From Agravayne

Blizz, I'm really interested in how you plan on handling this game long term. I watched the E3 Video today and Jeff Kaplan said that the algorithms for gear and skills and levels etc in WoW are set to work with an endless number of levels. The question becomes then, how do you plan on continuing the increasing quality of gear as the level cap continues to move upwards (as I presume it will again in the future)?

With the current trend, somewhere down the line players will have near 100%chance to crit, will never miss... basically, will this become a runaway train?

I've toyed with an idea, it's far from perfect, but basically I've always had a problem with this flood of "Epic" gear.

The epic quality gear only starts showing up at higher levels, and then suddenly its all over the place. I understand with item levels the stats are limited to certain ranges, but when it gets to the point that "epic" items aren't even rare... that just sorta defeats the purpose doesn't it.

I was standing in IF yesterday (how surprising...) and saw TWO players with the legendary sword Ashbringer. Now I dunno if that seems odd, but and item that is supposedly so rare that its not even epic but its legendary and two of em show up together...

Finally to my point, I wonder if it would fit with your program to have either a cap or decay on the said items, or both, so that they're numbers remain small.

Much like honor decay, without it everyone would eventually become GM/HWL, without this idea, everyone *could* eventually be running around with full Tier 3 epic's and legendary's etc... how boring is that... I would feel jipped if I put in all that effort to get something that turns out to give me *no* benefit over other players cause they have the same thing...

So, maybe it wouldn't work, the decay wouldn't be active on active acounts, basically it would be there to keep recirculating items on characters people abandon but don't delete, while the "cap" on items would maintain their epic status, rather than allowing them to be the norm...

I'm starting to rant so I'll quit now.

edit:changed subject, askandi to ashbringer (original error)

Eyonix's Reply

The "current trend" will change dramatically once the expansion releases. The items being obtained now will simply be stepping stone achievements, for the most part. The world of Azeroth will continue to evolve and those seeking greater power and items of epic proportion, will have much in the way of opportunity.

I'm not sure what to say concerning your request to limit the number of epic and legendary items obtainable. Decay? Where's the headache guy when you need him. Ashkandi is still a very rare item, despite the fact that you've seen two of them in IronForge. A very small percentage of players wield this item, I assure you. Many realms don't have a single character in possession of a legendary item. Those with orange texted items are still unique and beautiful snowflakes.

As the game evolves, the current "to-die-for" items will be yesterday's news. Everyone will be chasing the "next-big-thing", and so on and so forth.