And that's why I'm certain that the vast majority of characters will be replacing their TBC epics with dungeon blues once again. Maybe BT gear will hold up longer and the initial quest greens won't make your hard-earned purples obsolete, but the overall effect of the expansion on gear will be very similar to TBC. By the time you've run the new starting dungeons a few times, your old gear will be gathering dust. Blizzard doesn't want to break their well-oiled reward mechanism that keeps you playing.

That said, I can propose an alternative: What if you could choose to receive tokens instead of an item as a reward for completing a quest or killing a dungeon boss as you level? The tokens could be accumulated and redeemed for equipment all the way to the epics at level 80. Then there would be no need to steeply inflate the gear in the expansion, as the well-equipped players for whom the new mundane rewards don't constitute an upgrade could still receive a meaningful reward for their efforts. This might also encourage people to me more thorough in exploring quests and run instances more often instead of rushing to the cap. Good idea?
 

When you talk about a "smaller" difference it's important to understand that if this does occur its not a design choice made by Blizzard as such but a consequence of their overall philosphy.

When it came to TBC, in my opinion their were 2 clear objectives Blizzard wanted to implement gear wise:-

1) Outlands could be tackled with the poorest most easy to obtain level 60 gear
2) All players would be at a similar gear level when approaching the first 10man raid (Kara), thus the 5-man lvl 70 drops were ilvl 115 blues that matched the best level 60 (tier 3) gear.

The key though it that the difference at 60 between the best and worst gear was far far greater than than it is nowadays, thus if Blizzard implement the same philosophy for WotLK then yes gear upgrading would be slower.

I personally don't see this as a negative though, as on my 60-70 journey I got 0 upgrades, but the fun came from grouping with friends doing all the quests etc.

Blizz could alternatively make Sunwell equivalent loot start dropping at lvl 74/5 so everyone gets upgrades between then and 80, but with the ever increasing issues arising as ilvl gets better and gear becomes more powerful, I personally think they'll want to limit the upgrading to the philosophy they used in vanilla->TBC

Assuming the Ilvl formula stays the same I would imagine that end-game blues in WotLK will be Ilvl 190 or 195 to make them on even par with Sunwell loot. (my prediction for TBC was 100-113, so not far off)
 

Your gear quality doesn't really force you to level any faster. Some folk will equip anything with a "better" tooltip color and that's not going to make them level any faster either; quite the reverse, I should say.

A strong player will level or not based on their skill at leveling in the game. Very few pieces of gear are going to make leveling that much faster. Let's say I have a 2-pc set bonus that causes me to regen mana a little faster (about 1.5%) and another 2-pc set bonus that causes my damage output to heal my pet for 15% of the damage caused. Is this going to force me to level faster? No. There are plenty of other things to slow me down: delivery quests, smelling the roses, sleep, work, socializing, helping friends, poorly-built 5-man groups throughout northrend, lack of flying mounts enabled in northrend, and simply making less-efficient choices in quest completion & pathing since the content will be new (and I won't use a leveling guide).

The travel alone will more than make up for any gain in leveling efficiency from gear. Gear won't mean a thing. I may not replace my gear until a little later, since it's quite good, but there's no way my gear is going to force me to rush through brand new content that we've been a little bit starving for. Especially fun leveling content where you actually, y'know, read the gossip panels, quest items, books, "lost journal of so-and-so" the first time through.
 

Now I might be peculiar because I think leveling is fun, but to me that concept sounds as if having epics now means shooting yourself in the foot in WotLK. With epics you'll have less fun leveling because you'll just rush through it.

Didnt you twink your mage with loads of +frost damage gear to increase levelling speed because you'd be more powerful ?
 

So no gear upgrade for a few level makes the game no fun ?

Again people thinks the loot makes the fun...

And the discovery of the new zones ? And the new instances ? new job, new recipes, ...

Ok it will be mostly (imho) copy-paste of old content but if the fun is only the loot, buying a full epic toon for 20 bucks should be a lot of fun at the moment (ironic).
 

I love to just play the game with a good old sword or just have a cloth robe and a staff. And still be able to get a chance to see most of the game.
Gear checks, hit ratings, min defense rating.. bla!!! It is becoming an MMO Excel spreadsheet.
 

Add more skills and spells .. and less gear!!!
 

And you'll have less fun because you'll less often have the fun experience of a gear upgrade. Where is the fun of entering the first Northrend dungeon and then disenchanting every single item you find there, because your old epics are just plain better? Me, I'm now even less motivated than before to improve the gear of my level 70 characters, as to me a grindy gear upgrade now is equivalent to skipping exciting new content later.

What?! Tobold is actually equating gear with fun! For shame. Did you get some virus from that mail Nihilum sent you? I mean ... really ...

Bring back the old sensible Tobold, who kept my own insanity in check!

:D
 

Your gear quality doesn't really force you to level any faster. Some folk will equip anything with a "better" tooltip color and that's not going to make them level any faster either; quite the reverse, I should say.


So are you telling me a good player in epics will level at the same rate as a good player in greens....LMAO Thats a silly statment.

I think the mudflation will be abou the same. The difference they are quoting is because a larger percentage of the population have epics this time around. PVP gear alone ensures that.

I predict the same thing as last time. Thier may be a few tweaks but I think it'll be the same massive mudflation just more poeple in s2 and 3 gear will not need gear for a few levels.
 

Mike, as far as game mechanics go, WoW is and has always been a spreadsheet! Technically speaking, a WoW server is nothing but a database of players, monsters, and thier stats with a lookup table 'slot-machine' on top. Your WoW client software displays pretty pictures on your monitor to conceal this fact, but all your actions boild down to pulling the one-armed-bandit's handle and updating the database with the results.

WoW has a lot more common with gambling than Blizzard would care to admit!
 

I wonder if the incredible amount of time you spend thinking about WoW is influencing your viewpoint about MMOs to the point of being myopic?
 

IMO the idea is sound but the implementation is the key. If early 70's greens and blues are as less powerful than Tier 5 and/or 6 then you have a nice overlap. That allows people who haven't progressed through the all the TBC raid content to continue work towards finishing it while still earning effective rewards. It may also mean that players in Tier 5 or 6 may start on heroic mode to get their upgrades.

If the above is true then TBC content will have a longer shelf life. One of the biggest gripes I've heard in the last couple of months is how TBC made old world raids null and void. Part of the reason why is because of the major gear leap (of course the elimination of 40 man raids was also a major factor). If the gear leap is not so pronounced then the existing dungeons won't become obsolete so quickly.
 

What?! Tobold is actually equating gear with fun! For shame. Did you get some virus from that mail Nihilum sent you? I mean ... really ...

The rewards are an important part of the Skinner Box model of WoW. Are you telling me you aren't happy if for once a quest gives you a reward which is actually an upgrade to your gear? I'm not saying that rewards are all the fun, but they are certainly part of the fun.
 

Well, if by "level faster" you mean "kill things faster," then I suppose you're right - but if you don't want to grind mobs and you do quests instead, it will only marginally impact the actual xp-per-hour. I don't particularly enjoy hacking at a mob for five minutes, only to repeat the process seventeen billion times, so killing things faster is a win, for me - even though I will no doubt do every single WotLK quest.
 

well jeremy. Even questing you have to kill things for the most part. Even escort quests, gathering quests etc are based around going into areas where you'll have to fight mobs.

So yeah. The better your gear. the faster you kill things the faster you level. Regardless of playstyle. It's just a simple fact of a relatively simple model.
 

Well this isn't bad news to all of us. Personally, I hate leveling. I enjoy playing the game at it's max level. To date I've managed to only get 1 other character to level 62 in over 2 years... I just hate leveling that much. You call it speeding through content... I call it getting to the level I want to play at sooner. I'll have plenty of time at 80 enjoying the content on heroic.
 

I really see the change in WOTLK as a non-issue. I'm no more or less motivated to get gear or not get gear because of the expansion than I was before.

I suppose those with the best BC gear will go a little faster in WOTLK, but I doubt there will really be much difference.
 

I'll say more: gaining levels and gear gives you an illusion of getting better at the game. Getting better at something is a very rewarding experience!

E.g. You arrive to a new zone. You are level 11 and have some basic equipment. The monsters and quests in the zone are level 11-20. This means that most challenges in the zone can kick you ass! Through game pointers and some trial and error you find some level 11 quests to do and monsters to kill. You gain some XP and level up. You also find some magical items that are better than what you have.

Now you are more powerful! You can defeat the monsters you've been fighting easier now. Other challenges in the zone that were too hard are now doable. Intuitively you understand that your incresed power is due to the higher stats on your character. But you don't think about too much. Emotionally, it feels like you've become more skilled, more heroic!

Eventually, you reach level 20 and outfit yourself with superior gear. You effortlessly cleave your bloody way through most monsters in the zone. Even the toughest of them fall before your might. You've become a great hero of elite skill!

The heroic arc is now complete. Time to move to a higher level zone where you can repeat it all over again....


Now a another example:
You are playing a mini-game where you are always fighting against a single monster. Each time you defeat it you gain some XP, and sometimes you get a better item as a reward. But whenever you level up or equip a new item the monster also levels up and increases its stats to match your new gear.

Although your character's stats are improving, the difficulty of the fight isn't changing. You hit the monster for more damage, but it has more hitpoints to compensate. In fact, after a while you notice that the game plays exactly the same no matter what level you are or what items you have!

Not having any fun? Don't feel very heroic? What's wrong with this game? You are not improving, that's what's wrong. Although you are getting more powerful in absolute terms, you are not getting any better relative to the monster. Despite the gear/XP reward mechanism identical to WoW, there is no illusion of getting better at the game. It's boring and unfun.

I often see heated debates on the official WoW forums (and other places) about Skill vs. Gear. The zealots defending the superiority of one over the other couldn't be more misguided! I'm here to tell you that Skill = Gear. At least as long as you keep your disbelief suspended enough to play the game.

Also, there is no spoon. =D
 

Right, Sam. What I'm saying is that comparatively, the XP for actually killing mobs is low compared to the XP for completing quests, so unless you choose to grind, you'll still have to experience the same amount of content to get the reward. (That's if you want to experience the content - what better gear might well do is enable you to skip straight to, say, lvl 82 content and start there. That's a different story, though.)
 

Now I might be peculiar because I think leveling is fun, but to me that concept sounds as if having epics now means shooting yourself in the foot in WotLK.

I couldn’t agree more, but for a different reason. I strolled into Outlands in a full set of HWL on my Warrior. As I quested, I found that the green “upgrades” were just below my existing item and that quest rewards were really a downgrade for me. I didn’t really manage to find much in the way of upgrades until some of the group quests in Nagrand and even then it wasn’t much of an upgrade.

The big downside however, was my repair bill. Those purple epics have a much bigger repair cost associated to them then the quest greens. The difference in my output was slightly better, but the repairs were significantly higher. By the time I hit 70, I really didn’t have that much gold at all relative to the other players. My other 70s, by contrast, quested up in greens at a similar pace and I had plenty of gold to by the flyer once I reached the level cap. I’ve vowed that in the next expansion that I’ll actually downgrade gear to the greens as I level to save myself the hefty repair bill.
 

The best way I've heard the item upgrade path being described is something like this:

In Northrend you're basically going to be getting level 71, 72, 73 greens and blues. Your T4 will probably last until 73 at the latest, depending on the item. Sometimes the stats are just distributed more how YOU like them on a new item.

I don't understand the hate towards Blizzard. Unless you're breaking your back the night before the expansion just to get one more piece of T4, then don't worry about it. We aren't seeing the expansion until November. Get your upgrades now, and you might see a 5% difference when levelling in the fall.

Most importantly, HAVE FUN.
 

I think it is a bit too early to be de-motivated due to the release of WotLK at some undetermined point in the future. Whether or not the content of BC has 5+ months of life left in it is largely irrelevant, as there is virtually no way that Blizzard will release WotLK before October, meaning that any rewards you earn now are very likely to last you *at least* half a year.

We haven't heard virtually anything about the new mechanics or the expansion yet. Pre-BC saw Blizzard steadily release information about the new races, jewelcrafting (complete with flash demonstration), as well as slowly releasing information about the new talents, skills, and abilities in the weeks and months leading up to the beta.

Odds are good we won't see any new meaty information (bestiary updates are nice, but they don't tell the majority of players what they want to know) for around two months, until during the "playable WotLK demo" in Paris at the end of June. Assuming the information fow starts to pick up the pace, we'll see something on the website about sample death knight abilities and lore, followed by updates on specific classes, with the beta starting somewhere in September.

This puts the WotLK release at no earlier than October, and more likely November or December. You'll get a lot of use out of any items you choose to gather now, regardless of what kind of gear reset the expansion brings.
 

I think it is a bit too early to be de-motivated due to the release of WotLK at some undetermined point in the future.

It should be but till we have hard facts the logical reasonable thing to do is assume it will be no different from the BC content. And unfortunately that is a de-motivator for a lot of people
 

Learning and having new abilities is fun, this is what makes leveling fun. Unfortunately, Blizz has raised the gear wall so high at the end-game that few players ever have need of utilizing the full range of interesting abilities obtained while leveling. That is, I can't really move past Kara with my casual playtime to make good use of many of my abilities. I am stuck in solo PvE, which I think is going to be more common unless the fascination with (IMO) difficult to obtain Badge rewards are curtailed.

Secondly, gear upgrades are very insidious in wow. New purple adds a fraction of your dps? It takes about 2-3 replacements until you really see a noticable difference. That is unless you get an item that strikes with nature dmg, stuns or has some other interesting mechanic.

Blizz needs to decrease the end-game wall significantly, offer more crafted purples and include some more interesting mechanics. Make Illidan and Quel'thas tough, but please, let the casual player see some content.
 

Wait, what? If you say that purples offer only neglible benefit.. what's keeping you stuck in Karazhan? It certainly isn't the attunements.