One of the most controversial, but in the long run probably successful, features of Warlords of Draenor was the introduction of a boost that would get any character to level 90 instantly - free with the expansion, or available for a fee for subsequent characters (they didn't want people starting new accounts to transfer characters to their regular one.)
Now, I think leveling is an important part of any RPG, and there's a huge amount of game that you'll miss if you boost a character all the way up.
But most WoW players have been playing for a long time, and for those of us with alts, we've even seen that early content a whole lot.
The thing is, this isn't the first time we've seen a level-boost for characters.
When Wrath of the Lich King launched, pretty much hands-down the biggest new feature was the first new class - the Death Knight. Blizzard decided that Death Knights would start at level 55, only requiring that you already have some other character who was at that level - and that remains true today.
Now, the official justification for this was that it would feel weird for level 6 Death Knights to go traipsing through the Jangolode Mine, and that's valid. The Scourge isn't big on advancement - and someone who's only fit for some very light adventuring would most likely become a mindless ghoul, a zombie, or part of a bone construct.
However, the other thing was that they wanted to make it easier for Death Knights to get into the mix. In Burning Crusade, they effectively added a new class to each faction by allowing Draenei Shamans and Blood Elf Paladins, but these characters had a lot of catching up to do to join things at the endgame.
With another ten levels added (though they had already started to reduce the amount of XP required to get through the old world, and they added heirlooms in Wrath,) they basically allowed Death Knights to skip the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor completely, sending them immediately to Outland upon finishing their intro quests. And that might not sound so great now, but remember that before Cataclysm, the Old World's questing made Outland look amazingly well-designed and enjoyable. And to top it off, the blue gear granted by the DK starting experience was incredibly good compared to what someone who had just finished leveling up in the Old World would be wearing.
Today, with another forty levels of expansions (and with the 80-90 stretch encompassing two expansions, making it more the equivalent of fifty levels,) Outland is not the "almost there" head start that it used to be. Certainly, going 1-58 isn't instant now, but it's a lot easier and faster, such that you'll spend a lot more time going from 60-100 than you did going 1-60.
So here's our conundrum:
It seems that the level 90 boost was a huge factor in making Warlords such a success - subscriptions rocketed back up, perhaps not to peak numbers, but by millions. And for that reason, I expect that every expansion that follows will have a similar one-time boost to the previous expansion's cap.
And if a new expansion launches with a new class, you can bet that most people are going to use their boost on the new class.
This means that something like the Death Knight starting experience might have been a one-time thing. Monks were created simply as a new class, and not a Hero class. But in a way, that worked with the flavor (and also because they correctly expected that most people who made Monks would also play Pandaren, which gave the Wandering Isle a decent amount of traffic.)
Yet if we got another class with a strong flavor like the Death Knight, how could we justify creating a unique experience in which to get them started?
Well, the solution is pretty simple, I think:
Just make them play through it before they boost.
You could have another class start at 55 - just like the Death Knight - but before one uses a character boost, one would have to finish the intro story. The Death Knight starting quests showed that questing could be very enjoyable and very story-driven and actually a lot more exciting when tailored specifically to your class. Death Knights are a dark class, and you do some pretty nasty stuff in that quest-chain.
And given that it's all doable in an hour or so (and Blizzard has gotten better at preventing bottlenecks, so it'd be even more reliably quick,) I don't think many people would complain (though some would, because of course they would.)
Then, players would have the option of leveling up the rest of the way or taking a boost - but this would ensure that they're at least somewhat familiar with core class mechanics before they do so.
A class-specific starting experience would likely be better-tailored to teaching players how to play a new class, and so they might be given a wider suite of abilities if they boost than other classes, assuming there's something else like the Tanaan Jungle intro.
The far more radical option, though, would be to have a new hero class begin at 95 or 97 (for the sake of argument, let's say that this class comes in the next expansion.) They would have an intense 3 or 5-level experience, and acquire new abilities throughout the quests - not only when leveling. This would make it function similarly to the original version of the Death Knight intro, where quests would reward talent points for the old trees in addition to experience, gold, and gear.
I'd love to see more Hero classes - with all the bells and whistles and unique intros that Death Knights were afforded. Hopefully it'll still be a thing.
No comments:
Post a Comment