Progression in Cataclysm - led

Call me a traditionalist, but I love levelling.  It stems back to the old days in solo RPG games where getting through the lore and quests and to the end of the game was the reward. There were no end game raids, no groupwow gold quests for max level, no gearing up.  When you were done with the story you were done with the game, you watched a nice end game clip and moved on to a new game.  That to me is still the ultimate form. of progression in a game, getting to the end of the storyline. 

Therefore you can probably tell that the things I will like most are levelling and raiding as they advance the story line the most in an MMOG.  However, there are many other components to progression in a game as complicated as World of Warcraft.  So let’s take a look at some of the many different means to progress through the game and how I would like them to play out in Cataclysm.

Another minor progression is the addition of two new races.  While not everyone will rush to the new race, and will not want to level a whole new character, some will.  Even those that don’t are likely to jump in and create a goblin or worgen just to see and explore the two all new starting areas.

Next up while levelling is professions.  Traditionally in WoW professions have not provided anything that you really need while levelling and are left by most players until they get to max level, then they go back and level professions.  Even then, many only provide a few top end items that are worth making, and those are generally BoE meaning you can just buy them from someone else.

My wish for professions in Cataclysm is that they become an actual benefit to players while levelling.  They should provide excellent pieces of gear for use while levelling so that players are compelled to work on it as they level.  In addition, all professions should have some form. of large boost that you get when you maximize it at the level cap.  While there is a bonus to each now, I do not believe it is big enough that you can not go without it.  It should be big enough that players want to ensure they have it the second they reach the level cap.

Last of the basic progression methods is your gear. ,folding bikes; This is the one that seems minor but usually ends up taking a lot longer than levelling or anything else.  That is because you end up spending more time at max level on a character than any other level and oncecheap wow gold finished levelling Blizzard has to offer some form. of upgrades to keep you in the game.

My wish here is that they slow it down.  One of the biggest issues with WotLK was that gear advanced too much between each raid.  Once you were in Ulduar there was almost nothing in Naxxramas that was useful, the same is true from Ulduar to ToC, and ToC to ICC.  Thisledto almost no one running old raid content.  The situation was further complicated by Blizzard continually upgrading the badges available from heroics.

This made it so that anyone that needed gear to raid current content never ran the old content, they simply ran heroics for badges instead.  This was easy to do and got you the second best raid gear, without having to learn to raid. ,led lights; It also meant that anyone could take a break from the game, and come back anytime later and be back up to current gear inside a week. There was nothing lost from being away.

Meta. Progression: Non-character affecting
Ok, some of these affect your character a little through the gaining of gear.  However, that relates back to gear progression.  These viewed by them selves are just about your character and are essentially report card type items.  They have become a staple in WoW though and look to continue in Cataclysm.

The first and most common of the meta. progression types is reputation grinds.  While reputation gives you something to do, it takes too long in my opinion.  The only things you gain from reputation are low level raid items and some enchants. ,coffee mugs; By the time you grind out the rep, you were far more likely to have gotten a better top level item from a heroic or raid.  It just seems that you take so long to grind out rep, that there is no real reward in the end. Blizzard should speed it up by at least twice, or keep it the same and provide better rewards.

Raid Progression, which is the only real place I like achievements, despite the fact that they are used to check if you know a fight. Tracking raid progression through an achievement type system is a decent idea, it allows you to know what you have and have not accomplished.  It does not however, provide any idea if a player has actually contributed in a fight, which is why I do not like checking for achievements, all it means is that the player was there when the boss died, not that they know anything.

Back to the basics though, I would like to see raid progression back to vanilla game level or at least BC level.  Let’s get back to raiding that is hard and progressive.  Let’s get back to raids that require several weeks of work to figure out thewow gold mechanics of a boss and be able to defeat him. WotLK raids were way too simple and guilds (even casual guilds) destroyed them way too soon after their release.  Even normal mode raids should take a while to get through, like 3-4 lock out periods. Let’s also get back to raids that are more thoroughly tuned so that you need a lot of gear from the previous raid before being able to have a chance at the next harder raid.