Vertical progression is inconsistent with the principles and core pillars of Forever
During the BlizzCon Forever What’s Next panel, Tim Jones identified several principles and “core pillars” guiding Forever. I would argue that vertical progression is directly inconsistent with almost all of these goals.
1. Approachable & Familiar. Included in this pillar, Tim states that “Azeroth should remain a dangerous world…”.
Generally, vertical progression makes the world less approachable. Absent retail-like catchup mechanics, new players will always have additional barriers to entry. And the release of content offering better rewards results in less people playing older content with inferior rewards.
But I think somewhat more importantly, vertical progression inherently makes Azeroth *less* dangerous. Raid tiers with progressively more powerful rewards leads to stat inflation. Higher tier raids will be tuned accordingly. But Azeroth / open world content cannot be tuned against this statistical inflation-we cannot tell new players “you must have T6 raid gear before you will be strong enough for the new zone Blizzard just added.” This inherently leads to an easier, less dangerous open-world experience.
2. The World as the main character.
Leveling 1-60 in Forever will likely be magical and I think Blizzard will hit this part of the journey out of the park.
But at end-game? People are incentivized to do the content that provides the best gear. This is true whether or not the form of content providing that gear is what people actually want to do.
Vertical progression, with Tier 2 being stronger than Tier 1, Tier 5 being stronger than Tier 4, Tier 8 being stronger than Tier 7, and so on… funnels people into instanced content and disincentivizes people from being out in the world because higher tier raid gear is better for all content and “world” gear is worse for all content.
Azeroth becomes the lobby to access instanced content rather than the “Main Character.”
3. Journey before destination.
Vertical progression is the de facto destination. The destination is getting the most powerful gear.
But end-game can still be about the journey!
Legion-like class order hall quest-lines. Quest-lines unique to each faction that are added to and updated in each patch. End-game gear crafted from professions. Elite out-door dungeon areas that drop rare materials for professions or have associated reputations rewarding end-game gear. This obviously is not the same as the 1-60 experience. But it is much closer to it. It is more like the journey and keeps us out in Azeroth proper.
Tim says “we believe your effort should matter and it should continue to matter.” But vertical progression disincentives all of this outdoor content because stat-inflated vertical progression raid gear will be inherently superior to anything players can acquire from the above activities.
4. Protect and nurture social experiences.
I don’t think vertical progression necessarily hurts social experiences, the best example is people forming guilds for raids. But I don’t think it is always a positive. I have been in far too many pug raids in retail WoW where no one ever says a thing-except to criticize people they think are underperforming.
On the other hand, horizontal progression means players can focus on the content they enjoy the most, and hopefully meet other people who like that content as well.
If someone wants to raid, go ahead! And the gear that drops in the raid can have context-specific bonuses that make it bis for the raid. If someone wants to focus on an exceedingly arduous reputation grind, go ahead. Alts? Sure. Your gear won’t be falling behind. Or you can spend time farming rare materials to craft something for your profession.
I think Blizzard is sitting on something magical with Forever. I am just worried they will end up tripping over themselves by focusing, once again, on vertical progression in a way that invariably hurts the long-term health of the game.