The Daily Grind: Are heirloom items bad for MMOs?

@xSectarian
In other words, the crafting system is already so broken to begin with that heirlooms couldn't really break it any worse.

@aurickle

Yeah, basically. You know a crafting system sucks terribly when the developers have to put in crafting skill specific equalized stat bonuses to keep people from ignoring it.

But beyond that, heirloom items as a whole were essentially Blizzard's acknowledgement, even if it was stated under their breath and between the lines, that large parts of their game sucks to deal with.

Step 1: Decide you hate your class at end game? Either because of patches adjusting the meta-game so that the class you leveled is now no longer the class you have? Roll an alt and try again with that.

Step 2: Leveling an alt to cap is takes too bloody long because Blizzard feels the need to raise the cap with each expansion and no longer supports having multiple paths to take to said cap making the journey not only tedious but also exactly the same as the first time you did it? Buy some heirloom gear to make it that much faster so the pain is over with quicker.

Step 3a: Goto Step 1.

Step 3b: You actually found a class you like to play. Congratulations. I hope it doesn't get totally screwed over in the next patch.

Step n: Quit.

@aurickle, he said it's at low levels and you spin it to say the whole thing is broken.

do you work in politics?

@aurickle Crafting in WoW has always sucked.

As soon as I made my first item and realized that I'd never be able to make levelling gear before I outleveled it, I knew it was broken.

They fixed this a little in expansions with all beginner pieces being decent for levelling a bit, but then make anything beyond that, again, such a grind that you'd outlevel it before you could make it.

Add the fact that all max level crafted gear sucks beyond all suck and isn't worth the grind...Ugh.

I find Rifts crafting better, but not by much. I'm sure there's other MMOs that have amazing crafting systems that are a giant waste.
I think SWtOR was pretty decent, since you could farm and level at the same time.

@(Unverified)

I find crafting in WoW to be basically meaningless. The only things I actually like to craft are the useless, but fun, toys - simply because about everything else becomes useless, and worse than vendor sold gear, by the time the first or second content patch launches.

@aurickle ... This ^

That entire blog post assumes that ANY player, ANYWHERE was actually SEEKING to buy a low-level crafted item. Completely untrue. Players craft for one of three reasons: 1) they're a bit obsessive and they like fiddling with gathering mats and making things, 2) they're looking forward to the end game where SOME professions are useful, or 3) they are making things for their own use because they don't yet have heirlooms.

If Blizzard wants to support crafters, the place to start is to make crafted items just a bit better than the drops of the same relative level. Otherwise, it's less time and effort to get gear that way. Make it worthwhile, and they will come!

@doublerainbow

...It's voilà. Walla is a nonsense term used to simulate background chatter in film and television. *twitches*

@JuliusSeizure

thanks, not really important to know, but thanks.

@Ratham

PVE I don't think it was too bad, since the whole goal was to get you leveling quicker, though I did come to get bored of the same shoulders for 85 levels.

PVP wise though, they just eviscerated balance in the lower level battlegrounds and really should have been disabled. I wonder how many people decided to "give that warcraft" thing a go, went into Warsong gulch and spent 15 minutes getting totally slaughted by a Rogue packing dual heirloom daggers then decided it probably wasn't worth it.