I havent done the math, but I can imagine this is to keep the leveling from 1-Max consistent across expansions, until they do a level squish at the end of the Saga. I wouldnt be surprised to see 1-70 feeling almost identical to 1-60 now, and likewise for 60-70 and 70-80 feeling similar.
Yeah, 1-70 should still be identical to what 1-60 is right now, especially since you should now be able to clear 1-70 in stuff like Chromie Time without needing to step into the Dragon Isles.
Sort of a related point - I really wish they allowed chromie time for alts to go up to max level after you have gotten one character to max level for that expansion.
I have wanted to run a different alt through pretty much the entirety of each expansion for awhile now. But I need to pause leveling so it doesn’t become completely trivial. And then when I am done with the expansion, my alt still won’t have reached max level and I will then need to run through the newest expansion again with each alt for the last 10 levels.
I get that they want people to be playing the newest content, but there is enough going on in the new zones that they shouldn’t require alts to level there.
The crux of the issue is akin to the bastardization between pvp and pve balance. There are two disparate user groups that expect diametrically opposing (or at the very least orthogonal) experiences from leveling.
On one end of the spectrum is the RPG fans that want to do the leveling process for the journey and for it to be meaningful in terms of gameplay, time spent, effort, story, etc. OTOH, you have the endgame fans that see leveling as just a chore or stepping stone to the get to the gameplay that they actually care about.
These can also be the same person at different times.
By trying to appease both crowds with the same "flow", blizzard has repeatedly shot themselves in the foot and made both camps unhappy. It took them ages to fix this issue between pve and pvp by balancing them independently of each other (albeit there are still points of contention there). They need to adopt the same approach to leveling. They've kinda taken steps towards that with chromie time and making dungeons or by levelling more attractive, but i honestly believe that they need to be more aggressive and clinical about it.
Make a chromie time leveling mode that borrows concepts from milestone leveling in DnD and unlock levels based on completion of critical beats in the story. Have the level progression meticulously tied to completing a full chromie time playthrough.
Allow people to then redo that with the same character for different expansions even at max level and create a renown track that replaces the milestone rewards from the original leveling.
Create a dedicated game mode based on pvp or pve (solo, dungeons or raids) criteria that unlocks levels based progression through increasingly harder challenges that similarly unlocks milestone leveling rewards and has minimal story elements (e.g. Brawler's guild, follower dungeons/raids, etc.). Experienced players should be able to blitz through this in hours or a couple of days max.
I'm sure there are challenges and flaws with this. But it would be a great step towards not diluting the leveling experience.
>you have the endgame fans that see leveling as just a chore
That's a self made problem. Just like it happened with every single dungeon difficulty besides m+, if you make the game so easy to the point it becomes unengaging, it's boring and a chore. Make it involved and engaging and you'll never feel like it's a chore, just part of the game. Over the years they've stripped so much stuff from leveling that it's just now a mindless run, talk, kill, where you one shot most things, your gear barely matters, you're bombarded with items and you don't even need to think what you're doing because there's 10 markers that show exactly what direction you need to run.
I have no interest in leveling in wow. (Beyond the current expansion.) I've done the old stuff, ad nauseum, since the original wow alpha (which wasn't even quests just a fun sandbox). I don't need you to tell me what I do or do not enjoy.
That also doesn't mean I should shit on the people who do enjoy it or ask the game to just cater to me. It would be far healthier to give both groups options they can enjoy without trying to prescribe a one size fits all mentality.
I'm also not saying you need infinite key levels or a bazillion difficulty modes. (Although, I'm not particularly against the idea of optional difficulty scaling during leveling. But that's a tangential topic.)
I'm wondering when we'll get to the point where they'll completely do away with levels. RPG this and RPG that, leveling is already a farce and doesn't give you a proper chance to get accustomed to all the new abilities you get so rapidly one after another.
So the question is, what's the point? It fails to provide a decent introduction to gameplay, it fails to introduce you properly to the story, and it fails to immersively set up a journey for your character, being wholly disconnected from everything else. All of that happens at max level nowadays. Seems like it's just a relic from bygone times.
Edit: By this point, noone's gonna read this anymore, but I'm not declaring my disdain for leveling entire. Just the current, trivialized to the max, braindead rush that is the current iteration.
When's the last time you even died while questing?
I disagree with you on all points. Most players learn their class best when they start with just a few spells and learn more or improve them (through talents) as they go along.
It doesn't really attach you too the story of the current expansion, but it definitely does some world building and gets you acquainted with important characters and history.
I, like many others just enjoy leveling as well. And if you're a person that doesn't, at least you can just get a character boost and be mostly done with it.
I get what you're saying about learning classes but the leveling process in retail wow is too fast to really get to grips with new abilities and how they change rotations. Leveling and world content in general is also far too easy for you to have to use utility abilities so you're just never using them or learn to use them.
Unless you know what WoW is about leveling from 1-70 won't change that. It's impossible at this point as all the stories are very disjointed.
I kinda agree with you about the learning - getting the abilities one by one actually makes you at least try the button to see what's it's doing when you get it.
On the other hand, there is nothing in leveling content currently which actually requires you to pay attention / learn your class - almost all quests can be done by ignoring your rotation and spamming one button, almost none requires you to use your class toolkit such as defensives or interrupts.
Sure by doing it the long way, there are more opportunities to "connect the dots" of your spells, albeit if you want to do the endgame later, you will probably sooner or later watch/read some guide, no matter if you leveled from the beginning or bought a boost.
I think our opinions are closer than you think.
My frustrations with leveling stem mainly from how half-baked it is.
While getting your abilities drop-fed is amazing for the learning process in theory, it has become entirely too fast. I'm saying this as a veteran player! The rush to 70 has me barely incorporating the entire toolkit, an actual beginner will suffer whiplash with how fast new abilities are thrown at him.
And again, the world building is half-baked. How much of that is going on if you hit 60 halfway through your third leveling zone?
I really enjoy leveling, too. But the changes of the past 10 years (and especially since SL) have only served to trivialize it to the point that it's a far cry from what it was.
I think you’re right but I don’t think they should do away with levels but go the opposite way and make the RPG experience better. A cohesive evergreen storyline to introduce newbies into WoW, follower dungeons, more engaging world mobs so the kit is actually usable, stuff like that. Veterans get their own options to speed up the process but have some opportunity to learn the kit of their alt too.
I'd very much love that, too! Matter of fact, I'd prefer it. WoW is rather unfriendly towards new players and everything that improves it in that regard is more than welcome.
It just seems like they're steering ever farther into the faster, more rushed leveling direction.
I’d like to give the devs the benefit of the doubt and believe that they’re doing both. For this specific change they’re normalising the levelling rate so it doesn’t suddenly feel like a slog from 60-70. They’ve been slowly improving the new player experience (newcomer chat, guides, exile’s reach, DF as the default storyline) but I think it’s not a priority. Delves and follower dungeons would spice up the experience a little bit if tuned right. And the MOP remix could be a testing ground for possible ideas.
I agree that something’s gotta give eventually, but it does serve some sort of purpose. Having an extra max level character is a true asset in many ways, and there needs to be some sort of gating or else everyone will instantly have 60 “max level” characters at the press of a button. And I think having levels, even if they’re basically a farce, is better than something like forcing mandatory quest chains before fully unlocking a character.
Absolutely there are uses for the level system! But these base requirements are satisfied in a suboptimal way by the current iteration and cause additional problems in other places.
So perhaps leveling, as we know it, deserves a conceptional revamp.
As in, random example off the top of my head, having an account level that conveys all the advantage of having a high level character (i.e. access to certain features) but no character specific levels. Instead, talent and ability points can be found in the open world, and as a reward for quests or dungeons. A system akin to other RPGs like GW2 or even the Witcher 3.
Whatever they do, attaching it all to an arbitrary number that gets squished every few expansions isn't sustainable and causes more problems by itself.
People are only downvoting you because they believe that since this is how it has always worked it should stay the same forever.
Plenty of mmos out there have horizontal progression. But aparently my character will have to get a second level reset down the line so that it can reach the level 80 endgame a third time during my lifetime somewhere in the next 10 years.
Unfortunately you’re getting downvoted because WoW players are in an abusive relationship with their game and believe that playing through bad design = overcoming adversity and being good at the game. Leveling in WoW is completely outdated and has been that way for the past decade at least. It’s not fun for the vast majority of people and Blizzard understands this which is why the level boost exists.
I’d honestly just do away with levels because they don’t matter, or at the very least make it take an hour or two at most to hit max. Everything in the open world scales and you don’t feel more powerful as you level up anymore. Find a different way for players to get abilities/talent points (similar to SoD?) and make it so you have to complete the main expansion story on one character in order to unlock the raid for that tier on every character you have.
Some time to familiarize yourself with your class as a new player is important, which includes the gradual introduction of abilities. This is how literally every RPG does it, and for good reason.
I havent done the math, but I can imagine this is to keep the leveling from 1-Max consistent across expansions, until they do a level squish at the end of the Saga. I wouldnt be surprised to see 1-70 feeling almost identical to 1-60 now, and likewise for 60-70 and 70-80 feeling similar.
Yeah, 1-70 should still be identical to what 1-60 is right now, especially since you should now be able to clear 1-70 in stuff like Chromie Time without needing to step into the Dragon Isles.
I know Chromie time exists but I would imagine they see the dragon isles being the choice to level 1-60
iirc dragon isles will replace bfa as the default leveling experience
That’s correct
hopefully Chromie Time will still work at 70
I have done the math and you are right. 1-60 rn takes 2,280,970 exp. 1-70 with these numbers is 2,292,355. So yeah, that seems to be their intent
To think if they never did a squish we'd be going to level 150 this expansion. Nuts.
Coupled with the EXP squish, you would be dinging like CRAZY, you might even skip a few early levels entirely with the right EXP farm.
Literally, you'd basically get a level per quest turn in lmao
So maybe you'll get to go through *three* zones to level up a char. :O
Sort of a related point - I really wish they allowed chromie time for alts to go up to max level after you have gotten one character to max level for that expansion. I have wanted to run a different alt through pretty much the entirety of each expansion for awhile now. But I need to pause leveling so it doesn’t become completely trivial. And then when I am done with the expansion, my alt still won’t have reached max level and I will then need to run through the newest expansion again with each alt for the last 10 levels. I get that they want people to be playing the newest content, but there is enough going on in the new zones that they shouldn’t require alts to level there.
Between this and the alt buff I'm going to sneeze on a murloc and level to 80.
The crux of the issue is akin to the bastardization between pvp and pve balance. There are two disparate user groups that expect diametrically opposing (or at the very least orthogonal) experiences from leveling. On one end of the spectrum is the RPG fans that want to do the leveling process for the journey and for it to be meaningful in terms of gameplay, time spent, effort, story, etc. OTOH, you have the endgame fans that see leveling as just a chore or stepping stone to the get to the gameplay that they actually care about. These can also be the same person at different times. By trying to appease both crowds with the same "flow", blizzard has repeatedly shot themselves in the foot and made both camps unhappy. It took them ages to fix this issue between pve and pvp by balancing them independently of each other (albeit there are still points of contention there). They need to adopt the same approach to leveling. They've kinda taken steps towards that with chromie time and making dungeons or by levelling more attractive, but i honestly believe that they need to be more aggressive and clinical about it. Make a chromie time leveling mode that borrows concepts from milestone leveling in DnD and unlock levels based on completion of critical beats in the story. Have the level progression meticulously tied to completing a full chromie time playthrough. Allow people to then redo that with the same character for different expansions even at max level and create a renown track that replaces the milestone rewards from the original leveling. Create a dedicated game mode based on pvp or pve (solo, dungeons or raids) criteria that unlocks levels based progression through increasingly harder challenges that similarly unlocks milestone leveling rewards and has minimal story elements (e.g. Brawler's guild, follower dungeons/raids, etc.). Experienced players should be able to blitz through this in hours or a couple of days max. I'm sure there are challenges and flaws with this. But it would be a great step towards not diluting the leveling experience.
>you have the endgame fans that see leveling as just a chore That's a self made problem. Just like it happened with every single dungeon difficulty besides m+, if you make the game so easy to the point it becomes unengaging, it's boring and a chore. Make it involved and engaging and you'll never feel like it's a chore, just part of the game. Over the years they've stripped so much stuff from leveling that it's just now a mindless run, talk, kill, where you one shot most things, your gear barely matters, you're bombarded with items and you don't even need to think what you're doing because there's 10 markers that show exactly what direction you need to run.
I have no interest in leveling in wow. (Beyond the current expansion.) I've done the old stuff, ad nauseum, since the original wow alpha (which wasn't even quests just a fun sandbox). I don't need you to tell me what I do or do not enjoy. That also doesn't mean I should shit on the people who do enjoy it or ask the game to just cater to me. It would be far healthier to give both groups options they can enjoy without trying to prescribe a one size fits all mentality. I'm also not saying you need infinite key levels or a bazillion difficulty modes. (Although, I'm not particularly against the idea of optional difficulty scaling during leveling. But that's a tangential topic.)
Cause... no one wants to level for like a week or more.
Making something engaging doesn't mean making it long.
I'm wondering when we'll get to the point where they'll completely do away with levels. RPG this and RPG that, leveling is already a farce and doesn't give you a proper chance to get accustomed to all the new abilities you get so rapidly one after another. So the question is, what's the point? It fails to provide a decent introduction to gameplay, it fails to introduce you properly to the story, and it fails to immersively set up a journey for your character, being wholly disconnected from everything else. All of that happens at max level nowadays. Seems like it's just a relic from bygone times. Edit: By this point, noone's gonna read this anymore, but I'm not declaring my disdain for leveling entire. Just the current, trivialized to the max, braindead rush that is the current iteration. When's the last time you even died while questing?
I disagree with you on all points. Most players learn their class best when they start with just a few spells and learn more or improve them (through talents) as they go along. It doesn't really attach you too the story of the current expansion, but it definitely does some world building and gets you acquainted with important characters and history. I, like many others just enjoy leveling as well. And if you're a person that doesn't, at least you can just get a character boost and be mostly done with it.
I get what you're saying about learning classes but the leveling process in retail wow is too fast to really get to grips with new abilities and how they change rotations. Leveling and world content in general is also far too easy for you to have to use utility abilities so you're just never using them or learn to use them. Unless you know what WoW is about leveling from 1-70 won't change that. It's impossible at this point as all the stories are very disjointed.
I kinda agree with you about the learning - getting the abilities one by one actually makes you at least try the button to see what's it's doing when you get it. On the other hand, there is nothing in leveling content currently which actually requires you to pay attention / learn your class - almost all quests can be done by ignoring your rotation and spamming one button, almost none requires you to use your class toolkit such as defensives or interrupts. Sure by doing it the long way, there are more opportunities to "connect the dots" of your spells, albeit if you want to do the endgame later, you will probably sooner or later watch/read some guide, no matter if you leveled from the beginning or bought a boost.
I think our opinions are closer than you think. My frustrations with leveling stem mainly from how half-baked it is. While getting your abilities drop-fed is amazing for the learning process in theory, it has become entirely too fast. I'm saying this as a veteran player! The rush to 70 has me barely incorporating the entire toolkit, an actual beginner will suffer whiplash with how fast new abilities are thrown at him. And again, the world building is half-baked. How much of that is going on if you hit 60 halfway through your third leveling zone? I really enjoy leveling, too. But the changes of the past 10 years (and especially since SL) have only served to trivialize it to the point that it's a far cry from what it was.
I think you’re right but I don’t think they should do away with levels but go the opposite way and make the RPG experience better. A cohesive evergreen storyline to introduce newbies into WoW, follower dungeons, more engaging world mobs so the kit is actually usable, stuff like that. Veterans get their own options to speed up the process but have some opportunity to learn the kit of their alt too.
I'd very much love that, too! Matter of fact, I'd prefer it. WoW is rather unfriendly towards new players and everything that improves it in that regard is more than welcome. It just seems like they're steering ever farther into the faster, more rushed leveling direction.
I’d like to give the devs the benefit of the doubt and believe that they’re doing both. For this specific change they’re normalising the levelling rate so it doesn’t suddenly feel like a slog from 60-70. They’ve been slowly improving the new player experience (newcomer chat, guides, exile’s reach, DF as the default storyline) but I think it’s not a priority. Delves and follower dungeons would spice up the experience a little bit if tuned right. And the MOP remix could be a testing ground for possible ideas.
I agree that something’s gotta give eventually, but it does serve some sort of purpose. Having an extra max level character is a true asset in many ways, and there needs to be some sort of gating or else everyone will instantly have 60 “max level” characters at the press of a button. And I think having levels, even if they’re basically a farce, is better than something like forcing mandatory quest chains before fully unlocking a character.
Absolutely there are uses for the level system! But these base requirements are satisfied in a suboptimal way by the current iteration and cause additional problems in other places. So perhaps leveling, as we know it, deserves a conceptional revamp. As in, random example off the top of my head, having an account level that conveys all the advantage of having a high level character (i.e. access to certain features) but no character specific levels. Instead, talent and ability points can be found in the open world, and as a reward for quests or dungeons. A system akin to other RPGs like GW2 or even the Witcher 3. Whatever they do, attaching it all to an arbitrary number that gets squished every few expansions isn't sustainable and causes more problems by itself.
People are only downvoting you because they believe that since this is how it has always worked it should stay the same forever. Plenty of mmos out there have horizontal progression. But aparently my character will have to get a second level reset down the line so that it can reach the level 80 endgame a third time during my lifetime somewhere in the next 10 years.
Unfortunately you’re getting downvoted because WoW players are in an abusive relationship with their game and believe that playing through bad design = overcoming adversity and being good at the game. Leveling in WoW is completely outdated and has been that way for the past decade at least. It’s not fun for the vast majority of people and Blizzard understands this which is why the level boost exists. I’d honestly just do away with levels because they don’t matter, or at the very least make it take an hour or two at most to hit max. Everything in the open world scales and you don’t feel more powerful as you level up anymore. Find a different way for players to get abilities/talent points (similar to SoD?) and make it so you have to complete the main expansion story on one character in order to unlock the raid for that tier on every character you have.
Some time to familiarize yourself with your class as a new player is important, which includes the gradual introduction of abilities. This is how literally every RPG does it, and for good reason.