New Content making old one obsolete

[Siyano_v1legacy]

my post is mainly directed toward Blizzard with WoW and Hearthstone, but can be applied to a lot of MMORPG and such.
If you look at WoW expansions, burning crusade was very great but made a lot of the old raid stuff obselete, making green drop you get in BC easily dethroned super hard to get epics/legendary from classic, also made most of the stuff from classic trivial. And then from BC to Lich King, its made an entire section of the game basically ghost town. As more expansion come along, it feel like barely only 10% of the real content is even use, luckily they added the timewalking so you can "relive" the old dungeon but that have been way way far in the timeline.

I feel like Blizzard not even care about the continuity in their expansion of Hearthstone, with the new expansion name release being Gnomes and Catacombs. Why? I know most of their expansion didn't made sense in continuity until then but come on... This is blatantly lazy, just making content to make content, so they can throw their bone to their huge following and make millions without really having to "force" them self into making some kind of story, mechanic sense from expansion to expansion.

But i'm pretty sure not just Blizzard does this kind of "easy" work behind their game.
My 2 cents

 

[Hawki]

Can't comment on WoW (or at least not the things you describe), but Hearthstone has never had continuity. It's gone from various aspects of Warcraft lore in a haphazard manner, and never tried to be self-serious about it. Seems bizzare to complain about that now.

 

[Siyano_v1legacy]

At some point I dont mind much if they take stuff from whatever lore they have, but they could at least somewhat "connect" mecanically or flavofully their card, you rarely see interaction with card with other sets

 

[sanquin]

Nevermind making old content obsolete (apart from getting to max level), what about the whole focus on max level thing? Technically it's even on topic, because focusing on max level makes everything before it obsolete. Even the new expansion areas and story become mostly obsolete once you hit max level.

I just don't like it at all really. Mmorpgs used to be about the journey just as much as the max level. But now everything before max level is so piss easy and feels so pointless after you got your first character through the areas and story.

BUT it's still WoW. It's still Blizzard. So I'll probably be buying the new expansion anyway, play through it, and quit again after a month or two.

 

[Siyano_v1legacy]

so true, a lot of the F2P had this problem, where the leveling was boring as hell and "mostly" useless and everything of the fun was "only" at the highest level
I dont mind leveling but when its pointless, not really challenging, what the point and make you learn barely 10-15% of what you really need to learn for end game

 

[sXeth]

As the MMOs go, its an inherent conflict of sorts. People want the series to proceed and refresh, but they also don't want their previous characters and accomplishments to be washed away. So instead of World of Warcraft 2 with a new character, new storyline, and fresh starts, you get World of Warcraft Expansion.

Now a sizable number of players are partially or wholly interested in mechanical power. So the new content has to provide gains for them to consider it worth doing. So naturally, the expansion overpowers and replaces the old. It is essentially the sequel game, but rather then a complete restart, it forces you to abandon the old content gradually. New characters and players probably even get a free pass to jump straight to the new arriving level.


The idea of an MMO-style game that keeps expanding horizontally rather then vertically is good on paper. But would need the most ridiculously interesting gameplay core to keep people playing while not actually progressing. Which becomes troublesome when you have to balance that gameplay against spotty online performance (latency is always a thing, so you can't have particularly tight timing or reflex gameplay) and incorporating potentially 6/10/20/50 player challenges.

 

[Trunkage]

I heard about this issue, but I've never played WoW. I can say that Elder Scrolls Online scales monsters to you. While there are some dead spots, many zones still have lots of people. Many of the favoured zones are for economic benefit, (buying and selling through guilds) not because its the newest (although the new one is always full)