you can thank money for this

What’s really missing in the end game is the short term goals that keep you motivated. These were provided by items and dinging levels. EQ solved the “level cap” problem with AA’s Krones mentioned. Really what they did was “secretly” remove the level cap.

So is that the answer? Should we nuke the level cap and let people grind it up? What about another good EQ invention, LDoN? These were group missions you had to use some skill (not much though) to successfully complete. You were even ranked against other players by win % and total wins, so there was a scoreboard.

With a scoreboard go bragging rights, and we all love the bragging rights. See, there’s ideas out there, too bad the people that are paid to think about this stuff have quit trying…

When players reach a cap in their overall progression they face an invisible wall, the ultimate cockblock. Well I’ve made it this far, now what? I’m screwed because I don’t raid and the other systems to keep me occupied at this point in my progression are boring.

Removing or branching out exclusive incentives obtained in the raid structure isn’t a good solution, but that’s just me, in fact, I haven’t raided in over a year so I don’t think I would miss that structure at all, but the world would just end up being like a throw-away single player experience in the end without these systems supporting retention, players will still hit those invisible walls if all high-end loot is obtained by the same type of structured content players churned through during 1-60. We could always go back and point the blame on two developers who played EQ.

Other thoughts:

If the leveling curve were tuned in upwards to at least 25 days played it would have helped, the content was in place to support a longer leveling curve. The current average is 15-18 days played for begiginners, the current time investment is based off empirical data collected by playon.

AA system in EverQuest was a great way for non raiders to progress their incentives after hitting the wall (still boring) even if it bridged the gap between raiders and non further than it should have.

PvP is a great retention system if implemented correctly, World of Warcraft’s pvp system is poorly designed.

I disagree that WoW would be a better game if the life post-60 was more like life pre-60 because I don’t feel like grinding ogres day after day – or even worse, running 100 shitty collection quests that drive you insane. Fuck soloing.

Yes, certainly you need phat lewts as an incentive for raiding but that doesn’t make raiding a game mechanic that is worse than some other play style. I mean, I certainly wouldn’t do group or solo content if there wasn’t an incentive either. Would you?

I’m retired from raiding because PoP turned me into a bitter old cynic. I know why you guys raid, it’s all about the loot, and I mean ALL about the loot. Your not exited about doing your 1000’th run through MC, but your new recruits need phat lewts. So you drag yourself (and your other vets) through three more hours of the same crap you’ve done for 6 months. Heck, some of your vets are so bored their writing blogs to pass the time.

Yet whenever someone suggests that raid style loot be gained from non-raid sources it’s still high treason against the gods. “Don’t those clueless newbs know that if no loot dropped on the raids, nobody would raid?” Well that’s kindof our point. Since raiding is a game mechanic that requires incentive to prop it up it’s a bad play mechanic.

No matter what your current style of play is, the first MMO that comes up with an end game that’s “fun” will make all others (including WoW) obsolete. As for how a developer would do that, our best guess is simply “make it more like it was when we we’re newbs”…

I can use the same example with the spell drops in high end dungeons that Foton addressed above, if you make them situational, you can come up with some fucked up shit that would be a lot of fun instead of the standard incremental shit you have now and casuals won’t have to stress about getting their “core” spells with a 40 man crew so they can do their own content. The downside is with softcaps and making more items situational you sort of penalize the hardcore rewards and a lot of the smarter catasses will be pissed off about the artificial barrier, but if they spend most of their time raiding and killing the big shit, fuck it. They can always have both anyway.

Do you want WoW to be like Guildwars? If you want to play Guildwars go play Guildwars or you can wait for Hellgate: London.

Blizz needs to whip out big time dollars to get their original designers back. That or they could rename Ironforge to “Plane of Knowledge” so people aren’t so confused….

You are correct in what you are saying. Are you a Raider yourself?

Anyway I feel you are not, at least to my understanding, discussing what Foton’s argument or thoughts on this matter are. I see him saying that when a company starts putting items and content in places where over 50% of the players can’t get them, they are hurting themselves and other players. (Btw, saying 50% is being VERRRRRRRY lenient on who can get AQ items.)

Let’s see if quotes work or if I can use them correctly:

You don’t _have_ to farm anything. There were guilds capable of farming BWL in one session before AQ was even released. You certainly don’t need these spells in order to beat any content currently available in the game.

I’m not sure if we’re playing the same game. Items are everything. Sure, it may not make THAT big a difference in PVE battles, but when the WARcraft part of the game kicks in, anyone loaded with epics will wipe the floor with the regular green/blue player. If the game is supposed to be about PVP, why make the best items not available for the majority of your players. (No one has an I WIN button, but having Epics make an insane amount of difference in PVP situations.)

The expansion will make areas like MC, ZG, and higher-end content available to those Foton are speaking of, but then the higher ups will have more Raider only toys to play with.

Back to Foton’s point though: Why is Blizzard going down the same road as EQ in content and items? Aren’t there more creative and better ways of putting this kind of content into the game? (I have no ideas myself. Then again, I’m not paid to come up with these ideas either.)

Ninefingers

There is also another point we’ve all missed so far: selling these spells to the lvl 60 strat/scholo/UBRS/DM crowd would make these instances too easy.

A raid guild is most likely decked out in epic gear of at least MC or ZG quality. They have a ton of dmg items, high DPS weapons, plus the secondary AP/Crit increases through the massive stat upgrades that epic armor provides. The base damage is only one part of the calculation.

So while a new spell rank might be a great upgrade for someone who’s just starting with UBRS and Strat, it’s actually not that much of an upgrade for hardcore raiders.

A MC/ZG equipped Mage likely has a couple of hundred points in dmg and both trinkets (TOeP, ZHC). Upgrading his Fireball’s or Frostbolt’s base damage would prolly only constitute a minor relative upgrade of his total damage output. It wouldn’t make much of a difference against BWL raid mobs.

Upgrading the base damage of a a green/blue UBRS PuGer on the other hand would be a significant upgrade that could potentially trivialze the content.