How ‘Bout Those Invasions?
Has there been a more well-received or better designed expansion launch event in WoW?
Or, hell, any MMO?
Top to bottom, the Legion invasions have been amazing. I mean, yeah, Blizzard is essentially bribing everyone with loads of free XP to avoid slogging through the content in their own game. That’s the thing though: everyone is involved. Leveling alts? Get in there and gain 1.5 levels per Invasion. Already at max level? Get chests of raid-worthy loot. Already geared out? Have some lucrative toys to sell or appearances to unlock.
All of this is fairly unprecedented. Hell, I had to go back and look up what the prior pre-launch events even were. The last notable one was the Scourge invasion back before Wrath. Sure, that was fun for a time – I still remember actually role-playing a paladin as I griefed players trying to turn into undead (by Cleansing them) and/or releasing their shackled souls once they turned. What of the others? An Elemental Invasion for Cataclysm was just a convenient way to stock up on, erm, elementals. Mists was… Theramore scenario? I still haven’t seen that in-game, and I’m not even sure I can. Then there was some max-level Iron Horde nonsense for Warlords, yeah?
In any case, this current one is currently the new bar, IMO. It involves players of all levels, and provides incentives to players of all gear levels.
Posted on August 29, 2016, in WoW and tagged Bribe, Easy XP, Launch Event, WoW, Wrath. Bookmark the permalink. 9 Comments.
In An Age 
Don’t forget that they still haven’t announced when we get to fly in legion tho. Hoping its not WoD all over again. :< Its a trap!
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At least they announced the requirements, e.g. Pathfinder achievement. It does indeed suck that it’s some indeterminable amount of time in the future. Considering that they were seriously contemplating not implementing flying at all, it’s progress.
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Damn it man! You’re making want to re-sub.
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The pre-event being all but over now might temper that a bit. I certainly would be feeling different if there was not all this easy XP up for grabs. As it stands, I already ordered Legion from Amazon and will try and get a few more levels on alts later today.
The likelihood that I stick around for the entire expansion are close to zero though. We’ll see.
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Agreed, it was a really nice way of catching up on alts while doing new things. Some mini-boss were overtuned on the one-shot side of things, but it was still manageable to optimize the XP gain.
We’ll how long the expansion fun lasts. My personal threshold is quite low these days, one month of fun and I’ll be fine with it. It will more or less equal the price of a new console game or not waiting for a Steam sale for roughly the same amount of time, that’s good enough for me.
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If the xp and rewards weren’t there, would the actual gameplay enjoyment hold up?
Asking because you can’t maintain the xp and rewards forever (or even very long), so short-term it works, but that’s about it.
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I mean, it’s kind of a silly question. “If you remove all forms of progression, would people still run it over and over?” The answer is No. In this sense, perhaps the Wrath pre-expansion event pulls ahead, because the ability to start a massive plague and grief other players was entertaining enough for many to keep doing so despite there being no rewards.
But the thing is, this event lasted an entire month. The risk, if anything, is of people burning themselves out by running it too many times. In the scheme of pre-launch events getting entire servers – of every type of player, at all levels – involved for a whole month though… nothing else comes close.
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Clan wars in CoC suck in terms of progression (you likely spend more than you gain), but people do that content over and over because the gameplay is fun. Not disagreeing with you that this event seems to be working in terms of activity, just wondering if the actual gameplay is good, or if its just reward-based involvement.
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It’s the equivalent of a 1-gem barracks/collector boost event in CoC. Obviously not sustainable forever, but if your interest in the game is flagging (due to content drought or wallgrinding hell), something like this does wonders to revitalize it.
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