests with ease. Over time, the faction that reigns supreme would overtake all the areas up to the other nation's borders, and make it impossible for the opposing nation's players to even level. If I was on the losing faction, I'd just delete my character, and start anew on the winning side. Thus, making the problem worse, in the end, you would only have a single faction on each server, the other one would be a phantom nation.

I hope that people understand these opinions are just things that are bothering me, and may not ever occur at all, given Blizzard's great history of video-game greatness.

All hail Blizzard, and the Warcraft Franchise,

Veteran WC3 player, Omega_Vegito.
Current FFXi player, Varhalia
Possible WoW player, name witheld for copyright purposes.

*Cracks neck* Alrighty, lets disect this, shall we?

1) Lets start by saying that comparing two completely different ways of leveling (FFXI's camping to WoW's questing system) is not really advised. Apples to oranges, my friend. Listening to people who say getting to such and such level in WoW is like such and such lv in FFXI is not really accurate and is just an opinion. Some people may say getting to lv 50 in WoW is like getting lv 75 in FFXI. What I'm pretty much saying is that no one knows how fast the lving speed is. Different class changes will affect how fast people level and believe me, there were a few recently. This is beta so people who left with the impression that leveling is easy may have a different view come retail. Rely on facts rather then rumors.

2) Player vs Player is very optional in the game. There will be a PvP server come retail (in fact, there is a server for pvp now) but you don't have to join if you do not want to. In the PvE server, PvP will be in but it must be agreed between the two duel parties.

There will be inclusions of Battlegrounds in the PvE server where PvP will occur in instance zones but not much is known about Battlegrounds. You will also be able to participate in PvP if you enter the opposite faction's zones but this is left up to you. The devs said there is plenty of content in your faction's zone to keep you happy and peaceful without fighting fellow players.



For this, I will copy and paste and message from EnoYis, who has been sent by Blizzard to the hellish pit that is the WoW beta forums, on this issue :

"As has already been pointed out, this change (Being flagged for PvP while in enemy terrority) has zero impact on PvE players, since they will have no reason to be in enemy cities anyways.

However, there seems to be some worry that the current beta server is not a true "PvE" server. I will set the record straight on this one. The beta server ruleset is considered our "normal" ruleset. We are trying to insert consensual PvP content for players, but hardcore PvE players can avoid at this content at will. Our position is that most players prefer to be able to adventure in the world without having to PvP, but it is very nice to jump in and participate at will without having to make a character on a new server.

Currently, the only impact that PvP has on YOU as a player is when the opposing team decides to attack your NPCs. Our on-going goal will be to allow this to some extent but greatly punish it in the case of killing quest givers, gryphon trainers, etc. Lastly, it should be noted that in other MMORPGs it is possible to kill any NPC, just there is no benefit to doing so.

-Eno"

When it comes to the death of NPCs at the hands of the enemy, I just want to say its not as easy as it sounds. Important NPCs are usually high lved and they are surrounded by NPC guards, who tend to be lv 90s at the highest. I really do not see raids being that much of a concern in the PvE server. Just get to the NPC when a raid happens and move along.

Now, for all the info you need on the game, please come here: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/

Read up on all the information provided by the devs and make your conclusions. PvP will be a part of the game and leveling from what I heard leveling will feel less like grinding like FFXI, king of all grinds. Now its up to you whether any of these features suit you. If not, I suggest staying with FFXI for all you PvE needs and/or City of Heroes(Well, until City of Villians is released anyways).

Amazing I know all this info and yet I'm not in beta. *coldly stares at Blizzard*

*Edited to expand on a few issues.

Edited, Thu Aug 26 03:22:04 2004 by Redmoonxl

as a general correction, people seem confused about PvP in Wow.

it will be much like the system in SWG, only factions are mandatory.

the "Main Server" will follow much of the same rules as the current PvE, barring gross changes during Beta.

meaning, as Eno said, that if you want to PvP, simply go into one of the apposing faction's STATIC territories...they arent won and lost as Omega thinks.

as for leveling, im not a tester, so i dont know how it goes....in SWG (which im in the process of quitting due to Dev retardation) you can master a profession in around a week or two, depending on play time, etc.

mastering two professions (ie being as "high-level" as you can get) can take around a month or longer, depending on what you want to do.

i think 2 months of daily play (about 3-6 hrs, depending) is about right for "mastering". now in WoW, Equipment seems much more important to your character's abilities, so questing for your items should take up some time, too.

I hope it doesnt become like FFXI, where you spend 1000+ hours to be high level, and still have no fun.

I think it's safe to say that if a human walked into the undead capital, the guards *would* jump him. You can't go into the ogre city in Everquest as a high elf, and vice versa. This is really no different, except that I can actually DO something about those fuggers that want to kill my home city's guards for experience.