“Better three hours too soon than a minute too late.”
William Shakespeare
Time Elements
More and more it is hitting me just how insidious the design for the Artifact will be to level.
My plans for the first day and first week of Legion want me to get a good start, to build a strong foundation of profession alts and to go play and have fun. I look forward to exploring and to questing and to finding odd bits and to embrace the over-all design of Legion.
Typically with a new launch, players with Alts quickly flip through all of their characters so that they can begin building Rested. My intention is to do just that, build from the bottom up and ending with my Main who will go get the Artifact and make it to the Class Hall and; three, two, one: go!
The nagging little bit is that for every minute that I am on an Alt, I am not building Artifact Power on my Main. It is a dirty trick! Well, not a dirty trick, more like a time element in the design.
I have my Profession Alts who need to get to Dalaran and get their own Artifacts and the profession quests; six, seven, eight Alts? That is a big time buffer away from my Main.
And I do have a Main. I want to run dungeons, mythic plus dungeons and raid! I like playing with my guildies and friends.
Yet, I am leveling a ranged Shaman in Invasions right now and they are fun! I’d like to play that one too; sadly I’m locked into an Arms Race with my Artifact.
The more time I spend on my Main, the stronger I am — this is a new facet to the World of Warcraft game play. I can’t buy or create a bunch of high-end gear and be as good as the next guy; that Artifact will be either a beacon or an anchor.
I’ve decided (and that can change quickly) to port all of my Alts up on Day One, take the quests for the future day when I can invest in them, visit the trainers and pick up any profession quests available. Then, flip to the next guy and repeat. In this, I am very glad that we’ve already done the time consuming Broken Shore Scenario and the entry quests.
Oddly, the deciding factor for my Alts may be when my Main runs out of the Rested bonus. That is kind of strange as a reason. It may be best to wait for the next major patch (and speedier Artifact leveling) to then look to my Alt Factory.
The time invested element with the Artifact design is new to us. It could change the way we play by a large margin, at least for the first three months.
There will come a time in the Artifact leveling where the Next Step is a long one, each and every step; then we’ll start to think that we are “good enough” and begin to look at our Alts.
Remember long ago when the discussion on the gathering of the Blood of Sargeras; when the designers said that it was a product of time spent playing? I’m thinking that with the Blood and the Artifact that we may find other rewards that are purely based on the time we spend on our characters. We are used to Reputation but this is taking it to a new level.
We have three weeks until the first raid. It might be possible to get to 110 on my Main and begin to do rounds of World Quests and then look to a support Alt to level. Until raids begin to really soak up time (happily), we have a good chance to take care of our Alts; after we are at 110, I think.
Profession Alts should end at 110 and looking to the odd profession World Quests. That should be their End Game, right there. Getting to that point could take some time and more time.
Coffee Cakes and Crits 