Keen and Graev recently had a post about mudflation in EQ2, and I was thinking about how much worse a problem mudflation is in World of Warcraft due to the larger gap between expansions. Mudflation in the context of WoW expansions is when a new expansion comes out, raises the level cap, and the green random loot and quest rewards you get over the next couple of levels are actually better than the raid loot from the previous expansion. The further you came in the level 60 raid circuit, the longer your raid gear lasted, but by level 65 the MC / BWL gear was mostly obsolete, and by level 70 nobody was wearing any level 60 epics any more.
Mudflation has some solid marketing and design reasons, so we can expect the same to happen with the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. The marketing reason is that phat loot sells boxes. The design reason is that you want everybody at the same gear level once they hit the next level cap, to maximize the number of people that qualify gear-wise for the next raid circuit. If level 70 epic gear from the Black Temple was still required to start raiding the level 80 raid dungeons, there wouldn't be many people around to raid. And new players could never hope to catch up.
The specific problem of World of Warcraft is that there is so much more time between expansions, the average time between WoW expansions is twice the average time between EQ1 / EQ2 expansions. There were over 2 years between the original release of WoW and the first expansion, and there will be more than one year between the first and the second expansion. And leveling in WoW is relatively fast (compared to EQ1, not EQ2 where apparently people went from 70 to 80 in the Rise of Kunark expansion in a week). So somebody who started when the game was releases spent nearly 2 years at the 60 level cap, and will have spent nearly 1 year at the 70 level cap once the Wrath of the Lich King expansion comes out. And during all this time spent at the level cap he still improved his character by getting better and better gear.
Getting stronger by collecting gear at the level cap is a process that goes much slower than getting stronger by leveling up, and it has diminishing returns, it takes longer and longer to get stronger and stronger. But nevertheless the designers have to put in some possible progress, because once people feel they don't advance any more, they are likely to quit. So even with slow progress, after one or two years of it, you are considerably stronger than somebody who just dinged. And the new gear in the next expansion has to be better than the gear of the people who got furthest in the previous expansion, thus the longer the gap between expansions, the bigger the mudflation in the new expansion.
One unintended consequence of that is the gear progression for people who level up new characters after the expansion comes out. Currently everybody leveling up in old Azeroth leaves the place as soon as he hits level 58. The rewards you can get in the same time for doing a quest of level 58 in the Outlands as compared to a level 58 quest in Azeroth are much, much better. Even after the patch 2.3 upgraded the loot from the old world dungeons, I don't see people of level 58-60 do dungeons like Stratholme or Scholomance, when even the green loot of Outlands is better, and Hellfire Rampart would not be any harder and give even more awesome rewards. A lot of the previous level 60 content is now totally unused, and the same will presumably happen to the much larger amount of level 70 content currently in the game when the next expansion comes out.
Fortunately for Blizzard the patience to wait for deferred gratification, in spite of being considered a personality trait important for life success, is something that is very much lacking in many World of Warcraft players. I am always surprised how some raiders appear to raid mainly for the loot, and are willing to endure very harsh raid guild rules and schedules far beyond the point where the raid in itself is still fun, just to acquire some loot which will be obsolete in half a year. That is probably one of the reasons why many raiders can't understand the casual player's request for "easy mode" raiding with loot that isn't better than that of heroic dungeons. A raider thinks in terms of loot, and doesn't see the point of having an easy mode raid if he can already get the same level of loot in a heroic dungeon which is easier to set up. A casual player thinks in terms of different gameplay experience, and would like to have the choice between a tight heroic run and a larger, more relaxed raid experience. Personally I'm not an instant gratification kind of guy. I can live very well without epic loot, I only want to raid as long as the raiding experience is fun and play, not work and long hours late into the night. I know that come the next expansion I'll soon be equipped as well as the raiders, and even if I'll probably level to 80 a bit slower than them, that is actually the way I prefer it.
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