I am sure my story is not unique. Many years ago I was in a guild progressing through Naxx, but a few months before TBC launched all progress halted when we saw the writing on the wall: our level caps would increase, and all of our T2/T3 gear would quickly get replaced in the upcoming expansion.
While we can’t rewind the clock, I want to ask in this thread: what viable strategies could Blizzard have considered to better preserve content in their game? The side effects of their approach to increase the cap were devastating to me. While I never really cared for AQ20/40, MC/BWL/Naxx were such great raids, and it really sucked seeing them tossed away in the expansion.
I am sure there are plenty of threads discussing these and related issues on the web, so I am sorry for any duplication! I also understand that Blizzard is managing a huge project with WoW, and it will be nearly impossible to satisfy every player. That said, I had a few ideas for how such great content (MC/BWL/Naxx) could have been preserved, rather than discarded:
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Could Blizzard have delivered big enough expansions without increasing the level cap from 60? Could they have introduced something orthogonal to leveling, e.g., some form of reputation, that players would have to “level up” to be viable in the raids in new zones/continents introduced by the expansion? I think something like this is extensible — in each subsequent expansion there would be some new reputation, etc. to work on that wouldn’t interfere with old content. Basically, it seems easy/obvious to just increase the level cap in an expansion, but I wonder if there were better options.
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Even with a level cap increase, could Blizzard have done more to preserve level 60 raiding content? Perhaps they could have recalibrated the main raids (MC/BWL/AQ/Naxx) to be suitable for level 70 raiding? Also, could T1-T3 gear from MC/BWL/AQ/Naxx have scaled with a player’s level to still be viable for level 70 raiding — being replaced by T4, etc. later on? Here I emphasize how depressing it was to realize that so many hours of raiding went down the tubes when, say, Ashkandi from Nefarian got replaced by some green in TBC.
Thanks to all for any comments you many have. I am one of those players who never really played WoW seriously beyond classic. For a few of the early expansions I played for a month or so, but it’s only been with the re-release of Classic that I actually play regularly. I am also one of those players who sincerely hopes I can continue to play Classic as-is after they re-release TBC.
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a lv 70 heroic version of MC would be kinda cool if it was designed as a catch up raid of sorts. IE: with gear that’s just a step before whatever end game raids exist in TBC.
Yeah, I’m also one of those who quit when they released tbc and hoping I can continue to play Classic.
As pure speculation, though, as to what they could have done differently… One thing I saw that I found interesting is what they did in DDO. I don’t know all the details since I only played the game for a while through the lower levels so never tried it, but rather than increasing levels when they added content (and then having to “squish” them later), and instead of changing existing content & changing the gameplay of existing characters, they have a kind of reincarnation type thing where at max level you can “reincarnate” your character if you choose to, and sort of start over at lvl 1 but with enhanced “inherited” abilities and so on. It all looked very intriguing and it seems to be very popular with the player base.
I think the gear from the top tier of any expansion should at least last an entire tier after. Gear getting replaced is an inevitability of course, but the best of the best gear of an expansion shouldn’t be immediately replaced by greens and blues of the next.
The entire point of having a new level cap and a “gear reset” for each expansion is that at a certain point, new players just would not be able to play the game because there’d be a massive mountain of content for them to climb, in order to reach the newest content.
Nothing is stopping you from going back and doing old raids in TBC. Nothing is stopping you from playing Classic instead of playing Classic TBC.
Also, why do you want these raids to continue being “relevant” at level 70? We’ve been doing these raids for over a year now, nobody wants to continue farming MC any longer than they have to.
You can’t just achieve one thing and then hold onto that glory forever. If your purples being replaced by new purples makes you “depressed”, then you’re playing WoW for the wrong reasons. No matter what happens, you’re going to have “so many hours of raiding down the tubes”. The point of the game now is just to enjoy yourself instead of worrying about your gear getting replaced by better gear.
Also no, Ashkandi is not replaced by any “green” in TBC.
Naxx gear is not replaced until level 70 pre-raid BIS blues and crafted epics. Every time I see someone proclaiming that all vanilla gear is instantly replaced in hellfire peninsula, it’s just a massive red flag that this person has never actually played TBC.
Seriously, look:
i.imgur . com/BXyJwYT.png
i.imgur . com/hNE8qUe.png
Hellfire Peninsula gear doesn’t even come CLOSE to Naxx gear. It’s not until level 70 heroic dungeon blues that you start replacing Naxx gear:
i.imgur . com/Iv5Mc33.png
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Correct me if I’m wrong on this but I don’t think the OP is asking for a change by making a complaint, nor looking for remedies. I believe he/she is just asking, as an intellectual exercise and an interesting conversation piece, people’s opinions on what could have been done differently or what might have been more interesting, etc. /shrug
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At the end of the day, I think it would have been nice to make older content, the older zones still relevant. Even if it’s for like vanity items like the Orb of Deception. Incentives that won’t impact the new player. Give guilds a reason to put a bunch of people to raid MC, or BWL or whatever again. Maybe they could have given a consumable to those who cleared it. Or maybe if you cleared those Vanilla instances at level on your way to level 70, it would have given you a piece of good gear that you could only unlock with you hit 70. Dunno, something.
My issue with TBC was primarily within the WoW release timeline and what it did to Vanilla and the community, but completely making the old world content irrelevant was disappointing as well.
Yeah half these people don’t know what they’re talking about. They clearly never played it. Why don’t they just keep playing classic if that’s what they like? I bet half of them don’t do any research before complaining.