Challenging the Rush to Endgame in World of Warcraft Classic

Prepare to challenge everything you thought you knew about the leveling journey in WoW Classic's Season of Discovery! We're dissecting the "Shoulda Coulda Woulda" post, sparking a fiery debate on game mechanics and the community's response to botting. I argue the need to reimagine XP systems for a quest-centric adventure, scrutinizing the ease of leveling for classes like paladins and the potential for gameplay incentives to unite players. Get ready to confront the nostalgia and complexities of Azeroth as we scrutinize the transformative impact of the Season of Discovery on WoW's cherished grind.

Embark on a reflective voyage through gaming's social fabric as we examine the monumental role of add-ons in World of Warcraft. We reminisce about a time when leveling up was a communal celebration and question whether the rush to endgame content has stripped the soul from our online experiences. Tackling the add-on controversy, we consider if a world without them might revive the camaraderie once found amongst Azeroth's adventurers. Join us for a thought-provoking discussion as we weigh the personal freedoms of pace against collective pressures and yearn for a return to the joy found in the journey itself.

Hope you all enjoy and hope you relate to any of these stories. And I will speak to you all in the next episode!

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:12

Music. Hello and welcome to the pig and whistle tales from Azeroth. As always here at the pig and whistle in in still wind, I go for a variety of subjects with regards to world of warcraft. The grab a bottle or a pint, sit back and enjoy this midweek episode. We're going over something that's relatively fresh. We're looking at season of discovery, the second phase of it, and I've come across this post and essentially I've not read much of it, but it's titled should a could of woulda, and I think there's going to be a lot of debating that can be happened from it. So without further ado, let's get into this. So this is a very long post and essentially it's got several points and these are very big points. I'll take these points one by one and we'll go from there.

Speaker 1: 1:42

Now, season of discovery for those that people don't know, has multiple phases planned for it. So season total. First phase allowed you to go up to level 25. Second phase, which is currently in now, allows you to go up to level 40. Next phase will be level 50 and the final phase, phase four, will be level 60.

Speaker 1: 2:02

Now this is set in World of Warcraft classic. So the world of you know warcraft is classic, so it's just Eastern kingdoms and calendar, and the classes are essentially meant to be like classic classes. But the season of discovery part is you can discover these runes and these runes give you spells from either a different expansion or they are completely new abilities in like in general, like never been seen before, stuff like that so it gives that sort of classic element a bit of a twist. Almost Now, this is what this post has to say. I had some thoughts on what I really wish SOD shoulda, coulda, woulda did, and curious on what people's thoughts are or if they have their own ideas or what they wish it did. I think the fundamental issue with SOD is that the game intended to push people out into the real or into the world to rediscover classic. However, through data mining, add-ons, general information about the game, it fails to do this. So the more most issues with classic were discovered in 2019 dungeon spamming, mage, mass farm botting, etc. But instead of addressing the issues that the journey has to level 60, they made the journey easier with overall stronger classes.

Speaker 1: 3:29

If you want a season of discovery where people go out and discover and also create a community that is cooperative, you need to do the following to classic. So, firstly, the only reason that botting is a problem in any form of World of Warcraft is because of the player base. The player base buy the gold. The people who sell the gold make the accounts to make the gold. That's the only reason. If we don't buy a gold, they don't make money, so they don't buy a wow account to make the gold. You know, it's very simple.

Speaker 1: 4:06

That is a community problem and it never was a problem back in 2004 when classic first released, because, firstly, the technology probably wasn't there to do that it would have. They would have needed NASA supercomputers at the time in order to bot and have that amount of botting accounts and, secondly, people just weren't good. Back in 2004, I'm afraid, people weren't as good at World of Warcraft as they are now. Because of the information that you get online through Wowhead or any other source, you know absolutely everything. Technology itself is just improved, so your PCs are faster, so you can react quicker and, more importantly, people just know about the game more and the genre. When it first came out, people might have been playing it for the first time, but there's so many of these sort of genre games now that people can, you know, bring some skill sets from other games over to World of Warcraft and.

Speaker 1: 5:05

But they are right, the Issues were discovered back in 2019 when it was re-released, and that shows how flawed classic actually was, because If people just had the technology and the knowledge to do these sort of things in 2004, they would have been, but they couldn't because, well, the skill technology issue. You know there's many different things, but, and I guess, alright, so here's the first one big zone content, so that both factions have a steady route to 60, though each phase without Through each phase, without the need to grind. This was done in later expansions, creating things like quest hubs, but I don't think that's necessary. All that needs to be done is tweaking. The amount of XP mob should give should be less. Wait, in, the amount of XP mobs give should be less. So killing mobs isn't the source of leveling. The amount of XP quests give Should be more. Okay, yes, this would incentivize people to go out in the world and do quests and what, what not, rather than spam dungeons or farm mobs in rotation to level again and again and again.

Speaker 1: 6:19

What all craft was if you did every single quest in while classic, you wouldn't hit level 60, and they purposefully designed it this way, because in other games you were meant to grind your way to level 60. So this is a fundamental part of wow classic. You are meant to be on a grind and that leveling experience is meant to be like the journey. It is meant to be the journey and you can do it However you want. You can quest if you really wanted, but the quest at this level still will get you to the level that you want. You don't have to go and farm mobs, and this person is a paladin. So my honest opinion is it's because he can't really farm mobs that effectively some classes can, some classes can't, and but he would take on about two mobs and then go, um, potentially I don't know season of discovery like mana issues for paladins and stuff, but Paladins and classic are notorious for not being able to Do a lot, but season of discovery, I know, has definitely changed that for the better, in my honest opinion.

Speaker 1: 7:26

Reduce the amount of XP dungeons provide or completely remove any XP acquired from doing a dungeon. Firstly, there's no point doing a dungeon then. That'll be boring, but you want to be progressing your character as you do these. The XP should stay within quests related To the dungeon as a one-time reward, not spammable? No, quest dungeon is spammable and the rewards of items that the dungeon provided or provides, given it all three makes everyone Gravitate to them all the all times of the day. So open world discovery is reduced and also finding other people to play with to help discover is reduced. I don't see a problem with dungeons. You want to be, you want to be progressing your character. But sure, when you're doing dungeons, whether that be gear or quest and stuff like that, it's very good and it allows people to Enjoy these.

Speaker 1: 8:23

If you took XP out of dungeons, no one would do them, or people would do them, but they would hate doing them and you don't want an activity that is going to be one of your staple points of Season of discovery, which is dungeons at the time, because there are no raids, there is no more gone and there is. What is it not? Shanofanke, my god, what was the raid in phase one? Black feather and deeps, that one you like. There's just no point. You have no rage of, no endgame content of the moment. You piece of right, I guess, but you know it's going to be unbalanced because not everyone is level 60 and they made it so that he was more balanced at level 60, even though everything was like rock paper scissors type of deal, like druids, ferro druids beat majors, majors beat warriors, warriors beat ferro druids. You know that kind of rock paper scissors. But yeah, taking XP out of a dungeon would make people hate doing the dungeon, but they would have to. So it would be like doing your Legion artifact like daily stuff or your BFA like Azerite stuff or you know that kind of thing, and people despise that sort of a method of doing it.

Speaker 1: 9:39

Add more world elite slash group quests and make those elite slash group quests a huge payout in terms of XP slash items, while it doesn't have a population issue where the this kills MMOs like 04 with EverQuest to being very group orientated with a small player base that typically each zone is reserved to one to five group slash elite quests at the end of the zone, but this number could be increased, in my mind, double or triple. This creates incentive for people to yield or group up, which can create friends in relatively lonely, so lobal MMO. I don't think it's a bad idea. I think if you're putting a lot of the quests that are group content, you also have people who don't want to do group content and this would be a negative for them. But I'm not against this idea. To be honest, I think it's not a bad idea. Maybe put like world bosses or something like that. That could be like something really cool.

Speaker 1: 10:43

Make the content harder to match the stronger player base. Back in the day and I might be misremembering you couldn't hit something ever five levels or higher above you. People are clearing level 50 quests at level 40 is a problem with how easy the classic patches and the world needs to have more teeth than it currently does. If you have a world that is hard and poses a challenge, people will too man leveling or enjoy solo challenge more. Mac mixed it with points one and two, it will force people to not only go out and get good for max level raids which should be harder, by the way, not easier. Classic is brain dead easy compared to most modern games but will also stimulate economies during the level experience through consumables and having at level gear being more mandatory for solo success. This is always going to be a problem. The balancing of the world is going to be a massive problem and this is the thing. You can't really balance that without affecting other areas of the game PvE and PvP wise.

Speaker 1: 11:54

If they have to sacrifice someone being able to kill mobs higher level than them, they will. For the PvE and PvP side of the game, they would. Now, this isn't new. People have been doing this since 2004 where they killed, like high level mobs. Granted, it's easier in Season of Discovery because of the spells that you have been given as runes, but people still weren't able to do it back in 2004. People were able to do mad things back in 2004 and people forget this. So people forget that there's literally videos of naked rogues, like killing a warrior and stuff with only a simple dagger, like a starting dagger, because of the CC that they have. So people forget all of this and it's absolutely crazy, like all of this was in classic. It's just people couldn't do it in classic and to scale it to people who are better nowadays, you leave behind the more casual element of the game and like player base that are playing WoW and WoW was always meant to be for the casual player. That was even sent back in like 2004, where it was meant to be like more casual, friendly. So I'm not too sure about this if they need to sacrifice killing mobs higher level than them to save the PvE slash PvP side. I don't think it's really that big of a deal.

Speaker 1: 13:17

To be honest, slow down, levelling experience, each phase being only a fraction of the journey. A journey that in classic I think people did 1-60 in 21 hours, compared to vanilla whale, taking 200 plus hours Means that each phases content is swallowed up in the blink of an eye and people get bored and move on. People do this in every single patch of WoW. It's very tough, especially with classic. There isn't much that they can do to change it without people throwing an absolute shit show. So it kind of makes sense. Ignoring the screaming minority who like level boosts and don't love the journey, make levelling slower and more meaningful.

Speaker 1: 14:00

I remember back in 05 when people in your guild would say Grats when someone said ding, level 37, now it's just why aren't you level 40 yet? Because it's so quick and easy. People still say Grats, people still say ding and then get a response saying Grats, like if you aren't in that sort of guild or around them sort of people. Then you need to realise that and get out of that. I get that some of it might be a joke. I mean what he's put here, why aren't you level 40 yet? That kind of just sounds like a joke. I'm not going to lie the way that he's put it anyway. But look, people still say Grats In Wrath. They still do. In retail they still do. You just need to find the right people to talk with and interact with.

Speaker 1: 14:48

As for vanilla taking 200 plus hours, people didn't have add-ons like Questy. People had to use Thoughtbot and read the Quest and all of that stuff and it was brand new. So after 20 years or at the time it was 15 years when we went back to Classic, we had all of the information on Classic World of Warcraft. So we had an add-on that literally gave us the quests and it was absolutely crazy. And the thing is, people just got better at the game. That's all it is. You didn't have to wait for dial-up. You didn't have to wait for your mum to put down the phone so that you can go on the internet. You didn't have to wait 10 years for it to download via 5 disks. You know that kind of thing and I think you can take the levelling journey as quickly as you want. It feels a lot quicker because of the spells that you've been given, but people are also just more efficient at it.

Speaker 1: 15:48

The way that gaming is evolving, a lot of people are going down the route of you've got to be very quick with everything. You can't take anything slow. You've got to be very quick, very direct. You can't enjoy the levelling experience. It's all about getting to the end game and figuring out how to be the best at the end game content, the PvE, the PvP you know all that shit and people have forgotten what it's like to just chill, play the game like very slowly and relaxingly and, yeah, just take it at your own pace.

Speaker 1: 16:16

That's what I do in Season of Discovery. I'm still like level 22, I think Like from Phase 1, I haven't played it a while, but yeah, I'm going to plan on doing my levelling like very soon and just chill with doing that. You know it's something very simple, but it's something that I don't. I'm getting to level 40, it's very much. I want to just chill and that's because in retail that's what I do. I go okay, I need to hit max level, because the only thing that I'm really interested in is the PvP side and I want to be doing arenas like most of the time that I long on and that's when I would like the power through leveling a bit. I do enjoy, like the content itself, by the way, the whole storylines and stuff. Cinematic, all of that stuff is really really good and enjoyable. But yeah, that's what I do on retail. So sitting in discovery is the slower game for me, where I just take my time and enjoy myself, and I think everyone's got that.

Speaker 1: 17:19

But a lot of people don't realize that this might be their main game, so they really do just want to push and get to the best you know point of the game, which is the end game content usually. And then the final point, extremely controversial, and I'd be fine with just other points. To be honest, remove add-ons. That people have played classic, they've maxed it out. They have every add-on to make everything brain-dead easy and no matter what SOD developers make, removing add-ons, being in the game makes it you actually look in the world rather than on your quest.

Speaker 1: 17:55

I'm not the kind of person that says, well, you don't have to use them. Being a valid counter-argument to this, if you're in the community of players and 90% of them are using add-ons to improve their skill, you are a weak link because of the way you want to play the game. In other words, refusing to use add-ons makes you a liability and seen as selfish player, prioritizing your enjoyment of the game over whatever group you're in. If everyone is on an equal playing field of no add-ons, this negative play experience dynamic between the min-maxes and the normies won't exist. Creating a closer connection between the two groups of players and again bringing people together I like that. This guy's whole thing is like bring everyone together in the community side of it. I do like it. But add-ons are very much a personal choice. I do have to say that he doesn't have to use them, like he said in that post, and he thinks that you are a liability for it. You don't have to be.

Speaker 1: 18:59

If you really wanted to play like you want to, then you would be able to surpass the people with add-ons, like potentially Because you're going to be a lot more focused in a raid in PvP scenarios rather than them, because they're waiting on like a beep or something to tell them to move. You know that kind of deal and the bosses in PvE content are very much the same. They're not going to change their mechanics like mid-fire, are they? They're going to have the exact same five mechanics. You know don't stand in fire while you can see the fire, so just move out of it. You know there's one mechanic. You don't need a weak aura to tell you to move out of it. You know you can see it with your own two eyes. You like need to kill some adds? You don't need a weak aura to tell you to kill the adds, you can just see them and you turn around, bonk them.

Speaker 1: 19:47

In Raffer the Lich King, we raid constantly and there's a ICC weak aura pack that most of my guild have. I don't have it. I'm one of the main tanks for the raid. I don't have it Like, and yet I can see more than what everyone else can see, probably because, like I raid Lee the group. So I actually have more of an understanding of the actual mechanics and I don't use like what they use. So it's not really a hindrance. You can turn it into a positive. But you know it depends on if you want to play it really casually or you want to really. You know, prove yourself if that's the best way to put it. But that is where we will end it for this episode. Thank you all very much for listening. As always, do check out all the socials down below constant stuff happening over there. But thank you all very much once again and go Valor Friend Bye, bye my Banana.