It almost sounds like the event where a group of young guys downed one of the hardest bosses in Outland in weeks (where Blizzard intended for much longer), they just worked hard and had fun, nothing else.

This isn’t really a new realization - players will find the shortest path to the cheese. But when it becomes widespread, and people are bypassing content as part of that, then it basically means that a lot of money spent on content development is wasted.

Unfortunately I think the only way that this is going to stop being an issue is for game designers in general to get away from the traditional experience-levels approach to advancement. That’s a lot harder to do than it would seem, otherwise there would be half a dozen big games out there now doing it.

The consequence of this is a great deal of discussion about WoW among people and a tremendous positive PR effect including discussions among some people I know who think they can do it in less time.

I know so many people who have pointed out that WoW is really two different games in one… The treadmills and end game. Now that my first character is getting to 70 i am starting to see that (I didn’t play until early this year due to trying to get my business profitable).

I really think that anyone doing virtual worlds or running an MMO needs to take a character through to level 70 in wow for three or four reasons:

1) Bragging rights
2) See what they did right
3) See what they did wrong
4) Enjoying the scenery

I am really glad I took the opportunity to do so, even if it was a costly investment of time over the past four months.

Of these, (3) is the one that astonished me the most. I truly believe that Blizzard should be at 30m paid subs right now if they really took a hard look at what their core business is and how to leverage it better.

Besides, WoW doesn’t end at level 70. Level 70 is when you can compete in the Arena, fight in the maximum-level battlegrounds, clear high-level instances and raid.. except that all of these activities require other players.

Either way, you just have to ponder what in the heck he’s going to do now if he’s the only 70. You’re left waiting for the rest to catch up. I guess it’d be like working 40 hours of your work week in two days instead of seven, but still. You’re losing half the fun of doing it with your friends.

I personally watched most my guild in LotRO burn out because they leveled to 50 (max level) within weeks of opening, and then they were bored. Granted, even achieving 50 more slowly, I’m still beginning to be bored. How you manage to hold people’s interest once they’ve “achieved” the top aspects of the game, who knows. PvP I guess

The fact that many of us have learned and already mastered the game play of the current MMO, a lot of time we’ve already mastered the games DPS system from previous games.

Also with the fact that reading is not needed to do quests and we’ll get a quest journal that we can fill up with 40 or more quests at a time. Takes a lot of the emphasis or need to complete said quest like it matters or has any importance to the NPC whom is giving it to us. Also there is that little fact that quests don’t matter at all, since it will also be given to every other player that stumbles upon this NPC at the right level(s) or after having the right flag(s).

As someone said, it just a game of pinatas and pez dispencers. Developers seem to only treat the quest and its system as a means of giving away loot and experience bonuses. Players treat them as a means to gain experience faster and items that might be needed, sold, or thingss required for other quests.

Don’t get me wrong, it was the same way when EverQuest expansions were released after Kunark or Scars of Velious. Planes of Power and further expansions were just quickies it felt like. Most games today are the same, the expansions seem to be more about getting the game back in the headlines than to provide any real content to the players.

Yes your casual players will move through them at a slower pace, but not as slow or casual as your development team can push out the next expansion.