Flux

The World of Warcraft is several different games in one. But there always seem to be three stages to the game. Leveling, gearing, and achievement. Let’s take a look at them so we can refer to them later.

The first time you played WoW, when it hooked you, was the Leveling stage. There were many new things to see and do. The world was wide open. And there was virtually no grinding. You would spent most of your time adventuring solo and probably played casually. Of course, if you had already been through the leveling stage once and went to make another character the second or third time probably seemed like a grind. Eventually you hit the maximum level and things changed.

Once you were at max level, gear mattered and the Gearing stage started. Before now you would get new items from quests or occasionally buy or craft them. The limit to what you can see and do had always been your level. But now the only way to progress in the game was to get better gear. At this stage you found yourself in groups, either in five player instances or pvp. Players who prefered solo play or the faster pace, completed the remaining quests they could and then started over. Those who to see the end game or compete in arena went on to the next stage.

At the end of the game is the Achievement stage. It’s the slowest stage as well as a huge time sink. You have achieved by getting this far, but those that continue on are few. Only players who enjoy the challenge, like to compete, or want to do and see everything even bothered with it. This stage required you to be a hardcore player and to play regularly. Here you started raiding or seriously competing for rank in the arena. If you were off to go kill Illidan and got the Twin Blades of Azzinoth, you found yourself here. This either the least or most fun part of the game, sometimes both.

Guilds also follow three parallel stages. When most members are leveling, the guild is about community. It is a place for others to spread knowledge, help with the occasional group quest, or more often than anything else it’s a place to hang out. When most members of gearing, the guild becomes organizational. Leaders and rules emerge and more group activities take place. And finally when members enter the achievement stage, the guild is about progress. Generally raiding is the focus and completing the end game content.

While it’s likely changed in the last year, data mining of the armory shows that about two thirds of the characters in the game are below level 70, in the leveling stage. There other third is level 70 and in the gearing or achievement stage. As Blizzard makes it easier and easier to get gear either through honor or badges, more and more people have been entering the later stages. Of course, once another expansion comes out we will all be back in the leveling stage.

Whatever stage of the game is the most interesting to you is a combination of how casual or hardcore you play, if you like competition, and how much time you have to play.

Tags: debate
Author: aos

This entry was posted by aos on Wednesday, March 12th, 2008 at 12:00 am and is filed under Games, WoW. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.