In a recent interview at the Guild Summit Georg Zoeller had this to say:
Georg Zoeller: (Source) I don’t think three Operations is optimal; you probably want to go at least four or five but that’s not necessarily my call. That is Gabe’s call and everyone else who is involved, but we need to build a nice state of endgame. We’re building up and yes, at some point you have the discussion “which point do we have an accessibility problem?” You need to be able to get new blood in there.
If you’re not sure what he’s talking about, they announced that the 3 modes for Operations will now be Story Mode, Hard Mode, and Nightmare Mode. The 1.2 Legacy Patch will release a new Operation that has a Story Mode and a Hard Mode only. Sometime in the future, most likely 1.2.1 or 1.2.2, Nightmare Mode will be released as well.
In addition to this they will be adding new mechanics to Hard Mode (not new animations), and Nightmare Mode will also have additional mechanics beyond Hard Mode. They said that Nightmare needed to be a nightmare. If you missed my article, The Heroes of MMO’s, I talk about some of the changes that needed to be made and are in fact currently in the pipeline for release.
What’s amazing about Georg’s statement is that he recognizes and sees that the range of player skill and need for challenge can’t be neatly quantified by three simple degrees. That in fact to reach everyone equally they need a more diverse scaling method to satisfy all of their players. I for one am truly impressed with that level of foresight and open mindedness.
But what about you guys? What do you think of having possibly four to five different Modes for Operations? Keep in mind that all Operations are intended to be on the same lockout except for Story Mode (the easiest setting), so you’d only be doing one “difficult” Ops each week. Leave a comment below telling us what you think!
-Suffer Well Brothers and Sisters…
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