Whence Progress?

The Aggronaut has a post out singing the praises of a World of Warcraft currency exchange proposed by Blizzard that Bel has dubbed BLEX. In it, Bel mentions a mentoring system as part of his wishlist for WoW innovations. Lord Tridus from A Goon's Day Off thinks that such a system is simply a bandaid, for the problem of levels and old content. I threw in my two cents. (Quotes are his.)

"Flatten or wipe out the level curve entirely and content now becomes scaled on gear"
This system has worked fairly well in The Secret World, but the classless Ability Wheel and Skill System are very different from the classful system of WoW. I wonder if there would not be balance issues if they didn't completely redesign Azeroth from the ground up (and not just the landscape). And in TSW, you still cannot walk into the top areas in low level gear and expect to survive.

"as gear stats are all based on easily scaleable formulae already"
But that scalability depends on levels—that is, a single stat unit on gear has greater impact at lower levels than it does at max. Without levels, what would they scale gear-stats to?

For better or for worse, MMORPGs seem to be about all about character progression. Progression through gear can work, but there might be an upper limit to it that would be just as bad as plain ol' levels. And then, like Funcom's AEGIS for TSW, Blizz would be forced to come up with some other new system to represent progress to satisfy those players that are at the leading edge of content/stats.

The nice thing about a mentoring system like Rift's (unlike GW2's, for instance) is that you can choose whether areas you have already surpassed will be trivial or a continued challenge. There are plenty of times where I just want to beeline my way across a low zone rather than deal with the trash mobs milling about. Other times, I want to participate in the content at level; zone events, for example, or dungeons. Mentoring allows me to do so.

Like Tridus, I would like to see a truly level-less game. But I wonder if we're in the minority.

As far as BLEX, it sounds like a good idea. I've never gotten involved in that type of market, but I have considered it in order to get some quick game currency. And if it beats criminal gold farmers at their own game while replenishing the development coffers, so much the better.

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