I’ve cooled off a bit after my previous rant regarding WotLK and thought I would take a more calculated look at my issue with the expansion: the amount of content offered in the end-game.
The root of the problem, I have decided, is the cannibilization of content that occurs whenever a WoW expansion is released. The fact that all other previous raids and dungeons are completely meaningless after the release of a new expansion. The game world literally shrinks every time.
Back in the days of EverQuest, a new expansion never meant the death of an old one. The new additions might allow struggling guilds to progress further than they had before, but the content was still important and therefore still enjoyable to do. Planes of Power, one of the best expansions the game ever saw, was released in 2002 yet the content lasted guilds for years and expansions to come after that. The gear mattered, the progression mattered. One of the main reasons this remained possible was that not every EQ expansion offered a level cap increase. That, and, many encounters were gear checks, therefore you needed previous raid gear to progress into new content. Blizzard clearly seems to disagree with this design, but I think the game would benefit greatly overall if they gave it another look.
Consider the Sunwell instance, which Blizzard has said a minuscule portion of the playerbase ever saw. Would it really have been a bad thing if the level cap had only been raised to, say, 75, and the completion of Sunwell was necessary before moving on to WotLK raids? I think not. If most of your playerbase hasn’t seen content yet, then there’s nothing wrong with giving them a chance to do so. You aren’t forcing them to hang back while others get to play with new toys because that content is still new to them if they didn’t finish it. Tone the content down if you want (as Blizzard did with Sunwell, but most people still never saw it) so the casuals can get through it, but USE the content and make it matter. I would much rather do the content as it was intended than see it rehashed a la the new Naxxramas.
Consider this, for example:
Let’s say the next WoW expansion is a mini-expansion that does not raise the level cap, but adds a new, small talent tree in which points are earned through Achievements, and adds only a small continent featuring some new dailies and tradeskill quests, a few 5-man dungeons, and two new raid dungeons – one unlocking the next. The 5-mans would be immediately accessible and contain loot on par with current heroics, but with better stat allocation, as well as various flavor items such as illusion items and mounts to make it fun for those who do not need the gear. The raids would be difficult enough to require a guild to have previously farmed Icecrown Citadel (assuming it is the last WotLK raid instance) to proceed.
What this would do is add new content without making the previous content completely obsolete.
- Casual Non-Raiders could get new loot from the 5-mans, enjoy the new quests, and would become more interested in Achievements they may not have considered doing previously because it would now earn them the special talent points. This extends to all players really, as there are a huge number of people who simply don’t care that much about earning achievements currently. The points would give them something more desirable than mounts or titles to strive for. This would breathe new life into ALL content in the game, for any Achievement deemed worthy of earning these new points.
- Casual Raiders would have a better shot at clearing previous raid content they had struggled with such as Ulduar or Icecrown Citadel thanks to loot from the 5-mans as well as the new talent points. The excitement of reaching the new raid content would give them a tangible goal to work towards and the old content doesn’t have to go to waste.
- Hardcores would feel rewarded for the Achievements they already worked hard to earn, and would enjoy the headstart with the new raids since they have already cleared the previous content. They would still enjoy the new 5-mans for the flavor items and the daily quests for gold. The first raid would be a race to see who could unlock the second one first, but that raid would be difficult enough that the first dungeon must be farmed for gear in order to truly succeed. This would bring us back to an era where we actually cared about who got world first or server first kills.
In other words, essentially what I’m saying is that I think the free content updates such as the Isle of Quel’danas and Sunwell have been better for the game than the actual expansions themselves. When the new badge vendor opened up on the Isle along with the nerfs to Kael’thas and Vashj, that was one of the greatest times to be playing TBC as a lower-end raider and the hardcores were pretty happy too.
My biggest complaint was how fast the raid content was completed in WotLK, but If I had had to gear up in Sunwell to do Naxx, gear up in Naxx to do Sartharion, and so on, I’d probably still be working my way up and enjoying myself. Maybe this is just my old EQ self resurfacing, but it sounds more fun that way to me.
So, I guess my question is, why does Blizzard feel each expansion has to hit such a hard reset button? The content updates are hugely popular with the playerbase, why not follow that model more closely?
Do people really like leveling up that much? I’m going to say no, and that an expansion that was just full of end-game content (of all kinds, not just raiding) would be hugely welcomed by the WoW community. Then again, I am a raider and maybe I’m just looking at it from my own perspective too much. I’d love to get other people’s thoughts on this.
