I feel your pain. In your mid-30’s the choices are slim and more than likely you are stuck in Stranglethorn Vale for what seems an eternity. Of course, there is the RAF program that Blizzard has now implemented to further bloat their subscription base. You can go that route and get some free levels in addition to another mount…..

If Blizzard has increase the amount of effort/XP required to level by providing adequate content then all is well and good. If the % of times you need to do the same quest or instance to gain your levels hasn’t changed, then they have nothing to complain about. However, if this extra effort and XP comes by doing repeating instances or repeatable quests more times, then they have every right to be concerned. That would be a bold cop-out on Blizzards’s part to stretch the content without increasing its depth. But there’s no way for players to actually do the math to know if that’s what is now expected.

What I’m saying is if they developed the same amount of content they did to move players 10 levels in WoTLK as they did for the 10 levels in TBC, but increased the XP required to gain those 10 levels, it means that people will be forced to re-do the same content (instances) more times and there’s nothing exciting about that prospect the first time, let alone doing it for alts.

The endgame raiders seem to be the most… vocal, with the greatest sense of entitlement, largely due to the sense that they have “invested” in their characters, both in time and in money. (Which is part of my rant against the subscription model, incidentally… a rant that I still need to write in full.)

The Big Bear Butt Blogger has noted his intention to take the 70-80 journey at a relatively leisurely pace, as have other bloggers I’ve read lately. In line with that, I still think that Blizzard should horizontally expand the “old world” and encourage “sniffing the roses”, but that may well mean more work than they want to get involved with, especially with the next-gen MMO, Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 in the works. Of course, I think they should focus on the “old world” of WoW, but I suspect that they are content to let the endgame raiders monetize the game at this point, counting on inertia and the sense of investment to maintain revenue.

Really, MMOs can only stay “live” for so long. The romantic image of a persistent online world, always on, always living, just doesn’t fit into the business world, Moore’s Law, or the ever-shifting tastes of gamers.

Everytime I see comments such as the ones from the BETA testers, I die a little on the inside, knowing that Blizzard is doing their best to just make money, thus dumbing down this mmo even further. It is frustrating as someone who likes the characters, does not want to level up more alts, but wants a fairly mature player base to share the gaming experience with. Is it me, or has the WoW community in general gotten younger (and subsequently, sorry to say, dumber)?

Roma

1) gives each player a personalized experience that lets the player make their own story — not the one quest/storyline fits all model of WoW

2) allows the player to meaningfully impact and change a dynamic world

The reason why content is so boring and tedious for players that want to roll alts is because they must do all of the same quests that their main did — with very few exceptions. If WoW had no quests then the gaming experience would be much more open ended for the player. Instead of being told where to go and what to kill by a NPC questgiver, the player would start acting with autonomny and independence. The player assumes ownership over her the destiny of her avatar instead of blindly doing the bidding of scripted questgivers.

On dailies, I certainly agree with you there. They were created as a band-aid solution to thwarting gold farming (Kaplan’s words at last year’s Blizzcon). For me, the cure is much worse then the disease as it literally forces people to complete them each day just so they don’t fall behind economically.

@RomaGoth: I too am appalled at the attitude of many of the people complaining about the increase in experience required in WotLK. Let’s not forget, these are supposed to be “testers”; people who are there to *gasp* test. They should be a bit hardier and more resilient then the average player. It’s sad to see how lazy players have become as they really seem to feel they are entitled to easy leveling.

Another interesting development is that many testers now are using the “but I’ve got a wife and kids to feed” argument. Translation: they have a stable of alts that they are expecting to level to 80. How can they be expected to have all of their alts reach the level cap if the experience required is so much greater then before? Sure this sounds ridiculous but here we have a clear indication of how spoiled players have become. Their alts have “rights” now it seems! And an easy pathway to the level cap is one of them.

These are dark times for mmo’s.

Make content less static so that it’s less of a complete do-over and people wont want to skip it. Consider this… I decide to roll an alt because I’m bored with my main, so to ease the monotony, I should create an alt and go thru all the content I’ve already seen multiple times? That doesn’t seem like a reasonable approach to my problem which is, being bored and needing a change of pace.

Make the content more compelling and repeatable and I won’t want to skip it and the problem solved. As much as I loved AC2 repeating content is one of the reasons I never made an alt. Gaining XP was predicated on doing repeatable quests for XP – repetition built in, assumed and required. So now I should repeat the repeat of the repeating quests on some other character to try another class?? I think not. The addition of dailies in WOW to earn gold – repeating the repeatables is absurd insane and something I refused to participate in. Now that it is a major foundation of gathering gold, I’d NEVER EVER roll an alt in that game.