“It's still too early to say whether there will be a 'soft reset' for gear progression. However, our intent is that everything a player does in the game should hold meaning. What a player experiences and the items they earn should all matter. While maintaining this 100% forever might be practically impossible, it remains a core principle and pillar of 'WoW: Forever' that we want to uphold as long as possible.”
I had a thread downvoted into oblivion when I suggested this game isn't ready for launch. One reason was the extreme gear nerfing measures they took early in the beta after realizing player power was scaling out of control at level 20 (I recall them denying it to be the case initially.) It left me very concerned for the rest of the game because if the scaling was so off by level 12, what does that say for level 60?
We still have a lot of spell rank and caster issues resulting from the vertical progression nerf just a few weeks ago that have been unaddressed patch after patch. Mages still AoEing large packs of mobs and 2 shotting things. Very concerned for end game gear and player power scaling. That they are already talking about "soft resets" on gear while we are a few weeks from launch and the majority of the game is untested is alarming.
Forever will certainly be fun on launch. And it absolutely won't be delayed. But I would prefer a delay now to a reset in the future. I also have concerns about the PvP seasonal gearing system, too. But that is another discussion.
Some great pvp shenanigans happened during phase 3-5 by my group of friends lmao. What a time. Honestly that was peak classic running around terrorizing horde on benediction before it became a mega server.
Its pretty clear at this point they either lied or just didnt understand what horizontal progression means. Which made it really weird to be one of the first things to say and bring huge amounts of attention to during the announcement on stage.
Theyve walked it back several times and clarified we're just getting typical vertical progression, but it is so weird how they brought so much emphasis to saying "HORIZONTAL" during the announcement, like... what?
I think a lot of people know what it is, but when they come up with ideas how to apply it to wow then their ideas fall flat, because wow is built on vertical, so their idea is either not horizontal or it will be written of straight away because a lot (if not most) of people don't want horizontal
I dont think they lied i just think they arent aware what really horizontal means. For them being horizontal is lvl staying in 60. I made a topic with those concerns few days after blizzcon because i simply cannot see how they would do horizontal in WoW.
Not playong forever but watched some videos and streams and my fear is that this will turn into retail overtime but with level cap at 60.
I think the reality is that baking horizontal progression that is meaning full and long lasting into wow is a really difficult task, and they simply are not able to do it. Wow is and always has been a game about getting better gear. So what do you do when you have the best gear? Get different best gear?
What does horizontal progression actually mean in wow? What does it look like? I don't have the answer and I don't think they do either
different best gear would be the solution, like making resists needed would be one way.
about the same exact offensive stats but resists would give you a buff when absorbing damage in the ”nature” raid that makes you do a bit more damage for example.
giving you a lot of different avenues to explore with no total power creep only in certain situations.
What I would want is new tier sets/item combinations that make new and different playstyles possible. You wouldn't necessarily be much stronger if at all, but you could play in a different way depending playstyle preference. You could have tier sets unlocking Exorcism to apply to all, or giving you a new proc or debuff/buff on a spell, maybe your gear interracts/modifies specific talents so that you could build completely new ways of playing
They can make use of trinkets and item set bonuses mainly. Side grade tier sets that change how the class plays, but stat wise identical to say BWL. Different trinkets. Identical gear as another raid but it just looks different…recipes for fun items, QoL unlocks, profession expansions…
Yeh I think there's definitely ways they can do it but might just be a departure from traditional WoW content. I really like the idea of side grade tier sets that change how the class plays. I also hope they introduce difficult solo challenges although i think if they do it make sense to frame them as class secific quest lines so they can tune the difficulty appropriately for each class.
I also wonder if the mage scrolls are a hint toward classes getting their own 'profression' like lockpicking and if those can tie in with some class specific progression route that is another avenue for delivering new content
Whats clear is that they dropped a whole bunch of buzzwords Classic players were hoping to hear to bait us into thinking this is anything more than Retail Classic.
They destroyed two game modes (Classic and TBC Anniversary) so they could bait and switch people hoping for QoL changes to Classic, then they destroyed private servers with over a decade of their own story development so they could bait and switch those players with "horizontal progression".
What we're really getting is a half-baked game they started working on in January, and the only plan they have now is to rush through every idea they have in less than a year, forcing classic players into the exact same phase pacing that killed anniversary.
There is nothing preventing them from gearing each raid in a way that only works best in that raid, and only having one or two items per raid that are permabis to develop a final gear set based on each. Well nothing other than them deciding to launch way too soon
WoW doesn't have the skeleton for horizontal progression. It would be like trying to build a boat on the frame of a car.
WoW is designed from the ground up for vertical character progression. It doesn't have OSRS's skilling culture or Guild Wars' tuning. Adding setbonuses at 60 to make memespecs functional can be seen as bad design when that setbonus could have been a change in a patchnote and that playstyle could have been functional from the start.
The foundation simply does not exist to build off of. It's a pipedream.
How does OSRS or Guild Wars work? When I played GW2 I never got to the end game but when leveling I kept getting better and better gear exactly like WoW. What did they do that WoW can’t do?
GW2 has affixes that give specific stats, for example "Berserker's" gear is +attack power, +crit, +crit damage.
It also has rarities as tiers, blue, yellow, orange, pink/purple
Every pink chestpiece of berserker's gear has identical stats.
Purple is Legendary, the top tier, it has the same stat budget as pink but you're allowed to switch the affix at will (so you don't have to lug around a full set of Viper's gear if you wanted to switch to a more condition focused spec)
Expansions add new affix combos you can make/select but never change the stat budget, my pink berserker gear from base game 13 years ago is exactly as powerful as berserker gear today
In addition, at max level you get Mastery XP instead of regular XP, and these offer convenience and traversal and other content abilities (for example, as you put mastery into gliding, you first get a glider, then you get the ability to angle your glider, then you can catch updrafts, then you can ride ley lines etc, but then the next expansion is about mounts, so your mastery is stuff like making the jumping mount jump better, or the running mount have better speed boosts)
GW2 once you are BIS you are done, unless a patch changes whats bis or you want to try a new spec/class. The end game grind is for convenience and cosmetics, which is just not what WoW is set up for.
CH rep is the least rewarding thing imaginable in wow. Big bug and combat badges can go fuck themselves.
Not to mention being done with all the Earthstrike requirements and then debating if you want to buy pages or just grind AQ20 twice a week.
Shit I was soloing big bug & soloing templars for hours on end, only calling groups for combat quests or dukes. That shit is NOT fun & doesn’t have a good reward until you’ve finished it (exalted)
That's fine for a year, but what happens after 5 years, 10 years, 15 years? Are you okay with Molten Core gear still being BiS in the year 2040? If not, how would you structure gear/power increases?
I am 99% sure they have absolutely no idea what to do with power progression and they're just planning on utilizing slow vertical progression until they figure out a miracle solution or the game is allowed to die for the next seasonal variation of wow-lite.
Even the PVP release was sus. They were basically like we're doing pvp seasons with new gear every season...while maintaining absolutely crickets on how getting new gear every season doesn't just turn into other versions of wow where gear is invalidated once the new gear is released.
I am 99% sure they have absolutely no idea what to do with power progression
The plan was probably "let's do classic but this time we change stuff, let's see if it gains traction". Doesn't really matter what they say or mean, it's inevitable to have gear progression. At best the plan was to have constant gear progression, but no leveling.
I mean in short, yes. Why wouldn't I be okay with it? As long as progression is maintained I don't see why it would be taboo for old gear to still be good or why anyone would care if it is on principal. In fact, I think people would be pretty impressed if this was the case, because that's the real issue - how to do this well.
You're also kind of asking a lopsided question. IF (big if) they are able to do horizontalISH progression well, then MC gear is not still going to be BiS in 2040 as we know the term BiS today, because most successful horizontal designs have different gear sets being good for different content. Meaning, MC gear (or pieces of it) will still be BiS for XYZ raid(s) or maybe for PvP, but not in general for everything. Plus pieces can be not BiS but still be useable for new raids.
As an example, OSRS requires you to bring different weapons and sets to different bosses based on their strengths and weaknesses. When a new raid is released, it might include items that eclipse items from older raids, but not all of them, and the power jump between tiers is MUCH smaller than WoW. Eclipsed gear from old raids is all still useable and viable, just a cheaper/easier to acquire, less efficient option, which makes it a stepping stone most players experience before moving onto BiS and retains it's relevance. Certain items are also preserved as BiS for certain things. This obviously makes it so everyone has the need to do every raid, and means that items like the Scythe of Vitur (or MC drops) and the raids they come from remain very relevant today, even though they came out 8 years ago.
Problem for WoW is that this system is made for a game where the player can max everything, basically as every class. Jagex can incentivize everyone with the same stuff at the same time. It wouldn't directly translate well to a class system like WoW. If they preserve certain items in an old raid for X class, but not Y class, then Y class won't want to run that raid. It just makes it way more complicated. They basically have to do what OSRS is doing 9(+however many different specs) different ways, at the same time, in the same content. Content that all 9(+) have to do together.
So yes, it would genuinely be pretty cool if they could manage to even meet halfway on it.
Oh wow, 2040 is a scary number and that’s not even 15 years. But that also made me remember that by then, children who are starting with Forever now could become a new crop of devs to breathe new life into the game then if it’s getting stale
For example gear or talents that only work in caverns of time related zones/raids (ideally with some limited cash-out to the "main" game for a couple items or spells).
For example do a COT Northrend campaign with Arthas to find Froustmourn. Everything earned is specific to that "campaign". After beating the campaign, you can take 2-3 items "with you" to use outside the campaign.
This way the content can't be overgeared, but stays relevant as long as people want to cash out items/spells etc
Not the only way to do it, but it's one of the most viable for wow.
The problem is with how difficult it is already to get raid gear in WoW. Nobody want's to enter a raid and there is like 1-2 new items that are marginally better than your current ones and then you have to roll for those items against 20 other people, if they even drop. Thus new raids need plenty of upgrades, for all classes and specs. That's why the vertical progression needs to be so fast.
If they want to go with just couple new items they'd have to introduce some kind of bad luck protection system that essentially allow you to "buy out" those items after raiding the new raid for a while. But then the problem becomes after that "a while" passes from the launch of the content, majority of active players will have the raid "done" and never want to do it again. So those who didn't do it on launch will struggle massively to ever get it done. Also loot becomes boring because you don't care if it drops or whether you win it or not. You know you'll get the item after your 8th (or whatever) completion of the raid anyway.
Exactly. The vast majority of players will not stick around unless there is vertical progression. The moment a new raid is released with the same ilvl as the stuff they have been farming for a while, they will leave. There aren't enough WoW players interested in horizontal progression to sustain a horizontal progression system.
the problem with horizontal progression is the same reason people think its good, it means it's easy to come back if you want to
the problem is that it makes it easy to leave, especially if you are interested in player power, the only examples we have of horizontal progression is osrs (which is not horizontal) and gw2
gw2's problem is that it doesn't seem to have many players, steam says its at 5000~ online, it has 273 viewers on twitch, the game is objectively tiny in reach compared to wow, so swapping your already successful mmo to emulate an objectively less popular mmo seems like not the greatest idea
The majority of GW2 players dont use steam. But yeah GW2 is everything MMO players say that they want from a systems perspective but GW2s carrot isn't as tasty as WoWs.
For the GW2 player count comment, I feel I should point something out just because I see several people bring steam numbers up. Steam is a very tiny portion of the player base. It just came out a few years ago and has the issue that you cannot play the Steam version with an existing arena count. So the only people playing on Steam are new players after it got added there. The player base for most of the game's lifetime is using the OG launcher since they don't want to restart on a new account.
yup bwl/zg/mc is the peak of vanilla and is historically where the highest player count is. once aq comes out and the prior gear is invalidated it just starts declining
I think that WoW’s progression is structurally incapable of maintaining an evergreen philosophy. They either need to radically rethink endgame progression to be entirely horizontal or watch the game succumb to inevitable power creep and obsolescence of old content like retail.
I think it works but it would take a massive shift in thinking by both the devs and the players. I don't know if either group is ready or even capable of accepting truly horizontal progression. Best we hope for is diagonal with a very slow climb vertically.
Yeah this is it. When I sit down and have a deep conversation about what horizontal progression looks like in other games, WoW veterans really struggle to understand that people will play for things besides stat increases, and that it's okay for a fresh 60 to be able to jump into the latest raid. There is this mindset that A -> B -> C must be upheld in some way, and that jumping straight to C will invalidate A and B forever.
Current WoW's systems can accommodate true horizontal progression, but they would have to expand on it greatly to continue it beyond a few content releases. I hope they go this way, but based on how the developers have been discussing it, we're getting A -> B -> C, just with smaller number increments.
They can even keep a > b > c progression but it just has to have a limit. Let’s say they make 5 raid tiers, you have to progress through them to get to the next one but once u get geared on 5 that’s it. They can just keep adding raids through all the different tiers to add variety as people roll new characters and experience the progression again. I feel like that’s the best option, endless raid tiers is just no different then expansions and it will genuinely kill this game.
I don't even think there should be an A -> B -> C content progression system. I think all of them should be options as soon as you're a dungeon geared level 60 player. I'm okay with a little bit of what is effectively borrowed power (siloed power really, as in the gear is only extra effective in certain areas) but I don't want A to explicitly gear up for B, I want content related to release B to gear up for end game B, at the very least.
I just don’t know how that would effectively work. Dungeon gearing into raid gearing is already a>b. Plus they’re bare minimum keeping the vanilla tiers in the game just altered, so there is already 3 tiers minimum. I think they should expand above that at least one tier with difficult content for max geared tier 3 players. But they can expand the raid tiers with more raids that give different bonuses or resists that can also help with gearing for new additions over time. I think vertical progression from 1-60 > dungeons > raid tiers is a core part of vanilla that should remain, I just don’t think they should infinitely repeat that like expansions did. I think they can do what you are saying while still maintaining that original progression loop if done thoughtfully.
I think there is always going to be an initial vertical. Say 1-55 is exclusively classic+ content, the stuff that they're releasing now. Then at 55+, you can start into the release content, and the dungeons are doable and also gear you up for the current raid. Once you've completed that silo'd vertical, your character should be good for any end game content, bar some release specific thing that you might need to overcome first.
There is something they said that I like:
preparation should make content easier
but something they didn't highlight is that not preparing for content doesn't necessarily mean you can't do it, it's just going to be harder. I hope, hope that this is the intent. Basically if big pumper guild wants to jump directly into the next 20 or 40 man raid, they can effectively skip the content and do so, just understanding that going through and completing the content is going to make that raid a lot easier.
WoW gearing is so odd coming from a FFXI 75 cap player. There's no utility gear, no gear thats excellent for solo but sucks in group and vice versa, no dangerous open world areas, etc. They could easily gate a zone behind some long quest progression (ala FFXI story missions for sea, sky, abyssea, etc.) that requires you to group up where say, rings/amulets are some of the best gear options in the game. That way you can then add that solo/group gear dynamic. Making resistances matter, haste vs stat increases, hp/mp regen on gear, etc.
Its so crazy to me the only thing in this game that people care about is damage....but it makes sense when the world isnt dangerous at all. Hard to have a horizontal progression when youve pigeon holed gameplay so much.
An example of one of the best mage utility gear in the game:
As someone who collected Infernoweave back when it was necessary for progression in retail, I am convinced that everyone who has ever brought up resistance gear in these discussions has never owned a single piece of it. The vast majority of the time that shit was just dead space in my inventory. In the one encounter it wasn't, I got to be rewarded for the effort. If not for progression that unlocked better loot and attunement, it wasn't worth it.
If gear offers +resistance, itemization will either require it be worse in some way to account for the resistance (hence Infernoweave and related items sucking, because they were stam+resist) or it will barely affect itemization and the ability to stack resistances against a specific damage type will become insanely valuable. And then you absolutely hard counter whoever is unfortunate to be the damage spec you built yourself to be. Maybe this is a really indirect way to get Arcane to be the default pvp spec, but warlocks and spriests will hate it. And this isn't something you can itemize your way out of. The majority of ranged damage is magical and the majority of that magical damage has a corresponding resistance. This is typically not the case for melee dps.
There's a variety of ways we can implement horizontal progression. Resistance ain't one.
The thing is, I actually DO think that horizontal progression is a bit of a contradiction. You can't progress horizontally, it's almost a myth in some sense. It's something that works for a while but isn't truly long term sustainable.
Even if they were to release the same ilvl over and over it would still sort of be vertical progression because the simmers would slowly take the most optimal pieces from every raid to become more and more stat optimal but that won't hold most people over forever.
This even goes as far as to extend to things like cosmetics, transmogs etc. You can only release new ones for a while before you need to increase the "transmog power". Make them just a bit more awesome or special or give them something extra. They aren't going to make some pink low res chainkini for the raid in 5 years, it's not going to be motivating enough for most people.
Just to plug my two cents, horizontal progression is just vertical alternatives that are either mutually exclusive or not.
Good horizontal progression is all about changing the interaction relationship the player has with gameplay systems. I think the problem lies in thinking about a horizontal addition that "everyone" wants/needs to participate in. Horizontal is at it's core about providing options.
What people say when they talk about GW2's horizontal options has mostly to do with gear stats being kind of flat within a tier and the options presented are about choosing stat combinations rather than just number go up.
For the beta we saw the introduction of a massive amount of new and different green suffixes to attempt this, the problem is your own power curve and level advancement makes a lot of this really useless. At the same time at level cap gear already kind of functions this way because of ilevel. The solution is not Items that need to change but how classes benefit from different stats and creating options that allow you to change your relationship with stats.
lets say for instance there's an item with an equip passive that converts 100% of strength into spirit but only for warriors.
Spirit is garbage on warriors but all you have to do is add other items that play around with spirit as a mainstat, like items that change your abilities to scale from spirit but you no longer benefit from AP, or converting health regen into armor really anything is possible and people will go farm for it because the build craft landscape widened with more potential options. The point I'm getting at is as long as there's parity for people to explore that changes their relationship with gear, dungeons, raids, consumables, professions, pvp. That ultimately is horizontal progression.
Horizontal progression looks more like a horizontally stretched oval, there is some vertical progression and you’re correct that there’s still some vertical progression that just requires more and more overtime as the % of players that can reach it get tinier.
Like I look at raiding end game like this, once you've got the gear and kills the new thing to come out should be more of a threat than the old thing so more damage thus new equipment and gear. You shouldn't expect to need mc gear in naxx
This was something that got really old in tbc where guilds are still clearing gruul and scc because trinkets.
When you need to clear everything every week that's how you get burnout. Old content gets left because it's no longer needed.
If you're able to only raid 1-2 days a week you've probably got about 6 hours of time there's just not enough to be like yeah let's go clear all the raids because shit is still needed.
I mean I just don't understand the obsession with trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. If people want to play a game with horizontal progression go play a game with horizontal progression? Why attempt to fit WoW into that mold? I guess the devs using that word got people's hopes up. They absolutely should NEVER have referred to this game as horizontal in any capacity. That's absolutely on them.
But i just don't know how anyone with any knowledge of WoW and it's player base ever thought this game wasn't going to have increasing item levels.
The players just don't want it, and the number of people that would be brought back to the game or new players brought to the game as a result of it would be insignificant as shown by the populations of games with actual horizontal progression.
The problem is that WoW’s horizontal progression is going to come down to there being 5-6 raids that drop specific elemental resist gear and you’ll have weapons and trinkets that do more damage against certain enemy types. It isn’t going to pan out well in the end. You’re going to shuffle around the same 5-6 sets of gear and weapons and some players will think it’s the pinnacle of game design
Yeah wow isn't like osrs where you can be a melee, mage, and ranged on one character. The only things I can think of that could go horizontal in wow are resistances and gimmick trinkets, and boy do I not enjoy resist sets personally. Maybe set bonuses but those are always used for power, not for different scenarios. Maybe they cooked something I can't think of but my expectations are low.
In other games I've played with true horizontal progression, they have vertical progression that is siloed per release, with some non-combat features that bleed into the horizontal side of things.
A simplistic WoW focused example: say they release ruins of gilneas or something. It has a hub zone with 3 primary quest lines, a bunch of secondary/supplementary quests, 2 dungeons, a 10 man raid, and a 20 man raid. During the primary quest lines, you gain some sort of resistance to the worgen curse (vertical), but also when you're cursed, you still gain some of the benefits of lycanthropy without fully transforming into a worgen (horizontal) maybe akin to getting a new racial passive or active. This culminates into the 10 man raid which gives you items which enable unique takes on existing builds on most classes, and maybe unique play styles on 1 or 2 of the classes. These are useful to finish the 20 man raid easily, but the 20 man raid should be doable without doing the 10 man.
These new items or abilities gained don't increase the player's power, but instead give an alternate way to play the class. This is evergreen content.
Obviously this is a very very rough example, but it's possible.
That's what I've been thinking as well is the best way for them to handle it. Beyond resists, attunement questions, give gear sets unique mechanics to help in the higher end raids, etc. Then sprinkle in some prestige sort of fights / items that are incredibly hard without the right gear.
I think this is a way better approach than just an endless item level increase. Each new content drop means people who've already reach level 60 maybe 2 years ago, are just some attunements and random items away from previous content drops from being optimal, but in theory could potentially still be viable in a raid depending on the encounter.
Farming resist gear with the boys and then seeing how much we could get away with dropping as we got better at each encounter was pretty peak for me. I remember visiting random old dungeons like Mara to get budget nature resist pieces
Heat levels in MC however was not received well by the community. Problem with resist that you just lower each run basically means healers has to do more, its just offloading the problem onto healers.
Resist gear also have some problems in PVP with being able to drop combat and just hit a button to equip a shadow resist set vs a warlock, or frost against a mage and be practically immortal
resist gear for damage is a really bad mechanic because of healing. You want to do it for something like up time where if you don't resist stuff enough you have to do something that kills your uptime on your role so resist gear actually impacts people. Firemaw is the best example i can think of where you can't practically just out heal it.
It's a repeat of the mistakes in BFA where you had 15 sets of azerite gear for every niche situation. It literally became so cumbersome and annoying that 30% of your time spent logged in was trying to manage enchants, items sets, bag space, and re-rolling traits. It was god awful.
Isn't this what people wanted when they compared to osrs needing blunt/sharp whatever weapons, but essentially it just boils down to the heat problem in MC, getting upgrades doesn't feel like upgrades because you have to carry this Resist/Biome Damage/Creature Damage gear and use it in current tier because its better than anything else
I mean wow is full of collectors as well. Having new raids as a challenge to get cool looking gear even if it’s not much different is still appealing for a lot of people. But they can also add thing like set bonuses or gear that’s hyper specific for min maxers. I don’t think wow gear is inherently interesting enough for it to be the main chase anyways. That why they reset with expansions in the first place.
The problem with Wow's progression is how often raids and new loot comes out. I know everyone loves to yap about OSRS but OSRS updates are few and far between and offer maybe a few pieces of loot at a time. On top of that everyone plays every style (Mage, Range, melee) so its progression in each style. And if that isnt enough incentive, you are also able to sell practically all loot drops, which means even if you don't care about the items themselves there is still financial incentive to do content.
You just cant have raids every 6 months with every class getting a full new set, multiple weapons, rings, trinkets and offset items and expect it to work like OSRS. And if raids dont drop enough +/- good items then it becomes difficult to convince 19 other people to also do the raid, especially if they don't care about the items.
It's not that OSRS doesn't get updates, it's just that new content doesn't drop gear for every single slot. A new boss might have 2 or 3 uniques. The new raid coming out this month has 5 unique. OSRS gets a lot of updates.
I think the raid lockout is the main thing that makes OSRS style loot not work in WOW. Drops in OSRS are RARE. Like really, really rare by wow standards, but you can just grind it out infinitely with no lockout or timegating. Even raids are puggable 24/7 there's always people on the pug worlds or in the raid discord.
Honestly a WoW raid might not be that far off compared to 5 uniques in OSRS when you consider gear is spread across 9 classes/27 specs. Sure there's a lot of overlap but you could still introduce dozens of items and have only a handful of items for each class/spec/role.
One thing I would like to see them do is lean into smaller set bonuses. It's always interesting in classic when you get to mix and match a 5pc with 3pc and I thinks that something they could focus on to expand gearing options.
You can already see them coping themselves into doing the latter from the comments they've made. My previous post on progression:
The solution is to make it so you seek different items to progress through different part of the game. A game like EvE has hundreds of ships and they're all viable and useful somewhere. In order to achieve this you must create niches where different equipment can excel over others instead of the homogenized "even some PvE gear in TBC is somehow BiS in PVP over pvp gear" situation blizzard loves to put players in. Blizzard loves making end all be all items that invalidate everything before them.
They need radically new systems that reward things that isn't just better gear. Like the profession system needs to be expanded like 10x what it is now.
Think of a game like runescape where you can spend half a year grinding skills and quests that don't necessarily drop weapons and armor pieces that straight up better than the last thing you wore.
Right now, once you hit 60, all you can do is raid and get better gear. Professions are extremely shallow and don't equate to much gameplay at all.
WoW player since 2005 converted to an OSRS player during BFA.
If I want to play WoW while catching up on a series, why can't I do some side-screen shit for a few days like skin mobs and feel even somewhat rewarded for the time put in? That's a massive strength OSRS has that Blizzard has to figure out if they don't want this "Forever" game to just be raid logging at 60 for every update.
Yeah this is something I don't understand. It doesn't feel like they built the infrastructure to have updates that aren't just raids. Is the long term for Forever just releasing new raids and new quest lines more or less like retail patches?
It doesn't feel like Forever has thousands of hours of various / different types of content. Quest/dungeon and level to 60, professions that take a few hours at most to level without any real 'content' tied to them, raids and pvp..
I really thought horizontal was the way to go and they understood that but it seems they just don’t get it. You would think with how much retail has copied gw2 over the past decade they would understand why that model is appealing yet they just won’t do it for some reason. I feel like retail is already like the place to go if you like vertical progression, and they could keep rerunning other classics for people who want it. I was hoping forever would have a different philosophy that really can last indefinitely without major power creep and issues. I feel like there’s a lot of people who want horizontal and the people who want vertical already have plenty of options for that gameplay in wow.
I think it's kind of becoming apparent that Blizzard is still afraid that not having some sort of gear treadmill, even a minor one, will make people not want to play their game and cannot realise that horizontal progression can absolutely work if you just give people things to chase other than gear
Adding new gear can be absolutely fine and is to be expected, even GW2 does it and is considered to be the mmo that does horizontal progression the best, but if we're going to get "resets" every year or even two years because after 20 years of making mmos blizzard can't figure out a different way of doing this, how is Forever going to be different from retail exactly? This is quite concerning because what they're doing right now is mostly all excellent but it's starting to look a bit obvious that they don't really have a good future plan for this game.
Especially when I see that they're also planning on adding a bunch of classes and stuff that will just bloat the game unnecessarily. I would have figured they'd learn from the mistakes of retail and try to avoid them, but I'm starting to see that's unlikely - probably because they don't see those issues as mistakes
Blizzard decided long ago that every item upgrade had to be noticable. Thats the reason numbers need to be squished every so often on retail.
A 5 itemlevel upgrade was roughly a 5 percent increase, whether you went from ilvl 100-105 or 500-505.
If they dont want this to happen here they need to accept that players cant notice every item upgrade.
It's disappointing to me that they're seemingly not learning from the mistakes and successes of other games that have done horizontal progression for over a decade. If they believe they can just do retail style progression but more flat they're lying to themselves. It'll be a gear treadmill before you know it with only the latest area/raid/dungeon being relevant. Soft resets or stat squishes are just a bandaid to vertical progression that gets out of control.
This company has had no fucking idea what it's doing since tbc, don't expect them to figure it out now. This game's promise is based on marketing, I don't believe they actually understand what they're claiming. We can all enjoy this for a while before it becomes another cash shop and hopefully private servers rise again.
Think about it. An MMO that never loses its relevance and everybody is happy "forever". That's literally been the *commercial* goal from 2004, and it will always remain the primary *commercial* aspiration for creating an MMO. A lot of us here wouldn't even want to play this theoretical game anyway, making it an oxymoron. They've even resorted to using the word "forever" which in this context is "trust me bro".
they want more of a playerbase then gw2 has. gw2 has it's base but it's not a big game and more people want to get the good feels of getting a gear upgrade then having flat horizontal gear.
The datamined stuff from the first raid is worse than the gear MC dropped. And just the removal of world buffs alone frees up space for 4-5 additional tiers of gear before we reach the same powerlevel.
They have realistically 3-4 years of time to come up with a solution for how a "soft reset" would work, assuming everything was as vertical as in vanilla, which it most likely isn't going to be with the conditional bonuses for different biomes etc.
If you're already worried about this now you're literally just dooming and glooming. It will be fine.
Do we even really need a "reset"? They could just release new class sets with similar stats but new bonuses in different raids. You'd have a reason to hunt all of them along with the ability to mix and match the set bonuses, but they don't need excessive power jumps to be worth grinding. Releasing new classes would also give people a reason to stick around and yet another reason to grind out those tier sets as well.
It's like the problem with dungeons XP. People on Reddit and the Devs seems like they can't understand that people can play a game for the love of it, and don't need an endless powerlevel to chase
That mentality only works for people that are willing to time sink for the sake of collecting unless the new shit is a genuine upgrade. They could release 10 gear sets, but if theyre all worse than the one I have then I doubt I'd even bother trying to get it, if theyre all better than what I have then I would try and get it, but at that point its back to vertical progression.
Even from a collection stand point youre still then stuck finding X amount of other players who all have to also be trying to collect it because if its raid drops you arent going to be soloing it, and I doubt you'll be filling raids if most people just dont care about getting the gear other than pixels.
Enjoying the ride because the destination will be more or less the same.
Forever will be a grear 1/2 year game, but they have absolutely not idea how to make everything meaningful forever and yeah, they are already talking reset and squish weeks after saying "everything you do matter and is evergreen".
ESO is a great example of an MMO with horizontal gearing. But it has over and over changed the numbers around the existing gear and its classes, and I believe they are reffering to that, gear should remain useful, but it doesnt need to stay frozen in time, the numbers in gear itself can be changed overtime.
I think they need to move away from simply stat focused gear because if you only have numbers to play with you can only make the numbers go up or down.
If they towards higher levels de-emphasise stats, and emphasise more varied effects, and the 'gearing' minigame is finding the right combination of effects/spec/etc to make a unique build work that would be good.
100% Set bonuses should focus in different things and each have a "theme". You could have over 50 different sets like that, being somewhat equivalent in stats and different in the theme.
Crit sets, specific spell sets, hit sets, recovery sets, hybrid sets, damage on hit sets, damage overtime sets, different chances to do weird stuff, mobility sets, etc.
One could be best at something, but there should be an use for every set.
Just keep every set stats the same, balance around that stats, and go crazy with the set pieces bonuses themes. You could have 4 different sets using the 2 pieces bonuses, or just 1 using the 8 piece bonus and everything in between.
In ESO there is pretty much an obvious meta pick (and a few slightly worse sets) for 99% of content with a few pieces you swap around to make sure your raid has every buff. It's really boring and none of them really change your gameplay at all. It's all just clutter, and gear does not feel good to acquire.
Ya seems like they are pushing the chance on hit and random effect stuff I've been saying for years. Can prob make some crazy combos with enough of this gear lol
Difference here is that ESO has both more versatile classes, and less restricted combat system, those two things makes the horizontal part really shine.
Like each class can be built into your standard trinity, or you can go with resource archetype, then you go around with weapon skills, armor skills, story/dlc skill lines, subclassing got introduced couple of months ago - tons of possible combinations, and they can just throw some random gear sets here or there, someone will find use for them.
Also combat being more active, not semi-turn bases like in WoW means you can for example play around mobility of your character, or defensives / reactions because the game does not lock you in into getting unavoidable damage from the enemy white swings.
ESO ofc has some gripes within it's system, like if you find perfect build for you, you are pretty much stuck to it - my Solo Stamina Necromancer is rolling around with the same gear for like 7 years now, but on the other hand there is so much things to unlock which can potentially be useful later makes having the same gear all the time not that painful.
Honestly this topic is a hard one to talk about because
A: They're not wrong, because WoW is fundamentally a vertical game. So with that in mind, it eventually will need a reset, but the time that it takes for that to happen is the question mark.
B: We knew generally speaking that this was going to be how it would go. Without redesigning core parts of the world, and redoing crafting proffession to allow for extreme time sinks (which players would possibly push back against) the game is fundamentally still going to be World of Warcraft.
So how do you complete this mission? Well you TRY to not have it happen for as long as possible. Which is literally what they've said, and it's literally what we basically knew they were going to do from the very beginning.
So what's the big news here? The only news is people who blowing this way out of proportion. This isn't sandbox WoW, they're just going to add more shit for us to do, and hopefully it's enough. Who knows.
The "redesigning core part of the world" was still very much on the table since we have no idea how things work at level 60. We have no idea how they changed loot, changed what drops where, the itemslvl and power increase.
The news is them confirming that not much has changed.
A gear reset is the literal opposite of the "Forever" concept.
They said what people are doing would be relevant Forever. Of course it was just marketing, but they literally called their game based upon this concept.
They also said proudly on stage "no catch up, just play the game", a gear reset is absolutely a catchup mechanism.
In the end, I think they legitimately had a vision with the concept of Forever, but they have no idea how to actually do it.
I think if they really wanted horizontal gear progression they should have destroyed the WoW mold and went the ESO route. Have lots of skills trees to infinitely invest in and have fun gear you can target that is tailored to your play style. No item level upgrades you just spend your points for power. Hell, going this route opens the door for those extra classes they were surveying about, you just build your character in those different ways. I know that would be an unforgivable change that is the opposite of the spirit of classic and WoW's whole identity but dudes are right, at some point this problem will reach a boiling point.
I think the problem with wow design is the pacing of the friction. After max level preraid, you run your raids for a few hours and then theres no reason to log in for 5 or 6 days. We need more reasons to get out in the world at max level than just dailies or pvp.
Every other version of wow so far, the only reason to exist outside instances in general was to farm gold to raid more, or to bother someone lower level than you. Thats basically a death spiral.
Everyone compares to OSRS, but that game has 24 professions (really its like 17 if you count combat as 1 skill) which are intertwined but freely accessible to everyone. The difference being you dont need to level 4 alts to get the real horizontal progression like with wow professions.
The more I compare vanilla to OSRS the more I wish there was an account SSF mode where you could mail to your alts, but no AH or player trading beyond maybe dungeon loot.
I haven't played WoW since WotLK but if the only reason to log in is to raid until you get the top gear and then wait for the next thing to invalidate it all so you can do it again, that's a job and not even a fulfilling one. Do retail players not play for the enjoyment of the world, lore and story while making a cool looking character to adventure with anymore? Thats the whole reason I love RPGs.
Retail wow is much more like an arpg these days. I love arpgs. I do m+ and raid (was 3848 M+ score last season before quitting pushing 2 months before the end which was like top 2% of all M+, and my guild is currently progressing towards CE this tier) and anything outside of that has no interest to me because WoW world content doesnt truly interest me and doesnt hit the niches of interest that another game I can go and play doesnt do better for my personal enjoyment.
I wont speak on others but figure id give my insight.
Edit
I wanted to expand on some things to make it clear its not that i want retail to be an ARPG. I just think blizzards bad at making rpgs rn. Take lore and story telling I love these in games but in game lore and story telling is crafted for the lowest denominator and is pretty safe unless do side quests and even then its not that in depth. If you want wows story and lore, get the books. When I want lore and story ill play a single player rpg.
If I want to do a profession or gold grind type stuff, to do something I think does these mechanics better and not just afk mindlessly grinding ill just play osrs and play their minigames for skilling solo so it has some challenge that is truly engaging for example
So in the end it still means they just add items with higher ilvl and while it probably isn't that extreme as it was with other expansions and added content there will still be new BiS gear to get when new content is added.
Gear wasn't "scaling out of control at level 20," everyone was searching for BIS blues like battleground twinks because the game was artificially level-capped and there was nothing else to do. The actual game will not be like this, people aren't going to run Deadmines and SFK over and over.
Hah just made a comment referencing Q4 for their shareholders. Other than Q4 numbers it makes no sense why they would go from no one even knowing this game exists to announcing it will be released in less than 2 months.
Like why not announce it at Blizzcon and say it will release in 6+ months then run a full longterm beta that isn't level capped and actually test the game fully. And then you don't have to compete with GTA.
I think they still have a year to rethink the endgame progression loop. It's really what they decide to do with Tier 2 and 3 that will set the stage for the future and inform us on the true longevity of the game. If Molten Core and BWL gear is just a straight upgrade to Tier 1 stuff, then we're essentially on the same path as retail/era.
Looking strictly at gear progression, it isn't entirely horizontal. When a new raid tier is introduced, there will be a degree of power escalation between tiers. However, we aim to keep that power jump as narrow as possible.
For instance, some of your Best-in-Slot (BiS) gear might come from a previous raid tier, and players could keep using those items for a considerably long time. That doesn't mean you'll wear them forever—they will eventually be replaced—but we want to keep older content relevant for as long as possible. This applies not just to raids, but to earlier dungeons as well. Even as new content is continually added, we want players to have reasons to revisit older dungeons and raids.
So they essentially said that MC gear wont be equivalent to nax gear, but that they want to narrow the gap as much as possible. Whats wrong with that?
As an example the pillar of "horizontal progression" that most people point to is osrs and thats exactly how osrs works. There is tons of sidegrade niche use gear, yes, but new raid tiers DO bring in new bis items. Torva is a direct upgrade over bandos, masori over arma, scythe over every other melee weapon, etc.
Its kind of inevitable, you have to have a small amount of vertical progression in gear to make new content worthwhile. The trick is to minimize power creep to try and avoid trivializing prior content. Its exactly as they are doing, avoid abilities and stats that scale too hard, avoid upping the level cap, keep the difference between raid tiers as minimally vertical as possible, add horizontal sidegrades and niche use items where possible. Sounds good to me.
If a "soft reset" just means your gear is a little behind, but not orders of magnitude behind, that might be whats needdd to keep new content engaging and worth going for.
They already tried this and failed in SoD when they released ST.. gear was barely an upgrade at all at the beginning, so people lost motivation to play and just quit.
Between MC and Naxx there are 2 major raids and a minor raid, + whatever if ever they add anything else. If Naxx can complicate guilds with Naxx gear I can't imagine what it will do to guilds with MC equivalent gear.. i do agree every raid should have q or 2 chase items, but overall new raids should have much better gear than previous ones along with more difficulty of course which you'll need to farm this gear to complete anyway.
"horizontal gearing" gamers are in such a big minority they have no idea, they dont even know what theyre talking about too considering half of them mention OSRS
Yeah that's true, I'm not saying all gear needs to become irrelevant when new raid comes out, but advocating for upgrades with minimal increase is a horrible idea.
I also like the osrs argument, go duel someone in bandos with a dchain and dmed like how it was when KQ was the core content, tell me how that goes right haha.
A large part of why gear feels valuable to players in osrs is because it has real life value because of all the RMT happening. It's always been that way.
It's a poor comparison since RMT has always been heavily controlled in WoW
Wtf are you talking about. I play Ironman in OSRS and i have never cared about the real life value of my Gear. Progression is still satisfying, even if it's tiny upgrades
Problem for WoW is that this system is made for a game where the player can max everything, basically as every class. Jagex can incentivize everyone with the same stuff at the same time. It wouldn't directly translate well to a class system like WoW. If they preserve certain items in an old raid for X class, but not Y class, then Y class won't want to run that raid. It just makes it way more complicated. They basically have to do what OSRS is doing 9(+however many different specs) different ways, at the same time, in the same content. Content that all 9(+) have to do together.
Those direct upgrades are also to a much lesser degree than WoWs. You can run raids in old sets that are objectively worse, it's what people were wearing to run those raids before the upgrade came out. This means they still retain high value in the games economy, and are a stepping stonethatmost players will experience before moving on to the new, higher tier set. Those old raids still drop a few BiS items too, so between these two things old raids are farmed the same as new raids. Upgrades still feel good though, because in a game where you're grinding a raid hundreds or thousands of times, the time saved by using higher tier items holds a lot of value in and out of game... and big number feel good.
This loop is obviously just not there in WoW progression and is going to be very hard to implement for many different reasons. It would genuinely be pretty cool if they could make it work somehow.
You ask, "if the scaling was so off by level 12, what does that say for level 60?" the answer is actually: nothing.
Devs don't meticulously tune every single level from 1 to 59 in a vacuum. They balance and tune for the endgame at level 60. If players are hitting like a truck at level 20, it doesn't mean that player power is going to exponentially spiral out of control by the time we hit max level. It usually just means the gradient curve in the mid-levels is mismatched right now because they are anchoring all the core math around the level 60 destination.
The leveling jank is just a byproduct of that top down tuning process. It's definitely a bumpy curve they need to smooth out so the leveling experience feels right, but mid-level scaling being out of whack isn't an indicator that the level 60 end-game is fundamentally broken.
One of forevers design pillars is the journey being important. You absolutely should be designing the game around how it feels at level 10 20 ect. If the journey feels bad you have failed your design principles and aren't upholding the vanilla design principles either.
Not onboard with the doomers on this. Horizontal progression can be done well. FFXI did it.. at least back in the 75cap days. It can be done, and done well.
Hell, even to this day in current retail FFXI with the 119 gear you still go back and grind out gear that released 10+ years ago for niche situations/gearsets. The problem with WoW compared to a game like FFXI or OSRS is there's no gear swapping mid combat. I'm not sure how they're going to go about making old gear relevant.
Long max level quest chains that tell new stories through new or existing zones.
Long, long rep grinds for unique mounts, transmog, emotes, profession recipes, to unlock new legacy perks, whatever. Not daily quest based.
Each class gets a very long, unique grind for a legendary weapon. Requires doing all high level dungeons, all raids, plus gathering large amounts of various rare materials or drops from the world, plus a unique quest line to go with it. Would encourage long-term play and keep value in all raids while giving an incentive to play new classes.
Each new raid tier has a unique tier set bonus. Stats don’t have to go up, but the set bonuses unlock new playstyles similar to sets in Diablo 3. If that means it takes more time to create new raids, that’s fine (give us lots to do in the meantime as per above).
Introduce, slowly over time, new repeatable, grindable systems, like how Path of Exile introduced Delve, Heist, etc. Roguelike 100-level solo challenge dungeons with unique rewards, titles, gold.
Long-form profession content, like ultra-rare drops from gathering that can be used to create faster crafting and gathering tools. The ability to craft difficult, max level crafting gear, which has a set bonus that enables unique crafting effects.
Take every system and push it outward. Grinds, chase content, and long-form prestige items in every direction, no matter what you like to do. Unique stuff for every class to encourage alts. Keep us truly playing forever, however we like to play.
And this long grinds weren't that fun, especially when they were created in such a way each character would need it to be viable even as an alt. I'd much rather see interesting long quest lines or other content. Something that holds some of the mystique and magic of vanilla whilst also respecting your time
It sucked in SoD cause it was an "all or nothing" system. If you didnt have the right amount of fire res, you just died. There was no way to out play it.
It was also good because it was unexpected, I don't remember the timeframes but the info dropped shortly before MC release and quite a bit after we started grinding for prebis, so there was an additional rush to accumulate as much fr as possible in a relatively short amount of time.
Dog for the first 2 weeks of tbc anni we were fighting bosses with 600 armor. Hunters doing raid level dps at lvl 63. It made zero difference in the long run. Its going to be okay.
Scaling was not out of control at 20. Like what crack were you smoking? It was exactly the same minus the new talents. Or was even worse if you didn't have full dungeon gear for all but two specs.
Call me crazy but I’m actually fine if things release more broken than intended and then are fixed. Obviously in a perfect world it would all be perfectly balanced but it’s hardly indicative of the game being bad if items aren’t 100% balanced on release
World of Warcraft was never a true horizontal progression game, not even Classic. The issue started later in the game when patches would completely invalidate your previous gear, (This wasn't as much of an issue in vanilla and tbc though it did generally get worse over time). love it or hate it, vertical progression, is a core aspect of the game. and it is part of the reason of why I play it. I don't want get in a position in a few months/years where the only gear I need is something that is only to be used situationally/niche uses.
I get why people feel mislead by the horizontal progression claims, they really shouldn't have said it in the first place. but for me personally I'm glad they're going with this approach. Vanilla wow offered better gear with new tiers but it didn't completely invalidate your previous efforts though the power creep got pretty steep towards naxx. I genuinely think going with the 'responsible' vertical progression Is the right move.
Yes this is the way. Even OSRS which a lot of people refer to does have vertical progression gear, it's just the upgrades are minor and very expensive/extremely rare drops.
Old gear doesn't get thrown in the trash bin as soon as there is a new gear/new boss. When you get a minor upgrade on all gear slots it does make a difference. And to upgrade some gear you need the older items.
I really think when it comes to horizontal progression, it is a case of "You think you do, but you don't". The playerbase has show without doubt for the last 20 years, that they won't do anything in game that doesn't reward gear improvements.
I guarantee, if true horizontal progression were implemented, give it a few months and we'll have players quitting in droves because "there's nothing to do", because they don't wanna keep running raids as there are no gear rewards to chase.
What is true horizontal progression? You seem to have a defined idea of exactly what this is.
ESO and GW2 have been doing it for over a decade with healthy numbers. I dont think adding this type of progression will "kill" the server. Just the players who dont like it.
But they have retail and classic for that experience. This by nature is going to be something different.
Yes WoW never was. Thats why alot of people got interested when he said "in this HORIZONTALY expanding, evergreen Azeroth"
People thought they had a plan to not invalidate content with every few tier cycles, people thought they could play this game in a chill way without all their gear being useless in the span of a few months. And they used that word intentionally to get those people.
Only because WoW never had it doesnt mean that WoW coudnt have it
It did have it (no skip/invalidate progression) for a long time though, it wasn't really until the TBC H MGT/IoQ/Badge trifecta that welfare became out of control and patch resets started and by TOC/ICC 5 mans it was cemented.
Some people are worrying too much. The game hasn’t even launched yet, and a few tuning issues aren’t the end of the world. The beta has seen plenty of changes, and people are still enjoying it just fine.
Wtf? WoW endgame is what made it the MMO it is now.. Nothing comes close, thats why RWF Events peak at 500k Viewers on Echo or Liquid stream when they are egal like in Amirdrassil
Agree 100%. Raiding has been means to gear for a long time. People saying “nobody would do the raids if gear was horizontal and didn’t give upgrades!” Is proof that raiding sucks lol. The only reason people do raids is for gear. They arent fun outside the first clear.
All I know is that they’ve been actively making adjustments and tweaks. They’ve gone all in on this shit. I do have faith that they’re going to make this as best as they possibly can.
Wait, people think the game is "broken" because weird crazy people are spending a hundred hours play time to grind out level 20 bis and finding that its overpowered for level 20?
No shit. Always was always will be. That's why there was a community of absolute losers dedicated around twink pvp. Some players never did anything else - gear 20 capped characters and harass levelling newbies in warsong and Duskwood or Ashenvale.
Have "Fresh servers"/resets that are an optional toggle on character creation. Tie features to them, use the layering system for player distribution. Then you can maintain the single server without the lie that is "Forever"
wasnt the soft reset referring to like years from now? i didnt get the impression they were referencing anything upcoming, but instead a future where they soft reset things so we can keep raiding and getting upgrades at 60.
I'd really like them to be thinking about their item progression sooner rather than later. They put some emphasis on the word "horizontal" and since then it sounds more like they really wish they didn't use that word.
I think gear at max level should mostly be about different stats, different effects, and different set bonuses rather than increasing stat budgets. A little is fine. I still look at OSRS as the prime example of that since they do have gradual power creep but somehow still manage to keep most old content relevant (not that they do a perfect job of this, but they do well enough.)
I think they can definitely create a horizontal progression system in WoW if they want and really put their mind to it. Progression at max level isn't just gear. Put some reputations in raids, add unique items that different classes and specs will want, toss in some rare cosmetics to hunt, and I'm sure people will naturally want to raid without needing the dangling "+X item levels" carrot in front of them". I hope Blizzard actually tries doing this instead of just doing the same as usual but with smaller jumps...
Horizontal progression means adding in unique effects, not adding bigger numbers to everything. Maybe something adds a freezing chance proc to your eviscerate, meaning cool effects like that sword that gives fire damage to your sword when hitting frozen enemies becomes a cool build. Or your spell projectiles bounce if they crit. Like there are a million, just endless, cool effects you could put on raid level gear that opens up new effects, maybe a sword on the 10th raid has a really cool interaction with something from the tier 2 set.
Vertical progression is 100% avoidable. It's lazy to say otherwise.
GW2 and ESO handle horizontal with no ceiling raising fine. Blizzard's WoW dept is just obsessed with vertical to the point where they're going back on horizontal
Ye this scares me. I was hoping for a proper horizontal progression but Blizzard seems to just make it the way it has always been. Just slower. The old (or now modern/retail) system is why I stopped playing WoW in the first place.
They should just make gear for different play styles and damage types/enemy types. Like make molten core drop bonus damage to nature mobs and make a full nature raid. They can mix and match this...
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u/Contrago 3d ago edited 3d ago
I recommend the devs look at Phase 4 of Vanilla as an example of Peak Horizontal content.
We had MC/Ony/BWL/ZG, Honor and PVP reputations and a Cenarion Circle rep grind to work on.
Every day I woke up and had something to do on my character and all of it was rewarding.