How Blizz should have handled levelling in WoW

[Sensa]

Saw the poll in another thread about levelling vs character boost and after watching some of the new footage of WoD on the front page today the thought occurred to me that Blizzard could have stayed true to their roots and the genre if they only only put some "real" effort into making the levelling experience maintain it's original vibrance.

I'm old school having first starting playing WoW in early 2005 a few months after release. Those were the days when the world was alive, STV was a complete cluster… of world pvp, where forming friendships were necessary to band together to stay alive let alone hand in a quest and progress. Those were the days of epic zone group quests and chains (like the hammer quest so you could complete the last boss in Zul'Farrak).

The only positive thing that Blizzard did in revamping the levelling experience was the creation of fairly well thought out and engaging starting zones for the newer classes/races. As with other aspects of the game though, despite the effort put into revamping lvl 1-60, they completely missed the marked in most other respects. They made levelling a solo experience that was faster, easier and more linear. If you thought it was a mindless repetitious grind fest before, it became even more of a life draining experience as additional game levels cancelled out most of the speed boost but left you alone in the world for extended periods with little or no interaction, little or no sense of danger or prospect of death and little or no reward for killing your 10,000th boar.

The much better way to have dealt with the issue of increasing level cap, which makes the prospect of levelling a toon that much more daunting, would have been the following:

1) No matter the # of levels maintain 60 levels of levelling content.

To do this you need vibrant and compelling starter zones such as the newer classes/races got for all races. When you finish the starting zone (and say you are level 15) you speak to an NPC and are shown several cut scenes to "educate" you on the history of WoW (i.e. the happenings in each expansion). You are then, after choosing the story line you want to follow., transported to that starting zone. Like original WoW??... you get transported to the Barrens. Like TBC??... you start in Hellfire Penisula (there may have to be some adjustments depending on the Zone you choose to start in but you get the idea and yes this would probably require significant resources to rebalance zone content).

When you were transported to the zone you wanted to start in you would get a boost to level 45 instead of 90 (MoP max level 90 - 15 levels of starting zone - 45 remaining levels to equal 60 levels of levelling content).

No matter the zone you start in the quest rewards would be level appropriate. Thus the player that choose classic WoW would finish their 60 levels in say Winterspring and the player that started in Hellfire might finish up in the jade forest - but your level and not the zone would determine the reward. In a twist on the Guild Wars feature where your character's level adjusts to the mob's level the mobs would adjust to your level (to avoid too much phasing and being alone in the world all characters would be presented with the 5 or 6 starting zone options and resulting 5 or 6 available paths of levelling ensuring a steady stream of participants in the various zones at the same time and providing 5 or 6 varied routes to level to reduce boredom to altholics.)

This would also provide Blizzard an opportunity to explain some of the inherent inconsistencies in the timeline of WoW. TheNPC at the end of the starting zone could put the timeline into perspective (i.e. for players starting in the Burning Crusade) and for those that choose to start in the Jade Forest the NPC or your levelling guide could transport you back in time to fight the demons in TBC (the old caverns of time trick) to complete your levelling experience - actually inherently more logical and consistent then what happens now.

2) Going to all this trouble also requires the return of group quests and chains that immerse you in the content and the world. And, some form of levelling friend finder to facilitate group formation etc.

Many won't read this because its too long. And, yes, this is off the top of my head and needs a little fine tweaking. But for those who do take the time to read it, thoughtfully consider it and are willingly to intelligently respond thank-you in advance. The old levelling world was one of the things that made WoW great. Bringing it back to its former glory would be great imho.

[MAXCAVALERA]

Nice reading , thank you. I agree.

[Deleted]

Its a very difficult thing man...we all miss the leveling, socialization and world pvp of a leveling experience. But im afraid that as much as we miss it, its not real bro :C
The community is old and old players hate leveling another character. Mostly because the leveling process is spent on dungeons and because we just HATE the grind of a leveling experience ^^

Now what I support is Blizzard implementing smart gameplay mechanics to simulate the socialization of the leveling experience----> Islands (timeless, thunder)
The islands are a simulation of a leveling experience in a nutshell at maxlevel.
You make friends, enemies, quest, treasure hunt etc in a World pvp environment

But loved your different way of handling the leveling. Lots of good ideas .
I can only imagine me leveling another char if it would be
1-faster
2-in the world
3-Zones filled with other players

[ComputerNerd]

Group quests don't encourage socialisation.
That is when people want to work together, want to talk.
Not because they have to.

What happens to group quests when there isn't the actively levelling population to support them ?
Skipped completely or returned to when a player has outlevelled and therefore trivialises them to the point of maybe soloing, or hugely reducing the number requirements.

Immersion is a personal experience, something you as an individual enjoys.
Adding in something like that can either make or break immersion for any player, you don't simply "add it".
Some hate flying, some like flying.
It is not simply "immersive" to ground players.

World PvP was killed by the players, not Blizzard.
Battlegrounds offered a more convenient form, and the playerbase chose convenience over fun.
The playerbase chooses to use heirlooms, chooses to rush the experience, dps players overgeared with heirlooms choose to pull and tank stuff rather than letting the newbie tank actually learn to tank.

More options than ever to talk, to communicate with others but less willingness than ever to use them.
Group finders introduce you to more players than any closed guild group would, but does anyone actually want to talk, want to say hello ?

The levelling experience went downhill because the community did.
Blizzard cannot fix that.

[ringpriest]

World PvP was killed by the players, not Blizzard.
Battlegrounds offered a more convenient form, and the playerbase chose convenience over fun.
The playerbase chooses to use heirlooms, chooses to rush the experience, dps players overgeared with heirlooms choose to pull and tank stuff rather than letting the newbie tank actually learn to tank.

The levelling experience went downhill because the community did.
Blizzard cannot fix that.

More options than ever to talk, to communicate with others but less willingness than ever to use them.
Group finders introduce you to more players than any closed guild group would, but does anyone actually want to talk, want to say hello ?

Who stopped offering world pvp objectives? Who made BG's easier to queue for? Who introduced heirlooms? Who nerfed the relative difficult of dungeons and leveling? Group finders introduce you to players who aren't on your server, who you can't trade with, and who you will never see again.

[ComputerNerd]

Who stopped offering world pvp objectives? Who made BG's easier to queue for? Who introduced heirlooms? Who nerfed the relative difficult of dungeons and leveling? Group finders introduce you to players who aren't on your server, who you can't trade with, and who you will never see again.

If you don't see anyone from a random group again, it was because you chose not to.
There was no reason why you couldnt roll an alt there.
Why not talk to them and add to battle.tag/RealID.
Bllizzard tried to add in artificial objectives to bring people together in world pvp, hellfire/zangamarsh/bone wastes.
But it was artificial, because the rewards were desirable and not because players took part for fun.

The real world pvp was that without rewards, without bribes or incentives.
Because you could do it, not because you were expected to, not because you got a reward out of it.

Blizzard did nothing to change that, players did.
Queues are a result of time-constraints where players who are less convenienced, less able to participate at the convenient hours.
Are pugs as willing nowadays to take on players who may drop out after a period of time ?
No, they sure as hell aren't.
Previously they had to be understanding and flexible, now blizzard have had to change the raid format to reimplement the behaviour players chose to kill off.

[Heathy]

levelling is fun, probably the most fun you get during each characters 'career'. but i think ppl these days just want to get to the most current content as fast as they can.

I recently started doing my 4th alt from 85 to 90 and my bro and I discovered from someone else a neat trick on getting from 85-90, mob tagging in the barrens, took 3hrs to do 85-89.

one person preferably a tank gathers all the mobs, and the 85 char not grouped tags them, then the tank kills them all. goes from 12k xp per mob to 16k then at 89 its 22.2k. they all re-spawn in minutes they all drop motes, cloth and lesser charms + greens.

once you've done the manual levelling a few times finding alternate faster routes is just normal i think. but one thing i will say, i do miss the chain quests in classic they had a certain feel to them, they were sometimes vague, usually sent you to various places in the world, just overall much better questing back in the day. or perhaps the new questing is very similar its just that once you've done it once its loses its charm?

back in classic it took quite a while before an expansion was even mentioned, so from what i could tell, not many ppl rushed to get to the current content (at least not as much as they do now), where as now, we know expansions are always on the horizon so, ppl will do what they can to experience the end game before it becomes obsolete. some group quests would really give something back to the game, it really is unfortunate that ppl are so anti-social they can't get 2 other ppl to help them kill a quest mob.

i do like what they did with the timesink isle, although it is a massive grindfest, the ability to catch alts up is very sweet, no need to spend weeks farming trying to get a reasonable set of gear for your fresh 90.