World of Warcraft Reports

Two new World of Warcraft reports, one based on the beta test and one based on a recent Blizzard event in London, have been published on the web. Here’s a snip from the journal, which is over at Evil Avatar:

Good news and bad news. World of Warcraft has levels, so yes, it is a leveling treadmill in a sense. But at this time, leveling seems to be a consistent number of experience (in other words, I have yet to see that I need 5x the experience to get from level 39 to level 40 while for level 41 to 42, I only needed 2x the previous experience). There are no jumps like that. For the most part I have felt progress in all areas of leveling. Only twice did I feel like I was level grinding (level 17-19, and level 27-29). That level grinding was because I was not working on any of the quests that would have brought me to other lands and better experience. When I did seek those areas out, the feeling of level grinding left. It seems, by doing quest I can level on average about once every 8-10 hours of play. The first 30 minutes of play, I was at level 5. Within four hours, I was level 10. Most of the experience came from completing quests.

And here are a few interesting aspects about high level content, from the London report at WorldofWar.net:

I asked about high level content; specifically, what will keep players playing. Chris admitted there was a gentler curve in WoW than some of the other MMO’s (you level faster), and that a lot of the top-level activity would be PvP based.

There will be rankings and prestige (for PvP), points systems (for factions), titles such as (Defender of the Realm), and even extra content for PvP’ers of a sufficiently high standing, such as specific PvP instances, with special NPC vendors selling elite items that only the PvP (elite) will be able to access. There will also be item rewards for certain PvP feats.

Balance therefore is also crucial to the game. They are trying to balance all aspects, however Chris admitted that in one or two cases, certain classes would likely always have the edge on others.