Will Warhammer Online follow the WoW expansion model?

Golly gee, I hope not Batman! Still… I have a sneaking suspicion that EA Mythic is considering it, based off this interview with Josh Drescher over at Game-Industry.biz.

Under the hood you build all your systems with multiple years worth of content in mind, What you don’t want is when you launch the game you’ve got 40 levels - and it takes however long it takes to get to level 40. You then launch an expansion and it now takes two weeks to get to level 40 because now we need everyone to spend six months to get from level 40 to 50. So you need to spec the game out in such a way that you actually have those progressions in mind for later - so you don’t wind up trampling all over the earlier experiences every time you expand the game.

There was some confusion last week when Josh was quoted as saying “Warhammer Online will have 5 years worth of content built into the game at launch.” What he really meant was that WAR is built with scalability in mind for 5 years into the future.

Regardless of all the technical mumbo jumbo, what I find interesting is that Josh mentions a level cap increase in the same sentence as “expansion.” This has me concerned because World of Warcraft follows the +10 level cap per expansion model, and it’s probably my least favorite feature of the game. It’s a horribly uninventive and totally lazy way to give people new content for the game. Oh, and it also has the unpleasant side effect of introducing “MUDflation.”

The short and simple definition of MUDflation is that all previous content in your game is rendered completely useless when you introduce newer, more powerful content. Remember that legendary sword you spent countless hours trying to farm at your level cap? Yeah, that’s now trash compared to some basic quest reward in the new expansion. Remember that cool RvR dungeon (cough Darkness Falls cough) people used to enjoy? Yeah, now it’s a ghost town because there’s nothing in it worth fighting over anymore…

Maybe this “under the hood” scalability Josh is talking about will mitigate for MUDflation, but it’ll have to be pretty darn intelligent…

Why must games focus more on vertical expansion rather than horizontal? Vertical expansion is World of Warcraft… It’s getting the next ten levels. It’s grinding for season 3 arena gear because it’s a bit better than season 2. It’s leaving your older zones and dungeons to collect dust because they aren’t viable any more.

Horizontal expansion is kind of like Guild Wars. It’s giving you a greater variety of abilities to use in different situations rather than mashing the same three button combo because it’s the most powerful in all situations. It’s introducing new races, classes, and zones for players to explore. It’s offering more “fluff” like unique (but not overly powerful) crafting recipes, armour skins, achievement titles, and emotes.

I’m not completely naive. I realize you need to introduce a progression model in an expansion or else there’s no reason the get it, but to radically force players to “progress or be left completely behind” is weak. Once I hit level 40 in WAR, I want to focus on the “endgame.” If I want another grind, I’ll make an alt thank you very much. Please don’t force my currently capped character to gain 10 more levels and grind a brand new wardrobe to remain competitive!

I sure hope Josh’s example was hypothetical…

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