[WoW] $60 for a level 90!

[Lune]

This is all connected to the death of the sense of 'community' during late WOTLK that moved players away from a more classical MMO environment, toward a game whose social interactivity was more like a Dota or call of duty. Elite quests were removed, so you never had a reason to interact with anyone out in the world. Dungeon finder was implemented, so you never had a reason to interact with your leveling cohort or server community. Instead of putting in the effort to find reliable individuals to do dungeons with, the matchmaking system sticks you with people from other servers, and you do the dungeon without saying a word, then leave and never see them again.

When all those systems were fully implemented during Cata, Dungeon Finder, Raid Finder, and a strictly single player questing experience, many players lost easy access to the 'social bonds' that are notorious for keeping somebody glued to an MMO. Coupled with total class homogenization, the game lost its social soul, and completely lost its appeal to me.

All those things happened right around the subscription decline, so I like to think those are some of the reasons why.

Also, time travel expansion. lul

[Quineloe]

So that's why they designed the game up to level 89 to be as boring and trivial as possible...

[Reguiy]

Smart of blizzard to do that. Honestly, WoW doesn't start until you're max level, so this doesn't really bother me. This also is undercutting the RMT I'm sure. And if you're going to come back and don't feel like leveling, you may as well buy an account. I might buy one if I didn't wanna risk getting addicted to WoW again.

[Swish]

I have to agree with the "death of the community" statement.

Can't count the number of trolls on my realm network who'd join for an instance and mess around, not take it seriously etc. If they were on my realm without the matchmaking they'd never get a group again.

There was too much focus on daily quests and grinding, and Blizzard chose to make matchmaking instances with other realms a way to help people do more grinding. Why not just take some of the daily grind away? Never understood that...they have mentioned it in hindsight.

[stormlord]

Originally Posted by Lune [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

This is all connected to the death of the sense of 'community' during late WOTLK that moved players away from a more classical MMO environment, toward a game whose social interactivity was more like a Dota or call of duty. Elite quests were removed, so you never had a reason to interact with anyone out in the world. Dungeon finder was implemented, so you never had a reason to interact with your leveling cohort or server community. Instead of putting in the effort to find reliable individuals to do dungeons with, the matchmaking system sticks you with people from other servers, and you do the dungeon without saying a word, then leave and never see them again.

When all those systems were fully implemented during Cata, Dungeon Finder, Raid Finder, and a strictly single player questing experience, many players lost easy access to the 'social bonds' that are notorious for keeping somebody glued to an MMO. Coupled with total class homogenization, the game lost its social soul, and completely lost its appeal to me.

All those things happened right around the subscription decline, so I like to think those are some of the reasons why.

Also, time travel expansion. lul

Five to six years ago I would have been in line with you. Back then I wanted an EQ classic server. I too rationalized how EQ had took the wrong fork and went downhill thereafter.

What do I think now?

My explanation for it's more complicated now and uncertain, since almost every - if not all - MMO's die with age. If it were something as simple as getting the community right, I think there'd be more vampires. Vampires!!??? The reclusive MMO's that do not die!! Show me where they're? They shall remain legend.

You have things like this:

• How to combat increasing content and power of higher skilled/leveled players?
• How to combat declines in graphic quality?
• How to combat declines in general quality, throughout the game?
• How to keep players interested in the same game?
• How to ensure your developer team is always the best?
• How to combat the desire to spend money elsewhere on newer games?

I could probably go on forever. Some of these should be more correctly mixed together or omitted altogether. I've had so many posts on this I forget all of the points there're to make and how all of it's interwoven. Fact is, it's very difficult for me to relay all of it and I think I'm failing miserably.

The first and most important thing that comes to mind when I think about all this is how there's a need to always make new content for older players to keep them playing. As a side effect, this creates a mountain of content that all new players must climb. Because this mountain is always increasing in size, to make it climbable within a reasonable amount of time the designers inevitably manipulate the progression curve so at any particular point in an MMO's life it'll require the same amount of time to reach max level, given equal effort and aptitude. The outcome this produces - as the MMO ages - is new players will climb up the mountain faster and faster - something that's necessary to ensure they can reach the top in equal time. It's possible that in this process something inexplicable and hard to resolve happens and negatively affects the game.

And there're a plethora of other issues. One example, in my mind, is the MMO code tends to get more like spaghetti because new developers are joining the team and old ones are being lost. While sucky programmers can be to blame too, this makes it hard for the developers to find a middleground, since different developers have different habits and the code is always growing. They attempt to create common rules and guidelines, but even this doesn't stop the spaghettification that, like a leaky faucet, creates problems. It becomes more and more bloated, and it just seems to become more and more expensive to maintain.

And what about graphics? It's damn hard to keep a graphics engine always cutting edge. It requires so many other things in the game to be right for the company to justify the expense. And if you have a lot of old content, updating it all can be a major pain. This is especially true if you didn't plan on updating it in the first place. It's almost always easier to just leave the old content alone and make something new.

Bottom line, somehow it gets harder and harder to keep something OLD interesting and "new". Just as it's harder to keep a person growing older looking like they're 20 and much easier to just always find a new 20 year old. How many 70 year olds look 20 and how much money has to be spent to make them look that way?

What I'm saying is the reason they do it this way - the reason they abandon old decaying games - is the same reason we tear down old buildings rather than reworking them. It is cheaper.

[Tecmos Deception]

Originally Posted by Swish [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Why have a leveling system at all for the next expansion? Clearly too much for players to do another 10 levels on their main character when the community would rather shortcut with their credit cards.

Buying a level 90 is obviously something for players who already have played 1-90 before and don't care to do it again + something that will allow new players to catch up to their established buddies more quickly. It does not in any way suggest that current level 90s "can't handle" leveling up in a new expansion. Blizzard makes money in the process, but they ARE in the business of, ya know, making money (and, somewhat connected to that, keeping customers happy).

These forums are full of people bitching that leveling in wow is too easy, but then when Blizzard offers players a way to skip the part of the game that you think is retarded, you complain about that too? Not to mention the whole "it's ok to use RL money to incidentally obtain p99 xp pots, but if you pay for levels in wow "OMFG I CAN'T BELIEVE WOW WOULD DO SOMETHING SO HEINOUS!!!"? Lol.


I mean, I agree with the sentiment that WoW isn't for me anymore. But just because the game isn't what it used to be, or it isn't what YOU are looking for, doesn't mean it hasn't made decisions that made some sense (dungeon finder wasn't Blizzard secretly trying to kill MMO community; it was a fix for people playing on low-pop realms and them trying to bring more convenience to players... yeah it kinda was a double-edged sword, but what isn't?) or that it isn't still fun for a lot of people.

[Sturgeon]

P99 to implement a $60 fee to go from 50-60

[Uteunayr]

Originally Posted by Tecmos Deception [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

"it's ok to use RL money to incidentally obtain p99 xp pots, but if you pay for levels in wow "OMFG I CAN'T BELIEVE WOW WOULD DO SOMETHING SO HEINOUS!!!"? Lol.

I am against both. I do not believe that real life wealth, which is not strongly related to your effort and work, should translate into in-game benefits. The nice thing about MMOs before the F2P model started to build is that everyone pays in their $15, and from there, what you become is entirely based on your hard work. Two people that do the same work get the same benefit. RL money to obtain XP pots, whether it be for a kickstarter, or for a F2P model game, is something I am opposed to because it makes two people that do the same work get unequal benefits based on real life wealth. This may not permeate through the entire game, but it being present devalues the hard work some players will do based on the real world distribution of wealth.

I come to these games to get away from the bullshit in the real world. I'd like for my hard work to provide me the same benefit, nor more or less, than the benefit provided to a person who puts in more hard work. Or, in the same way, for someone to be able to do less work to achieve the same.

They are virtually the same thing, only differing in degree (the point to which you wrote), but they are both shitty systems.

However, to the defense of others who find WoW selling a level 90 relative to a F2P game selling XP pots, is that one model is a subscription, while the other (p1999 xp pots for example) is free to play, so they are not directly comparable without keeping the sub in mind.

[Tecmos Deception]

Jumping from 1-90 is not really a benefit in WoW anymore. It is either a hassle for a new alt or something separating a new player from playing with his friends who are already on the server. It's not something that can give a competitive advantage to one player over another or something that can be remotely construed as paying to win.

I'd be against paying to buy a level 50 character on p99 because it's against the spirit of classic eq primarily, but also because in a world of limited resources it wouldn't be fair to players to allow money to contribute to the control of those resources instead of just ingame efforts. But there aren't limited resources in WoW, and the spirit of classic WoW is dead anyway, etc.

[Uteunayr]

Originally Posted by Tecmos Deception [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Jumping from 1-90 is not really a benefit in WoW anymore. It is either a hassle for a new alt or something separating a new player from playing with his friends who are already on the server.

The benefit is that most of the absolutely most incompetent players are not flooding the LFR and LFD system. There are enough stupid people in that system without accentuating it and making it worse. It was hard enough for me to continue doing LFDs and LFR, but I did it for the sake of the guild I operated as GM and raid leader for. I lead us to the top of my server, which I am proud of, but it was done primarily because general pugs at lower levels show some of the most stupid players around. Imagining them jumping up to the end game is just sad, and toxic to the community.

It is a benefit, a product of work, as you skip past about 2-3 days of worth of some intense grinding, 2 days of potentially learning something about your class. Blizzard doing these things is why I passed off leadership of my guild and quit a few months back.