Even if they make 1-85 totally free... that will not really help WOW get new players that will be paying for higher levels. The first 85 lvls of the game have become terribly bland to say the least. The lack of variety in talent trees, unbalanced classes while leveling and very repetitive and grindy quest content will keep ppl away - rather than get them interested to play any further.
What WOW needs to do is to rethink their original leveling curve. Taking the current 90 levels down to 45 would not hurt the game in any way. And it give a good chance to lower those big numbers that are multiplied with every new expansion. 2 expansions from now we will see items with 1000s of stamina.... and 100000000000 dmg if they go on like this.
If Blizzard is planning to let new players pay for XPboosts to get through content that is no longer worth paying for.. then maybe... as a subscription game.. they need to take a look at the game from start and make that experience better for the subscribers. Cause even as a F2P content. Most of the latest F2P games offer much better and more balanced content than what Blizzard is doing when it comes to that.
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I much rather like to think that a sub game with 90 levels should restructure it so that the subs are getting the very best out of the game. EQ has done that few times cause expecting players to even play 5 year old content that is starting to lack pretty much everything that modern MMOs are offering.... is simply not acceptable.
Thats why I think BLizzard did a big mistake with Cataclysm when they did not restructure the game so that you can level the entire character in Vanilla world and at faster phase. The new talent system has made the game very grindy to play with so little variety. And the leveling experience in WOW is simply not good enough cause the game is too focused on keeping new content fit into the old ... rather than change the old one and make it better. Its understandable that BLizzard thinks that way.... but it still leaves the game with very bland content that might leave alot of players walking away even before they get to high enough level to pay for the game.
I think open mind is good. But to expect players to act like WOW is still the top quality gaming experience for MMOs while leveling.... is simply not gonna cut it. And to just add more stuff on top of already bland content (even if it becomes F2P) will do more bad than good. Specially when the new content has to be forced into the same model as the old one.