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Why did WOW need levels?
moostown
Member CommonPosts: 377
It has a Talent Tree system and all you had to do is leave out levels and just gain 1 point every level making you stronger in different skills you spent in stuff, which in turn could have unlocked new sets of Spells. This way it's a class based game without levels and has elements of a skill based game in it and wouldn't be sooo different from what we have now but it would make it much more "easy to learn but hard to master" and fun.
Comments
They did it because back when World of warcraft was created the word "grind" wasnt really heard of IMO. people still thought the lvling system was unique and inavating so they thought it was cool...at the time. This is my opinion so please dont bash.
Quite simple really, people love to see themselves progress in an MMORPG...its the big appeal of these games. It is much easier to measure your progression via levels rather than skills... hence they became popular back in the days of EQ 1 and the tradition continues to this day.
Also, levels make it easier to balance the PVE side of the game, you can design the encounters so that only people of an appropriate level have a chance of surviving it.... forces you to follow the pre-determined path the developers design for you.... which is their goal..... and not necessarily yours.
Also, playing a skill based, level -less game takes a bit more thought as you pointed out..but, a great many gamers don't want to think about their games...they just want to play them...and levels makes it easier for them for figure out what to do, what to fight (mobs have levels too, right) and simplifies things all around.
Blizzard wasn't trying to make a deep, immersive game....they were trying to make something to appeal to a wide customer base...they've obviously succeeded in this regard.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
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Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Lol, ^^, people hadnt heard of the word grind before WoW? Eq was a grind fest. Anywhere, kyleran hit it pretty much on the head. Most people like a sense of achievement and a goal to work for. Also, its a status symbol, (regardless of how easy it is), and working to achieve that is intrinsically rewarding.
Hence the success of WoW, something most people forget. It's great to say your game has a much more robust system for crafting, or pvp, or whatever..but you can't get that deep into one branch of things without skimping on others. WoW, on the other hand, went for a jack-of-all trades approach, much like EQ and UO did back in their heydays. And much like them it has enjoyed great success. That's a good lesson for the WARs and AoCs and whatnot to pay attention to (though I do have great hopes for both those games!)
As to why WoW needs levels...honestly people hype skill-based systems too much. A skill based game is just the same as a level based one. Look at EVE, most people's penultimate example of a skill-based game. Yeah there's no levels, but the time, effort, and cost involved in achieving certain skills cfreates tiers of players that are, in essence, levels themselves. It's still level-based, it's just acquired and displayed a different way.
The same with class vs non-class games. Sure you can have a skill-based game with no classes, but people will invariably come up with a handful of "optimal" skillsets that will become classes in their own right. The only real difference is the window dressing.
I see the OP's point, but like a few before me have pointed out, WoW whent for a jack-of-all trades approach, thus appealing to quite a wide audience. Girl gamers to name an example (and lets face it, they are a minority), I rarely saw them in games such as Diablo 2, but have met plenty of them in WoW. Same goes for parents, along the usual teens.
To be honest, I liked that approach a lot because MMORPG's are a social type of game, and this way you got to talk to a lot more varied audience than the standard ''I'm the dungeonlord-nerds'' (note that I dont mean offense, im just stereotyping :P). The good thing is that, people will inevitably get bored of WoW, and are now introduced to MMORPG's. I think this will have an effect on the upcoming MMORPG's aswell. I honestly believe that today's audience of MMORPG's have been varied a lot more, one of the major causes being WoW.
WoW as a skill-based game would have required immensely different content. The steady progression served to let the newbies to the genre slowly accustom themselves to this type of game, and gradually increase their skills by extensively experimenting with all of their abilities.
You cannot thrust a week 2 player against Ragnaros. Sure, it'd be more fun for him than killing Murlocs, but you'd be hard-pressed to extract the 10 months out of his subscription
WoW jack of all trades hehehe . WoW is an excellent PvE game, that is its main selling point. It threw in crafting and pvp as an afterthought.
WoW has levels for the same reason most games have levels. It is the easiest way to structure a game, period. Your level determines your place in the universe and almost all possible actions in the word revolve around that. Unlike a skill based system it allows for a more structure and linear type of gameplay, and developers like control over what you do. Levels and a level system also makes it possible for the devs to pace the game easily and make content available only when they feel it should be. Whereas in an open ended game a person can go almost anywhere he likes and do whatever he wants, which confuses the hell out of most people LOL
The main reason i feel that WoW has levels is becaus ecreating a game that uses levels to ballance charecters and NPC's is easier than trying some other way.
"Kill one man, and you are a murderer. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill them all, and you are a god."
-- Jean Rostand
i'm bored with wow now but it's a good game to play. level base is normal in mmorpgs
Everything Happens For A Reason! "Shadowziel"
This is a pretty simple one, most RPG mechanics for about the last 20-25 years (single player, MMO, take your choice) are based on the Dungeons and Dragons role playing game. The whole kaboodle of experience, levels, basic stats (strength, intelligence, etc.), armour class, hit points, etc. etc. is largely derived from DND. It seems to be the defacto standard for an RPG.
As to why Blizzard took this route? Well it has already been said, they wanted a game with mass appeal and that's what they got. They also have 9mill subscribers paying however many $ a month, so commercially it worked!
Personally I kind of agree with the OP, I would like to see a game that is purely based on skills but it's a risk that I'm not sure too many developers are prepared to take.
so you'd have fun from levels 1-50, then get achievement trapped(why would I join another game, I'm so far here, so close to getting what I want) and get to 60, to get even deeper in achievement trapediness when getting the phat lootz.
then repeat the process in the expansion. lots of carrots with fast leveling to get achievement trapped, then even more achievement traps for the phat loot.
I find it amazing that by 2020 first world countries will be competing to get immigrants.
because it was trying to replicate the successes of the previous mmos. Why change that when those models did well. Would be good to see someone innovate though.
Grind was here way before WoW. If you played any of the MMOs previous to it then you probably thought WoW was a breath of fresh air when it came out because it required a lot less time to play. Even with the raids introduced EQ raids took a lot longer to complete believe it or not. Even Ultima Online was a grind and it was skill based. The grind was using the skills over and over again to get them up.
Grind is the only way mmos keep people from getting through all the features too quick, its not a single player game these guys want to keep u for a long time. UO was a giant grind , except you could easily macro most skills lol.
*boggles*
OK, so, what you're actually saying is that, instead having levels, they should have levels.
*facepalm*
Ultimately, it doesn't matter whether you have traditional WoW/EQ-Style levels, or EvE Online style skill points, or any other yardstick...it's still a "Level", no matter what label you choose to slap on it.
I, personally, believe that everyone decries the WoW Level system without looking at what it is *about* the way the level system is implemented that bothers them.
For me, it's two things.
* Power disparity between levels. The fact that I have 70 HP at level 1 and ***7000*** HP at level 70 is just ridiculous.
* XP/Money scaling. I was appalled when I saw Burning Crusade's XP table. Level 60 required around 200,000XP to achieve. 61 is more like 400,000...but they scaled the XP up so the TIME required to get there is around the same. At the same time, they also scaled up the monetary rewards, and the money sinks in terms of Repair Costs, Food, etc. Does not compute.
In any case, if you're looking for something different, have a peek at Pirates of the Burning Sea... The Developers *are* gamers, and they've done their best to address what they feel are the biggest issues in existing games, and tried to come up with something that's quite different than anything else around...and it sounds like they've done it...