One of the most discussed design systems in current WoW is the expansion-limited character progression system; what I’ve come to call “Choose & Lose”, and I thought I’d make a post about my considerations of it, and why it has changed the face of WoW, not in a particularly good way, for me.
This style of character advancement really started in Legion. At the time it seemed a really neat idea - our characters would work on earning famous items of gear that would empower them. My warlock was chuffed at stealing the Scepter of Sargeras out from under Gul’dan’s nose, while my Paladin got his hairy mits on Ashbringer. We powered them up through the AP system which had its own small but significant talent tree and although it was a bit grindy nobody really minded it too much since we were building and strengthening famous items from the game.
But come the end of Legion and as I made my way into BfA I lost them. All that work and effort, all that time and the Artifacts became nothing more than mog appearances, and things that sit in the bank gathering dust. Then in BfA I got Azerite gear and the Heart of Azeroth necklace that I again worked on empowering and grinding, only to have that lose all usefulness once I arrived at the Shadowlands.
And now I have Covenants, soulbinds, conduits and am once again grinding away at empowering things that will in a few months’ time, vanish from use as we players are presumably once more presented with another set of choices that really won’t be much choice at all. Something else to figure out which of my characters gains the most benefit from, which Ill choose to work on and which will eventually be lost and forgotten.
This all came to a head for me recently when I looked at the long line of greyed out Renown on the Renown screen of each of my characters and asked myself - why bother choosing? Why bother to work on them because in not that long a time all that effort will be wiped, I will take nothing with me into whatever follows. There is no sense of permanency from this work because I know ultimately it isnt permanent.
In my possibly not very humble opinion, this is a cotton candy game system. Its sweet and tasty while you eat it but it has no food value and contributes nothing to the game’s health. Blizzard needs to seriously rethink this design philosophy because after 3 expansions of going through this, my desire to jump onto the treadmill of temporary enhancements is wearing very thin.
Blizzard needs to also do some choosing, before they lose forever what makes WoW great.
EDIT: the comment often comes up about gear, how we change gear every expansion, etc. Im not actually talking about gear, Im talking about systems. After all, we can change gear on a daily basis but things like the Heart of Azeroth stick there on our character for an entire expansion.