Patch 5.4 patch notes
Virtual Realms feature revealed
The Proving Grounds are coming
The latest patch 5.4 newsShould L70 players be able to start a L55 class of their choice?
by Dan O'Halloran 
Oct 19th 2008 at 12:30PM
That's when my guild brother (heya Taiglin!) made what I thought was a brilliant suggestion: since level 70 players will be able to roll a brand new level 55 Death Knight when Wrath launches, why not roll any class at level 55? I was going to explain to him why that wasn't a good idea, but honestly, I thought he had a point. I already know how to play a Druid (well, I'm relearning with the new talents from Patch 3.0.2 and my new found love of Balance specs), why can't I roll a level 55 Druid on a new server to have an alternative place to play? Or even just to join friends who rolled toons on other servers.
You may argue against players rolling a class they don't know how to play then bungling through pick up groups, but isn't that exactly what's going to happen with the flood of DKs about to hit every server? Blizzard is poised to open the door to this option with their new Hero class, why not every class?
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Classes, Alts
Reader Comments (Page 4 of 7)
Tarbh Oct 19th 2008 4:03PM
As players levels alts, they have to go trough the content they are already tired of, meanwhile everyone else is doing the things at 70(80) you want to do, albeit in a different way than you would on your main. An alt refreshes all content to some degree, but even moreso at endgame, most people level alts to reach that point, nothing more (bar twinks). The old world content is a mind-numbing barrier in-between the player and allowing that player to apply the fresh class mechanics to more 'meaningful' endgame content.
identd2412 Oct 19th 2008 1:19PM
It will never happen, no reason to do any content from 1-55.
People who just start playing will have no one to group with.
If they ever do this, they would hjave to start everyone at 55
Framet Oct 19th 2008 1:25PM
Yes but not always.
1-55 content is cool to just skip it after doing it once.
But being able to go 55 on DK, and having to level it all after doing it many times already can be annoying.
IDK what would be the fix or the way to deal with this tho, thats something that has to be disccused with caution.
Xecnamalain Oct 19th 2008 1:23PM
Pro's: more high lvl alts, more heals, and tanks, and much more DPS.
Con's: Less help for new players in lowbie areas.
Other: Less low lvl Twinks, but more High lvl Twinks.
:-\
Bloodthorn Oct 19th 2008 2:30PM
"You may argue against players rolling a class they don't know how to play then bungling through pick up groups"
there alrady are, and I think I've pugged about 2/3 of them, most even continue on to 70 with a cheesy grin on their face and a bunch of nerve-wrecks behind em...
Nimb Oct 19th 2008 1:27PM
Well I would welcome this change I do not see blizzard going threw it.
Due to the fact they want to keep people in the old world. This is why the AH and Class Trainers are all still there. If toons where level 55 all of the zone would go unused and blizzard doesn't want that.
On the other hand if the community presses them enough like they did the PVE to PVP xfers it very well could happen
Superwaffle Oct 19th 2008 1:46PM
No. There's a reason the Death Knight is a Hero class.
Ilnara Oct 19th 2008 1:36PM
I'd love this if they did it.. why not. They could make so much money off something like this. So many possibilities to market this.
$25 for the character.
$25 to Max (for lvl55) any chosen professions.
$25-$50 to gear the character in Blues of the appropriate level.
They could even make a special selection of blue gear for this task, doesn't even have to be stuff that is available in game via the quests and Instancing, so as not to take away from those achievements.
$25-$50 for some gold to get started maybe even.
I mean why not... Blizz could EASILY do this, and in one fell swoop ERADICATE nearly all gold sellers, and power leveling services, it could also have the side effect of further hindering account theft as less people will be prone to going to such services because Blizz would essentially be providing them.
I like it.. I'd pay up to $200 to buy any character at
lvl 55, but if they let us do it for free, even without gear, professions, or otherwise, I'd still support it!
D.O.T. Oct 20th 2008 10:41AM
Bought characters and gold.... ftl.
Cowbane Oct 19th 2008 1:42PM
I SPECIFICALLY remember this being brought up at Blizz-con, and they said they were thinking about it.
Ilnara Oct 19th 2008 1:43PM
Eventually Blizz is going to get to the point where, to keep new players joining, they will have to do something like this even for players WITHOUT 70's. Not many new players are going to be enticed by the prospect of starting a new character at lvl1 and seeing lvl 80 hanging up there. Lets face it, eventually, we'll be going to lvl 100 I think. Thats a couple more X-pacs, and they are already working on the Next one. We know this is true.
This is an issue Blizz I feel will address eventually as the level cap increases, that is, if they want to keep bringing in new players. However, In a couple more years, perhaps their 'Next Gen MMO' will be ready and they won't care about winding WoW down and if new players have a long row to hoe to get to the Cap.
Anything is possible, it does though depend on their plans for keeping WoW viable, and for how long after they are actualyl done 'adding' to the project. At some point, the dev cycle will end on this game.
Lunati Oct 19th 2008 1:46PM
Blizzard actually answered this awhile back, instead of doing this they're adding the legacy items, which scale with level. All the shoulders give exp bonuses, and leveling will be much faster for veteran players.
Everquest did this, and the result was old starting zones were dead areas where new players couldn't get any help. People rerolling alts, running into new players, and helping them see the roots of the game is an essential part of gameplay.
Ilnara Oct 19th 2008 1:51PM
Perhaps, this is why Blizz should learn from EQ's failure with such a program and come up with one thats better.
If ANYONE could buy a character at lvl 55..well then, no one needs to level up from 1, and it won't matter if anyone is there or not. Aside from that, currently, the lowbie zones are PACKED with high level players right now farming mats for everything from Inscription to stocking up for their DK's. Theres plently of 'life' in the lowbie zones right now even without lowbies around.
(I've seen more 70's in Darkshire than lowbies on my lvl 30 druid over the past few days)
In short, if applied to anyone, for a price, I don't think it'll matter really.
Roxton Oct 19th 2008 1:47PM
It's a nice idea, and I'm in two minds about it. So here are arguments for and against:
-) Leveling is an intrinsic part of MMORPG's; adding this feature trivialises this.
+) Players would already have had to level one character, and 55-80 is still a lot of leveling.
+) It would enable people to gain an experience of more than one class more easily, and so would ultimately improve the average quality of play.
-) A lot of the most fundamental skills for playing a class are learnt at early levels and then built upon; starting at 55 removes the early experience.
-) It trivialises the old world, which is a shame since much of it is really extremely well designed and provides for immersive and satisfying gameplay.
+) Players will experience the world while leveling originally, and also if they ever have to go back and level a gathering profession or do boosts ect; it's not lost completely. Also, while some zones such as Westfall and Redridge are absolute gems, others are at the reverse end of the spectrum (although actually I rather liked Un'Goro and Tanaris).
Also, this is unlikely to happen, because by implementing this Blizzard would remove a large part of the attraction for their Recruit a Friend program, which is currently making them $$$$$$$$$$$ in new subscriptions - the proposed change here doesn't make them any money except maybe making a handful of people not quit.
Lokasenna Oct 19th 2008 1:48PM
Starting at level 55, as mentioned, completely ruins the game for any newbies and would quickly turn Azeroth into an empty wasteland.
Better idea: For every character at level XX, your characters below that level get a boost to their XP, similar to Refer A Friend. Even 30%, though, isn't the greatest. 50% per guy at least. The idea here is that you want people running the old instances and quests, but they shouldn't have to grind the same zones five times.
Other better idea: Once you've got a character at level XX, the instance achievements (Kill Van Cleef, etc) for characters below that level are worth, say, 1/3 or 1/2 a level of experience at whatever the instance's level is. This way, again, you still have to level up, but there's a faster way to get there and you have a built-in mechanism to keep the population for instance groups alive.
Tarbh Oct 19th 2008 1:54PM
I have done the Orc starting areas (troll warrior), the tauren starting areas (hunter main), the blood elf starting areas (unsuccessful alt) and the undead starting areas (rogue).
I have done Stonetalon 3 times.
I have done the foothills 3 times.
I have done highlands, tanaris, ungoro, 1k needles and fucking stranglethorn vale 3 times. I've done most of the old areas at least once because I leveled my main pre-nerf. The zones listed are the ones I found least loathsome, the ones I go trough to level up alts. I want to roll a healer, but I see that large, boring, dull mountain before me. Standing between me and a different play experience, and I don't know if it's worth it. Why? In the case of my warrior, I had to wait until I was endgame to find out that warrior just was not much fun for me, she exists just as an heb/alchemist to support my mains raiding now. But it turns out that rogues are fun endgame (I only really found out by rolling a premade on a ptr, the rare case they are available). So, not only do I have to play ~12 days (I'm not the fastest leveler) just to find out if it was at all worth it, I have to play ~12 days doing everything I did 3 times already, I get the story, I know what is going on, I don't really care for a lot of these zones, I don't want to do Azeroth all over again.
Please, let us have something like a content skip, I know it might sound odd to cut content when the goal is to keep us playing, but if we crate characters we like more, we will spend more time investing in their progression rather than just letting them gather dust.
A Firetruck Oct 19th 2008 1:56PM
it wold be better for blizz to just add new content for 1-55 a few more "different" quests, class quest chains, quests involving some phasing(like recapturing a town) and some quests involving major characters.
e.d add a quest chain to wpl where at the end of it you fight some scourge and sustain heavy losses sorta a prequel to making a deathknigtht
Toclafane Oct 19th 2008 2:06PM
To be honest, I think the best way to improve player's levelling speeds would be if Blizzard could manage to keep realms up for more than 20 minutes at a time. I've not been able to play all weekend due to my real being down every time I've sat down to play. Sort it out!!
Burrito Al Pastor Oct 19th 2008 2:10PM
I'm amazed that nobody's brought this up yet. You're all falling down on the job.
Starting non-Death Knight classes above level 1 isn't viable because the Death Knight starts in a special zone which was created with the express purpose of teaching the player his/her new class. Abilities and talents are doled out at an accelerated rate, but you don't have all your stuff the second you log in. In other words, the Death Knight can start at 55 because of a great deal of content created so that he COULD start at 55. Blizzard couldn't realistically create such tutorials for all the other classes without a significant expenditure of man-hours they'd rather put towards other things.
TL;DR: "You may argue against players rolling a class they don't know how to play then bungling through pick up groups, but isn't that exactly what's going to happen with the flood of DKs about to hit every server?" No, it's not. The flood of DKs will be taught how their stuff works; the warriors and druids and shamans would have a spellbook with a hundred abilities they were completely unprepared for.
Ilnara Oct 19th 2008 2:40PM
People buy services from Power leveling providers and accomplish this now, today. Aside from that, I know several players that have started at lvl 1 and STILL don't know how to play their class optimally.
Your point is thus, negated and rather moot. People that truly intend to learn their class optimally, are going to do that, no matter what level they start at.