On Re-Leveling
One thing I've been thinking about with Cataclysm looming is the idea of leveling my army of alts to 85 (plus two new Worgen!). It's a daunting prospect, but more than that, it's a boring prospect. It's not as if Blizzard doesn't want us to have alts: They've put in all sorts of perks for your "other characters" from heirlooms armor to the cold weather flying book to BoA rep tokens.
I have no doubt that the quest writers will come up with some cool and unique stuff for those levels, the problem comes when it's my 6th time through. When I enter a zone, nothing changes from one alt to the next, the only variable is what method I use to kill the baddies: Using druid ability X instead of Hunter ability Y. In some other games (*cough* Dragon Age *cough* ) I'm still using rogue ability A or Mage ability B, but my choices and relationships (call them reputations for the sake of WoW) affect a whole lot. I think they tried this a little with the Aldor/Scryer and the Oracles/Wolvar, however neither of those quest chains actually changes anything, and your choices are reversible.
The problem of course is that one game world is full of other players and the other isn't. Is it possible to make those kind of major story changes that affect different people in different ways? I know they are implementing a lot more phasing in Cataclysm, so perhaps we will see a bit of it.
And just a note: I'm not talking about making leveling faster necessarily. I think the amount of time to get everyone to 80 was fine. It was just boring.
I have no doubt that the quest writers will come up with some cool and unique stuff for those levels, the problem comes when it's my 6th time through. When I enter a zone, nothing changes from one alt to the next, the only variable is what method I use to kill the baddies: Using druid ability X instead of Hunter ability Y. In some other games (*cough* Dragon Age *cough* ) I'm still using rogue ability A or Mage ability B, but my choices and relationships (call them reputations for the sake of WoW) affect a whole lot. I think they tried this a little with the Aldor/Scryer and the Oracles/Wolvar, however neither of those quest chains actually changes anything, and your choices are reversible.
The problem of course is that one game world is full of other players and the other isn't. Is it possible to make those kind of major story changes that affect different people in different ways? I know they are implementing a lot more phasing in Cataclysm, so perhaps we will see a bit of it.
And just a note: I'm not talking about making leveling faster necessarily. I think the amount of time to get everyone to 80 was fine. It was just boring.