Power Leveling through BlizzardFollow

Although a free level 90 character with the purchase of WoD was mentioned, apparently, Blizzard will also be selling level 90 boosts 'soon'.

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2014/01/17/pre-purchase-warlords-of-draenor-get-a-level-90-immediately.aspx

"Perhaps even more interesting, the announcement also mentions that players will be able to purchase additional level 90 boosts directly, without having to mess around with additional copies, accounts, and transfersl"

Meh, they'll get a Level 90 with no crafts (except for First Aid), very little money (probably what, 100g?), small bags (probably 16 slot ones that sell for 10g on most servers), and dungeon-quality blues. Probably 463. Maybe 450. I doubt it'd be 476.

At best, they'd be fast-forwarding about what, 80 hours or so?

I doubt it would seriously make THAT much of an impact upon the game.

The data I'm using for my guesses is based upon the "Free 80" you get out of Scroll of Resurrection.

Edited, Jan 17th 2014 8:16pm by Lyrailis

Edited, Jan 17th 2014 8:16pm by Lyrailis

Can you imagine doing any group activity where one player makes a mistake, how long before he's accused of buying his class and told to "l2play." With the community already questionable, this might be one more negative aspect to it.

Very curious as to how this pans out. Again, the boost might be available 'soon', so it might go live before WoD.

for me personally Im not thrilled with this idea, for a couple of reasons. I did the boost this on my second acct and boosted a pally to what was it 85 at the time? And im totally lost to many spells/abilities which talents to take(thankfully in this case we dont have the trees anymore)? What is the rotation? How do i dps proper with this guy? I have a level 30 ish pally that i play but there is a big jump from that. I know the basics but i wont take my 85 pally into a dungeon i would be booted with the quickness, even if i had the proper gear. So i dont play him at all he is covered in cobwebs.

Now lets look at tanks. I have a warrior and a DK at max level both of which i will never tank i did it in the lower levels but not past say 80 or so. im a dps kinda player. I can tank and play a healer at the lower levels in dungeons but past 80 things change a lot in dungeons it seems. I suppose my point is that with these these boost to 90 or whatever its going to be there are going to be a ton of people in PUGS pulling thier hair out, and lots of tanks dropping like flies in LFR.

Im a believer in learning and growing with your class, from the begining. Of course there are factors that apply, like you may boost a 2nd hunter or something on another acct. fine i guess.I think that sort of thing will be the majority At least i hope that will be the majority. But there will be a big jump in healers and tanks that will bring down heroic groups and LFR groups.

My issue is compound.

1. The ability to pay for a premium service that is a pretty massive advantage to players (essentially 1-2 months of additional time at cap).
2. The fact that this is being used to bypass bad content. Bad content motivates people to purchase the boost, and punishes those that don't. That not only ensures they aren't going to fix the problem, but adds an incentive to NOT fixing it.

If Blizzard wanted to say "***** it, the content isn't going to be repairable at this point - fast track it" they could put an in-game mechanism in place for it. Add a quest chain somewhere near endgame that lets you create level 90 characters, so people who have experienced the content don't need to do it again. And new players buying WoD get a free 90, so it's not forcing them to experience it anyway.

But I'm not okay with it being a P2W item (which it legitimately is - there's no other term that would fit an item that lets one player access content a month or more earlier than another player).

Frankly, that's NOT different from selling actual gear in practice. Assuming they play the same amount, the player who buys the boost is going to have an additional month or two of gearing padding their ilvls compared to the player who didn't pony up the cash. Unless the luck rate for drops between them is INSANELY skewed, they will not have the same level performance until they are both BiS. There's no way that's not P2W.

Leveling content is in effect a gating mechanism here, and they're selling a premium item that lets some people bypass a 1-2 month gate.

That's just ridiculous.

Selling gear and paying to level to 90 is nowhere near the same thing.

Also I'm not sure where you think there's some competition here, but you're making up an argument to support you side that simply doesn't exist. It's a boost to 90, not a boost to top tier raiding capability. If you don't already have a toon at 90 at this point, you clearly aren't in a position to be competitive anyway.

If one player is able to access content 2 months faster than another player, when putting the same time and effort into playing the game as the other, simply because they payed to bypass content, then yes, it's still a P2W purchase.



I agree with you that this is a serious problem. It's also a problem that should be solved. And it's absolutely ridiculous for them to use this problem as a motivator to make an additional purchase to access content that doesn't suck.

Because that's exactly what this is. They COULD go ahead and multiply experience awards for quests/mobs under level 90 by 10x and expedite the leveling process. They COULD go ahead and make a "straight to 90" path built into the game, so that the only people who are accessing the broken content are the ones who actually want to. They COULD have made character creation default to level 90 for anyone who owns WoD.

But instead they're using this serious design flaw to sell what is, in every way, a P2W item.



Everyone who is purchasing WoD is getting a free 90, which means that this service is only going to be interesting to people who want ANOTHER toon to cap, which makes it highly likely that they're the type of player who intends to access level-capped content with that new level 95 character.

And because it takes a time investment to level characters, which not only means 2 months invested into a new character, but also a whole lot of time that COULD have been used accessing endgame content on their current level-capped toon (because, again, they're already getting a free one, not to mention whatever toon they already had).

So, yes, it's an EXTREMELY valid scenario. And it's obvious that these don't need to be concurrent events for the point to be valid. What Blizzard is selling is the ability to shave 2 MONTHS of play time off of the gating period to access endgame. That's what this product is. That's what they've comodified here.

And because they've comodified it, it now has a direct value for the players regardless of whether or not they're purchasing this service. So, yes, it's a valid example. Because the player who does not purchase it is, in every way, the loser. They're now paying $30, and two months worth of game time, to access content that someone else pays $15+the service fee+ very little game time to access.

Yeah, if they're a SUPER hardcore player, and the other person is SUPER casual, they might end up accessing hardcore content in about the same amount of time. But that's incredibly unlikely for the vast majority of WoW players.



[EDIT]

To be clear, if the fix to the broken leveling is to allow players to bypass it, I have no problem with that. What I DO have a problem with is them allowing people to bypass broken content by paying an additional fee.

The fact that the leveling experience is terrible now is a design flaw, and it's absolutely unacceptable for them to be using that as leverage to get people to pay for an "optional" service, when the alternative is to spend literal days

If they still want people in those zones, running content, then they need to make quests stay current way longer, vastly increase experience returns for quests/kills, etc. I should be able to skip zones entirely when moving between questing tiers - go from Darnassus straight to Ashenvale, etc. The breadcrumb quests exist in lower-level towns anyway. If they cut the time investment from 80 hours down to 10 to hit 90, then there's no need for a paid service. That's not a bad investment at all.

The reality here is that they're much happier using that slog to motivate players to spend more. And that's a ******** business model, and it's insulting game design. This is more egregious, to me, than TOR only giving F2P players 1 action bar, originally.

Edited, Jan 18th 2014 2:16pm by idiggory

Invalid counterexample.

P2W does not depend that it be the only route to the highest level of power - that's just a false argument. P2W means that you are able to pay for advantages. Being able to access content two months earlier is an advantage. Having an additional two months of seals from running your dailies is an advantage.

How is this different than if they sold someone a two-month supply of seals that could be traded in for goods? Your "it can be obtained without it" argument isn't really going to hold weight then, is it.

The point is that, if I want to make a new character, I need to make a decision to invest two months slogging through broken content, or I can pay a fee and access the actual content I want two months faster.



Again, in no world have I EVER seen a P2W label being used exclusively for exclusive power levels. In any game I've ever seen that was P2W, RMT was letting you fast-track your way to power, not the exclusive way to access it.

Plus, I'm going to argue that it's just wrong that this isn't a problem that needs to be fixed. Blizzard is adding this option because there's demand for it, and there's demand for it because 1-90 content isn't fun. It's painful, it's terribly balanced, it's slow, it's unexciting (talent system and ability level changes greatly exacerbated that).

The fact that this content is so unenjoyable is what is their motivator for designing and implementing a payed "skip it" button, thereby heavily changing the landscape of their business model and the way players approach new content. They're adding it because they expect it to be the route a substantial number of people take when creating a new character, and they judge that potential profit to be well above what they lose by pissing off people like me.

It's BROKEN content. The content is meant to be enjoyable and interactive - it's a subscription-based game, and this is something they expect you to spend two months on. The fact is that the content is bad content, and they're using that as a motivator to get people spending money to bypass it and access the good content.

It's not just "showing it's wear and tear." The fact of the matter is that Blizzard is failing to provide a quality experience 1-90, and they're choosing to use that to push RMT instead of fixing that problem.

And, same as above, your counter-example can't exist in a bubble. If this was newer content that people wanted to skip because it was "showing it's wear and tear," would you have no problem with it? If people were bored gearing up ANOTHER heroic raid-ready character, would you be fine with Blizzard offering the ability to create a level 95 toon at ilvl <whatever> so you could jump right into the hardcore content?

That's absolutely the same thing. All we've done is moved the point in the timeline to a later date. It's no different investing time and effort in your character to get them up to level 90 and geared to take on new content as it is to get them to 95 and geared to take on new content.

You're approaching it differently because you WANT to consider that different. Logically, it isn't.



Yeah, if we're going to zoom our perspective out to a level stupidly far disconnected from human experience. And the EXACT SAME THING can be said of weapons. There's no value to an ilvl difference, because come new expansion that's just not going to matter.

The point is that, in the here and now, the choice of whether or not to buy a character boost up to level 90 is a really big factor in the quality of my play experience.

And it's absolutely not okay for them to make players make that choice.

Either make the zoom to 90 a standard feature, do the once-and-done WoD thing, whatever. Keep it equal.

But no RMT purchase should EVER have a major potential to affect my real time enjoyment of the game. And this one definitely does.

I have no problem with RMT purchases that affect the enjoyment of the game in very minor ways - a non-combat pet, a mount, an appearance change. I have no problem with services that carry fees for good reasons, like realm transfers.

This is VERY different from those.

The Recruit-A-Friend thing is already limited to certain players, so I don't see this as a major ethical issue. If anything it's more fair than the RAF feature since everyone can use it if they have the cash. I can't use the RAF feature (and get the mounts) unless I move to another country.

They see me trollin', they hatin'...

I have 6 level 90 guys a 86 monk and many 70 somethings and yes the content is repetitive and boring as hell. I think they tried to fix the old content with Cata introducing many new quest lines. and the only toon I got on RaF I don't play at all. im lost with him as mentioned before. after reading all of these comments I only oppose the purchasing of the auto lvl 90 character. The content is there while boring (not sure its broken, hasn't changed much since vanilla) but defiantly boring IF you have done it as much as many people have done(for me at least 10 times). right now im on a break of WoW and playing EQ again and im finding enjoyment in boxing a ranger and monk from the beginning. like WoW there are zones untouched that provide viable and fresh scenery and ways to level.


In WoW I would love to see them take a page out of EQ's book once again, and make an expac like serpents spine and have the entire expac content available from 1-max lvl. In other words you wouldn't need to leave the confines of the core of the expac to level to max if you didn't want to. maybe at that point say at 59 you would crave some BC content...

Not buying it. You go on and on about what you hate on any given day, go back and read the last few years of your posts. This is the thread that buys you soapbox time, so this is your hate of the moment.



You got called on not playing, so you're reinventing your position to say that you don't play because you don't like old content and somehow the boost to 90 is relevant to that. It isn't. SoR and RaF already allow boosts that are contingent in some way on money, either by reactivating an account or buying a new one. A guy who can multi-box also receives an advantage based on his ability to pay for the accounts, power use, game time and hardware. Talk of allowing extra boosts to 90 is nothing but recognition that the same folks who already have the money to get around time sinks would be able to just buy multiple copies of WoD.

They "just fixed" leveling content once. Cata. I wonder why they don't want to repeat that experiment? A large slice of the fan base, I'll term them that because many seem to be critics who don't actually play, complained loudly about how they had been cheated out of new content because dev time had been spent on something other than cranking out max level stuff.

That is my only big concern for this. With the technology to scale gear now one way they could fix it is to give higher level players the option to run the old dungeons through lfg but scale the gear depending on the dungeon you get. Like you can set Classic, BC, Wrath, Cata or MoP dungeon groups and it will put you in an appropriate dungeon at an appropriate level. To sensitize it more they could have it so you get a bonus on your reward if you run the whatever the expansion theme of the day is. For example, today you get extra justice for signing up for a Classic random, the next day it is a Cata random.