Call me a traditionalist, but I love levelling.  It stems back to the old days in solo RPG games where getting through the lore and quests and to the end of the game was the reward. There were no end game raids, no group quests for max level, no gearing up.  When you were done with the story you were done with the game, you watched a nice end game clip and moved on to a new game.  That to me is still the ultimate form of progression in a game, getting to the end of the storyline. 

Therefore you can probably tell that the things I will like most are levelling and raiding as they advance the story line the most in an MMOG.  However, there are many other components to progression in a game as complicated as World of Warcraft.  So let’s take a look at some of the many different means to progress through the game and how I would like them to play out in Cataclysm.

The Basics: Tried and true progression mechanics

Let’s start with the most basic progression system: experience points and levels.  My first comment here is Boo!  Only 5 more levels, what are they thinking!  Realistically though the number of levels will not really matter as long as there are enough quests and zones to take you a long time to work through to get to the new max level of 85. For me, I am hoping that it turns out to be longer than in WotLK as levelling felt way too fast to me there.  It was possible to hit level 80 within 2-3 days of played time, which was just too fast.  I think it should take at least a week’s worth of played time to get through a game and I am hoping for at least that in Cataclysm. 

Another minor progression is the addition of two new races.  While not everyone will rush to the new race, and will not want to level a whole new character, some will.  Even those that don’t are likely to jump in and create a goblin or worgen just to see and explore the two all new starting areas.

Next up while levelling is professions.  Traditionally in WoW professions have not provided anything that you really need while levelling and are left by most players until they get to max level, then they go back and level professions.  Even then, many only provide a few top end items that are worth making, and those are generally BoE meaning you can just buy them from someone else.

My wish for professions in Cataclysm is that they become an actual benefit to players while levelling.  They should provide excellent pieces of gear for use while levelling so that players are compelled to work on it as they level.  In addition, all professions should have some form of large boost that you get when you maximize it at the level cap.  While there is a bonus to each now, I do not believe it is big enough that you can not go without it.  It should be big enough that players want to ensure they have it the second they reach the level cap.

Last of the basic progression methods is your gear.  This is the one that seems minor but usually ends up taking a lot longer than levelling or anything else.  That is because you end up spending more time at max level on a character than any other level and once finished levelling Blizzard has to offer some form of upgrades to keep you in the game.

My wish here is that they slow it down.  One of the biggest issues with WotLK was that gear advanced too much between each raid.  Once you were in Ulduar there was almost nothing in Naxxramas that was useful, the same is true from Ulduar to ToC, and ToC to ICC.  This led to almost no one running old raid content.  The situation was further complicated by Blizzard continually upgrading the badges available from heroics.

This made it so that anyone that needed gear to raid current content never ran the old content, they simply ran heroics for badges instead.  This was easy to do and got you the second best raid gear, without having to learn to raid.  It also meant that anyone could take a break from the game, and come back anytime later and be back up to current gear inside a week. There was nothing lost from being away.

I would really like to keep the gear progression slower and harder.  This would make sure you do not have the current situation where large numbers of people have nothing to do in game and are leaving until the expansion is released.

Meta Progression: Non-character affecting

Ok, some of these affect your character a little through the gaining of gear.  However, that relates back to gear progression.  These viewed by them selves are just about your character and are essentially report card type items.  They have become a staple in WoW though and look to continue in Cataclysm.

The first and most common of the meta progression types is reputation grinds.  While reputation gives you something to do, it takes too long in my opinion.  The only things you gain from reputation are low level raid items and some enchants.  By the time you grind out the rep, you were far more likely to have gotten a better top level item from a heroic or raid.  It just seems that you take so long to grind out rep, that there is no real reward in the end. Blizzard should speed it up by at least twice, or keep it the same and provide better rewards.

Next up is Achievements: these are basically check marks for doing things in game.  While comparing achievements can be fun for some players, it doesn’t add a lot to the game.  Sure some of the hard mode achievements can be fun and challenging and give you a different way to play, but most achievements are simply “Do X” or “Explore Y”.  Do you really care if the game recognizes that? I know I don’t.  All it does is give you a check mark and some achievement points, which can’t be spent on anything.

It would be nice if there was some measurable way for going out of your way to achieve things to actually improve your character. Even a gold or badge reward after every so many achievement points, say every 1000 achievement points you get x gold and y badges.  Something. Otherwise, I don’t see a point in them, other than to be abused as a check for raid groups. Which brings us to the next point quite nicely…

Raid Progression, which is the only real place I like achievements, despite the fact that they are used to check if you know a fight. Tracking raid progression through an achievement type system is a decent idea, it allows you to know what you have and have not accomplished.  It does not however, provide any idea if a player has actually contributed in a fight, which is why I do not like checking for achievements, all it means is that the player was there when the boss died, not that they know anything.

Back to the basics though, I would like to see raid progression back to vanilla game level or at least BC level.  Let’s get back to raiding that is hard and progressive.  Let’s get back to raids that require several weeks of work to figure out the mechanics of a boss and be able to defeat him. WotLK raids were way too simple and guilds (even casual guilds) destroyed them way too soon after their release.  Even normal mode raids should take a while to get through, like 3-4 lock out periods. Let’s also get back to raids that are more thoroughly tuned so that you need a lot of gear from the previous raid before being able to have a chance at the next harder raid. 

New to Cataclysm

These progression methods are all new to Cataclysm, and add yet another maze to run through to get your cheese. How do they stack up to the old standards? Let’s take a look.

The first new progression in Cataclysm is going to be Archaeology.  Hurray, a completely new profession to grind through. And there’s the problem, another grind.  I hope that this new “profession” has enough to it to be fun and informative about Azeroth that it keeps it entertaining and rewarding as you go through it. The theory behind Archaeology sounds interesting, and anyone interested in the lore of the game will probably get hooked hard to levelling it up.  I am personally optimistic on this one, as Blizzard tends to learn from its mistakes and I can’t see them making another profession that is not fun to get through. 

The other new progression item coming with cataclysm and the one I am most excited about, besides levelling another 5 levels, is Guild progression.  I believe this is going to be a huge one for Cataclysm.  Finally there will be a way to separate your guild from the rest and gain bonuses from it.  This has a lot of people very excited and that will help keep players in guilds and keep guilds active. 

In today’s game too many guilds have degenerated to just a place to get together for your raids, battlegrounds, or arenas.  I believe that guild progression will help support more than that.  I hope it will get more players involved with their guilds, and help return a guild to what it should be: a place to socialize with friends. If the fact that being in a guild provides bonuses to your player is what it takes to get people to participate more, I am all for it.  Maybe the players that just used a guild for a raid will realize that there is more to it than that.  I doubt it, but I can dream, can’t I?

To wrap up, I can see a lot of ways to progress in Cataclysm besides just the pure level grind.  There really looks like there will be something for everyone in the expansion.  There is Archeology for the lore players, levelling and new instances for casuals, and new raids for raiders. There is more gear, professions, and more that will appeal to pretty much everyone. Here is hoping that everything pulls together in a positive way for all players!