Thoughts from a new (returning) player...
OK, so I have decided to return to the game, and level up a new toon (rogue of course). In the past, when a new expansion was released, for revenue generation, reaching cap as soon as possible was a priority, so it was a race to open all maps in the expansion, then reach cap by farming KM3 or WT4. Once capped, the best money to be made was historically farming elites for the most desirable weapons in the first few weeks of the expansions release.
This time, with experience on my side, and no pressing reason to hurry, I have leveled the old fashioned way....by playing the game and following the story arc.
At this point, I am level 35, severely undergeared, broke, and out of pots, but have begun working through the Glintstone maps. I have reached a few interesting conclusions that I did not pick up on my first time around, namely, from levels 1 to about 31, XP is relatively easy to gain through quests that grant 600-1,200 XP. Unfortunately, after level 31, specifically, in the Tindirin expansion, XP is difficult to earn as there are no quests that provide assistance.
I would have thought that farming Brackenridge elites would have provided better XP yields, but was disappointed that this is not the case. It seems that the best bang for the buck is to return to KM3 to gain XP....not follow the story arc.
Second, I have seen that gear availability is unreliable, with the exception of some twink brackets, and in those cases, the better gear is grossly overpriced relative to income generation potential for the level (for instance, what income generating loot is available at lv23???). With some smart purchases along the way, I have managed to stretch out my gear purchases as I have increased in level. As funny as it may sound, until I hit level 33, I was still using a lv13 Living Spirit helm, because high quality gear is prohibitively expensive, and the stat bump for low end legendaries didn't warrant the not-so-insignificant gold outlay. Every 10 levels or so, I have bough cheap legendary weapons, and at lv26, purchased some good rings and amulets, which I am still using.
In closing, here are some suggestions I would implement to improve the leveling experience for new players.
1) Continue to offer XP granting quests in Tindirin and beyond. These XP quests were a great help through Kraken and Shuyal in particular.
2) Provide non-tradeable/sellable rewards for quest completion that offers above average legendary quality gear to assist you as you level up (something akin to Dragonbone gear would be appropriate at each expansion).
3) Introduce some "rare drops" that could make low-level farming profitable
4) Create a "disassembly" function that grants crafting materials from the junk legendaries that flood the market at all levels. This would increase the value of these junk legendaries, and the resulting crafting could pump some much needed income into these low level farming areas.
5) Build in some "grinding" type quests like we had in Nordr, where after 100 boss kills, you get something that could provide some decent income.
I'll expand on my thoughts as I progress through the game, but these are my thoughts thus far. Very interesting going through the game again. There are a lot of changes that have been made that I appreciate, so I look forward to exploring the new elite world (when I grind my way to cap).
