kingpatzer wrote:
Quote:
A gear reset MUST happen, you can't expect a new level 70 character to suddenly be geared to the same level as someone who has been spending the last year (or even 6 months) at level 70 gearing himself up, without some intervention from the "Gear Reset".
No, what you'd expect is that toons in the range level 60-70 would have reason to do the level 60-70 content.
One of the problems with BC was that no one bothered to do things like BRS or Naxx. I think Blizzard's hope for this expansion (from what I've read) is to give people a reason to enjoy being the level they are and to spend time doing the content they designed. That's a big reason for the 10-man versions of raid content. It will give people a chance to spend time being challenged and having fun at each point of the journey from 60-80.
I don't know about you, but I would not like to level to 70, then spend a year (or 6 months, or heck, even 2-3 months)doing all the raid instances, just so that I could gear myself up to carry on leveling.
For that matter, as a level 70 right now, who is really only T4 level geared .. I would not like to be forced into clearing all the way to the end of Black Temple, just to get the gear I need to enter Northrend, if that was the case, I'd have to stop playing... and I promise you - I'm with the majority here ... and that'd be bad news for Blizz and the game.
"Bothering" to do the high level raid content meant spending a very large amount of time raiding instead of being able to jump into the new leveling content of the expansion.
Ten man raiding won't change that with the new content ... they've always got to consider a new character starting from scratch, those new characters cannot be forced into doing Previous incarnations of the game's end game content first before carrying on ... it's just not feasible.
One thing I am hoping for though, is an extended levelling experience. Getting from 60-70 was a short little push in comparison to getting from 1-60. Which meant the expansion felt like little more than a tag-on.
If getting from 70-80 means a major effort (ie, not doable in 24 hours /played), then the "Challenging" aspect of the game will return to a degree. Every quest completed will be an accomplishment, and every level dinged will be greated with server-side fanfare, and for a very long time, seeing a level 80 will be something to behold.
However, any environment where you give players an extended amount of time at max level to gather gear (cos that's the main goal - experience "End-Game" content), you disadvantage other players who are not at max level (or who haven't been there as long) when you start releasing new leveling content. It'll be the same with the Expansion after wrath, and it'll be the same after that as well.
Edited, Jul 16th 2008 12:24pm by robertlofthouse