Level 58: Time to go to Outland?

For a long time now, I have watched players run straight into Outland the second they hit 58. Either they have heard about how great the loot drops are there or they experienced it themselves with their mains and now that their alt is 58, they choose to take the exact same course they took the first ( or second ) time through. They level quickly through to 60 while in Hellfire Peninsula, and move into Zangarmarsh or Terrokar Forest at 60 or 61. They love the new zones, the new quests, the speed at which they are leveling. And then they finish up these three zones at level 64 and move into Nagrand and they hit the wall at 64 miles an hour.
Not all classes will hit that wall. Some will only be slowed down. But Nagrand is the spot that they all feel their leveling to 70 has become a grind again. So they realize, they have to go out and grind a level to get back on track.The question is why? The answer is very simple, and some even knowing the answer, still make the jump to Outland at level 58.

The issue is this: Hellfire Peninsula was designed for a level 60 character, and the zones that follow were designed to build off Hellfire. What this means is, if you enter Hellfire at level 58 and start doing those quests, you are using them for the wrong level. And thus, you will be using Zangarmarsh and terrokar Forest for the wrong levels as well.

With Patch 2.3, Blizard tried to fix this for people by both decreasing the experience needed to level all the way to 60 and increasing the experience acquired from quests. This took zones like, Eastern Plaguelands, Winterspring and Silithus and made them excellent places to level from 58 to 60. But, because Blizzard didn't say specifically to stay out of Outlands until level 60, players, in general, ignored the change post level 58 and entered Outland. Some entered believing they could get to 70 faster, some believed the great gear in Outland was the reason to move out of Azeroth, some entered Outland for a much needed change of scenery and still others moved into Outland because they had done most of the quests in one or two of the 55-60 zones and were frustrated with finding more quests for the zones to level. Each of these reasons all stem from the same source: Impatience.
Player want to level. They want to be 70 so they can take part in the end game content. And let's face it, with the complete lack of players to level with or run level appropriate instances with, who can really blame them? They want to play with their friends or just be able to run the content to make some friends. What these players do not know or understand is, with that lack of patience comes a price they must pay at level 64 and then again at level 70.

If a player moves into Outland at level 58, they are effectively leaving thousands of gold untouched that could be theirs at level 70. They are planning to use Shadowmoon Valley and Netherstorm to hit max level, when if they were patient they would have hit 70 before ever entering these zones. Imagine for a moment if you hit level 70 while halfway through the Blades Edge Mountains quest lines. That would leave all of the quests in Netherstorm and Shadowmoon Valley with level 70 gold only rewards. How many thousands of gold is that? How much further along would your grind to 5000 gold be if those quests were used for gold and not experience? Every time I am in Netherstorm and I see someone below level 70 there questing, I cringe for them. I know what a mistake they have made and there is no way for them to fix it now.

The worst part is: The mistake is usually made somewhere in the characters 40's or 50's everything stems from there. Boredom and impatience leads players to move out of a zone before it is complete. They can handle the next zone so why not? The zone their in is driving them nuts and they decide to move on. But they leave all that experience untouched and therefore need other zones/quests to replace it. So it's replaced with experience that would be better for other levels, until finally, they move into Outland and lose out on thousands of gold they need for their Epic Flying mount.

I recently leveled a mage to 70. It's my new maina nd my new favorite class in the game. I leveled fairly quickly, though I spent alot of time talking to people, going to guild meetings and such. In other words , many hours of leveling missed. But I was able to get to 70 in 11 days, 14 hours, 30 minutes and 52 seconds. I have included a screenshot of hitting 70 to confirm the time. Now, there are leveling guides out there that claim they can help you level to 70 in just about 10 days game time. The guides can be very helpful and I won't say don't use them if you find them useful. But, they are not needed, in my opinion. Just grab all the quests and do them. Turn them in and do all the quests that are made available at that point, and just keep going. Then at 58, stay out of Outland. Go get to 60 or even 61 ( as I did with my mage ) before hitting Outland. I hit 68 in Nagrand and used Blades Edge Mountains to reached 70. That meant every quest I had not yet done was a huge gold reward and I was able to get my epic flyer in no time at all.

If you are patient, you will hit Outland stronger and the leveling will be smoother and quicker. You will hit level 70 with literally hundreds of quests left to do and thousands of gold just waiting to be yours. Yes, the 25 daily quests per day can really help out with your gold grind to 5000. But if you are a marathon session player, those dailies run out fairly quickly and then what do you do? You do the quests that others have done to level and you make tons more gold. I have my epic flyer on two characters, on two seperate factions and on two different servers, so I have had to grind out 5k gold twice, with no help, no loans and no in game gold purchased with real life money. And, I can say from experience, a little bit of patience, put me so far ahead that the time "lost" at level 58 - 60 was more than returned to me at 64 and at 70.

- Grimme

Big Download interviews Blizzard about the Arena E-Sport

World of Warcraft's Arena Tournament launched on March 31, 2008, letting players immediately create level 70 characters and equip them with high level skills and epic armor. Competitors from around the world battle for up to $200,000 in cash prizes. At the same time, the Arena Tournament underscores Blizzard's intentions of using WoW's PvP gameplay as a type of eSport. WoW rose to become the most popular MMO in the world primarily because of its PvE content, and using its PvP for eSports marked a sharp turn in the game's focus. We catch up with WoW's Lead Designer, Tom Chilton, Paul Della Bitta (Senior Manager, Global Community and eSports) and Joong Kim (eSports Manager) to get the inside story about balancing PvP and PvE gameplay and what players can expect to from the future of Azeroth.

Tell us about the Arena Tournament and how World of Warcraft is taking steps towards becoming an eSport.

Tom: When we first created World or Warcraft, we always imagined that PvP would be very important in general. We didn't anticipate turning it into an eSport, so it's one of those things that's been evolving over time. In Burning Crusade, we developed the Arena system because we wanted a competitive element - we wanted something that felt like a sport within WoW itself. It so happens that it's a pretty good platform for eSports, since it's fun, fast-paced, action-oriented and well enough balanced. After running the arena seasons on the live servers, it seemed like a natural extension to move toward a more organized eSport tournament.

Are you going to take what you learn from the Arena Tournament and apply it to PvP areas in the live game?

Tom: Yes. It has a nice symbiotic relationship in a lot of ways. Since everyone will be playing on equal footing in the Arena Tournament Server as far as equipment, and players can change their characters as necessary, they're able to experiment with a lot of things that would be difficult to try out on a live server because of the limitations of leveling up a character. It provides us with an interesting petri dish, where we can evaluate how things are playing out on the tournament server and then apply that knowledge to live game where possible.

Do you think that there will be a time when the Tournament Arena will have its own rules and balances separate from the live game?

Tom: No, we intend for the games to stay very much the same in terms of rules and balance. Any changes we make on the live server will be reflected on the arena server. Anything that we learn and deem necessary to change on the arena server will also apply to the live server. It's very important to us that the experience on the live server feel well balanced, so any lessons we learn will work in both directions. We also want the game to feel consistent so that the Arena Tournament server still feels like World of Warcraft gameplay. We don't want it to start diverging and feel like a completely different game.

What is the ultimate goal with the Tournament Arena? Will there eventually be televised gameplay?

Tom: As a game designer, my ultimate goal is to have it be fun and exciting. I'm sure Paul has more to add.

Paul: As far as televising goes, eventually the players competing online will transition to a live event to each of the regions where we're running the tournament. The winners of those live events will go to a global final. We know our players are very interested in watching, so we're looking to broadcast them in some way. We'll be releasing more details as we get closer to those events.

There is an objective. We want to give our players the opportunity to become pros and show off their talents. Our players will have the opportunity to become superstars within the World of Warcraft community.

When are the Arena Tournament Finals expected to start?

Tom: Joong can answer that.

Joong: The online portion of the Tournament will end mid-July. Global Finals will begin late in the year... probably around October or November.

Any word on where the Global Finals may be held?

Joong: We're still looking around for where the best place is.

Is the Arena Tournament a sign that Blizzard will be dedicating more of its resources to PvP content instead of PvE?

Tom: No, I definitely wouldn't say that's the case. The vast majority of the team is dedicated toward developing our continuing expansions. By its very nature, it tends to be mostly PvE content. I think since the Arena Tournament is a new that it's getting a lot of attention right now, but it's not changing our development focus as a whole.

What are some of the challenges in developing PvP content and balancing it against the PvE aspect of the game?

Tom: There are a lot of challenges. World of Warcraft is a very complex game, and you can break PvE down into a whole bunch of subcategories like soloing and questing. Then there's 5-man content, 10-man content and 25-player content - all have their own type of balance. Then throw small and large group PvP on top of all that. At the same time, we're trying to preserve the feel of a class-based game, where each class feels distinct and a different gameplay experience.

The reality is, we know the game wouldn't be as balanced as a game that is purely designed for competitive eSports, but it's balanced enough for people to feel good about their classes and their choices. We're keeping in close communications and getting to a point where people feel that all the classes are viable across all the different situations. That's certainly the case in PvE. We see more viable classes and specializations now than before The Burning Crusade. So, even though we've introduced a competitive element with PvP, we've managed to improve the balance for PvE.

Do you guys play in the PvP areas? Any favorite classes?

Tom: Obviously, all the classes are dear to me. Our class team is full of guys that play a whole bunch of different characters. Every single class is fully represented across the development team as a whole. We're just as lively discussing class changes internally as we are on the forums. There are definitely a lot of people who are passionate about the game. Most people on the team are actual players and play every night.

We actually have an internal Blizzard Tournament going on because so many people here are interested in competing but are ineligible to play in the real one.

There appears to be a divide between PvP and PvE players. Some believe the risks and rewards of PvP aren't high enough, while others think that PvP is too unbalanced to be worth the effort. Do you think there should be a stronger blending of the PvP and PvE experiences?

Tom: We prefer that players experience a mix of content instead of pigeon holing into one kind of gameplay. The game ends up being more fun for more players that way. We like to create the game mechanics to encourage players to do different things. That's not to say we're trying to force people's hands if they want to do something exclusively. A player can focus on PvP in Arena Tournament and be successful, but we try to put in mechanics to allow or encourage crossover. I would liken it to questing, where it's more fun to do a variety of different ones instead of the same kill quests over and over. In the same way changing up quest types and areas are fun, changing up gameplay is fun. We often comment that although players may prefer one kind of game over another, even hardcore PvP players enjoy the PvE content quite a bit.

Is it possible, or even a priority, to design PvP areas to minimize griefing for new PvP players?

Tom: I think that deals with each person individually. We have separate PvE where players can't be killed by other players unless you do something that allows you to be killed. So, it really comes down to personal choice. People that sign onto a PvP server do so knowing that they can be killed by other players out in the world. Players looking for that kind of random, spontaneous, gameplay use the PvP servers so we don't intend to introduce rules to limit it.

Would Blizzard make class changes to encourage more diversified PvP configurations?

Tom: We'd like to see equal class representation, but some classes are inherently more popular than others because of what people imagine themselves to be within our world. So, regardless of balance, there will always be some classes that are more popular than others. Then there are PvE considerations along with all the different PvP configurations (2v2, 3v3 and 5v5), which makes the issue tricky.

How do you determine of a class, power or team combination is over or under powered?

Tom: A combination of gut, listening to players and looking at statistics. We're always listening and playing and looking over trends. We collect all that data and make decisions based on it. There are certain things we leave in because a class is powerful in one area but weak in another. We often won't bring down an area where a class is strong without bringing up an area where it's weak.

Thank you for your time.

Source: http://news.bigdownload.com/2008/05/13/pvp-vs-pve-blizzard-on-world-of-warcraft/