There’s an interesting quote floating around from Blizz dev Tom Chilton. “By building expansions, you are effectively building up barriers to people coming back. But by including the level 90 character with this expansion, it gives people the opportunity to jump right into the new content.â€
On one level I completely agree. I know the feeling of wanting to go back and play a game but feeling too overwhelmed by what I’ve missed in the past. I absolutely love(d) EverQuest 2. Wonderful, wonderful MMORPG. I’ve wanted to go back so much, but every time I download the trial I feel completely lost. A few years ago (gosh probably 4+ now) I went back for the Kunark launch and leveled a Sarnak from 1-65. As I worked through previous expansions, I felt lonely and never saw anyone around. I needed to do that content to level up to see the latest expansion, but ultimately never made it there.
On a different level, I don’t necessarily agree that this is an expansion’s fault or intrinsic to the idea of an expansion. I think vertical progression / development are the issue. If anything, an expansion can be an enticement for players to enter a game or for someone who has been gone for a while to re-enter because there’s more to do and see — essentially the value offering has hopefully increased. This is also because of the problematic nature of focusing on an end-game rather than an entire game or a “living world.”
Offering an instant level 90 in World of Warcraft is a bandaid fix to the problem of having the 1-89 gameplay be worthless. This is a case where we see the symptoms being treated and not the cause. Does this work for WoW? Yeah, it probably does and in fact it’s actually reducing their particular barrier to entry, but not fixing the core issue.
It’s not easy. Balancing character progression while still creating a world that expands the possibilities more horizontally, without boring people from a lack of “things to do,” is one of the most complex and difficult to achieve designs — that’s why we almost never see it happen.
I didn’t read this post since my attention span is waning…
…BUT the title did remind me about buying the Velious expansion and only getting to see the Druid port location.
Edit: So I actually did read the post just now. Remember when WotLK came out? I didn’t have a character so I spent 6 days alone leveling one up to… 70 was it? The only players around to keep me company were those caring souls who camped low-level quest hubs for easy kills.
That was truly an awful experience. And I don’t mean the PKing.
I am mixed on this one. The new expansion has me interested in EQ2 again. I skipped the last two expansions. If they didn’t put something new out, I would probably never have thought about going back.
I have a friend who quit EQ2 years ago. He has not wanted to go back because there is almost too much to catch up on for him. And the fact that he would have to level up in empty zones.
The free 85 level characters certainly boosted EQ and EQ2s population at least for a little while so I can see why WoW would want to try it out too.
On the flip side, starting at lvl 90 brand new player.. holy shit is that daunting. You dont know how to fully play your class. Get invited to some group and be just terrible would ruin the game for the new player for sure. I guess it’s a nice to have feature and works well for those that are patient to actually play their character at lower lvls then when ready make a lvl 90. So it’s a double edge sword in the wrong persons hands.
I don’t even know how to play my own max level characters if it’s been too long since I played. Especially if there were any major patches.
Expansions are doing it wrong in my opinion.
They should actually expand and give us more things to do add more variety.
Not reset our progress.
For instance the first expansion to wow made it so we got a new area and it felt like we where kicked back to lvl 1 to lvl to 60 again. A big reset.
What did it do right? Expand by new areas, new races and new instanced content.
They could have added to the game without resetting our progress.
That and I do not like powercreep.
I think powercreep is the big problem that creates the barrier of entrance.
(as well as not beeing able to play and compete with the rest of the people that have not bought an expansion.)
I stick by my previous post on the “Why level so quickly?” thread. All expansions for that MMO would simply add more areas to explore/mobs to fight/material locations… what have you. And the same characters would be just as useful in both areas. Forever.
“I didn’t have a character so I spent 6 days alone leveling one up to… 70 was it?”
I think that sentence best describes how simplified leveling has become, seventy levels in seven days.
And now 6 days is considered slow. My how far we’ve come.
Expansion only reflects the initial design of the game. I mean, what else a WoW expansion could contain but more levels and new raids ? This is the initial game model, they’re not going to revolutionize it with any expansion. A different game, focusing more on the world and community would expand by adding more activities or more regions to explore/trade/conquer. Civ5 expansions added new layers to the conquering/dominition game, they didn’t suddenly made it a diplomacy game.
Expansions are indeed entry barriers regardless of their type. Playing a Civ5 game with my friend who doesn’t have all the expansion is simply not fun for me. I could see people refusing to play with others who don’t have all the expansions, especially when they change enough mechanics to change the strategy part. Taking my previous example of an exploring game, there’s a social barrier. Your friends/guildmates might be playing in a region or playing activities you don’t have access. You can still enjoy your game, but you might not be able to continue playing with the same group.
These barriers are somewhat necessary as they create monetary incentives. From a business perspective, one way to create more revenue is to create barriers/paywall. If the unlockables are good enough, people will buy them which in return convince other people to join. Or you can create new game each year and expect people to dump the old one and migrate to the new one (eg : sports game).
This is where I think that EQNext is on the right track. Get 1 class to start, keep adding more classes to play and make yourself more diverse. Their idea is on the right track as you are not excluded from any content.
Interestingly back between 1998-2004 expansions weren’t a barrier to entry into games. Why, because as has been said before, MMO’s were not so much about power creep as they were about expanding your world. The expansions for UO, EQ, AC and the first expansion for DAoC did’t bring any type of barrier because they all were games you enjoyed playing as either your high level character or your low level character or helping others out. Characters were so much different each other that there were always people re-rolling or new people playing.
Hell on P99 9 (The EQ emu server) five years after it launched, leveling spots are still jam packed, as those of us can attest too.
It’s all about game design pre 2004 and post 2004. Pre it was all about the world and your experience in it with a vast assortment of different classes or combination of skills to choose from. Post 2004, it’s all about homogenization. All classes share numerous traits so there really is no difference in alts. As well as the game has changed from living in it, exploring it and experiencing it to rushing to max level so you can start “The real game”.
I played Asheron’s Call for just over two years. It was a skill based game that used levels to give you more skill points. The original max level was 126. After just over two years, I was only level 72 and everyone else was just like me. In UO, I played for just over a year, didn’t macro and had two characters, both of whom weren’t 7xGM’s. EQ I played initially but didn’t get into it until the Luclin expansion and let me tell you, there were still TONS of people leveling.
This is pretty much why I refuse to play any new MMO these days. They aren’t the D&D experience I want, they have become bad RPG’s with stupid boss fights at the end.
I can still remember playing UO, AC, EQ and DAoC from before 2004. I have great vivid memories of all those games and all the friends I made and all the experiences I had in them. My best memories of MMO’s since have been me being bored and quitting them.