I just had a thought. One of Blizzard's (and other game companies') biggest headaches through the years has been illegitimate power leveling and gold farming, along with the various hackings and stolen accounts/items that go with it. What have they done to prevent it? One thing has been to lower the relative price of many expensive aspects of the game (like mounts). While some players decry this as simplifying and dumbing down the game, it also disincentivizes the illegitimate purchase of gold through RMT. Other games simply simply introduce RMT directly into the game in various ways, like making mounts available in the cash shop.
What about the other aspect, power leveling? There have been various approaches taken so far; one of course, is to shorten the leveling game, despite increasing the number of levels. What might be another way to get players into the portion of the game many seem to want to be, quickly?
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Only way, as far as I can see, is to offer an option to skip levelling altogether.. perhaps with an extensive tutorial session to teach players the basics. But my thoughts? I don't think you can stop power levelling. People in that much of a hurry to rush on perhaps shouldn't be playing MMOs but sticking with the many other options out there. I have noticed a couple of games offering the former, however. EQ II, GW 1, both have options to just skip ahead and I don't think WoW is too far behind them with this approach. WoW's level grind is too large a grind these days. Wouldn't surprise or particularly bother me if they added this option.
ReplyDeleteThanks. You made my point. ;)
DeleteI'm pretty sure I read that Blizz had a survey to see if players would be interested in purchasing high level characters. Isn't that something EQ2 and LOTRO are doing now?
ReplyDeleteI think that survey was conducted by Massively not long after the announcement about the one free upgrade to 90.
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