Warcraft: Character Retirement System
Throughout the years, we’ve seen many different systems incentivize all the different kinds of content World of Warcraft has offered in its lifespan. The WoW community is made up of such a large variety of players and the game itself offers some form of content for basically every aspect of its player base.
In Battle For Azeroth, we saw the introduction of Allied Races, which catered to player agency and those who enjoy the leveling experience with the introduction of Heritage Armor. This was intriguing for me, yet also a little off-putting, as someone who has been playing the game since December 2004 and already has every class at max level. So after some self-reflection and pondering around what would entice me to pursue the leveling experience again, I came up with the concept of Character Retirement.
Character Retirement
This is a systems design concept I devised where, upon reaching max level, you have the option to retire a character. Upon doing so, that character will essentially be deleted, but you are also granted some form of a reward for the time and effort you invested into that character. My initial thought was something like a certain amount of gold on the server you leveled that character on, but this could also go the path of cosmetic rewards such as mounts, titles, transmogs, etc, or even something along the lines of enhancing the potency of Heirloom items to improve future leveling. I’d be interested to hear what other reward ideas folks have as well – reply in comments below!
So looking at this system in a practical sense, for my situation – I could take one of the classes I’ve already leveled, say my Gnome Mage who is fresh level 120 (BFA), retire him for some reward (gold or otherwise), and then create a new Nightborne Mage. It provides me some incentive to not only participate in the new content that is the Allied Races and Heritage Armor, but also increases the health of the leveling zones by ultimately increasing the population of players leveling in the Retail experience.
If we look at “leveling” as a type of content, comparable to dungeons, raiding, PvP, or pet battles, this starts to make more sense. The goal with a theme park MMO is to provide a variety of different healthy content experiences so players have the option to invest their time into what they enjoy, while sharing the world with other players in the world. So what this concept of Character Retirement tries to incentivize is leveling as a viable, replayable option of a content loop.
Thinking Forward
Something Warcraft has not done very well historically, but are starting to improve with the introduction of systems like Timewalking, Party Sync, and even Allied Races to an extent, is the goal of making older content viable, healthy, and active on a daily basis. As we look externally, games like Elder Scrolls Online, Guild Wars 2, Star Wars: The Old Republic demonstrate the potential of how we can leverage scaling and rewards to incentivize the gameplay of older content. In those games, it’s common to see daily or weekly quests that ask you to go to an older zone, dungeon, or raid to complete some objectives for currency used in current end game. If we look at Warcraft, Timewalking is about as close we get to that, with so many systems, content, and countless developer hours just sitting there unused.
Now looping back to Character Retirement, making the leveling experience an incentivized form of content opens a lot of opportunities for the game, as well as the community to leverage. For example, if we look at our friends over at WoW Challenges, their Iron Man competition could greatly benefit from a system such as this, on top of very likely attracting more participation, given the incentive. This is just one example, but if we’ve learned anything about the World of Warcraft community over the years, it’s that they are a creative bunch and the more options you provide, the more creative they will get.
Conclusion
I won’t ramble on any further, as I feel I’ve communicated the concept, as well why I think it would be a positive addition to the game – especially as we move into the level squish and updated leveling experience we will see in Shadowlands. I’m curious what you think – as someone who plays Warcraft, or even if you don’t, what are your thoughts on a system like this that incentivizes the leveling experience? For me, having duplicate classes feels like wasted effort and then deleting a character obviously feels much worse. Share your thoughts in the comments below and let’s have a chat about how we can make this game we love even better moving forward. Thanks guys.
In the game called Fate, when you “retire” a character, you can pass down one of your items to your “successor”. The item gets a random buff when you do that. Doing this multiple times can leave you with a very very powerful item. Typically players will do it with something that doesn’t require a high level character to equip (like a ring, as opposed to a weapon), so it can be used immediately with your new character. Just a thought!
Nice, I dig it! I’m not sure how it would translate into WoW – but maybe it could be something around timeweaving / crafting affixes or empowering Heirlooms. Since related content, it could be a progression loop that would benefit itself the more you invest into it – or something along those lines!
I would say no on the deleted part but something I’ve been suggesting is buffs for the characters you level so say you make a new race lightforged dranie and get it to max level get a 1% increase in a primary stat like intellect for the dranie gives you a reason to level other races not worrying about the class and make you more bound to your account each race offers the buff once and then people would level all the races to get more stacking buffs to there stats causing people to play more or pay for boosts
So this might work for open world stuff, but I’d imagine it would quickly run into issues when it comes to end game balancing, as well as creating a side effect of “requiring” this type of leveling investment for anyone who wants to put out optimal DPS/HPS. I do think, however, something like empowering Heirlooms could be a related alternative to increase power while leveling as a form of reward.
My sons and I have talked about this years ago. Our idea was that your character would die while killing some massive apocalyptic threat to Azeroth, and then Stormwind would have an instanced Hall of Heroes where you could visit statues of your retired characters and see tributes to their achievements.
Oooh, Hall of Heroes, I dig it! Yeah, I think something like this could be really great as a means of documenting your accomplishments (on top of achieves, titles, etc).
Even supposing enough people would be interested in something like this, you have two problems: 1) if gold is the reward, it’d mess up the economy real bad. Blizzard already tries their hardest to funnel excess gold out via tokens and absurdly expensive mounts, I highly doubt they’d feel inclined to put more back in. 2) If the reward offers a tangible advantage to players, people will feel pressured into effectively deleting the characters they’ve spent years of their lives playing. Unlike other games, mmo characters don’t have an expiry date where you can decisively say you’ve done all you can do. That character will still be viable in future, when new content drops. They only become more valuable to the player over time, not less. Adding on to that, if the reward scales with investment in the character, that means there’d be incentive (and therefore, pressure) to delete the characters that matter most to the player. If the reward is substantial enough (and it would HAVE to be, for the average player to justify doing something like that), top-end raiding guilds would demand it of new recruits, to gain any possible advantage, thereby shutting a lot of people out of that level of content. And even amongst that community, few would be willing to part with their longstanding characters. But let’s say you weren’t talking about that, and rather you just meant people “retiring” characters freshly at max level… why? lmao. What’s the reward? Again, gold doesn’t work. Cosmetics wouldn’t change gameplay, it’d be an identical grind, and they already exist in the form of heritage armor. Hitting max level isn’t even difficult to do! Also, you don’t explain any real ideas at all in this article, nor actually clarify the benefits. “This concept will make people want to level because… it will make people want to level!” And then you suggest gold as the reward, as if that would do anything to alter the levelling experience you’ve become so fatigued with (it won’t). You were on to something by mentioning the iron man challenge, because that actually changes the levelling experience without destabilising things for endgame players. How about instead of this retirement idea, there could be an option to level to max whilst under some sort of restrictions, like the iron man challenge? It could be anything: no mounts is an easy one, but you could go more creative and have a levelling mode where you can’t use healing spells or abilities, only potions that you have to craft yourself. Or a mode where your health and mana function as hunger and thirst bars, where they deplete slowly over time and you can’t use healing spells/abilities/potions, you can only get water by visiting lakes/rivers and getting water there, and to eat you have to hunt mobs to get meat and things off them. Stuff like this would change the levelling experience, make it fresh and new and fun. Character retirement would not, *and* it would destabilise either endgame content or the game’s economy.
I’d agree gold is very likely not the proper approach here, which is why I was requesting other opinions and alternatives. We are definitely aligned with the priority of ensuring the rewards or benefits do not directly impact player power, as the implications of that would indeed create a situation that “forces” players to participate, which is obviously not intended.
I like the idea of leveling modifiers, but I’d imagine something like custom servers would likely accommodate that approach more (RuneScape has done this for years). A thought I had was potentially doing something like upon retiring a character, you could do something like enhance a piece of Heirloom gear – which would scope its potency to the leveling experience (likely *some* balancing required).
With the change of leveling 1-60 in Shadowlands intended to be 10-20 hours (likely less), this feature is really intended for those folks who just genuinely enjoy the leveling experience. As with every system – it won’t be for everyone, nor is it really at all realistic to design for everyone in today’s world. But in the context of reward for performing the progression loop, I think there are a lot of possibilities including cosmetic / prestige rewards including titles, mounts, transmog, etc that would not affect economy or balancing in any way whatsoever.
Love the idea. I think those who have supported the wow franchise long enough to have leveled that many characters should get one resonable conceled request exclusive to there account and what they desire from game developers. A wish if you will. (Within reason).
Haha, interesting. So SWTOR does something called Legendary Status. It’s nothing really, besides custom Flair (icon next to your name) and a Title, I believe. But just something to show off the accomplishment might be nice at the very least!
That’s a great idea. But I would take it even further. Have a cut scene where all your npc come to pay respect to the dying charter one last time. Pertaining to the class and faction is how they perform their burial rituals. And just like some cultures. You can have your possession sold for gold or handed down to other characters you have. You can even help sell the charters home or stronghold if they own one. This will open up so many possibilities for Blizzard. Then you can also charge players for burial sites coffins or cremation etc etc etc. What a genius idea. Great article. Thank you.
Creative! Yeah, I think there are a lot of pathways this feature could be taken, for sure. My concept was very light (intentionally), because I think this could evolve in many different ways – but having it be lore-driven isn’t one I had originally considered. We could definitely see some interesting ways for the process to play out, based on class or race that would be pretty fun!
Why gold? That’d be the worst way to do it. Something that would make more sense would be a sort of prestige system (similar to COD) that’s barred behind the current Heroic endboss (you can prestige after getting any AOTC achievement)
Maybe your next mage gets different colour or flavour spells, entirely new spells, special heirloom gear for transmog, a mount. Maybe you can unlock exclusive races?
Prestige 5 druid give you Keeper of the Grove
Prestige 5 warrior lets you be a Vyrkul
Prestige 5 Warlock lets you be a dreadlord
Totally – I think there are many different ways rewards could pan out, potentially even offering a choice, based on what that specific player would find most interesting or useful. But I agree that having some form of progression loop to enhance the return of the investment would be pretty cool, particularly around things that might be considered rare or prestigious.
It’s a nice concept, but it won’t work in WoW. The retirement system is not something you see in MMORPGs as in those types of games, the character is very very important to establishing the individual in the world that is Warcraft. People pour hours and hours into a character, some only play one their entire journey. Taking away that character, forcing them to delete the character they loved and worked so hard on simply wouldn’t fly.
Retirement is a rougelike system that only works in those games. Imagine, if you will, with wows loot grind and systems upgrade paths, raiding achievements, gear, etc., having to reset from the beginning to do that grind again. Albeit, it’s a good incentive for going back through the leveling system, sure, but you’ll find not many people are eager to go through it again unless they absolutely have to with alts, and even then people often opt to boost up to current content.
I love the concept, and it sounds that it’s a great system in other games, but WoW is simply a bad home for the system.
I think it’s highly contextual to the player, honestly. Would I ever “delete” or “retire” my Rogue who I’ve mained since Wrath, or my Paladin I made in 2004? Definitely not. However, I would consider deleting one of the 16 max level toons I have, to level another Allied Race in the same class. The larger problem being the incentive to do so. But I think it’s important to note that this feature definitely isn’t intended to be for everyone, but at the same time – it’s intended to address a variety of use cases.
I don’t think this progression loop / system is intended for main characters, as much as really catering to those who just enjoy the leveling process (comparable to how pet battles was created to cater to those who enjoy that game system vs raiding or pvp).
Not sure how many would be interested in having their characters deleted, sorry retired, they’ve invested in for years and lived through content after content. Maybe its different now and characters feel throwaway to newer players. But older players would go through hell and back to keep the characters they invested in since Vanilla. I find it almost obscene to think of retiring the characters that were with me all these years. Euthanasia in return for gold and greed. Lovely.
Yeah, I would agree that this system would not really be at all intended for main characters or those you have invested years into. However, as we look forward with the new leveling experience being 10-20 hours max and Allied Races being another option – that context changes quite heavily for those who just genuinely love the leveling experience.
As someone who currently has 30 max lvl toons with 2 more at 112 and more to come, I find this idea to be unfathomable. I have only ever deleted one toon in over 11 years of playing and it will never happen again. It just seems wasteful and no amount of gold or stuff could make me do that. I lvl each toon and gear them up to around 450 ilvl and then continue. I’m not looking forward to shadowlands at all!
They should allow your heroes to retire and take up regular jobs, like tavern owners or tailors. For some a shack in the hills no doubt….
Or for the truly unique opportunity of rare loot you could make the boss fights to obtain the loot be permadeath battles….you win, you win big time, you lose and it’s game over.
They could and should introduce ageing and ultimately retirement and death then your heirlooms and adventures really would mean something to the next generation of characters you play with.
Also it will help people deal with the day when Blizzard turn the servers off one day……it’s gonna happen people
Interesting ideas – would very likely require some rework or probably even just custom server types to accommodate the more “hardcore” concept you mentioned. But introducing new ways to play and different approaches is interesting.
I think that the retire concept is a brilliant Idea. I love the leveling experience. But i think that the reward should be account bounded like Heirlooms. OR upgrade prices for retirement.
I deleted many chars tot start new ones with many expensions.
In alle for your plan.
Nice, yeah I think your playstyle and preferences of systems probably aligns exactly with why this feature concept exists – fingers crossed we something to really incentivize that style of gameplay!
As someone who plays MMO’s primarily for the leveling process I think WoW is by far the worst of the big MMO’s to play. WoW has the most boring, monotonous gameplay if any MMO by modern standards. I’m not into raiding, I don’t care about gearing up. I love the open, ever changing worlds only MMO’s can offer. Guild Wars 2, ESO, SWtOR and FF14 all offer vastly superior leveling experiences. WoW is just a grind fest and race to max level. It’s all about gear.
As someone who also spreads himself thin across multiple different MMOs, I’d agree that in the context of leveling – WoW has indeed been fairly stale and doesn’t provide much depth. That said – there are a variety of ways you can level in WoW, which is a nice perk – but I think with the level squish and rework in Shadowlands, the questing leveling should actually be a little bit improved.
However, if you just don’t enjoy the questing experience that WoW has to offer (totally valid), your opinion will likely not change – even with the improvements (and 100% it’s designed to be all about the gear, for sure).
How about retiring sends them to your mains garrison and you can use them for their professions (as far as they progressed), if they are a gathering room, you can pay some resource currency and they will produce expansion selected gathering materials over time as they did in your garrison.
Ah, that’s a neat idea. Even if they weren’t interested in making Garrisons content current again – they could definitely fit some form of flavor in with customizing followers for mission table stuff – particularly with the new auto-chess stuff for Shadowlands. Pretty neat concept.
Not a great idea. Itll just lead to more pay to aquire. People will wanna make a character, buy level boosts. Then “retire” them to unlock everything cosmetic. The putting more plays in the world not at max lvl is unlikely. Remember theres buyable level boosts. Gold means nothing in the game nowadays so that wouldnt be a good incentive to “retire” a max level character.
Not sure the level boost argument is valid, given the tech already exists to distinguish a boosted character to invalidate eligibility (Heritage Armor). I do agree the gold reward probably is not the strongest option, however – although I think providing it as an option for those who would find it most useful is likely helpful.
Mm maybe not a retirement but a reincarnate system. Any non boosted toon leveled to max can be reincarnate to a new class, race, and gender with an account wide xp boost. Say 2-5% each time capped at 50% with gold boosts after xp to keep players leveling, after that could do rep, exc.. would get rid of heirloom items, and would always have characters at all different levels making all content viable for groups. Would also get skilled players slumming with is lower level toons teaching us the ropes.
Much love vasaad
I like this idea – this is close to what I had in mind regarding empowering heirlooms, as it would feed its own content loop. I think the point about bringing more experienced players alongside the newer or slower paced players is also a huge benefit – something other games like ESO and FFXIV do very very well.
Check out DDO (Dungeons & Dragons Online), it’s been doing that for years, called Reincarnation. You “delete” a character and start a “new” one and gain a minuscule perk from your “previous life”, such as +1 damage, etc. This brings a new sub game to the game, of cycling through many lives stacking up the bonuses.
Ah, very interesting – I was not aware DDO had this, as it’s one of the few MMOs I haven’t invested all too much time into. While I’m not sure the power increase would work in WoW (maybe if it was scoped to the leveling process), I think the concept with a bit of tweaking could likely work quite well!
I think it’s a workable idea. Have the option to bring them out of retirement, or make them an NPC working at the garrison or class hall.
For sure, I think this could be pretty neat. FFXIV does something *similar* with custom followers through their Squadron system. Not retired characters, but followers with much more personality and cosmetic flair than the typical WoW followers we get for those types of systems.
The whole reason to level up a character is so you never have to go through the trouble of leveling that character up again…
I’d say this feature would really be catering those who enjoy the leveling experience, which it sounds like is probably not you, haha.
I have so many max level characters that I’ve started to make spec specific ones after populating The Horde and The Alliance with max levels of all classes. I may have interest in something like this.
Very nice! Yeah, I think this would probably be something that you might be able to benefit from. For me personally, I don’t really have a desire to have duplicate classes, as it starts to feeling overwhelming. So based on personal threshold of enjoyment, this could be useful to help with that a bit for sure.
I like it. Retire the ton. They work at a pub or whoever. You automatically get wages they earn. Steady flow of income. Plus other perks you mentioned. I likes.
It’s not a bad idea, but I would rather have the remaining pieces of heirloom armor more since I heard wow is taking the Xp bonus off of them.
I had a similar idea a few years back. When you retire your character, it becomes a random spawn NPC mob in an elite dungeon, appropriately placed based on its power. It can drop any item it’s carrying (with some obvious limitations, like event rewards, etc.)
One word, classic.
Maybe if they made leveling something that takes more then 2 days it would actually be worth a damn, but you’re better off just leveling toons in classic.