Scooter and I spent the weekend when we weren't preparing for the family dinner party) questing with Meyleigh and Beyleigh. At some point, I also got some solo time on my Tauren, Sedgeweaver. As you may already be aware, Dear Reader, WoW's pre-expansion Legion invasion event is going on right now, since the introduction of the Demon Hunter prestige class on Tuesday, 9 August (maybe it started this weekend, I'm not sure). I had assumed that the event was for high-level characters only, and didn't figure on participating. However, a flight from Thunder Bluff to Orgrimmar took me through the Northern Barrens during one such event, so I headed to the Crossroads to check things out. As it happens, the event mobs are tuned to my own character levels, so I was able to participate and get some rewards.
On Sunday afternoon, I suggested to Scooter that doing a couple events would be fun and rewarding. She turned out to be at least enthusiastic as I was, and we were able to complete all the events in the Eastern Kingdoms before migrating Meyleigh and Beyleigh to Kalimdor on Sunday evening. Of course, we're hoping to get at least four more events in tonight—including all three in Kalimdor to complete the Defender of Azeroth Achievement/Feat of Strength. I guess there's another one involving collecting pamphlets that players are literally killing their characters to get "efficiently."
The event is a bit of a mixed bag, from my perspective, though mostly positive. I like the invasions themselves, which remind me of Rift invasions. And the rewards are nice. I liked leveling and gaining more abilities, which seem few and far between compared to WoW 1.0-3.0. On the other hand, the massive amount of XP and levels gained from participating in the events is exactly the opposite of how I would like to progress through the game. Our Rogue ladies leveled twice per event; which, along with some regular questing, meant they went from level 21 to level 33 on Sunday. So our Redridge quests turned grey before we were done, as did Duskwood before we even arrived. We completed the Bravo Company (SPOILERS) questline anyway, which was entertaining, but decided to skip Duskwood entirely in favor of Desolace—at this point, more level appropriate. [EDIT: As of Monday night, Meyleigh had hit 40, with Beyleigh on her heals. Desolace is barely green, and we quested in Dustwallow Marsh instead.]
If I were more inclined to race to 100, I would eagerly welcome the boosts the events give. But as always in RPGs, it seems to me that the journey is the better part.
The event is a bit of a mixed bag, from my perspective, though mostly positive. I like the invasions themselves, which remind me of Rift invasions. And the rewards are nice. I liked leveling and gaining more abilities, which seem few and far between compared to WoW 1.0-3.0. On the other hand, the massive amount of XP and levels gained from participating in the events is exactly the opposite of how I would like to progress through the game. Our Rogue ladies leveled twice per event; which, along with some regular questing, meant they went from level 21 to level 33 on Sunday. So our Redridge quests turned grey before we were done, as did Duskwood before we even arrived. We completed the Bravo Company (SPOILERS) questline anyway, which was entertaining, but decided to skip Duskwood entirely in favor of Desolace—at this point, more level appropriate. [EDIT: As of Monday night, Meyleigh had hit 40, with Beyleigh on her heals. Desolace is barely green, and we quested in Dustwallow Marsh instead.]
If I were more inclined to race to 100, I would eagerly welcome the boosts the events give. But as always in RPGs, it seems to me that the journey is the better part.
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Scooter proofreads almost all my articles before I post them, for which I am very grateful. However, any mistakes are mine and mine alone (unless otherwise noted). If you are reading this post through RSS or Atom feed—especially more than a couple hours after publication—I encourage you to visit the actual page, as I often make refinements after the fact. The mobile version also loses some of the original character of the piece due to simplified formatting.
Scooter proofreads almost all my articles before I post them, for which I am very grateful. However, any mistakes are mine and mine alone (unless otherwise noted). If you are reading this post through RSS or Atom feed—especially more than a couple hours after publication—I encourage you to visit the actual page, as I often make refinements after the fact. The mobile version also loses some of the original character of the piece due to simplified formatting.
Like most things in an MMO, you can always opt out. Although hitting the fast foward button once in a while is nice choice too (I'm talking to you Outland)
ReplyDeleteBlizzard agrees that a slower leveling experience would be benficial. In a Legion Dev Update Liveblog back in May their lead designer Ion Hazzikostas called the experience broken. Given how the current invasions not only scale the monsters level, but the gear as well, it would be very cool to see older content revamped.
Given the multitude of alts I already have, that these two are on an accelerated XP gain isn't that huge a deal. There are of course consequences to turing off XP gain, and—as I said in the post—the positives of the Invasion event outweigh the one negative.
DeleteYou're right, though, it might be interesting to see other content scaled to the character's current level, if that could also be opted out of. After all, they're making a huge deal out of running old content for transmog items.
Thanks for commenting. :)