The leveling process needs to be slowed down

[Pascal]

Except you dont learn how to play from leveling, at all. Back in BC when I started playing, I got my warrior to 70 and had no clue what I was doing. WoW was my first MMO so I had no idea what a tank or DPS was, no idea what rotation to use, really how to do anything except melee, cleave, and heroic strike mobs. Half the time Id use cleave on mobs single target because cleave sounded like it did a lot of damage.

Eventually I found websites that taught me things and made friends with people who gave me hints, but leveling itself literally gave me zero preparation for end game.

Now like I said, WoW was my first MMO so maybe all MMOs are like this, but every other game Ive ever played taught you how to play. Maybe it didnt show you the most advanced stuff, but it taught you enough to get by. Whether it was tutorial levels or literal directions on the screen, within 10-30 minutes I had a decent idea how to play any game I tried. WoW never came close to that.

You not learning how to play from leveling is probably not very concrete evidence that no one ever learns through leveling. I learned quite a few things that ended up being important while I was leveling, even my first character - a hunter, one of them being that if the mob starts running towards you, hit feign death. There are hunters that still don't know that, but I learned that while leveling. Some people are bad learners.

I have an incredibly easy time playing a spec that I leveled as when I play an alt, but if I respecc it takes a lot of research and getting used to. Usually when I look up how to play a specc that I leveled as, I was already doing it right.

Of course, me learning through leveling up is also not definitive proof, but at any rate we have established that some people do learn and some people don't.

[Evil Inside]

After going through a leveling area at least 7-8 times on different toons it gets a little stale. Atm I do whatever I can to rush through to 85 as quickly as possible. But I do know that there are people that enjoy questing and such, each to their own.

[Ferocity]

From player's part - he can't slow levelling by his own initiative. Even if you wear no heirlooms, do no dungeons/bgs and log out in wilderness to get minimum rested exp, it is still overly fast and you outlevel area literally shortly after zoning into it. And no, exp lock is not an option, it's a bone thrown to PvP twinks, and doesn't go really well with levelling.

But there are also people who want their max level asap, so slowing down levelling process could be done only by providing players special options:
1. "No rested exp" option.
2. "No exp from gathering profs" option.
3. 2 Modes for levelling - easy mode for "gifted" people (aka "I want max level NOW to enjoy endgame"), and normal mode for players (exp. curve same as pre 2.3.0).
4. My half-joke suggestion: all heirlooms to have "of the Cheater" added to the name and automatically giving title while wearing heirlooms - "the Cheater". Levelling is now quite easy in full greens 10 levels below wearer, heirlooms make levelling unimaginably far beyond easy which equals to cheating.

Also ratings and spell costs must be reworked from scratch, whose idea was to penalize "level up" by steady cutting of crit/haste/dodge/parry/hit/no-spell-ranks should be fired. I level'd a number of chars to 85 (without heirlooms), and 80->85 punishes player especially hard for each "level up". On my healer toon I regretted a lot that I didn't lock exp at 84 to farm some normals before ding'ing 85, 85 murdered all little mana regen my healer had without much luck with upgrades.

[Prokne]

A lot of players (including me) like to complete all quests in a zone before leaving it and then proceed to the next one. You can't really do that in Cata, because you will find yourself surrounded by grey quests..

You can still complete quests that are grey. It makes no sense to complain that levelling is too fast and then proceed to level in the fastest way possible. If you want to take it slow and do all the quests in a zone you can do that. You will level slower by doing grey quests which is what you want anyway. I like being able to quickly level alts after the first several.

[Rivin]

I think what he means is that it's just a major pain to have to take repeated trips to and from SW/Orgrimmar twice every time you play through a zone.

I would totally agree if that was his reasoning. I hate how annoying they made the whole process of disabling experience.

[Wildmoon]

I think 60-80 shouldn't be slowed down because it's boring as hell for me.

[Magicochon]

I do not like to level myself but I tried once to level without looms without grinding and I encountered the same issue. So I have to agree with you. However I don't think it's a problem when you level an alt. But it is when you level your first char because it ruins the first leveling experience. A system should trake if there's a lv 80 char on the account and reduce the exp gain from monster so that when you level your very first toon you're not level 27 after finishing a lv 10-20 zone.

[Ferocity]

A system should trake if there's a lv 80 char on the account and reduce the exp gain from monster so that when you level your very first toon you're not level 27 after finishing a lv 10-20 zone.

Only if as option.

[Powerogue]

If you like to complete zones while leveling, simply disable experience gains every five or ten levels until you've finished all the zones in that range you want to do. It's costly if you're low on funds, but otherwise it makes questing much more enjoyable.

it seems frustrating I'd have to resort to that. I tried leveling a character, zero xp boosting heirlooms and such, and could only get about halfway through a zone before I was shoved to the next. I'd waste a lot of time looking for the epic finale well past the time all the mobs were green/gray to me, often not finding said finale. :/

at this point I'd say either slow the leveling process down to match the zones or cut some of the fluff quests in zones and leave the fun quests.

fluff quests: the many remaining "twenty bear asses" quests

[endersblade]

Its almost like theres a lot people who've never played Blizzard games before, how is current WoW leveling any different from Diablo 2? The entire game is completely irrelevant until the current expansion in current WoW just as how all of Diablo 2 is completely irrelevant until hell mode. The type of game that WoW is serves no point in slowing down leveling from 1-80(1-85 come MoP) when everything prior to the latest expansion is, once again, completely irrelevant content due to how each expansion invalidates everything else before it.

Sorry to put it so indelicately but... I think you're everything that's wrong with this game.

*Well, the problem is, he's right in a way. *Blizzard has made WoW so end-game focused, that all the content prior to the current expansion is completely pointless. *Look at outlands...the quests are still focusing on what was relevant during BC, when Illidan, et. al has been dealt with already. *No updates. *

I don't think the leveling speed needs to be changed, per se. *It's the fact that with heirlooms, guild perks, RaF, it's almost entirely impossible NOT to outlevel a zone before you get done with even half the quests. *You should try leveling without any of that; the game actually levels quite fluidly.

Besides, there are so many quests per zone NOT so you have to finish them all, but so you can pick and choose which ones you want to do. *Thanks to Cata, most of the 'vanilla' zones have a main story-line quest string, and many little individual quests that really have nothing to do with the main quest. *They're there just so you have options. *While I am definitely one of those people who completes every quest in a zone before moving on, I can perfectly understand skipping them because you get tired of the zone and just want to move on.

Also, turning off exp every couple of levels is the only option you have right now. *Either that, or don't level in your guild, and don't use BoAs. *Blizzard has been speeding up the leveling process, again, because they've made this game so fucking end-game-centric it's sickening, so there's no way they'd ever slow things down. *There are still numerous bugs in low level instances, broken quests, glitched mobs, but blizzard doesn't give a fuck because it's not in an end-game raid. *Once it's been bumped to a previous expansion, like Lordender said, it becomes irrelevant, and blizzard no longer cares about fixing it.

[jd812]

no op just no

[Deleted]

Leveling is the most useless part in this game. If something it should be removed totally. It's only function is time sink.

[Deficineiron]

to the OP -

1) I suspect cat. zones were designed to level appropriately with actual zone progress, but were later changed to meet an external goal of time-to-level which didn't take shit into regard about actual zone mechanics.
2) leveling content is repeatedly tuned and re-tuned to try to retain NEW players. existing players don't quantify in this process.

Just look at the changes between leveling in vanillla zones pre-2.3 or pre 2.0.x vs. now. It is, ignoring geography and cgi, unrecognizable in tuning and effort/skill/time required.

Of course with the instant-level-X taboo finally overtly broken (you could argue was actually broken with RAF bonus level feature), I don't think having to go through leveling content is going to be a major issue for new players for much longer.

[DechCJC]

Yes it needs to be slowed down but it's not going to happen, sorry.

I'd love to do it as well, and to people saying 'you can do the quests while they're grey' or 'turn off xp' - Seriously; that's not the point, it's meant to feel rewarding when you level up; when you finally get to 85 you feel like you've actually accomplished something. Idk why, they're complaining about people not getting out of SW - A big factor to that is probably because there's absolutely nobody leveling alts because it's so quick. It can be fun, it's definitely more fun than before, but it's annoying to finish 1/4 of a zone WITHOUT BoA and then be able to go to the next zone.

I'm not going to make it longer for myself when it's far quicker for everyone else; that's dumb, it should be difficult to get to the max level. I made all my friends leveling up my first few toons to 70, a few more to 80 - Haven't added a single person for all of Cata - I maybe see about... 12 people leveling all the way to 85 (excluding dungeons) and there's no need to talk to them.

Rambled on a lot there, probably said a lot of stuff that didn't make sense but I can't be bothered to go read over it again, it's too early.

---------- Post added 2012-03-11 at 07:04 AM ----------

I think 60-80 shouldn't be slowed down because it's boring as hell for me.

Yeah, 60-80 is fine.

[Deficineiron]

I don't want to "finish the zone" at all costs. I just want the leveling process to feel less awkward. You can't achieve this with such cheesy tactics like disabling the XP gain.

the irony posters responding to you are ignoring, intentionally or otherwise, is that used to you would have to go to more than one zone in a level range to get enough quests to level by outdoor questing alone (this is early bc, I have heard vanilla was not so at some points). now the suggestion is, instead of go from epl to wspring and silithius when you need high-50s' quests, to 'cut off xp.' I am probably not the only person who sees the unintended humor in this view.

However, don't you dare try to kill mobs in classic azeroth for normal xp at or after level 60, because even though that was OK for 4 years of expansion (over 75% of the expansion-life of the game), it is unsanctioned player behavior now and only gets 10% of normal xp. You are not playing in a blizzard-approved fashion at that point.

[Abysal]

Instead of slowing down leveling, they should do a better job consolidating quests in certain zones. By that I mean reduce the total number of quests and maybe combine some quests without increasing the XP. With less total quests, you can get through a greater percentage of the zone at the same level.

Making the leveling process slower is only going to make it more and more daunting to bring in new players as more and more levels are added with expansions. The last thing WoW needs right now is a greater barrier to entry while the subscription numbers are dropping. They should be focusing on making people who've yet to play WoW want to start playing it, rather then giving them more reasons not to.

[topitopi]

Short Answer: no it does not.

Without BoAs, lv1-85 still takes a long time. If it took longer that would be a huge barrier to entry and would make people much less inclined to have alts

[Deficineiron]

While I agree the pace is a bit too fast, I understand why they made it that way. With all the expansions, we will need 90 levels until you see the end game content. That's a lot of levels.

it isn't so much levels (though there is a psychological element there, observe how they slow down reaching 100), it is time played. old-style, you were looking at 2 weeks play to do a decent job getting a toon to max - that translates into 2-3 months for most marginally well-adjusted humans. now it is a couple of weeks. this is a changes that goes beyond the total leveling-time curve.

[DechCJC]

I understand that with more expansions it has to be somewhat slowed down - But you have multiple zone choices for every 5 levels up to 60. At least make it that you have to fully complete -ONE- of the zones to get those five levels you need :/

[ablib]

I'm 40 levels away from having 10 85's. I've leveled a lot. I think, as it is now, it's still a painfully long process.

Yes, I remember what it was like in the old days.

It's still too long.

However, I would agree there should be options to make it slower, and faster, for those who prefer each option.