Perhaps the most interesting announcement that came with Warlords of Draenor was the news that, free with the purchase of the expansion, players would be able to boost any character immediately to level 90, so that they could - after a short tutorial to allow them to make sense of their many abilities - jump into the current content without having to play catch-up.
As someone who played RPGs long before I played an MMORPG, this almost sounds like heresy. I've always been an opponent of the notion that "the game begins at the level cap," as I spent about a year playing in late vanilla and early BC before I ever got a character to 70, and I had tons of fun doing so. I value the leveling process - the way that abilities unlock as you go, with the world opening up to you as you played (I remember when I first got out of Mulgore on my Tauren Shaman and came to Camp Taurajo, that was the first time that the huge scope of the game really hit me.)
The 90-boost is not aimed at me, though. WoW is a game that has been designed from the start to appeal to a broad audience. I may be sitting on thirteen characters who are at the level cap (and a few more that are in the 85-90 range,) but I'm far from the norm (see: title of blog.)
For many people, a hundred levels seems like a freaking mountain range between them and the raids and such that their friends have been telling them about. Giving them the ability to do only a tenth of that - and all in the newest, most modern content - should make a lot of people consider trying the game who might otherwise not have. It could also bring back older players who know what it's like to feel super-powered, and don't want to spend a ton of levels trying to get back to that feeling.
One thing to note is that this boost will not give people a level-capped character immediately. You'll still have to do those ten levels in New-Old-Draenor, meaning they'll be arriving at the new cap with the same mix of weird questing and 5-man gear that the rest of us will (they're less likely to have their Legendary Cloaks, though.) They get a serious catch-up, but they won't have any more of a head start than people who played through Mists.
The other reason why I'm ok with this is that it won't necessarily mean a death to low-level questing. You get one boost, and while it's possible that it could become a paid service, I expect most people will be willing to spend the time leveling an alt if they've already got a main up top to hand them gold and heirloom gear.
There is one area that I'm a little curious, if not really concerned about, and that is hero classes.
At the moment, there's only one hero class: the Death Knight. Monks proved that you don't need every new class to be a hero class, but I wouldn't rule out the special "hero" perks being applied to a future class, especially if it's one that's steeped in lore like the Demon Hunter.
At the moment, you need a level 55 character to start a Death Knight (who starts at level 55 - basically, they want you to do the same number of levels to get to the cap, even if it's not on a single toon.) For those new players who have just started, I wonder how the 90 boost will work if that person chooses a Death Knight. Do they have to burn their boost on a character they aren't going to play so that they can start their DK - who will then have to go through all the expansions' zones? Or conversely, will they have to level up to 55 on a different toon first, before they can boost their DK to 90?
Granted, they'll probably just build the boost into the UI in such a way that allows you to make a level 90 DK regardless of your previously-existing toons. And as a weird consequence, that boosted DK would then qualify you to make any number of additional DKs. Actually, it might just make more sense to remove the prerequisite for starting a DK altogether.
Where I think this notion gets stickier is the prospect of future hero classes. There's no guarantee there will ever be more hero classes (though I really hope there will be,) and if there are going to be, we won't hear about them until the next expansion is announced at the earliest.
But assuming that we get our Demon Hunters, our Timewalkers, or our Tinkers, or whatever at some point, what does this level boost mean for them?
The whole idea of a hero class is that these are classes that wouldn't make sense as a level 5 dude clearing kobolds out of Jangolode Mine. Just being a member of the class implies that you've already become as powerful as some of the legendary heroes of Azeorth.
Death Knights started at 55 for that reason, and also because this was before the Cataclysm revamp, and they wanted to let people skip the dull old vanilla content and go straight into Outland, which was comparatively far better designed at the time.
I've often thought that 55 could simply be established as the hero class starting level, and that future ones could start there as well. But with these level boosts (and I imagine that, unless this somehow proves to be a horribly unpopular or problematic feature, we'll see a new one with each expansion,) what would that serve?
Imagine, for example, that in two years' time, we hear the announcement of "Sands of the Infinite," where we get to battle the Infinite Dragonflight across time with the aid of the new Timewalker hero class. The new level cap is 110, and there's a boost to 100 like what we're getting in Warlords of Draenor. If the Timewalkers start at 55, then what's going to happen? I imagine most people would ignore that and simply boost the shiny new class to 100. All the work they put into the new starting experience for the Timewalkers gets skipped.
I have two solutions to this totally hypothetical situation that may never arise: one is to simply make their starting level much higher - perhaps letting them start at 95 and get to 100 by the end of the starting quests, or, if people would want the option to take them through the older expansions, simply have the starting experience drop them directly into the level-boost starting experience if they so choose.
Anyway, that tangent aside, I think that fundamentally, Blizzard has got to cater to all of its customers. I'm served well by things like the Cataclysm low-level revamp, but for some, a far better solution is just to let them skip their way forward.
I honestly don't know if I'll use this feature this time around, or even if they introduce new classes in the following expansions. But I'm glad that those people who might be turned off by the game will reconsider when their climb to 100 is made only a tenth as long.
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