I'd really like to see digital salesFollow

I hear ya. Not counting the times I spent with the friends who really made this game fun for me, my fondest memories are of solo killing things that were difficult after seeing videos of others doing it. Hell, even the ogres outside Dire Maul could be fun to farm, if only because I loved the tells I'd get when groups would pass by me on their way to the instances.

I've been pissed every time I have to level without flying. It's not like with flying you're doing any less grinding, you're just not getting places as fast, which is irritating.

Hell, I'm a rogue, I stealth through most everything anyway, why is it a big deal if I can fly to a place, drop in stealthed, and start killing as opposed to walking in stealthed and start killing?

This is true, and I imagine we'll be seeing some next generation MMORPGs where the focus is on end-game right off the bat.

The Secret World sorta did something along those lines, as has EVE Online done to some extent over the last many years. There are no levels and no leveling process, instead there is accumulating better gear, more wealth and more skill points so you can use the better stuff and unlock more stats or abilities. DC Universe Online did something in between where the level cap is 30 and reachable in less than one week for even the most casual player, but then the real grind starts for skill points spent on unlocking powers and attribute points. Star Wars Galaxies had another system where using an item (such as weapons, "bandages" and grenades) and using certain abilities (such as prospecting) would increase your skill with that item or ability and move you up a skill tree containing that item or ability mastery.

The classic leveling process was an interesting one, but considering how little time the average player spends leveling compared to at end-game, I think future MMOs will have more of a focus on playing the game's content rather than grinding to level cap where, as you said, the real game starts. Right now, you burn through the "leveling zones" until you reach the "end-game zones" - the zones for the current expansion. There you grind faction rep and do dailies until a new expansion is launched, assuming you don't just fly to a city and queue up for dungeons. It's a very linear process which renders a bunch of zones useless, or irrelevant, to the majority of the player base after a certain amount of time (majority reaches cap).

If they removed the levels and had people start with all spells and whatnot right at the beginning, they could focus on stuffing all those many zones with "end-game content" instead of "leveling content" that just sits there. They could remove levels from mobs as well and give them degrees of difficulty, such as "weak" for newbie mobs and "boss" for boss mobs, etc. This would allow brand new players to jump into the fray without first having to spend a month or two grinding to level cap. Sure, there's still be a kind of grind, since you need progression in a game to keep it interesting, but it would open up for so many ways to do the progression instead of limiting it to five new zones on a new continent every expansion.

They could make Dire Maul, Zul'Farrak and all those other "lowbie" dungeons, that people run once or twice and never set foot in again, regularly visited dungeons by simply removing levels. They have that fancy item level thing for no apparent reason, so why not use it to automatically scale the dungeons based on the group's average item level? Say a group of average ilvl 300 players join a dungeon run in Wailing Caverns. The game auto-adjusts the stats of the mobs in the dungeon to present a challenge for that gear level and adjusts the loot tables to drop ilvl 333 gear, or whatever the next "tier" would be.

Voila, leveling grind removed without removing progression. And now you get to choose between 20+ dungeons and zones to gear up in instead of 2-3.

Edited, Oct 1st 2012 11:49pm by Mazra

That's what patch notes and betas are for.

I completely agree and that's an interesting idea. Its very similar to how GW2 does work, ish. You can be lvl 1 and do 'endgame' It maxes your lvl gives you all the skills and basic decent gear, in WvW. Now from what I can tell , if you lvl your character you would go in with your own custom gear maybe a bit more experience with how your abilities work.

My best analogy how Normal MMOs work is they are like Life, for the first 18 years you really dont get choices, some basic ones, leveling is a lot like this.. You have dungeons as extracurricular they give you a boost get you a bit ahead of the game at the current point but in the end they arent vital. At cap (or 18) you have to start making the real choices, get a job(Raid), get more schooling (Heroics), raise a family (Alts), and the daily grind (dailies XD), Now you can even have pets (and kill things with said pets). orrrr I'm reading into this way too much (probably). And each new expansion is a new step in your life where your getting accustomed to how new things work.

But anyway If i delve into that analogy more i would need to move this post to a different forum.

Right now I'm liking where everything is. I have WoW it's at a good place and if content dries up for a while I can fall back on the subless GW2 (Which you should all buy cause its awesome. I think Mazra is already there haven't logged on this week.) I know I'm two timing MMO's but damned if they don't cure my itches in different ways.

"If you would have asked me a month ago if I was excited for MoP I would have considered not resubbing, I was VERY skeptical. I am pleased with this expansion so far."

That's how I feel. I'm not going to do Farmville or Pokemon, but I like the new zones and the new quests. There seem to be more oddball "help the farmer grow some onions" quests and fewer "kill 30 goats and bring me their eyeballs" quests. I like the way the zones look, too, as in pretty. A lot of BC was just plain ugly.

So far I think I might like this one better than BC, WoLK, or Cata, but it's still pretty early in the expansion.

The only reason expansions release new zones is because of the leveling process. If we didn't have to reach a new level cap every expansion, there'd be no reason for new zones. They could simply update the loot tables in the existing zones and spend time and resources on making new events and whatnot in the existing zones. Prior to Wrath and Cataclysm release, certain events have been added to the old zones. The ghoul invasion and the rampant elementals were all excellent events, but once the new zones open up, you leave the old zones where these events are taking place. Imagine instead that you stayed in those zones where the events are happening. The expansion features: new gear, new talents, new classes, new races and new events. Sort of like the holiday events, except more... permanent. And longer lasting.

The entire idea that an expansion should feature new zones and that new stuff should only be available in those new zones is linear thinking. If WoW was treated like a giant sandbox, they could just release new stuff in the old zones, or make new zones and still release the new stuff in all the zones (world bosses, go!). Instead of creating new areas of shiny, they could release the shiny to the entire sandbox and watch players mess around with it. I think that would make for a much more interesting game.

People would still be able to do what they like most, such as farming, or grinding dailies, or grinding dungeons. The only difference is that there'd be more options and a bigger area available to the player base.

Now you're thinking with portals.

Oh, I get you. Thanks.

There's more than enough in MoP to do. If you're complaining that all you do is sit around [insert city] with nothing to do then log out. If you're logged into WoW doing nothing then I presume you don't have much of anything to do offline either, and then I'm just going to presume it's you.

Find your own things to do online or off. There's plenty.

I'm sorry, perhaps it didn't come out right. I just sigh and roll my eyes sometimes when people say "there's nothing to do." And I didn't mean to over generalize or be overly presumptuous. Sometimes I feel that when people are bored they look for others to entertain them instead of entertaining themselves. I don't want to rant about this though. I will admit I was wrong and said it wrong.

Anyways, I don't think it should be a grind. It's a game, you should enjoy it. I understand that some people wait for que's to pop, I've done it too. However, while waiting, I did fishing, or the loremaster, or archeology, just something. If WoW is a hobby then you shouldn't dread doing it.

Then IMO people shouldn't complain that there's nothing to do. They should complain that they don't like the enjoyable content Blizzard provided. Of course, even if you added content specifically to their tastes, people would still find something to complain about. That's the nature of the beast.

As it stands, Blizzard added a LOT of content with this expansion, more than in any previous expansion. If you can't find something out of all that content that you like to do, then the problem is with you, not the game.

I don't think as much was added as in the TBC expansion, but otherwise I'd agree with that statement.