Yesterday I had zero intent to sit down in the morning and start writing about level scaling systems. Sometimes posts just happen. However after writing it one of my friends mentioned a key point. There should functionally be a way to flip off level scaling if you absolutely positively want to just go wreck things. The prime example of this would be if you just want to farm up a bunch of low level materials quickly. I remember when I was leveling any of my various tailors up in World of Warcraft, I would simply find a dungeon in the level range and mercilessly wreck it for the sole purpose of getting as much cloth in as short of a time as I could. This would have been completely maddening were I not greatly over leveling the content. Once again I think we can look to Final Fantasy XIV as a good example here because some time ago they added in the ability to queue for content “undersized”, which functionally turns off the level synchronization process allowing you to just wreck the content if you so choose. However I still think I would prefer it if MMO worlds scaled by default, and then simply allowed folks to disable that option if they so choose.
I’ve said recently that I really love returning to an MMO after some time has passed and be confronted with potentially years of content to go off and experience. The thing is this also has an extremely negative side to it. Right now I am in this weird place where I am super into content that happened two years ago. There is something to be said about experiencing things at the same time as your friends, because it allows you to have conversations about what is going on. This has been one of the best parts of Final Fantasy XIV is that each time they give us a slow drip of story content we all consume it then can talk about the revelations that are contained within. This allows us to have moments of theory crafting and speculation… knowing that at some point in the future we will be able to resolve what is actually going on. With Star Wars the Old Republic and the Knights of the Fallen Empire content… generally speaking either folks played through this content two years ago when it released… or will likely never play through it.
That puts me in such a weird places because I have all these thoughts and feelings about the game and what it is doing… but I don’t exactly feel right talking about them on my blog. Knights of the Fallen Empire has some pretty big revelations that would be better experienced than told about. This is one of those times when everything about it is extremely heavy on the spoiler front. Each time new revelations come to light… I wish there was a group of people that I could talk through them with. Basically this is one of those times when I wish I had played through the chapter based content as it was being released rather than this current Netflix style binge sequence that I am going through. I have a feeling that Guild Wars 2 and its living story content is much the same… likely best experienced as it is being released a little bit at a time. This also makes me really want to get caught up so that I can at least join the discussion happening with the Eternal Throne content. However I am also extremely cautious of looking up too much information for fear of getting these plot twists completely ruined for me.
On the positive front I have stumbled across a really awesome YouTube channel that has helped me get back into the game and the modern concepts. Swtorista has this awesome Star Wars the Academy series that breaks down a bunch of topics like “What to do at Level 70” or how the Galactic Command system works. The best videos though are a sequence on the best looking craftable armors for each class, since we all know the true end game of an MMO is looking awesome. Through her videos thought I have been able to catch up pretty easily without risking spoilers too badly. Side note… there is a special place in hell for folks who put obvious spoilers in YouTube video titles… as I already have apparently one of the Iokath revelations spoiled because of this. For those interested I am largely playing Belghast my Jedi Knight on Ebon Hawk at least while I do all of the chapter based content. I have a large stable of character spread between the two factions and they are either in House Stalwart on Sith side, or Einherjar on Republic side. If you are also playing feel free to ping me and say hi.