Hypothetical Expansion 8: Tier 5

Scenario 8: Tier 5

The Possibility: To end my chain of hypotheses, I bring to mind a possible expansion which in fact would have made sense ages ago – the implementation of a fifth tier to separate lower levels and renown ranks from upper levels. This theory does go hand in hand with raising the renown and level cap but deserves its own category because it does not necessitate them in the current state of the game.

The Pros: As I stated in my prior post – tier 4 is not a fair fight. Separating people by renown rank would give new players entering tier 4 a fighting chance. My main came through T4 back when the best gear you could get was full Dark Promise, and those people were rare – seeing someone with even one piece invader made jaws drop. On average players were decked out in combinations of Dark Promise, Sentinel, and Annihilator – maybe some conqueror if you were lucky. Now as I bring up other toons my poor fellas in devastator get eaten in milliseconds by a RR80 choppa. He looks at me, I’m dead. It’s not fun. I knew a guy who hated T4 because he had no chance, so every time he hit level 32 he rerolled – to me that’s not what  Warhammer is about, yet people do it.

The Questions to be Raised:

• Mythic’s biggest argument against a T5 is that the population would not sustain it. I dont know if they ever considered that maybe new people would sub if there was a) a new tier to fight in and b)their lower level toons were on an even playing field in T4. Would this expansion create the population boost in WAR necessary for sustaining populations in all tiers?
• Where does T5 go? In most of the story lines T4 is on the home front of the factions capitol. Do you tack on a 5th tier to the existing pairings and somehow rework the story to accommodate for it sticking the cities behind T5 or do you leave them at the cap of T4 and have another tier…? Given the geographic mess the story lines are currently in I guess it doesn’t matter.
• Do we open up a new racial pairing and make it exclusively T5, forcing classes in that pairing to forgo their storyline and level in the existing three pairings.
• At what point do we cut T4 in half? Or does T4 remain RR32-RR80 with T5 being RR81-100?
• New maps? New scenarios? New pqs? New armor sets? I likey but would Mythic go through the work to do it?

The Finances: This is a mixed bag. People would re-sub to see tier 5 but the question is would the momentum stay to keep the population alive in every tier or would it dwindle and create 5 tiers with skeletal populations. There are already arguments to condense the game to three tiers to remove the dead zone that is t3 (although with the LotD changes t3 may regain life yet!). Temporary financial boosts without a sustained population… could bring the end to WAR.

Conclusion: Although in my heart T5 is something that should have existed ages ago I fear what this would do to the game if the population did not hold after the expansion, let alone the fact that Mythic has stated they do not favor T5 because it would force them to rework mobs in dungeons that coincide with T5. I believe T5 could only be implemented with an expansion which was guaranteed to bring in huge numbers – like the implementation of new racial pairings because everyone is in love with Skaven. As a stand alone expansion I do not think this would be a prudent move, as a tag along expansion to new content which could be experienced T1-4 this could very well work.