I have played WoW for 20 years. It has given me immense pleasure. As such I would like to give something back to the WoW development team. I don’t presume to know any of Wow’s future development plans, so what I am proposing may be and probably is entirely out of line to WoW developers. It is rather presumptuous of me to think what I am going to suggest is of any value to WoW development. That’s ok. I just want to give something back, if I can.
I started as a programmer in 1965, 60 years ago. I got a master’s degree in computer science in 1967, being in the first graduating class in their Computer Science program at my university. I went to night school while my day job was a programmer. I loved programming so much that I used to tell my colleagues if they didn’t pay me to do this job, I would do it for free.
From there I quickly moved up the ranks until later in my career I was a victim of Peter’s Principle. I could no longer design and program but was made an advisor to management on evaluating struggling projects to either suggest solutions or cancellation. It was a rather political job, and I hated it.
What I am going to suggest is rather brief and simple, but I believe may hopefully set a stage for a future resurgence of WoW to its past glory days. Lofty goals I admit and maybe this or something like it is already being done.
I would suggest an entirely new way to level characters up to the current expansion level. It will be quick and easy way to level and learn a new class.
Delve Leveling:
(1) Provide new players with a leveling alternative to the current leveling method from level 10 to level 80 without doing away with the current way of leveling.
(2) After reaching level 10 a player could choose between the old way of leveling or to level via Delves exclusively.
(3) Making the leveling choice would be ill reversable.
(4) The goal of Delve leveling would be to teach a new player how to play his chosen class while at the same time providing an extremely fun leveling experience. Nothing more.
(5) Delve leveling would not be based upon the current level designations, 1-80, but something different like, for example, A to H, where reaching level H would then transition to level 80 for the continuation into the current expansion.
I don’t want to go into more detail here primarily because I don’t know Blizzard’s current plans for WoW. Also, there are a lot of players out there that know a lot more about WoW than I do who can provide even better advice. This is just some food for thought.
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Quests are just outside delves. I’m jk, delve leveling sounds kinda cool, dungeons can be frustrating and giving people a solo experience might make it feel better.
If you are a computer programmer and want to do them a favor, making suggestions is nice but it’s just another bunch of suggestions. There’s a better way.
Learn how to write addons. It’s not that hard, I did a “hello world” type addon once just to see how they work. It’s just LUA programming which is pretty much Python programming.
If you write addons that will make the game more fun to play, that will attract people which will make WoW more profitable and improve Blizzard’s bottom line. That is really the best way to do the company a favor.
Just remember, if you do this they own you nothing. Don’t expect anything in return, after all this is a favor you are doing.
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Thank you for your suggestion. However, being 83, I’m kind of beyond the best candidate for developing LUA’s. You would be surprised what a little bit of age-related dementia can do to one’s programming speed, accuracy, and finding all those pesty bugs.
But I still love gaming and building my own gaming computers.
You would be surprised. I’m just on the shy side of 80 and I’m still writing the occasional program and teaching a database class at a near by university. I won’t say it keeps me sharp, I’m beyond that, but it keeps me slightly above the mid point between dull and sharp.
Try it. LUA programming is designed to be easy. And the people in the UI and Macro forum are extremely helpful and guided me through the whole process.
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Don’t worry about that. You are not dull, and you are sharp! What matters is whatever you do, have a passion for it.
I’ve been retired for 30 years and have loved every minute of it. At heart, I am a researcher. I follow the latest developments in cosmology, quantum mechanics, AI, and photonic computers. I would not be able to do this broad level of research if I was still working for a company. I helped develop the government’s spy satellite program during the Vietnam war, I was the sole developer of a search engine for the military to search their classified documents in 1970 with full Boolean logic with embedded parenthesis, and I worked with an IBM Research task force to try to predict what this new Internet thing was all about and how it might affect their business and others. They thought I could tell the future. I can’t tell the future. They thought I was a genius. I’m not a genius. However, I have been very fortunate to have had a passion for everything I have done.
Thank you for your positive encouragement!
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I like this idea. A lot of people already level via dungeons, but the super fast way most groups run them make it far less of a learning experience and more like a breakneck loot grab.
Delves (and possibly follower dungeons) could be a fantastic alternative that allow solo players to learn their class at their own pace.