Douglas

So, I've been pretty frustrated with WoW (although patch 2.3 looks like it'll help a lot). I've thought it over and thought it over, and I think the main source of frustration has been that I couldn't play the way I wanted to with the people I wanted to play with. And the single biggest reason for that is, we have not been able to stay in sync. We progress at different rates.

When I have 3 70s, but a guildmate's highest level character is 54, it puts a severe damper on our ability to play together. How do we solve this problem without an insane amount of effort on the part of players?

(One common answer I hear to that is along the lines of "get better friends" or "join a better guild" or something similar. That's a very frustrating answer for me -- I've got good real-life friends I want to play with. I want the game to allow me to play with them without introducing undue organizational overhead. I want the game to help me preserve communities, not shatter them.)

The best solution I've come up with is a mentoring system, where higher level people can temporarily nerf themselves down to lower levels, in order to play with teammates without trivializing their experience.

Here's how I imagine it would work.

You right-click on your portrait. Just as you can use that to select "Heroic" mode for instances, you can also use it to select "Mentor" mode.

So, doing that indicates that you're willing to temporarily "downrank" your character in order to play with others. Next we have to decide what level to reduce you to.

One way to handle it is, whenever you join a party, look at the level of the highest level person who has not turned on mentor mode, or the lowest level person who has. Pick that for your sync target. This has the advantage that it'll work for all content everywhere.

Another way to handle it is, whenever you enter an instance, look at the level of the final boss of that instance, and set your sync target to two (three?) levels below that. This has the advantage that, if you've got a bunch of bored 70s who feel like running through Deadmines, they can actually do so and be challenged, even if nobody around is of the right level. It gives us more options. But, it only works in instances.

So, once you've got your "sync target", your level is temporarily lowered to that. Higher level spells are greyed out. Other spells are downranked. Level-based calculations (hit/crit/glance/crush/whatever) are done with the lower level. Basically, the highest-level non-mentor character or lowest-level mentor character provide a "sync point".

Next we have to worry about bringing gear into sync.

One way to handle that is, do a calculation to average up the average ilevel and gear quality of that "sync target". Then reduce the power level of the downranked charcter's gear to about that equivalent level.

Another way to handle that is, for each level, simply place a cap on the stat you're allowed to have for that level as a mentor. I am not sure what would work best.

(In either case, if the system is implemented via syncing to an instance rather than a character, you could allow gear progression that way. For example, imagine that entering Molten Core capped your level at 60 and your gear at around T1 power levels, and entering BWL capped your level at 60 and your gear at around T2 power levels...)

We also have to bring talent points into sync. I don't have a good idea for how to do that at this time.

If they added a system like that, it would be much easier for groups of friends to have a good experience playing together even when their habits result in different rates of progression otherwise. With the "sync to a character" system, you'd be able to group up with anyone for anything. With the "sync to an instance" system, endgame characters would be able to experience every instance in the game as it was intended and without maintaining a stable of alts, without having to arrange their play time so as to avoid "outleveling" instances before they get around to them.

What do folks think?

One criticism I've heard is "this is too hard to do". I don't think it has to be, but if you can think of a way to simplify it without destroying the fundamental point -- I want to play my high-level characters with my lower-level friends without dominating their play experience -- great, please follow up!

Another criticism I've heard is "nobody will do it without incentives". Well, I would, and I know other people who would, but I agree that a typical PUGer probably wouldn't. Maybe there's some way to incentivize this? Heck, maybe the final boss of every single instance drops a heroic token for everyone who's there in mentor mode or something. Ideas?

Anyone have a completely different idea for solving the same exact problem?