Presumably, the idea behind heirlooms is that players who are able to purchase these items have already progressed enough on one character that they should be given an “express ticket” for other characters. I think the idea of an express ticket is fine, but I think the fact that heirlooms more or less permanently replace gear slots on the journey to max level is really bad design. I know it’s basically too late to remove heirlooms from WotLK, but maybe we can refine the concept of heirlooms for future iterations of WoW Classic.
So, isn’t part of the joy of WoW the gear progression? Chasing upgrades? Optimizing your gear setup? Heirlooms just undermine that on a fundamental level. Any weapon I ever pick up now is just automatically vendored or destroyed, because there’s no way it can ever be better than an heirloom. Alright, maybe some weapons could slightly surpass an heirloom’s power for a level or two, except they never realistically will, because you are going to enchant your heirlooms, which generally costs a decent chunk of change; enchanting another piece which is going to be obsoleted by the heirloom again in just a few levels would just be a bad financial move. For chest and shoulder slots, it’s not even close, because no item you will find from a monster/quest/dungeon will have an experience bonus attached to it.
As mentioned above, a side effect of heirloom gear is that I now have no desire to do dungeons for weapons, chests, or shoulders. Remember when some lucky warriors would emerge from RFK with a corpsemaker? Well, no point in messing with that anymore; I can just buy an arcanite reaper heirloom, which is just as good or better. Heirlooms cause people like me to be even less inclined to look for dungeon groups, making it harder for everyone else to actually form a low level dungeon group. Low level dungeon participation is pretty much at an all-time low for Classic as far as I’m aware.
Heirlooms also just make characters obscenely powerful. There is basically no risk of ever dying for some classes while leveling if using heirlooms and high level enchants, and they can just mindlessly plow down mobs that will die less than 10 seconds. Maybe this style of play is preferable to some people, but I don’t think it is for everyone.
Overall, I just don’t see why Blizzard chose heirlooms as the way to give players an “express ticket” to max level. I think there are probably much better solutions out there that can accomplish all the positives of heirlooms without sacrificing any part of the gear progression line for low level characters. We could’ve maybe had BoA consumables that increase experience gained or damage dealt for 2 hours or something. Or maybe the exp boost portion could have just been attached to a shirt or tabard instead that has no combat stats, with a little bit more of an exp gain to compensate.
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All valid points but why did you buy the heirlooms then? You could have chosen regular gear.
Me personally I am not a fan of heirlooms for all the reasons above + their price. At least in retail you have incentive to acquire gear to collect transmogs.
Many players are already complaining that leveling is too slow. They want permanent Joyous Journeys experience buff. At least leave them heirlooms.
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That’s how they should be. It’s a shame they aren’t as strong in Retail as they used to be. Heirlooms are designed to make the leveling process easy! If you want to chase upgrades, don’t use them. It’s really that simple. They’re entirely optional. You don’t ever need to buy them from a vendor.
Your average player doesn’t want this, your average player loves heirlooms. It’s fun to be powerful at a low level and not be hassled. It’s good to be rewarded for playing multiple characters. It’s nice to not need to worry about what you’re doing because the leveling process is not the game for most people who play. It’s an obstacle. It’s a requirement to get to the real game for them.
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Again, my entire point in this thread is that I think we could have had the positives of heirlooms without completely obsoleting a bunch of low-level gear.
Edit - ok, I guess the title wasn’t really reflective of my point. Updated to fix it.
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I would say it’s not really worth pursuing changes to the heirloom system considering the current state of classic. If we could go back in time to the day the idea for heirloom was pitched, I would definitely propose an account wide buff instead of an equipped item to preserve the sanctity of some iconic leveling quests and items like the whirlwind axe, staff of Jordan, or your first pair of non gray/white shoulders on a character.
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Heirlooms are truly an account perk that has been a god-send for alt-oholics like myself. This is the fact that I want to get a character to max level asap because my concern is end content. I have played and leveled through all expansions and the stories were great at the time but like reading a book 800 times I know the outcome. Running dungeons for special gear is only pertinent to me for transmog at this point.
The power levels of the heirlooms is on par in my opinion. I do not want to die in the world and with all the class abilities to heal and avoid damage now negates that enough as well. Not to mention you can fly earlier and skip packs where you don’t want to clear.
I appreciate your point of view but it also sounds like a niche opinion for specialized players that want to relive the old leveling paths and the joy of level farming certain items. When I am in the mood for this I play classic to be honest.
Okay, so you like heirlooms because they greatly increase the speed at which you level. So how does that contradict the point I have repeated in this thread that there were other simple ways to speed up leveling without removing gear progression from low levels?
Again, there are other ways to provide power increases without removing gear progression.
What does this even mean? You want heirlooms but also want leveling gear from dungeons? You are sounding like you want the best of both worlds and need to accept that it will be one or the other.
They are designed to level with you and give you an advantage, how would ANY dungeon gear along the way be that strong? You also need to remember that when these dungeon items were added to game it was a totally different game.
And for the last post:
Heirlooms greatly increase the speed that I level partially because I can choose what quests I want to do without the worry of priority dungeon runs for a certain piece that may take multiple runs to acquire. I can clear through everything, vendor all of it for gold along the way and not worry about checking stat weights. When it comes to BoA consumables we already have that as well.
Gear progression has been dead for leveling since the level/stat squishes multiple expansions ago.
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