The opposite of Heroics
by Mike Schramm 
Jun 11th 2009 at 1:00PM
Reader Malos on Nagrand sent me an interesting idea that I thought was worth some discussion. For a long time now, I've been a big fan of the idea of turning the old instances into Heroic versions -- I think it would be really fun to play Deadmines as a level 80, or roll through Scarlet Monastery for badges. But obviously the problem there is that Blizzard already has enough to do -- they're focused on creating new content, not revamping old instances that people have already played.So Malos has a solution: instead of tweaking the instances to us, how about tweaking us to the instances? He suggests a set of gear, much like the Heirloom gear, that matches your character to whatever instance you happen to step into -- if you enter Deadmines, it powers down your level 80 character to an appropriate power and level for the instance. That way, all Blizzard has to do is make one set of gear per class (that could even scale upwards, so they never have to make it again), and boom, every instance could be played at the standard difficulty by any character any time.
Will it happen? Probably not. But I really like the idea of tweaking the players, not the instances, and I think there's a lot of possibility there for Blizzard. They've had such a tough time trying to balance out content for all kinds of players (including all of the hard modes and extra gameplay in Ulduar), that it might be interesting to try and measure the difficulty by going the other way -- balancing players out for all kinds of content.
Filed under: Items, Analysis / Opinion, News items, Instances
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
Yeng Jun 11th 2009 1:06PM
What would be the purpose in doing this though?
elstor Jun 11th 2009 1:18PM
Fun and challenges
Naix Jun 11th 2009 1:25PM
The old instances are bad bad bad. Not to mention everyone has ran them 8972457348597 times.
Don't make us do it again.
Yeng Jun 11th 2009 1:33PM
I don't see the fun and challenges in it. It was fun and challenging the first time you ran through it at level. Getting a set of gear so you can go back and run it and be nerfed going through it does not sound fun and challenging. Plus the point of it being 'easy and quick' for Blizzard is moot, as without them going back and creating rewards for doing these old instances, the majority of players are not going to have any interest in doing it.
Manatank Jun 11th 2009 1:54PM
I love this idea so much I don't even know how to express it properly. I question how it would work with glyphs and talents though.
AyaJulia Jun 11th 2009 2:39PM
@Yeng: I think the idea is, instead of tuning the instances for level 80 so level 80s could go run heroic RFC or something for badges, you'd put this gear on and still run "heroic" and get your badges?
@Naix: Not everyone.
Aykwa Jun 11th 2009 2:48PM
I'm not a fan of this idea.
First, who is going to be happy to see a crit of 400 on a mob? Progression and bigger numbers are psychologically important in such a game.
Second, we already have so many choices for heroics and raids, why would we want to add 20 more? I think there is only a relatively small percentage of the population that would care for this "extra" content, and the amount of work to make it happen would take resources away from other areas.
Third, do we all really want to have to remember or look up another 80 boss fights, tips for hundreds of different trash packs, and potentially thousands of new pieces of gear that would drop from them all?
I don't like the idea of constantly living in the past, including Blizz trying so desperately to keep people going to the old Azeroth cities (by not putting trainers and AHs in Shatt and Dal). Live in the present, plan for the future, and learn from the past.
DanH Jun 11th 2009 6:27PM
"Second, we already have so many choices for heroics and raids, why would we want to add 20 more"
Because last time I checked, choice was a good thing?
I don't actually think this is a workable idea (as others have pointed out, too much faff sorting out your bars and your talents every damned time) but I don't understand the logic that says that running Deadmines again after four years is boring, whereas running Halls of Lightning *every day* is fine.
my2cents Jun 11th 2009 9:37PM
I'd be all for it as a "just for fun" option. I don't think it would make sense to have heroic badges or anything like that drop in RFC. But sometimes at level 80 I think it would be fun to experience a Baron run as a similarly-geared level 60 like I did back in Vanilla WoW. Just for the hell of it. The rewards wouldn't need to be scaled in any way, I'd just like to run it again the way it was originally meant to be run (without needing to park an alt at lvl 60 so I could do this)
I bet they could implement something like this with a tabard. In the 3.1 ptr, there was a tabard given out that increased the average ilevel of your gear so that people in full naxx gear could test out the hard modes. What if there was a tabard that scaled down your health, damage, and healing by a certain percentage when you entered a low level instance, depending on the level of the instance. Again, just for fun, not for any type of rewards.
Ceradene Jun 11th 2009 1:10PM
Tweaking players to match instance difficulty is a strange idea. The whole goal of an MMO is to advance your character through levels and through gear. What would be the point of running such dungeon as you are proposing? No level advancement, no prospect of better gear. It seems a little pointless.
*shrug*
Kraf Jun 11th 2009 1:25PM
Just for fun, cause after playing for a very long time it's gets boring with 3 80's and not raiding much and nothing else to really do. I'd love running DM with actually 5 ppl...it actually being a challenge. I only ever did DM with a group a couple times 4 years ago
strikermcbain Jun 11th 2009 1:41PM
If you have 3 maxed level 80s who only raid, you don't want to roll another alt, AND there are no raids going... I think it would be time to do something non-WoW related. At least until the raids start again. As for re-running the instances. Isn't that what alts are for?
V Magius Jun 11th 2009 2:34PM
I think it's just a carry over from the people playing City of Heroes and City of Villains. There you needed to be able to drop your level because some instances had a level range. If you were too high, you couldn't get in. That may have changed in the last 2 or 3 years.
This is a feature I don't think we'll ever seen or possibly need. The hard part is the scaling. CoH/V had a bunch of abilities and you could add boosts to it. They didn't have ranks of abilities that were pretty much useless when you took the next level.
Worcester Jun 11th 2009 2:55PM
No, the "whole" idea of an MMO is not just advance your character and get better gear. Some of us play a little RP, some like to craft and sell, some like to explore, some like to PVP, some like to collect... the list goes on.
I hate to be insulting, but you really have to be an idiot to think you know what motivates other people. Take off the blinders and get a clue. There are a lot of people in this world. They have their own ideas. Stop trying to talk for everyone else.
Ceradene Jun 11th 2009 4:18PM
@Worcester
You were insulting. And you did mean to insult me, otherwise you wouldn't have done so. I however, won't sink to your level.
What I merely meant to say was that MMOs evolve around the idea of character progression. If there were none, people would have no motivation to play MMOs. I too enjoy PvP, RPing or just running raids that yield no upgrades for me for fun, but in the end it's not what the game revolves around.
Blizzard themselves keep implementing this system. If it weren't so they could just have added more hard encounters to this game without adding new gear rewards. That would be completely possible seeing how the current design works, but people would hardly have the motivations to do these encounters after doing them once if there were no further rewards involved.
Claiming this game isn't all about character progression is all nice in theory. But even collecting and PvPing is character progression. Personally, I don't know anyone who plays WoW only for the social aspect of it or RP and keeps their toons at low level because they're not interested in progressing them.
Quark1020 Jun 11th 2009 6:05PM
Actualy, the whole point of MMO's is to have fun. Some people like chalenging new content, others may like to visit old content. Aside from personal gain, the only other reason to revisit old content would be to help out the new players.
Wow wouldn't be the first game that would have zones that lower a player's level. City of Heroes has it designed so that lower level players can have their levels and stats to be able to play with higher level players, and inversly, the higher level players can lower their levels to match up with lower level players. During the time where a character's level is lowered, the character gains extra currency instead of EXP.
I'd say implement it simply to make someone happy. I won't be revisiting old content anytime soon, but no reason other's should enjoy themselves.
Tinious Jun 11th 2009 1:11PM
The purpose would be that I'm level 80 and never had the chance to run deadmines because I blew right through the levels for which it'd be interesting. Would be great to go back with some old timers and have it be challenging.
To be honest, I'm not sure why it's *that* much of a challenge to just create a mode where the mobs have HP and DMG scaled to level 80...
Cyrus Jun 11th 2009 1:52PM
"The purpose would be that I'm level 80 and never had the chance to run deadmines because I blew right through the levels for which it'd be interesting. Would be great to go back with some old timers and have it be challenging."
So reroll an alt. If you don't want to level past it again but can't find anyone interested in running it when you try, then go on your main for a while and try again later, or the next day. That's basically what I'm doing with my rogue, who is now level 31.
"To be honest, I'm not sure why it's *that* much of a challenge to just create a mode where the mobs have HP and DMG scaled to level 80..."
For one thing, old dungeons (except for the ones aimed at level 60s and level 70s, of course) were designed for a range of levels. Especially multi-entrance or multi-instance ones like the Scarlet Monastery. Produce a formula that tunes Bloodmage Thalnos for a level 80, and the same one would make Mograine on par with a level 88. Unless you use different formulas for the two of them, but then it's getting challenging.
Also, loot would be a problem. They don't want to add heroic version of old dungeons with no loot at all; who would do them? Each person with a level 80 toon would do one of them, one time, and that would be it. But Blizzard wouldn't want "vanilla heroics" to have loot comparable to level 80 dungeons, either. It's safe to assume that Blizzard likes how many sources of level 80 loot and Emblems of Heroism exist in the game right now. Since you mentioned the Deadmines, there are eight bosses in it. That's twice as many as in any Northrend instance, not counting heroic-only bosses. Old instances were big. That would be a lot of badges.
Sorry to be dismissive, but this is a really tiny problem for such a massive change.
Menchi Jun 11th 2009 1:13PM
I can't remember what game did this i want to say it was FFXI where it level locked you for certain events so that you couldn't just over power encounters temporarily lowering your level to that of the event.
It was an awesome way to defeat power leveling, and keep all the events fun and interesting.
I dunno about this though. What made these instances fun wasn't the instances it was being the first time in there not that it was the right level.
AyaJulia Jun 11th 2009 2:49PM
"I can't remember what game did this i want to say it was FFXI"
I played FFXI for about three years, so let me tell you -- you're correct.
FFXI, for those unfamiliar with it, had a series of level-capped areas for any missions (like long, epic, difficult quests) that were meant to have that sort of gradual progression. Level 30 players and level-capped players would be on the same page when doing them, allowing both low-levels and high-levels to progress. The end of the mission chain would always be high-level, with some of the BiS equipment available in the game.
For example, the expansion that utilized this system most thoroughly had its first three missions at level 30, then three at level 40, then three at level 50, then a mix of level 50 and level 60 missions able to be done in any order, followed by six-ish missions at the level cap of 75.
People criticized the system heavily because of the need to keep GEAR for all of those levels stashed in their banks. The company that makes the game only came out with a scaling system for gear earlier this year, allowing you to keep your level-capped equipment on the entire time, but truth be told, it's rather... lacking. They also let you apply the level caps more liberally with the introduction of this system, allowing players to "level sync" down to the level of any of their buddies of any level to fill out their groups.
....hm, forgive the ramble, but I feel it warrants discussion in an article such as this. Still, I'll cut it here. :P Don't mistake this for an advertisement for that game by a long shot... I used to love it, but now--a year after I stopped playing it--I have no idea what I saw in it.