Keeping Old Content Relevant
Tobold and Ravious today posted about WoW's old zones are of no importance to high level chartacters and how this will cause WoW to eat itself. Tobold talks about how Luminous has you go back to farm low level zones for materials you need while Ravious talks about how Turbine is constantly revamping the low level zones to better streamline them and give old players a reason to start new.
Both of them are essentially looking at the same problem from two ends of the spectrum. Tobold is coming from the viewpoint of someone who has played WoW for years upon years and has no reason to ever go back to those zones. Even if he had to go back to those zones to farm crafting materials, he would be doing it solo. Ravious is coming from a viewpoint of someone new to the game or returning after being gone since just after release. For him, those low level zones are ghost towns and the few people in them are just soloing by themselves and have no reason to group.
I cannot help but wonder if in some ways, Guild Wars got it right and maybe the style could be modified for a standard MMO. With the Factions and Nightfall campaigns in Guild Wars, it takes a player about 5-10 hours to reach the level cap of 20. From there, they have access to almost every single zone in that campaign (aside from the very final stages of the campaign unless they are grouped with someone who has access).
Instead of railroading players down one or two set leveling paths in a game with the game, why not remove levels all together and just make all zones the same level but with varying levels of difficulty? In Guild Wars, I can go to the later zones from the campaign from the start but they will just require a greater amount of focus and concentration than the earlier zones.
What I would like to see is a game have a two to three hour introduction area similar to the pre-Searing in Guild Wars Prophecies or the level 1-6 racial introduction areas from Lord of the Rings. This introduction areas would be your tutorial to teach you the basics of the game and your class and if you have already done the introduction on a previous character, you can skip it and go right into the game proper.
You could take your friend to an "end game" city siege, raid, or whatever activities are usually exclusive to people at the level cap within hours of them joining the game. Since there would be no levels, all instances and zones would remain valid.
Leveling and constant stat increases just cause mudflation so why not do away with those systems? I used to only see a goal as new purples but playing Guild Wars has shown me thousands upon thousands of people who play just to get new skins for their weapons and armor. There are many people who would go kill things for house and guild hall trophies or materials to craft an insane looking axe.
While the foundations of the RPG is a level based system, I think it is time for the genre to evolve.
Also, you still have time to get your name in to win one of the two extra Aion beta keys I have. Just make sure you get your post in before the end of the day. I am going to close the post tonight and announce the winners tomorrow.
June 15th, 2009 - 13:24
I’ve never played it, but going off it’s name I assume Guild Wars is primarily a PvP game, with little or insignificant PvE (At least not even close to what WoW’s PvE is).
If that’s true than its still going to be a niche game and won’t appeal to the masses. Changing the look of armor, gaining achievements, acquiring trophies, etc might be enough for a game that has no subscription and caters to PvP, but I’m not convinced that the game concept is enough to hold the attention of a large number of players.
When I say large I don’t even mean WoW large, but even something like 1-2 million players which no MMO has done yet outside of WoW.
June 16th, 2009 - 12:16
I played guild wars and lost interest in it very quickly. I agree in principle to some of what you’re saying, but progression is a very big feature in the majority of games. Removing viable progression would more than likely lead to more people leaving the game sooner because they had no goal to pursue.
If the game’s endgame takes 6 months of leveling to get to and you hate it, they get 6 months worth of subscriptions before you quit. If the game’s endgame takes a week to get to and you hate it, they get a month’s worth. Guild wars is not a subscription based game, so they have no reason to have players invest more time, and it shows.
I don’t know if there really is a good answer to this dilemma. . .
June 17th, 2009 - 12:05
I think the thing about Guild Wars that kills it for me is wading through the same thing over and over to get to certain areas again. In principle it ALMOST works. To me the game always played like a 3D Diablo 2. Get gear, exit chat room, farm area.
June 18th, 2009 - 14:19
Fish, as a result of the horizontal design of GW, people don’t have to play it for stupid amounts of time to progress, they play it because they enjoy doing so and to explore content. That’s what jettisoning the subscription and leveling grind do; they make the game stand on its own merits, rather than keeping people invested with treadmills and dripfeeds of rewards.
More games should do take that lesson to heart, and count on keeping players around because it’s fun to play, not because they feel a sub obligation or because they have to “grind rep” or level a character before they get to “the real game” at the level cap.