There are still quite a few things that have me worried about HoT, but I expect most of them to be dismissed later on as we get more information. One I do not expect to be come a non-issue is that of power creep and content relevancy.
“But way!” you may say “there is no vertical progression, so there can’t be a power creep!”
But something a lot of people in the MMO community tends to forget is that power creep comes in many forms. Guild Wars 1 had no vertical progression at all – no raised level cap, no larger skill bars or higher attribute cap, no better gear stats, etc. But it still suffered from power creep. Even if you ignore the addition of heroes, Prophecies content became far easier than Nightfall, Eye of the North, and Beyond content. This “ease of old content” took many forms: available skills and professions for players (both with stronger skills and stronger combinations of skills), and enemies being more complex (compare the enemies of Prophecies to that of Nightfall, or those of Nightfall to those of Beyond) are just two major cases. Naturally, improved henchmen builds and the addition of heroes (and later the extended number of heroes a single player can bring to a party) all attributed to this as well. Now, even if you go full henchmen, Prophecies is far easier than what it was in 2005 or even 2006.
With Heart of Thorns, we see specializations, masteries, new dynamic event systems, and so forth. With Season 2 we’ve began to see some power creep in the new maps. Silverwastes is far more profitable of a map than Orr, Frostgorge, or Southsun. The events in Silverwastes and Dry Top are more complex and challenging – for the most part – than events in Orr. As time goes on, the systems will advance more and more, enemies will become more complex. Older content will become more and more irrelevant – both because it becomes easier, and because it becomes less profitable. New maps means new rewards that the old maps can’t offer, and will often include some of the old rewards as well (such as T6 materials).
Even restricting masteries – all or some – to the new areas will not prevent it. Merely slow it, but likely not by much as the major issue comes from specializations and the complexity of event and enemies.
This issue happens to coincide with the problem of downscaling – as new content is made, it will be mostly (if not solely) for level 80 characters. Thus low level areas become less relevant as well. Downscaling only does so much currently, resulting in low level areas exceedingly simple for high level players as it is. Add in power creep? And it becomes even easier – something downscaling is meant to avoid.
TL;DR: I fear that, just like with Guild Wars 1, this expansion will create a power creep that makes old content irrelevant.
The question thus becomes: How do we prevent this?
Well, in my opinion, the “best” solution would be to rework the older content so that it can remain challenging even with the new progressions of the players, so that the old content remains as complex as the new content. Basically, do to the vanilla content what was done to Tequatl. Not every single bit, perhaps, but the majority of it.
But the issue in this comes in that as more content is designed to be more complex and more horizontal progression for players is made, more content needs to be revamped. And if you get too zealous in revamping, then those who don’t have access to the progression may not be able to beat the old content. Thus it really isn’t the best option.
I’ve said my 2 cents. I’m sad I don’t really have a plausible answer other than “ignore it” (a bad answer, if you ask me, but one Anet’s known for as GW1 shows). Thus I open the floor to others. What do you all think of this?
