Here are the first two parts of the series to bring you up to speed:

Power Creep in Pandaria -- Part 1
Power Creep in Pandaria -- Part 2

It was only supposed to be two parts, but I realized another trend while writing those original posts. This was originally supposed to be an addition to Part 2, but it ended up getting so "textful" (as things often do here), that I just decided just to create a new post. :)

The Death Knight

The topic of content consumption got me thinking that this is probably the main reason why Blizzard abandoned the Hero Class format.

Because the Death Knight class started so high level, it skipped all of the starting zones and content. Blizzard would later realize that this was a mistake, and it's probably the reason why they'll never do it again. Their decision, after all, wouldn't have had anything to do with the DK skills or abilities since they can easily be scaled or balanced.

Players liked the idea of skipping a lot of the beginning content, but it didn't benefit Blizzard in the end so that same mistake can't be made again. (In any of their games FYI.)

And the timing seems to work out well too. When WOTLK first came out, they didn't understand the issue of content consumption (or maybe they didn't think it would become an issue due to the wealth of creative material they had already amassed.) It wasn't until mid-to-late WOTLK did they start making changes and adding new features to re-use older content. Then, Cataclysm came out and the entire expansion pack was ALL ABOUT reusing old content. To make their intentions ever more clear; it introduced the new Archaeology Profession. :)

A Belated Solution

There's actually still a way to correct this "failure" and it might be really fun for users and Blizzard alike.

Basically, create an "Origins" story for the Death Knight class where you start at level 1 and show their progression and character development from a simple peasant to a Death Knight.

Since you don't want to take away the instant 55 Level Up, this could be a completely optional "Starting From The Beginning" feature.

For example,

• You create a new character and select the DK class.
• You are then given an option for your "Starting" pre-DK class (e.g. a Warrior, Mage, etc.)
• After some introductory in-game cinematics, or even a brief Level 1-5 tutorial stage, you're given the option to "Skip To Your Rebirth?". (The Origins story stops here, and you just jump to the main DK story.)
• If you continue the "Origins" story, you're locked in.
• You start out as a "Farmer" Class earning a meager living on a farm. :)
• You level the temporary "Farmer" Class until 10, at which point you join the military or a resistance, and you switch to the early level "Starting" class you had previously selected. (e.g. You train to become a Warrior, Mage, Rogue, whatever.)
• Blizzard could have a lot of fun with a temporary 1-10 "Farmer" class too.
• At this point (Level 10), you can start doing normal quests and such that have already been created by Blizzard. But, now there will be new customized quests only available for your character that develop the back story. Even every 10 levels there could be missions or special quests that work into the main lore. (Like going off to war, war campaigns, secret missions, rising through the ranks in the "Military" or "Resistance", your family, new lore discovered, etc.)
• As you rise through the ranks, it finally culminates at your death (at Level 50 or 55) by the hands of the Undead. At which point the main DK story kicks in.

This gives Blizzard an excuse to use some of their old lore and back-history on the Death Knights that they haven't used yet.

Plus, they're not creating a whole series of new quests just for the "Origins" story, but rather bits and pieces here and there (like every 10 levels). Less development time.

Players will go through all old content again, which is what they want. But, they will still have the option of jumping right to their Level 55 DK if they want to.

To encourage players to follow the "Origins" path instead, though, they can offer special bonuses that are made available during the story line: special gear with really cool aesthetics (they will be farmed for transmogrification), new pets (which players will jump at the chance for upcoming Pet Battles), vanity stuff, new achievements, or trinkets that have special visual effects.

I suppose the "Origins" path could also be made available as DLC.. especially with the new Battle.net Balance. :)

If not, at least Blizzard could use it as a test to determine if other "Origin" features could be successful for other classes (Rogues assassinating their way to the top of their Rogue guild before getting kicked out). In order to experience the "Origins" story, players must create a new class. Players may or may not like this, but it would definitely be very cool for the DK class. And, having special bonuses for following this path, however, might encourage many players to do it. Especially the ones who haven't created alt characters yet, which Blizzard already knows.

What do you think? If you guys really like the idea, drop some hints with Blizzard. :)

I think it would be a lot of fun, plus it addresses a lot of the issues they're trying to fix.

Here's something interesting.

So, you've already seen the BattleTag™ announcement. And you'll notice the TM symbol attached to every little instance of BattleTag™.. so it's a trademark owned by Blizzard right?

Apparently not. UBISOFT ENTERTAINMENT owns that trademark. :)

It's an old filing (2010-06-09), and there hasn't been much activity until just this week. Oddly coincidental.

They filed an "Intent-to-Use" report with the US Patent and Trademark Office, which was just received 2 days ago. So, UBISOFT wants to start using their "BattleTag"/"Battle Tag" trademark too.

There's also another older trademark for BattleTag by another business, but it's just for wireless devices. The UBISOFT one is for entertainment services, computer games, LAN services, etc.. so it matches with what Blizzard wants to use their Trademark for. And, UBISOFT owns the TM in Europe too.

I guess this leaves a few possibilities:

1. UBISOFT is a typo in TM database. (Very very doubtful.)
2. Blizzard bought the TM from Ubisoft, and the changes aren't visible in the TM DB yet.
3. Blizzard is getting a "BattleTag" trademark instead of "Battle Tag". Still, a punch in the face to Ubisoft since they intend on using it too.
3. Ubisoft is going to make a stink about the trademark (TM infringement). It's too similar: "Battle Tag" vs "BattleTag". And, it would be funny if they use it themselves in the same way Blizzard intended.
4. Blizzard might change the Battle Tag name to something else.

Blizzard would have known all about the Ubisoft TM well in advance, though, before using the name.. so I wonder what's going on?

Blizzard is also using both wordings "BattleTag" and "Battle Tag" in their posts (Ex 1 & Ex 2) about the service. And, Blizzard users aren't making the distinction either (so this "confusion" could actually help Ubisoft if there was a legal case.)

Seems awfully coincidental too that Ubisoft wants to suddenly start using the trademark.

There's also a 5th possibility.. but I don't even want to consider it. It's too scary.

Why Are They Doing This?

The rate of content consumption is also a quality vs quantity struggle. Content consumption is harmful to Blizzard and it needs to be regulated and controlled. Right now, it's very important to slow it down and get older content consumed again. Blizzard wants to deliver higher quality content, at a slower rate, rather than quantity (bad quality at a higher rate.)

High leveled players will start visiting older dungeons and raids again, because the item drops will be useful again. They want players to re-consume old content so that they don't have to put out as much anymore, or at such a high rate. It's basically a way to buy them time to produce higher quality future content.

The Item Squish will get players progressing more slowly in higher tiered dungeons and raids. Because of the difficulty to progress, it slows down our growth rate to match content delivery. It doesn't, though, make dungeons more difficult to complete.. this isn't about making dungeons harder (that was an attempt made by Blizzard, but it failed), it's more about "not jumping ahead" too quickly to new content.

The Item Squish is really smart from a business standpoint and for future planning. I hope that other MMORPG developers don't make this same mistake, and you can be confident that Diablo 3 and Titan won't be making this same power creep mistake in their own expansion packs.

• This change starts setting a new pace for players that Blizzard wants. Players are consuming content too quickly, and Blizzard needs to slow them down.
• This gets players prepared for future games and expansion packs. After MOP, expansion packs will debut with a smaller number of zones and dungeons, so that they can be added as major content patches later when Blizzard is ready.
• It's possible that MOP might be the last major Expansion Pack, and future "expansion packs" will be more DLC (smaller Digital Download only mini expansion packs.)
• Old content is no longer wasted and unused.
• Players now have more to do, and more options available. This is the big one: giving players more options, rather than being stuck with the same dungeon run over and over.
• Content is no longer skipped over, and players must progress through Blizzard's content at a certain rate (more lore delivered this way too.)
• This gives players the impression that Blizzard is "constantly delivering" and "updating" the game. They cut out content that should have been released in the expansion pack, but instead release it in smaller bits at a time.
• Players are happy that there's a constant flow of new content to consume, even if they don't realize they're being fed with smaller portions.
• Originally, Blizzard was going to deliver monthly major content, which didn't work out for obvious reasons. It's an old sore spot that they're finally able to address.
• Slowing down consumption gives the artists and designers more time to create new content. Less stress, and less time needed to figure out how to ramp up item stats for new dungeons, encounters, or expansion packs.

Blizzard Already Doing The Prep Work?

In the past, Blizzard has already tried several methods to get players re-visiting old content:

• The Cataclysm expansion pack itself.
• Adding Heroic difficulty levels to dungeons.
• Dailies and Seasonal Events that require traveling all over the World of Warcraft.
• The Archaeology (/spit) profession.
• Transmogrification.
• Exploration (hidden gems) and Exploration Achievements.
• Lore quests that sent you to many destinations.
• Special Events that only take place within older Dungeons.
• "Path of Titans" was meant to do this too, but it was cut.

The idea was to make more "new options" and "new places" available but by re-using all older content that might have been skipped, run through too quickly, or just unnecessary (like old items.) Blizzard is trying to re-use everything in the game to avoid hard questions about content delivery and so that hard work isn't wasted. It's also a really cheap way to avoid costs, resources and work. Doing this saves them a TON of money.

They also tried different ways of extending longevity and controlling content consumption:

• Leveling restrictions. Once you hit 80, you HAVE to move onto CATA or else you receive only 10% experience gains.
• Making dungeon encounters difficult in the beginning, and then nerf them later.
• New Dungeons rolled out more slowly. Less zones/dungeons in Expansion Packs. Introduced as Major Content Patches after 2-3 months.
• PVP Seasons, locking in items until Blizzard is ready for the next round of consumption.
• New Talent Changes to shake things up, make things new/novel again.
• And of course, all of the obvious stuff to keep players busy, like professions, auction house, exploration, achievements, pet battles, seasonal events, etc.

Even with the Item Squish, even though it's "just an idea", they've already made arrangements to start getting players prepared for it (and for internal testing purposes):

• Ghostcrawler's Forum Post, of course, making everyone aware.
• Creating items that have scaling stats like Heirlooms. This means that full fledged Level-Scaling throughout the whole game is possible. In my opinion, this ruins games. It's a very lazy way of thinking, so I wouldn't be surprised if Blizzard actually imposed this on users one day.
• Buffs, Spell Damage and Mana Utilization is all based off percentage calculations (of base numbers) now instead of fixed numbers in the past.
• Changing Tool Tips to get players familiar with "Costs 20% of Base MP" calculations. So, when the change comes.. all of the Ability Tool Tips and Descriptions still stay the same. :)
• Another New Talent System (skill based rather than number manipulation.)

(Note: I haven't played the game in many years now, so if there are any other pieces you've noticed in-game that relate to this, let me know and I'll add it to these lists.)

Other Alternatives

The big problem with the Item Squish is the feeling of being nerfed. It doesn't matter if everything else is normalized, once those big numbers disappear there's going to be a lot of rage.

Role Playing Games are all about creating a better player (better than everyone else), so it's very important to give them a feeling of progression and a godlike sense. Everyone wants to a god, after all. :)

This is a problem that only affects high level players though. There's an alternative option available where high level players stay the same (still godlike), the power creep issue is fixed, and you can make low level players feel better about themselves.

The "Item Inflation" Method

What you do is eliminate the power creep between Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria, so no huge item stat increase between the transition. This just leaves power creep issues which span from Vanilla to Cataclysm. During those phases you create an Item Inflation.

So, something like this:

What happens here is that everything scales properly from Vanilla all the way to the end of MOP. But, new characters will start out with (what they think is) uber awesome gear stats, but mobs are also adjusted so they still take the same length of the time to kill.

High level players stay the same, and low level players feel awesome again. Big changes are going to happen anyways, but at least in this scenario, high level players are happy, there's no mass exodus, and Blizzard receives the same result: no more power creep.

Even Ghostcrawler's "large number calculations" don't even need to be used in this approach; because of the relative progression, large numbers can just be "displayed" for users to see, but they're actually represented by smaller numbers (and smaller calculations) on the back-end. Having uneven exponential growths in their numbers, like how it is now, is what led to their problems. Not that any of this should have been a problem in the first place.. even 2 trillion isn't exactly a very big number for modern computers.

The Future

Because of this approach Blizzard is taking, you can start to make assumptions about their future games and expansion packs. For example, there won't be "uber items" available within Diablo X1 or Titan expansions. They also plan on leaving out a ton of content so that it can be added later as a major content patch.. new dungeons, mobs, bosses, or rares added to Diablo later for example.

This gives Diablo 3 the impression of frequent content addition, even though all of it was originally intended in the first full package. Titan will be the same. New expansions will have, say 2-3 "dungeons", and 4-5 new "dungeons" will be added for the following 2 years before the next expansion pack.

Blizzard wants players to keep reusing old content over and over and over. They'll find new methods to get you revisiting older content (e.g. difficulty levels.) This is almost how Diablo 3 was completely designed from the ground up. :)

With Item Squishing or Inflation, because dungeons take longer to progress, Blizzard can start introducing even newer ways to get players visiting older dungeons. For example, rare spawns with high-level stats that appear in older dungeons. So, a Level 90 might visit Level 75-80 Dungeons, take a long time to beat the dungeon, only so that there might be a chance of a rare boss appearing that carries Level 90 items. WOW players will roam for rares, just like in Diablo 3.

Oh, and one interesting note about Item Squishing.. it's going to bring back the good old days of bugs and exploits. :) There are a lot of mobs, abilities and items to go through.. and some will be missed. So, there might be a mob with an uber-damaging ability still based on old calculations, or a special item/gear piece missed that still has uber-stats. A lot of unchanged "bugged" stuff is going to make it's way through, and they'll be exploited quite a bit. :)

They would have to make the change during a quiet period.. so, months before launch or months after launch. With my Item Inflation method, though, there's less likely chance of exploitation, because bugged items can only be underpowered and they would really only have to specifically focus on boss skills. :)