Ion Hazzikostas on leveling and pristine servers

[Fedster]

Last night there was some talk about leveling pacing, and how Blizzard is aware that they've made it too
easy and too fast.
That's probably the reason they've dicussed pristine servers internally for a while now.

The whole need for leveling to max level fast is not needed any more since they've introduced ways
to boost a character, or so he says. Watch that part of the interview here:

[Lochton]

Well, it's true. Leveling should be slowed down to what it should be, keep the boost as a shortcut. Currently, leveling is so fast, it can't even pay itself by boosting.

"Wasste money on a boost, or give it maximum 8 hours and have a lvl 100"

[Segus1992]

I feel like this is a ploy to increase boost sales. I want leveling to be fun, not necessarily slow.

[Fedster]

I feel like this is a ploy to increase boost sales. I want leveling to be fun, not necessarily slow.

He actually talked about that. They want it to feel epic, but it can't feel epic if you keep oneshotting mobs before they even engage you (for example).

[klaps_05]

yea but im a snowflake which wants fast leveling. i dont want to buy a boost as it costs so much, id rather just speed level my characters just like the 90-100 in 2 hours wod guide.

[karatakor]

Leveling is too fast, but at this point how the game is broken who cares?
Pristine server at this point is just a delusion of what people want.

They obviously don't have any idea at this point how to respond the legacy servers.
They are just overwhelmed and it's becoming way bigger than they expected.

Let's continue this battle we are getting legacy servers soon enough and that's all what matters.

[Apology]

I've said it all along:

-Have a long, challenging, fun levelling experience for those of us that enjoy that.
-Also have a free max-level boost option available for those of us that don't.

That's the only way they're ever going to satisfy everyone.

[Echo of Soul]

This actually gave me a lot of hope. It proves that they are aware of a lot of the problems with the game but more importantly, want to fix them.

[Musik-Diversity86]

Leveling is too fast, but at this point how the game is broken who cares?
Pristine server at this point is just a delusion of what people want.

They obviously don't have any idea at this point how to respond the legacy servers.
They are just overwhelmed and it's becoming way bigger than they expected.

Let's continue this battle we are getting legacy servers soon enough and that's all what matters.

Please keep that out of this topic. Legacy servers never mattered.

I for one love the idea of them fixing the issue with mobs being killed too fast. It is a step in the right direction and with the Boost, lvling fast isn't necessary anymore and people just want to know lvl through stories without having them turn trivial in 10 minutes.

[Antermosiph]

Honestly, they just need to retune it so you don't outlevel zones so fast that you spend so much time walking. Additionally they need to add alternative questing paths for a quicker experience.

Example: You could quest in zone A & B, it'd be steady but not difficult and take a reasonable amount of time. Or you could quest in zone C that is populated by stronger mobs and group/elite quests. Doing it as a group would level faster, or using heirloom gear and/or skill could be in place of a group.

Honestly I miss bounty elite group quests. They were massive exp if you could solo them and felt amazing in the process.

[Chrno]

I've said it all along:

-Have a long, challenging, fun levelling experience for those of us that enjoy that.
-Also have a free max-level boost option available for those of us that don't.

That's the only way they're ever going to satisfy everyone.

This is (now the boost exists) the only solution to this 'problem'.

[deniter]

I've said it all along:

-Have a long, challenging, fun levelling experience for those of us that enjoy that.
-Also have a free max-level boost option available for those of us that don't.

That's the only way they're ever going to satisfy everyone.

Yeah, pretty much this.

The game was perfect in classic WoW, leveling-wise. Now we have a collection of zones you complete in certain order as they were stages in arcade action game, or skip everything and queue for dungeons while hanging around in a city. The only problem was when a player wanted to raid with his/her guild on different class, or had to replace a player who quit for whatever reason, and the long leveling was your only option. Now you can pay £, $ or € and get near max level character, problem solved.

Slowing down the current retail content and stripping down certain features is not a solution. The structure of gameplay doesn't support this, and would only make it more tedious. The only way is to go back to pre-cata game and start the work from there.

[Isheria]

If you think that they will simply increase experience requirement per level by like 200% so you don't outlevel zones will end well then i have bad news for you because at the very next minute there will be some guy or more complaining how they can't have 10+ alts anymore because levelling is too slow.

You can't just give people easy levelling for years and simply take it away just like that because "well levelling is too easy guys so we gonna slow it down so you don't outlevel our lovely zones", this has already been tried with other aspects of the game like harder 5-mans from easy mode ones from wrath to cataclysm and it was a failure of epic proportions.

[Super Kami Dende]

My PERSONAL preference and I know people WILL disagree with me.

For leveling I would like them to maybe double the Exp needed for 1-60, 60-70 maybe a 1.25 to 1.5 increase, 70-80 is fine as it is, 80-85 maybe a 1.25x increase, 85-100 is fine. But what I would want the most is leveling scaling tech of Legion zones applied across the game. I would love to be able to go 1-90 purely by just doing the zones of Kalimdor or Eastern Kingdoms.

With Scaling tech I could do dungeons without out-leveling an Area, I could also 100% an area and see all the story without quests going grey even with an heirloom Exp Boost.

With Scaling Tech I would likely level a bunch of characters and take a nice leisurely level through the stories of the low level zones. Since at the moment since I know I won't complete an areas quest I have no motivation to care about the story since I only see like 1/5th of it.

Leveling should be a tad slower 1-70 but with Heirlooms and scaling tech should still not feel like quite the massive grind of leveling in Vanilla BUT would also give you the ability to explore and have fun without constantly thinking you are going to be leveling subpar/suboptimal since with scaling you would be gaining the same exp exploring Duskwood at 75 as you would exploring Sholozar, which would be AMAZING.

All and all the one thing I loved most about Guild Wars 2 was being able to full experience each area at my own pace without really screwing my leveling speed. This is what I would love in WoW.


P.S- I would also love that instead of level requirements for dungeons, you scaled to dungeons so say you could queue for all Kalimdor/EK dungeons as soon as you hit say level 20 or so.

[Deleted]

Think people need to get over this legacy server crap though, technology and gaming in particular is all about moving forward, new designs, new features all that. Regressing backwards is pointless. Half of those complaining about the "good old days" aren't even subbed lol go play Runescape or something while the rest of us advance with more and better content.

[Vintersol]

I for myself hate leveling currently, because it's so simple and boring. I've leveled my last character before cataclysm and never had any interest in leveling another toon, because it isn't entertaining.

[Lochton]

Taken from threads on this forum:

"Levelling is too fast, it is a joke"
"Levelling sucks, I hate it, I want to be max level immediately"
"I like levelling, but it should be fun"
...and everything inbetween.

Personally I like the idea of: "You should not outlevel a zone so quickly, that you cannot complete the story" but it adresses none of the above issues. It is like if you try any computerise between the "no flying" and "yes flying" parties and end up pissing them off and everyone inbetween.

...and at the end of the day...define "fun" in "it should be fun". Some people find pvp fun...I don't.

I for one, welcome slower leveling. It is WAY too fast at current speed.

[ThunderTaco]

I've said it all along:

-Have a long, challenging, fun levelling experience for those of us that enjoy that.
-Also have a free max-level boost option available for those of us that don't.

That's the only way they're ever going to satisfy everyone.

I don't think it's a good idea.

If you are going to give everyone a free max level boost option for everyone, you might aswell go the FF route and just allow players to change their class on the same char.

[Accendor]

I've said it all along:

-Have a long, challenging, fun levelling experience for those of us that enjoy that.
-Also have a free max-level boost option available for those of us that don't.

That's the only way they're ever going to satisfy everyone.

Actually not, that would not make everyone happy. I think everyone should have the same leveling process and boosting should not be possible at all in any case.

[Super Kami Dende]

Yeah, pretty much this.

The game was perfect in classic WoW, leveling-wise. Now we have a collection of zones you complete in certain order as they were stages in arcade action game.

Well to be fair you had that in Vanilla as well but since you generally had paths like Elwynn Forest->Westfall->Redridge->Duskwood->Stv etc, but since Vanilla had such a large amount of release areas you could vary to a degree, but it often took quite a long time. For example the Vanilla Night Elf run from Darn to Westfall was atrocious.

Also I would very much say the game was not "perfect" in Vanilla, it very much had it's issues in it's questing.