Insta level 90? How feels you?

I'd ask this on the Blizzard forums but as we know it's mostly full of knob heads defending Blizzard till the ends of the earth.

So, I ask you. Regarding the instant level 90 sale, how feels you? Not the preorder but the fact they now sell it in the games "shop" for £40.

It seems to me, you are paying extra, not the play the game. The game economy below that level will probably become moot as well.

Well if you want to show off to your friends that you've already reached max level, you've got the chance to do it now.

Other than that, I see no point of it.

Well everyone rattles on that WoW is only good when you do end-game stuff so I guess it was natural to offer people to start at end-game. Shame cause some starting areas are actually pretty good (or used to be at least)

I'm still amazed people actually play that game to be honest.

I tend to find the opposite. While much of the quests are kill X collect X padding. Some of them are fairly well designed and written. And done so in a digestible manner without big long pretentious Bioware bullshit. Several of them stand out. Paticulalrly several the Burning Crusade quest in which you slaughter a village only to discover it was not them who killed a Draenei peacemaker. With some good context and writing the X 10 kill shit becomes interesting. Playing with players screaming "pull mob!" "healer is noob!" bla bla bla (most of them tend to be assholes) just annoys me.

The 90% that don't. Or those who do and poured in masses of time to get to that point. Both in simple leveling and crafting.

I thought that's what heroic classes where for. i.e. Deathknight. Already have a high level character? Here's an opportunity for another one.

Yea, it will effect them as well, no doubt. Instantly, you have people with dozens of skills filling up the screens without a clue as to what to how to play. Likewise probably never run a dungeon or raid before.

World Of Warcraft players are renowned for patience and manners.

This is one of the main reasons I left WoW for good. Sadly the community has become one of the worst on the gaming scene.

WoW was a great game, with an awesome community, but as it became more and more popular, the inevitable happened and idiots started playing.

I play on and off both Guild Wars 2 and SWTOR, and I have to say the community in both games is very good. Most people are glad to help and have a chat.

Ehh, it is the consumers choice.

But maybe they shouldnt have made levelling so darn boring in the first place. As a matter of fact, I would be all for a patch or expansion lowering the level cap to a much more reasonable 30.

Subjective, but eh, still disagree. Crafting. Dungeon run. Questing. Pet battles. PVP. Exploration.

As someone who actually enjoys the concept of "lore" (I check the wiki page to read about zones and characters) I'm finding I'm actually leveling up too fast to the point that the enemy NPC's are going green and blanking out. I can't actually experience all of the burning Crusade or WOTLK content with a single character. Barely even half the zones for each expansion and that's barely doing any dungeon runs. Leveling up isn't a problem unless it's one of these dickheads who just want to skip all the shit so they can get raid gear to hang around floating above the auction house all day thinking people give a shit.

Is this your first MMO cup?

Don't mean that in a bad way. It's just that you talk about WoW like I used to when it first launched.

World Of Warcraft didn't have expansions when it launched. 50-60, 60-70, 80-90 as opposed to 1-50.

Crafting: Terribly executed in WoW. I have seen much better examples of crafting elsewhere which actually feels like crafting.
Dungeon Run: The leveling dungeons are so offensively easy they are downright boring. The good dungeons are those at the level cap, preferably heroics too.
Questing: The quests in wow are incredibly boring, especially all those kill X to collect Y of Z quests. Those actually punish you for playing with others. Almost more linear than Call of Duty or Super Mario Brothers 1... somehow.
Pet Battles: Minigame, if I want to play a mon game, I will play a proper mon game.
PvP: Much better at level 90 than it is at low levels.
Exploration: Yay for endless amounts of empty landmasses and copy paste castles.

The levelling experience in WoW is a very shallow experience, it is no wonder that level boost is selling really well from what I hear, not to mention, my classmates in university even came back because of that instant level cap thing.

Mate, you haven't made an argument here beyond "I feel". Which is a waste of time.

Some of the shit you have mentioned as well "endless amounts of empty landmasses" is just plain wrong from both a gameplay, npc count and lore perspective.

From a Pokemon perspective as well, World Of Warcraft is actually more promising since the world is much larger with literally, millions of players to battle against. And Blizzard are arguably superior at game balance. So, whats proper? They shouldn't do it, why?

Like stated already, most people just want to get into the end game. Once the xpac comes out and you have to level 100 then it just becomes like the Scroll of Resurrection they did a year ago.

Yet the things I said are generally agreed upon.

But oh do tell me what makes WoW's crafting good or even decent for that matter. It is as barebones as it gets, click on a recipe, craft from recipe, it is basically a glorified shop with the players spending resources instead of money.

Do tell me what makes run into big mob group and AoE to death then rinse and repeat challenging or even fun?

Do tell me what makes WoW's questing decent? Sure there is some decent writing in there, but most of the writing is trash and there is a reason not many people read it. Let us not forget who is the lead writer at blizzard.

Do tell me at least one reason I should play the pet battles instead of just doing the normal PvE or PvP which WoW is designed around. Or in case you want to play a mon game, not just one of the superior alternative.

Do tell me what makes lower level PvP anywhere near as good when the balance is explicitly done for max level PvP, Not to mention more skills and talents to go around with and a bigger community.

Do tell me what makes wow's world not empty because last time I played here were very few landmarks for the ammount of land that was covered. And I certainly got fed up of seeing the same castle over and over again with the only difference being the mobs inside and the name (although, in the open world PvE, there really isnt much difference from a gameplay perspective between most mobs, outside of basic stuff like caster or melee).

They shouldn't have bothered with pet battles. Blizzard should have spent their resources around improving their core gameplay and actual content rather than gimmicks that add nothing to the core experience.

It should be worth noting that I quit before I got to the mists of pandaria zones, so unless they made massive improvements to the levelling experience, and I mean massive, my point still stands.

WoW is a good game though, but the levelling experience is as bad as it gets. There is a reason Blizzard is doing this and people are buying it, because no one wants to bother with the godawful levelling portion of the game.

Jesus Christ man, space it out.

Maroxad,

You have listed all these things basically saying the game has nothing to offer.

I'm curious, why do you personally think that it 7 or 8 million players paying a sub after 10 years?

Thing is when it released the game mechanics obviously were not as dated as they are now but still people enjoy it and it still has FAR MORE subs than any other MMO. Why is that?

This is just my personal opinion of WoW but I think while leveling has had it's day and has become a lot less interesting, the game as a whole is still a whole lot of fun. It has a tremendous amount of content and the combat is extremely polished (as it should be after 10 years) and just in general the game is very entertaining.

I'm not a fanboy, in fact I just posted some negative stuff on the WoW forums the other day and had to fight off all the tards attacking me as if Blizzard could do no wrong. But the fact remains that a whole crap load of people still love the game and I expect that the new model updates will cause a surge in players with this next expansion.

I don't know....I just think the game should get a bit more credit for what it's done right and clearly it's doing something right.

Brilliant move by Blizzard. They will get paid to play the game for you :P

What makes people stay in WoW are stuff like the good PvP (for mmo standards), their friends and guildies, attatchment to characters, strong marketing that keeps bringing new people in, the incredible end game raiding, the top notch combat mechanics (still unmatched by any mmo as far as I am concerned).

I am not saying WoW is a bad game, I am just saying that the levelling portion is by far the weakest link. And this is why I can see the whole insta level 90 thing as being justified. I am a firm believer that a game shouldn't force players to stick through hours after hours of gameplay just to get to the good stuff.

Well think about it though, after 10 years people are done with lvling. They are bored to tears with it (like me) and don't want to go through it again after leveling up multiple toons. Long time players have paid their leveling dues and this is a way to let people play other classes and keep them interested in the game. And yes it's a way to make some $$ as well.

I see, and agree.

Speaking of which, I do remember people attributing WoW's sudden population boost to the whole free level 90 thing.

I didn't know it took that much time to reach level 90. Makes sense now.

1. Didn't bring that up at all. Even if we did, it really wouldn't change the reality in the slightest.

2. Guilds. Families. Friends. And of course, it's primarily an combat game.

3. Try debating without sounding like an asshole or we wont debate at all.

4. Even taken within the context of "collext X" or "kill X" Blizzard injects story and gimmicky twists. Contrary to the negative connotation "gimmick" is not inherently a bad thing.

5. Might give it a try when it's on a steam sale. However, I'll be surprised if the actual quest chain is as well done as Blizzards. Likewise, that appears to be all you could list, against a game almost a decade old. How many MMO's have we had since then? How many have died?

6. It's subjective you play a game for fun? I... can't really think of any other reason to play a game.

7. Obvious. Re-read.

8. The quests are based around a Christmas tree structure progressing through landmarks. Specifically designed to progress the players location as well as quest chain. Every zone has a story arc.

Also define "uninteresting" because to me (and yes totally subjective) this is some of the best and most varied scenery I have seen in any game to date. Not only is a beautifully conceived, it runs like butter on low end hardware. Entering the Hellfire Peninsula for the first time tops anything seen in Crysis. A prime example of art style over technical limitation.

9. The game is almost 10 years old and still the most subscribed MMO around. I'm not talking your word for it lol. I remember all the bold claims of Lord Of The Rings Online, Age Of Conan, Warhammer Online. They are all dead and World Of Warcraft remains top dog. If people are complaining then they are a loud minority or simply full of shit.

10. I've been playing fairly leisurely , a few hours here and their. By no means die hard. In the space of two weeks, near enough maxed out. From what I hear from my more die hard freeing who played games like the original Everquest, shit was way tighter back then. They quite actively talk shit about games like World Of Warcraft for being so casual and allowing players to level up so fast.

11. Subjective, even if this is the case of most playing for the end game. Player do, especially for titles like Everquest,

Damn, I plan on playing SWTOR soon especially now that it's free to play (yes, I'm late to the party). In fact it'll be my first ever MMO I've ever gotten into, maybe I can hit you up sometime Felipe and we can go double dragon on their ass.

I'll let you know when I get it and shiz.

2. Would be a good point, but unfortunately for a lot of people out there. Guilds, Family and Friends are not an option since most players are at the level cap and a good ammount of these people are not very willing to roll a new character.

3. How does arguing that Blizzard's writing is poor make me an asshole exactly? Besides I am not the one resorting to name calling here ;)

4. Gimmicks like use this item after they die, when they are below x% hp or before they die are not interesting gimmicks and dont really add anything but tedium.

5. I only listed one game because I thought that would be good enough, but I could also argue for more games if I wanted too. Asherons Call, EverQuest, RuneScape are some others I can think of which had more interesting questing, and are all older than WoW. I could probably mention more but ultimately, Quests werent all that common in mmos prior to WoW. But really questing in most mmos is lame and even though the questing in WoW is better than the questing in the likes of GW2, Warhammer Online and SWTOR doesnt mean the questing is any good.

6. What I am saying is that you find it fun, but I dont. You basicly used a "It is good because I like it" arguemetn whereas I backed why the pet battles are bad with several reasons.

8. The zones in WoW are unintesting in the same way the zones in Skyrim or Oblivion are unintersting. That is outside of the landmarks, there is nothing really interesting to see in a zone. Compare the level design in GW2 or TSW to the level design in WoW and there is a lot more interesting stuff to see per square kilometer over the other. Likewise the variety within a zone, isnt really all that good compared to what is seen in the likes of GW2 for instance.

9. I was directly pointing at the population decline. And no, there was a large uproar about this and Mists of Pandaria was not very well liked from the looks of things (going by user scores such as its 4.6 on Metacritic), a big part of this was that Blizzard spent too much resources on stuff that really didnt contribute to the core game. I have nothing against Pet Battle's existance, my problem is how Blizzard wasted resources that would have been better spent elsewhere.

10. Difference was that levelling in EverQuest was actually enjoyable. In WoW it is far too linear, unchallenging and handholding for its own good. It is basicly a tutorial that goes on for longer than most games.

This.

Regarding WoW, yeah I think that buying max level is BS but I also think grinding through 90 levels of WoW just to reach the endgame content is about the last thing I'd ever do. I get the idea of wanting to try another character type but not wanting to wade through 90 levels of fetch quests to do it. I would never take advantage of such an option, but that's also because I'd never play a game where the leveling isn't its own reward and to me, WoW is not that game.

-Byshop

I don't understand why its greedy or bs. It's an old ass game and people are board to tears with lvling but still like the endgame, this gives those people a way to not have to lvl once again just to get to endgame stuff.

It's such a shame that games have become this now.... where people would rather pay real money, on top of the real money they are already playing, instead of actually playing the game...

Right, after 10 years people don't want to level up again and again and of course Blizzard is trying to make $$ off of it, why wouldn't they? I just don't know why all the drama over it, it's not like the game is still young in it's life.

I generally don't have a problem with hero classes. As long as you already have a high level toon, you can use a Death Knight. This seemed like a fair approach. Although from reading the forums it appears the term "Death nub" was formed due to people not knowing how to play. This model will potentially amply that.

My friends, not to engage in a similar childlike personal attack (which is deeply hurtful) but if you do decide to declare and agree upon something in the future, some basic form of proof reading generally helps.

I'm saying that I see both sides of it. I get the idea that the game doesn't really begin until you reach the endgame content, so being able to skip to that has appeal (particularly if you've already been through 1-90 once already), but I think it's crappy for a couple reasons:

1) One of the things that quickly breaks any microtransaction model is the ability to buy power, which is basically what this is. I have to wonder what affect this will have on the community that earned their way to their level to see a bunch of noobs pop up as 90s all of a sudden. I see this argument in single player games, where people are annoyed at the idea that someone else can beat the game on an "easy" mode whereas they had to earn that ending. This annoyance is even worse in multiplayer games where everyone is in the same community playing together, but not everyone put in the same amount of effort to get there.

2) It could be argued that this isn't "buying power" but rather "skipping to the good part", but that's not great either since that's basically acknowledging that leveling up to 90 is a tedious chore that you have to get through to get to the good part. When I capped in SWTOR, I played with the endgame content a bit (which sucked at the time) but I was actually far more interested in starting a new character type and walking through the story of a whole new character type. To me, -that- was the fun part. If I were to skip to the cap in SWTOR, I feel like I'd be bypassing the best part of the game. In WoW, pre-endgame seems more like a chore than a joy.

-Byshop

That's funny, because I would think ad hominem name calling is a lot closer to a personal attack than anything that was directed at you. Or is it only childish if you aren't the one doing it?

-Byshop

For someone who's been on a forum for such a long time, the piss poor attempts at taking someone out of context certainly come across as amateurish.

My friend, it been emotional.

That was wrong and thus moot. So, moving on.

Yeah I get that, just still seems weird to me... but that's probably because I'm a gamer from the old days, things have changed now. Hopefully it doesn't completely destroy the starting areas and leveling up areas, but I think Blizzard hasn't really cared about them for years now anyway so no loss... Glad I left, better MMOs out there for me anyway.

If you can explain the context I robbed you of that justifies calling others names like you did, lay it on me. I'd love to hear this.

"My friend, it been emotional."

Sorry, I don't speak non-sequitor.

I get what you're saying, but my point is that total noobs will be there right along side the experienced players who are more justified in skipping to 90. Also, if getting to the level cap is such an arduous chore then I question how good the MMO is in the first place. I would never do this in SWTOR or The Secret World because exploring the story and puzzles through leveling is the best part.

-Byshop

I'm not a fan of having level 90 noobs who then ask me how to add an extra action bar because they have too many skills now.

This should only be awarded to someone who already has a level 90 character and still wants to keep up with his friends if he decides to reroll. It should not be given to everyone, especially noobs who don't know the game very well. At best you should be allowed to raise a character to the same level as your highest level character.

Believe it or not.... I fully support this. And although I was initially against the weapon upgrade Microtransaction in Dead Space 3 I change my mind now.... I say let them buy progression... Especially in the case of Role Playing Games since they require absolutely nothing but Repitition.

That would have been a much better system to go with.

What's the point in playing the MMO if you can just buy your way to max level?