My good friend Xill ventured into WAR last night on a trial account. He's a hardcore WoW player and like me a PvE-first player. I was eager, if a little scared, to get his impressions.
Turns out we have very similar takes on the PvE. He rolled a marauder and played the first 5 or so levels solo. Then I grouped up with him on a disciple and we churned through a mixture of content: easy and normal PQs, oRvR, quests and scenarios.
His take, in short, is as follows:
The World is very cool looking.
the PvE is interesting and engaging.
Levelling is too fast.
Now this may come as a shock to people, but I have to agree. Leveling, particularly in tier one, but arguably throughout the process, is very fast. This is not a big problem if you want to RvR, but if you are interested in doing PvE it can be a problem.
Why? Because PvE is a cumulative experience. Completing quests and quest sequences develops the story line of the character and conveys the development of the character in both the larger narrative and personally.
When you out-level content that you are working on, you have to decide to abandon the content or to continue with content that offers rewards of reduced value: less xp from kills, less useful prizes. Eventually, you have to decide to proceed in the narrative order to a stage that is already, before you've begun it, of low value, or skip a portion of the narrative to move toward more lucrative hunting grounds.
This problem is already in place just from doing quests and influence grinds in the given chapters. From those methods alone you may outpace the narrative, but I'd guess that it would stay close enough to not be overly jarring. However, when you add in scenarios and oRvR -- components of the game you're strongly encouraged to participate in, and that offer excellent returns, the outpacing of the narrative gets extreme.
So what's the fix. It's as easy as it is impossible. Reduce XP from RvR, possibly even reduce xp from mob kills and/or increase the amount needed to level. Would this kill RvR? I doubt it. There's already several strong motivators to RvR: oRvR rewards, renown gear, as well as the separate Renown Rank system.
Reducing XP from RvR and possibly increasing it for long quest strings, dungeons and other more-intensive PvE components would revitalize PvE and maybe put to rest permanently the misguided notion that WAR's PvE is inferior.
Won't happen, but it should.
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I think if they reduced the XP rewards in Tier 1 scenarios, that would help greatly.
ReplyDeleteSo far the quickest way to grind from 1 - 11 is hitting scenarios back to back and you can get to 11 in one night if they're popping enough.
In comparision though, I was able to get to about 12-14 in WoW in one night easily.
I agree that its not much faster than WoW, but your experience is similar to mine. Queueing scenarios in my opinion should be about change of pace and playtype, and raising your renown rank, but right now its also the best way to get xp.
ReplyDeleteIn early t3 even I found myself getting 15k+ xp for one scenario win, and 10k+ for a decent loss. That's a lot of xp for a short RvR experience.
I'm of the opinion that leveling in PVE is too fast and Leveling in RVR is way to slow. I would like to see it flip flopped being this is suppose to be RVR centric game.
ReplyDeleteI have been leveling my alt in purely ORVR and Scen's and I stay in a constant state of Renown cap waiting for xp to catch up. It has taken me over 2 weeks to level from 1-17 in this mannor, and on my Main I leveled from 1-20 in the first week doing quests and Pq's....this is a problem i think...