I don't need to have a current sub to understand the scope of the landscape with regards to gearing, endgame, and the transition from leveling into the grind, as it stands now.
Because,
shockingly, the entire system didn't get a complete revamp in two months. Crazy how that happens, isn't it?
Quote:
Today, that has changed. Each expansion has brought changes to the game, some of which survive to influence subsequent ones and many of which quietly fade out. Yes, in a perfect world, they would redesign the existing world each expansion, but this is where one of WoW's strengths becomes a weakness. The baying masses on sites such as MMO-C are filled with guys who started at 12-13 years old and they're the self appointed prophets of WoW. They have the attention span of a fruit fly, they believe they see the one true vision of WoW and almost without exception they want new content to be end game content. WoW has gone into the realm of polyhedral dice and the Grateful Dead, it isn't going to get new players, so it has to satisfy the old ones and we have all done the grind. Most of us in this discussion have, at one time or another, done the alt grind repeatedly. Blizz can make us kill 10 of something instead of 30 for Nessingwary, but we've all seen Nagrand to the point we've seen every inch of it and there is no reason it should magically change to give us a new map (in the style of Cata). [More or less what Someproteinguy already noted above, with some extra wool gathering thrown in. Now, you kids, get offa ma lawn! Smiley: nod ]
I need to level a paladin something like 8 levels and I'll have at least one of every class at 90. I'll hit two of each at some point since I sometimes play both factions. When my latest Monk hits 90, she'll make my third, on four accounts. Analysis based on leveling through old content means jack all to me, and if you were to take your measurement over to a site that is still active (ZAM sacrificed this one to Wowhead) you would see that. It is at best a variant of "when I was a kid, I walked 9 miles to school, up hill, in the snow, and we liked it".
Literally, NONE of this has anything to do with my point.
Me, like two posts up, and again in posts before the bump wrote:
Whether or not there should be a skip to 90 option, how that should be implemented, if it's an issue that the leveling content isn't engaging enough, etc. are all other issues.
Yeah, an option to skip the leveling content (or at least "accelerate" it to the point of ease), is probably necessary now, because leveling isn't fun for most players. Absolutely no argument about that to me. The chances of a quality revamp of the system are so utterly low, that I don't see many other options at this point.
BUT, It's also separate from the P2W issue. Because a leveling skip can be implemented both as a RMT service, as an in-game quest line, etc. There's nothing fundamentally P2W about a leveling skip, since there's no fundamental "P2" in the concept.
But when we have a system where the leveling content isn't fun or engaging, but is acting as a gating mechanism for new characters to reach the fun and engaging content, selling a service to bypass that gate is extremely problematic. IF a level skip is necessary to improve the quality of the game to an acceptable point in the context of rolling new characters, but it is then locked behind a paywall, that is extremely problematic game design for the player.
The level skip has never been the problem here (or, if it is, it's a different issue). It's the paying for the level skip that is the problem.
This is the sort of service I would be likely to scoff at as P2W in a F2P game. Making it a paid service in a subscription game is just unacceptable. Subscription games are built on the foundation of paying for full access. The addition of purely-cosmetic items and services in a RMT shop was begrudgingly accepted, but services that actually augment the way players play and approach the game are fundamentally different from those.
If Blizz thinks that leveling content isn't enjoyable to justify its status as a required gate to access the content players want to play, then they should be implementing in-game solutions to that problem.
Implementing paid solutions to that problem is
actually complete crap.