Cameron Sorden at Random Battle pointed out how Blizzard’s decision to drastically alter the amount of XP earned in World of Warcraft (WoW) is actually helping re-playability and low-level content, in that it’s so much easier to earn XP at low levels, that new characters only see a fraction of old-world content, thereby giving players a reason to re-roll, as new characters can level to 60 and see content that previous characters might not have. This isn’t a boon for oldschool players who had to see all the old-world content back when XP was so slow coming; before, characters needed to explore all of Azeroth just to keep the quests coming, but for newer characters, this is definitely a nice thing.
That said, we can’t help but think it’s too-little-too-late, as most people have legacy characters that already experienced all the old-world content, and simply missed the chance to flag all the new achievements as “completed”. In other words, these changes are a boon for only a small segment of the player-base, as most players already have enough alts to have seen most of the old-world content already. Blizzard should have implemented this type of thing sooner, else found a way to maintain the existing content-to-XP ratio, such that players could miss out on major content and still reach the level cap from the get-go, thus making re-rolling an appealing action.
As it stands, Blizzard’s efforts are clearly money-driven: get people to the level cap ASAP where most of the existing players are, such that grouping can continue at end-game and people can experience only the latest raiding content. To us, this whole thing merely shadows the achievements of the oldschool players, who ought receive some sort of recognition for churning through the content in the first place, for much less experience than new players who get recognized for their accomplishments via the new achievements system.
Granted, every MMOG will evolve over time, and certain changes will be implemented that make old achievements easier to accomplish, but given Blizzard’s emphasis on titles and aesthetic bonuses from in-game accomplishments and even out-of-game money-sinks like the WoW collectible card game (CCG), we can’t help but think developers should build their games with some sort of achievement-tracking system from the get-go, even if it’s hidden from the end-user. That way, when certain content becomes irrelevant down the road, the developers can retroactively reward the oldschool players for their historical achievements with titles, unique items, etc. At least that way, there would be much less QQ, and more contentment for past accomplishments.
Similar Posts:
- The Gamerscore is dumb. – Apparently, the XBox 360 Achievement system is loved by console gamers, which has always confused us…
- More on “achievements”. – In August, we commented on the achievement system as popularized by Microsoft’s XBox 360. In short:…
- Welfare epics hardly welfare. – In late November, I complained about reaching end-game late compared to many World of Warcraft (WoW)…
Comment by linking this page in a tweet. Or, tweet @WyldKard.