Help the n00bs!

Mr. BBB brought up a good discussion on his blog the other day about mid-level content and since I have a very bad habit of playing various alts, it is very relevent to me. When I first started WoW it was about 3 months after the initial release, and while there were many people who had reached level 60 already, the majority of players who were still on their way up, and a lot more just starting the game like I was. This made for a great social experience while still at low levels. Lots of players looking for groups to knock out hard quests, run through the low level instances, or just to get things done faster.

Jump ahead a few years and the level distribution of players has changed drastically. A very high percentage of players have at least one level 70, many have more than one, and the game seems to focus on the end game and getting other players there quickly. Now I don't mind being able to level faster and all, especially with my limited playing time, but by making the end game so much more appealing than anything else, it is very hard for new leveling players to get the experience many of us veterans got when we first started playing.

One of my favorite moments in the game was on my first character, a gnome rogue, in Redridge Mountains. I was obviously very new to the game still, but I was starting to understand my class and the role a rogue plays. If you've been through that zone you know the last few quests send you to a tower full of elite orcs and you are supposed to kill a couple of their leaders, one right outside and one at the top. I was lucky enough to find a group of four others around my level and we headed out.

The mobs outside were spread out and pretty easy to pick off one at a time, then we came to the first boss mob. He had three guards, and I knew it was gonna be tough, but our mage knew how to play. He kept one sheeped for the entire fight while we burned down the rest, a pretty impressive display for a bunch of new players. Heading up the tower was a challenge as well since all the mobs were runners, but while we had some adds show up a few times, we managed to make it to the top. Using the same strategy as the first boss, we took down the second and his three guards, and once again had almost no trouble at all. It was a great experience to see that kind of teamwork take place, and while at the time I thought was pretty normal, I have since come to realize that PUGs don't turn out that way often.

After leveling a few alts through the same area, I can say that I never had the same experience. After taking way to much time to pull together a group on my first alt, we managed to fail miserably and ended up resorting to calling over a 60 to run us through it, which does not give you that feeling of accomplishment. With other alts I made I didn't even bother doing it if finding a group took more than a few minutes. It seemed that everyone had a level capped friend that would just run them through it, but I can't imagine how new players feel with those quests sitting in the quest logs but being unable to get them done because they don't know anybody yet and everyone else is getting help from their high level buddies.

I'm not really sure how BBB's idea would work out, making a new faction with a lower level cap might be a little extreme, but we need something in the game to make staying at a lower level more appealing so new players can get that experience of comradery and teamwork early on. Sure we have twinks and all, but those players stop leveling at a certain point, which doesn't really help questing players out much.

I would suggest a modification to the idea. I do like the go back in time to thwart the Black Dragonflight, but maybe make those instances open to everyone once they reach a certain level and for whatever level they happen to be it will be reduced accordingly. Say once you reach level 25 you can do the "Return of Van Cleef" instance (see this post), and any characters over level 28 will be reduced to level 28 and given generic weapons and armor that corresponds with their class for that level. There would have to be a way to hide your actual level when looking for groups for these instances as most high level players will be biased against grouping with the lowbies.

If certain quests for these instances were made available at various levels with good rewards it would keep a steady flow of players looking to put groups together for them, and faction rewards or some other sort of incentive would keep players going back. The new players would get a taste of how to run an instance while still at a low level. They would learn their class, how to use it, and when they got to the high level stuff they would be prepared.

Well that's my two cents towards that idea. If something like that was added to the game I can tell you that I would be all for it as long as it adds something to the low end content to create a way for low level players, who may never even reach the level cap, to experience everything that made those levels so much fun for those of us that have been around since the beginning. What do you think?