Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
Now it's much easier. Players boost their profiles on websites like https://wowcarry.com/wow, and they do it much faster. I have nothing against this, but new players shouldn't do it. They should learn how to play the game first and reach a certain level. I used that website to get some items I wanted, and it's cool that we can do that.
― Plato
We didn't know that dungeons gave better rewards
But once we learned that, we stopped playing outside and started focussing on dungeons.
And then on raids.
To get that feeling back, the outside world has to be as rewarding as dungeons, and the developers have to make an active effort for that.
So for example: players rush through the lvling, since they know that after they still have to go through the grindy process to get the pre-raid BiS items for raiding.
If AoC can reward players who adopt "the casual playstyle" with receiving the resources to build pre-raid BiS items BECAUSE of that exploration, then no guild leader will stay "get the fuck out of Stranglethorn Valley and come to the dungeon to lvl up, you fkn noob".
That is a very cheap example, and hasn't been thought through. The point is to show you how these things can be done differently if the desired gameplay is rewarded. If one player rushes through the lvling, and then has to go out and spend days grinding resources, while the other player tells him "oh I already have all that because I played the game the way it was meant to be played", that could go a long way in getting back that feeling of going on an adventure with friends with no clear goal in sight.
The problem with wow is that it rewards ignoring the outside world (of warcraft).
Does that make sense?
Sandbox or PVX mmorpgs like for example archeage, lineage 2 , albion , eve , always make more sense for me, because we really are working in something that will be used, for example for conquest territory , guild wars, survive open world pk/gankers, gathering in dangerous zones , survive trade roads and many other objectives....
so themepark are not forced to be on a basic cycle of life with patch/Xpac.
The game gives you options to partake in a plethora of things from different crafting roles, pve, pvp etc.
Now theme parks in relation to cash shop cosmetics, I hope they do not break immersion by putting in relatively dumb stuff like gingerbread house skins for your trebuchet.
and if they did any of that tacky stuff, I hope it's only for limited and I mean limited time in-game. I'm not personally a fan of the current trebuchet design, especially since you're driving around on a bunch of wood tacked together.. it just doesn't make any sense.
Wow used to be awesome with immersion, then it went too far onto the theme park spectrum both aesthetically and mechanically. It's a lonely game to play for many players.
What game does a good job with expansions, that doesn't make old content irrelevant? Because I feel like most MMOs have that problem, when you reach max level, or new stuff comes out... You don't really go back to lower level areas very often.
Now I feel like ashes has a bit of an advantage here with its node system. Nodes closer to starting areas will grow faster, therefore probably end up being larger, keeping people on the area.
But if the mobs and gathering resources in an area get outscaled, people won't go to that area as often anymore...
Edit: @SirChancelot11
You kind of answered this for yourself. One of the biggest ways to keep old content relevant is to make old stuff in that content relevant. Don’t release a new expansion with entirely new mats that never need the old mats outside of leveling to get to the new stuff. As long as you don’t make old mats entirely irrelevant the second you add something else, people will go to the older areas to get those things inserting people back into that part of the world.
Not really thought out, but still an idea on something you could do to keep lower level dungeons/world bosses relevant: quest line at a high level has found a crystal that temporarily boosts power. We want to test that power to see if we can harness it. Quest NPC tells you to go try it out in this lower level dungeon to see if it works. You go in, the aura the crystal has enraged the mobs and they actually put up a fight. You get to the boss and it goes crazy, has some new mechanics, and is harder. Quest npc deems it too unstable after you finish so it requires more testing so it doesn’t become some kind of baked in level scaling for everything.
Like I said not completely thought out, but there are definitely ways the devs can choose to integrate new content into the existing world instead of just separating it from everything creating content islands.
It's the whole point of having a dynamic world instead of a static one and for having all of the systems tied to the rise and fall of Nodes.
Albiom online, eve
― Plato
Expansions: 100% agree and I answered almost all of those things in my video "The Most Important Video I'll Ever Make" at 19:00