Ghostcrawler made a post yesterday about how the stats on gear are continuously increasing with each expansion and with each new tier.  Will we eventually be running around with 10,000 Spell Power and 100,000 health?  Is this a problem?

According to Ghostcrawler, it isn’t a problem.  Numbers are arbitrary no matter what size they are and they’re only really a problem when they become hard for the human mind to comprehend.  When most people talk about gear scaling they talk about how percent based stats scale, things like crit chance and spell haste.  These numbers necessarily have a cap and as you reach that cap it can cause a lot of issues with the game.  But for the more basic stats like health, spell power and attack power, the actual numbers don’t really matter.

The one comment I have to make about that is the numbers do kind of matter, at least in regards to old content and world PvP.  With each new expanion, and each new tier, the numbers have to get exponentially bigger in order to be relevant.  If we were still getting the same upgrades for each new piece of gear that we were getting at level 10, the upgrades would be so small compared to what stats we already have that they would be inconsequential.  No one would care about gear.  The upgrades we get have to be percentage based… we always get say a 2% upgrade on our gear.  As our gear gets stronger, that 2% gets bigger.

What this means is that the old content is getting exponentially easier with each new expansion.  We’re not just increasing in power linerally or by an equal amount each expansion… we’re actually increasing in strength exponentially, getting incredibly strong compared to our original incarnations at level 60 or lower.  I don’t think this is a problem that Blizzard is concerned with.  They don’t care if we’re soloing AQ40 at level 85 since it is 5 year old content.  But it does do funny things with the game when it comes to lore and immersion and world PvP.  As we get stronger and stronger it makes us more and more like gods compared to our lower level guild-mates and lower-level mobs.  Each new expansion is an even greater jump in power than the last expansion.

This isn’t something Blizzard can fix without ending character progression, which would end the game.  But it is interesting to note that there are some consequences to stat and gear scaling that Blizzard isn’t really talking about.  I’m curious to see how high the gear scaling will go before the World of Warcraft finally comes to an end.