The Problem of 'ilvl Creep'

*Amateur math and statistics inside.

Everyone is familiar with the 'gearing up' routine in WoW: Defeat encounters and get better gear from them. Use this better gear to tackle the next, harder encounter. Get new gear from this harder encounter and take on the next, harder encounter. Get new gear from this harder encounter and...you get the picture.

There is no problem of gearing up, progressing, and moving forward in the game. In fact, there is quite a bit of fun to be had in the process! My problem is the current stage of WoW is suffering from 'ilvl creep'. What I mean is that quality of gear available to level 80 characters is creeping higher and higher with each content patch.

I assume most of you know by now that every item has an item level, or 'ilvl' that shows the item's relative power to other items. This means not every epic (purple) item is equal. Take, for example, Noth's Curse, a drop from Naxxramas 10-man. It's ilvl is 200. It has 184 points of stamina, intellect, and spirit combined. It also has 2 gem sockets, about a 1% increase in haste, and 85 spell power. Now let's look at the best current item of the same type, Runetotem's Headpiece of Triumph, at ilvl 258. It has 318 combined Sta/Int/Spi, 2 sockets, a 2% increase in crit, and 151 spell power. Very roughly calculated, the ilvl 258 piece has a 75% increase in stats!

(Yes this is one item of many, I checked some other comparisons and found similar increases of 65-75%)

Notice however, that ilvl 258 divided by ilvl 200 is 1.29, or only a 29% increase in ilvl. In other words, the amounts of stats on an item are increasing faster than ilvl is. For every ilvl you add, the item gets 1.29% stronger.

Enough numbers yet?

Here's some more - way back in 2004 dinosaurs roamed the earth, and the level cap was 60. Epic items were rumors, and the few level 60s that were around were busy conquering Upper Blackrock Spire and Scholomance. The highest ilvl item then? 63. 60->63, not a huge gap, eh? Then we got Molten Core, Blackwing Lair, Ahn-Qiraj, and the first version of Naxxramas. When all was said and done, the level 60s were running around in tier 3 armor with an average ilvl of 88. 88/60=1.47. In other words, the gear was 47% over their level. Now at level 80, after 2 expansions and 6 more tiers of gear, we are at 258, (never mind that a few of the hard mode rewards are at ilvl 272!) 258/80=3.225, a 223% increase over their level.

I hope you can see through my slipshod math to the demonstrable trend: Gear is improving at an increasingly exponential rate compared to Character level and even to ilvl.

What if gear was scaled at original levels? The first tier of epic armor sets were at ilvl 66. 9 tiers at 6 ilvl per tier would put us up 54, to ilvl 114. That would put us at the level of gear dropped in Kharazan, the first raid dungeon in the Burning Crusade. This is roughly equal to the green gear you can pick up as a level 68 in Northrend. It seems to be straightforward, but why wasn't it done this way? I think its because players wouldn't get the satisfaction of noticeable improvement in their character.

If you raided throughout all the dungeons of WotLK and killed Arthas, but only gained 30 intellect and 50 spell power along the way, would the sense of accomplishment feel the same? Some would say yes, that the encounters and raiding are what is fun, not waggling your e-appendage around, and showing off gear to others. And, its entirely possible the game could have been designed that way. Just scale the bosses damage and health to match the quality and stats of the player's expected armor, but keep the demands of coordination and teamwork the same. If I have 10,000 health instead of 20,000, just make some damaging attack hit for 5,000 instead of 10,000.

This is getting kind of silly. In Cataclysm, will my level 85 mage have 50,000 health, 60,000 mana, and fireballs that hit for 25,000 damage? How is that different from having 5,000 health, 6,000 mana, and fireballs that hit for 2,500? They also have to keep readjusting values for secondary stats like crit, or we would have all hit 100% crit long ago.

However, Blizzard chose not to do it this way. Gear is creeping up, up, up, and it is getting to the point where character level and ilvl will become trivialized as markers of comparison and progression. It seems, unfortunately, that gear creep is being used to obfuscate the fact that our characters cannot progress in many other ways. Why can't my mage use a mace or learn a single healing spell? Why can't rogues learn to set a freezing trap? Why can't I develop and personalize my character more as I'd like to? Who cares, here's some gear that will make your fireball hit for 15,000 damage, oooo, aaaaa! For all the creativity and ability Blizzard has, it seems they are just pumping up item levels without considering other ways to progress characters.

Some of this is being addressed in Cataclysm with the Path of the Titans feature, and a lower level cap increase to only 85, but no new talents are being introduced. I still worry how ilvl creep will continue to grow and grow. As I stroll through Orgrimmar as a level 85 in my ilvl 420 gear, sitting at 6,000 spell power and 3,000 intellect, will it feel any different than it is now? Or will it just be an inflated balloon version of my current self, bigger but with no substance inside?

(*This post was inspired by a string of voa pugs I was in, three weeks in a row. The top dps and/or main tank left after beating Koralon - there is nothing of value dropped by the other bosses for them, not even emblems, so they just leave, stranding 22 locked out players without a main tank to continue. While it pisses me off, I can see their side of it, why should they waste their time on bosses that drop gear so inferior to the current t9? It wouldn't be an issue if there wasn't such a huge disparity in level 80 epic ilvls.)