Breaking the MMO, why World of Warcraft will soon be unplayable.

So many of you have already heard about the new service to boost your character right to level 90 that Blizzard will be offering in their MMO titan, World of Warcraft. This boost will cost the player $60 in the US (apparently Blizzard calculated out how much time people usually take getting to level 90 and based the amount you pay on that). I recently read an article on PC Gamer about the new service and I have to say, the level boost experience is as bleak as I expected.

HOW IT WORKED BEFORE.

The basic premises of any level system is very simple, it reflects the in player's experience. But at another level, it also helps to ease the player into the mechanics. In a sense, the experience bar also reflects the player's ability to control the character. When you start a level 1 character in an MMO, you have 1 ability. That one ability is your bread and butter and is usually the core ability to your class. I haven't played WoW since I quit Mists of Pandara and started playing Final Fantasy 14, so in this instance, I'll use the Lancer/Dragoon class to teach you about what I mean. 

A level one lancer starts with one ability, True Thrust. It is a very simple ability, it allows you to do an attack worth 150% of your base attack and can be used once every 2.5 seconds. This helps get you into the groove of your abilities, as all of them for the Lancer are spaced about by 2.5 seconds. It helps you to build a rhythm that you will be using all the way to the high end raid bosses. 

At level 2, you get your first new ability, Feint. In truth, this one won't be used as much later in the game but it basically slows down your enemy a bit, increasing your survival rate in certain fights. This fate does give you a glimpse into the other abilities you will be using late on, specifically abilities that put a DOT on the enemy. Te be more specific, putting damage over time affects on your enemies and keeping them up when they run out. 

At level 4, you get the biggest and probably the most important addition to your arsenal. Vorpal Thrust. On its own, this technique is not anything special. It does an attack that hits for as much as your normal attacks do. Pretty useless. However if you read the text on the ability, you will learn something very special. If you use True Thrust first, you remember that one from way back in level 1, it will place a little dotted lining around the icon for Vorpal Thrust. If you use Vorpal Thrust next, you will then deal 150% of your normal damage. This is called a combo and is the main way that the Lancer will do his/her damage. This extends even further with an ability that you gain at level 26 called Full Thrust. On it's own, it only does normal damage but if added onto our 1, 2 combo we just used above, it will do a whopping 330% damage. 1, 2, 3 POW!

All of this is learned just by leveling your character which prepares you for the real game, post level 50 content. I use about 15 different abilities during my rotation. Almost all of them are a part of a similar combo structure. Now what do you think would happen if I dropped someone in front of my keyboard and said, "There you go, have fun!"

THE STORM.

Blizzard has stated that they will eventually have players who pay for level 90 to go through an hour to two hour quest to teach players how to play the class they just paid for. A sort of crash course in being bad ass if you will. While that will help alleviate some of the problem that occurs when sticking someone with a character they have NO idea how to play, it's not actually out yet. At this moment, if you buy a level 90 character, you are simply dropped into the appropriate capital city on the continent of Pandaria. There is no indication where the player should go, no explanations of what these buttons do and little regard for making sure that this wild child is up to speed. 

From what I am to understand, this has become a major problem in the game's matchmaking system, Looking for Group, since a large majority of people who join have no idea how to play their class. This is especially bad if you choose a Tank or Healer role since skill is a major part of those two roles. It's very easy for an inexperienced player to ruin the fun for everyone in the dungeon or raid. 

WHY DID THEY DO THIS?

There are a few reasons why Blizzard decided to implement this feature. The biggest one in my opinion is the fact that the amount of "new" players, specifically those who have never played WoW and sign up for an account, are very low. In fact, I can guarantee that a majority of those "new" players are gold sellers who need to get there presence back into there game after being banned for advertising illegal real money transactions. 

There is also apparently the push to make it so people can play the newest expansion NOW. A friend of mine explained it as, "you bought it, why shouldn't you get to play it now." That is not an exact quote by the way. While I like the idea of getting players into new content right away, just selling them a level 90 character comes with a ton of problems of it's own that the developers are going to have to fix. Not quite the most elegant of solutions. 

HOW WILL THIS AFFECT NEW PLAYERS?

The biggest way this will affect new players has already been explained above. Another one that I feel a lot of people are going to experience is an inflated sense of how much this game is going to cost. While you do get a free upgrade with your purchase of Warlords of Draenor, the new expansion coming out god knows when, any future characters must be leveled up the old fashioned way or pay $60 for another level 90. That's already on top of the $19.99 you will need to pay for the base game which now comes with the first 3 expansions it seems, $19.99 for Mists of Pandara and $49.99 for the new expansion pack. To a person looking out from the inside, just to enter the game costs $89.97. That doesn't include the monthly fees you will be paying after your first month of play. That is a steep asking price.

In truth, they don't really NEED to charge that much for the expansions. The majority of money that WoW makes is from there monthly subscriptions. Just one year of the monthly fee on a month by month basis DOUBLES what they make on buying the base game and expansions. $179.88 to be exact. If you compare that to the entry fee of other MMO's, it seems abysmal.

Final Fantasy XIV

Price of entry: $39.99
Monthly Fee: $12.99 for entry level (1 character per server, 8 characters total)
$14.99 for Standard (8 characters per server, 40 in total)
Additional Content: Character Transfer to another server $18
                               Changing your characters appearance $10
                               Veteran Rewards are provided free depending on how long you have been subscribing.
                               Additional Retainers are $2 per month.

DC Universe Online

Price of entry: Free
Monthly fee: not necessary but can get an all access membership for $14.99 a month. Players will have access to all DLC content.
Additional Content: $9.99 per expansion pack. Various ascetic items available for sale as well.

Guild Wars 2

Price of entry: $49.99
Monthly fee: none
Additional content: Can purchase gems which can then be used to purchase in game content. Players can gain these gems on there own at a slightly lower rate.

SO WHAT CAN BLIZZARD DO?

Well for starters, Blizzard can stop insulting its own product. The first thing you learn about public speaking is to not undermine yourself. To do so is to take away your credibility. You need to have confidence in what you are doing. That's not say you can't admit when something went wrong, like when the PSN was hacked. This is not one of those situations though. Instead of harping on the old team so much, they could have simply announced that they would be returning to the basics. It excites the player base without undermining your ability to still make the A plus content you are known for.

The second way would be to reduce the cost of entry. I would do away with charging for the expansion packs personally and just sell WoW as a base game. This is the way that Final Fantasy 11 and the original EverQuest are running there services now and it seems to work pretty well. It keeps the point of entry cheap so that the consumer doesn't feel like they blew a bunch of money away. It's true that it might be a gamble and would take a bit of revenue away from the company, but it would also show that you are trying to make the game open for new players. They could also remove or reduce the monthly fee so that players new and old can continue playing without having to worry about next months subscription. You could even take a queue from the cell phone companies and offer family subscriptions. This way, the whole family can enjoy the game without having to buy each person there own personal copy. While it's true that you could just share an account, they still wouldn't be able to play together so this would go a long way in trying to show that you want to give the family a gaming experience they can enjoy at a fair price.

Finally, get rid of the insta level 90. The hours spent leveling a character are pivital to teaching a person how to play the game. For some people, even that isn't enough. A 1 hour quest is going to make people feel overwhelmed and will put a pressure on the community that just isn't worth it. If you really want to get people to level 90 faster, start offering heirloom gear to people who haven't reached level 90 yet. Or reduce the amount of experience needed to get to level 90...again.