Ion Hazzikostas on leveling and pristine servers

[WowIsDead64]

Blizzard are like politics. They promise everything, even stars from the sky, but only before winning elections. Then they usually forget about such a promises. I guess, it's one of those populist statements, that give hope to some players and even sound like "promises" for others, so they continue playing, while waiting for it to happen in nearest future. But it's nothing, but empty words now. As you may know, we can't believe official announces now, not even just waffle during their interviews.

Without heirlooms leveling is completely ok now - no location outleveleving happens. But heirlooms are godsend. I have only about 40 days to play this game till I won't quit it forever most likely. And I need to bring 7 characters to at least 90lvl. 10 levels per hour won't be possible without heirlooms.

[McCrazy]

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...

Meanwhile, I still have my level 90 button. What will happen to it when my level 100 button appears? No idea, but I'm going to find out. And then they'll both, or one of them, or whatever, stay right there.

(11 max level characters, I know, I'm a slacker, sorry, I have a job and stuff)

Cheers, and happy leveling, at whatever speed you do or don't prefer.

I have two accounts, already upgraded to Legion. On one character- loadingscreen I see 2 100-boosts and 1 90-boost. On the other character loadingscreen I see 2 100-boosts and no 90, because I used that one on this account.
As I see it, I can boost 3 characters now. 1 to lvl 90 and two to lvl 100.

[Dizzeeyooo]

while the rest of us advance with more and better content.

yup WoD was all about the more and better content

[Cæli]

my observations from leveling a char without heirlooms so far.. leveling is a bit too fast and quest rewards suck ass at lower levels. you rarely get anything usefull and if it is the armor type you need it often has the wrong stats on it.. how is this still a thing?

How are the rewards a problem ? Quest rewards shoudn't have to be an upgrade 100% of the time. Once in a while you get a powerful upgrade and you're happy and can't wait to do that quest when you check the rewards.

[Deleted]

I long for times when hitting max level was an achievement and felt great, unlike nowadays. When I leveled my first character to 100, I did so without any experience gain potions and it still only took me a couple of days (not accumulated, 3-4 hours played each day).

[Aeula]

Nerfing low level stuff to make it harder is going to cause a shitstorm. They'd need to redo the world again (Like in cata) to implement this properly.

[Lex Icon]

How the rewards is a problem ? Quest rewards shoudn't have to be an upgrade 100% of the time. Once in a while you get a powerful upgrade and you're happy and can't wait to do that quest when you check the rewards.

i'd be happy with some coin and an upgrade every once in awhile.. the way they do it now i just get alot of trash.

[Deleted]

Nerfing low level stuff to make it harder is going to cause a shitstorm. They'd need to redo the world again (Like in cata) to implement this properly.

Can you guess what 8.0 will be? A World Wide Flood because if N'zoth and Aszara maybe? :P So they have a reason to redo most of the world again to fit it to the new system?

[Tackhisis]

That guy is an idiot. The levelling should be made so you could skip arbitrary zones, not doing every one fucking zone over FIVE expansions doing a hundred quests that give 0.5% of XP to get to the next over ALL my characters. Doing that more than 4 times is a torture, and the whole idea is just to sell you a service that costs like HALF of YEAR of game time. That is bullshit.

[Vorkreist]

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.

It would be great to have vanilla like leveling with some rewards achievement/cosmetic and the option for the current style of faceroll leveling.

[Deleted]

People need to remember that there was a lot of mystery about leveling back then. There was no perfect way to do it, you couldn't Thottbot 50% of the quests and even then you would have to filter through a LOT of user posts to find the right way to do quests or to find them.

It is very hard to replicate that kind of experience at this time, there is just too many ways to find the information you require - and some of those ways don't even make you leave the game.

This is actually one of the best observations from the 'against legacy servers' crowd that ive heard... nice point.

Although i do think that this issue wont affect most players experience when they revisit Vanilla. I for one will NOT use online resources to cheat my way through Vanilla, i want to experience that questing difficulty you are speaking of

Sure, i will come across some guys who know how to do some of the quests, but im sure that most of the tricky ones will keep me stumped!

[Balir]

Legion's zone and mob scaling will probably become the norm in future from lvl 1. SWTOR has a similar system.

[Tackhisis]

People need to remember that there was a lot of mystery about leveling back then.

Lol. Why am I looking now at the detailed levelling guide with all zones, monsters and quests on the way to 60, then?

[Thetruth1400]

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

There's the rub though, it's not fun right now. They pretty much hit it on the head that it's pathetically easy to the point of being more of a chore than an experience. Hop in a zone, do a few quests, and due to the ease of leveling, you out level the zone before you even finish the majority of the quests there. You hop in a dungeon during that time, you can kiss that zone and the zone after it goodbye, because you've out leveled them by far.

Even if it is a thinly disguised attempt to sell more boosts, it's a good one in my eyes. Everything in this game should be a fun experience, not something you just breeze through for the sake of max level only mattering. I honestly hope that level scaling is a success and they apply it to the entire world.

[sethman75]

Im happy for leveling to take a long time.

Each new xpac i always start a new toon and enjoy it immensely learning the new class.

Great way to keep me interested and stay subbed

[Deleted]

Lol. Why am I looking now at the detailed levelling guide with all zones, monsters and quests on the way to 60, then?

Yes they existed, but people were not looking them up because everything was fresh, new and interesting to discover.

[irdsyd]

Why not give people a choice.... you get choices of raid difficulty - give people with more than one max level character a choice for mobs at current difficulty or mobs with adjusted difficulty. If it's possible to adjust mobs in legion as we level to our level then this must also be possible.

If I'm playing a new class from scratch Id prefer difficult in parts (not the whole way) to help learn the class. Most of the time I think I prefer to get to the end.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

I recently leveled a character on a realm with some old friends (it has been a long while) and I did notice out leveling the content in the zone WELL before the zone was complete which did feel clunky as hell. I only used non-xp boosting looms as well for the specific reason of trying to avoid that (because yeah I know, fully loomed toon is going to do that). I also don't think I was touched in the first 4 or 5 zones as a ranged class. Not a single finger on me. Low level leveling does need some work I have to admit. I found myself insanely board even though I was going through zones for the first time as alliance and even reading along and following the storylines. It just had no risk or challenge attached to it. Reward seemed well covered though. I had 50 or 60 gold when I was like level 30, good of my level gear, and just about anything I could want within reason for that level and not being handed a lump of gold from my main or buddies.

[Lochton]

The thing I have a problem with comments like these is that imo (yes my opinion) they lack sufficient other variables as to why current leveling is in a bad place.
Gehco: In all honesty what will happen if they just made it slow(er)? Yes, quite right! It will be slow(er)!! So that solves everything right? If they just cut experience everywhere, the leveling content as it is now (heirlooms with insane stats, oneshotting mobs, lack of mobs, lack of elites, lack of elite packs, lack of runners/screamers, lack of mobs that hit harder then the current wet noodle trend etc) will remain the same.

So from what you posted, you only want it to be slow right? Nothing more changed? No danger etc? Just slow?

And this is the part where you read too much in to one section of the topic.

By slower, I mean more danger, more challenge, more objectives, more connection of the zone, more elite missions - do I really have to go on? I want storyline unlocks of some dungeons, I wish to see more cross the zone time instead of just entering a zone and 20 min later, you're outleveled.

[procne]

personally I'd prefer some optional mode of "original" leveling, where difficulty and pace is the same as it was when the content was released. Although even that wouldn't be enough for content from previous last 3 expansions.

I loved leveling in vanilla, when I had to be careful and avoid pulling more than 1 or 2 mobs. When I actually gathered mats to craft some gear for improvements - right now it's a waste of time because it's faster to just keep questing and get better gear that way. Add to it that mobs are so easy to kill, that you don't need any upgrades anyway.

I spent last couple of days playing WoD with 7 days trial, and questing was so devoid of challenge and bland. Instead of overcoming obstacles, avoiding danger I simply was looking for big groups of mobs to aoe them down easily. It's gotten fun only when I got to Tanaan jungle, where mobs had 2-3x more health. They say they want 12-15s per mob, but so far in 90-99 zones it was more like 6-8 seconds, in green gear, in tank spec for me. It feels more like diablo where you just plow through monsters.

Another thing I don't like about questing nowadays is this feeling of... "rails" I think? In vanilla I remember I was exploring the world, adjusting to it. But now it feels the opposite - every moment I feel the world is adjusted to me. Starting with things like quest chains (often in groups of 2-3) which take me from location to location, one after another, instead of just giving me various quests for different locations and letting make my own path. Then things like quest objectives being shown on map and minimap (which I can't hide anymore, I think I could in cataclysm), so that questing is reduced to following arrows on minmap instead of searching. And the most annoying thing is discrepancies in enemy strength. In questst where you are supposed to face armies (frostwolf pass for example) the enemies have decreased health, or player damage is artificially inflated to one shot said enemies and it feels more like slaughtering critters instead of taking part in a battle. Add to it that often your NPC companions are so tough that you could as well just sit and wait for them deal with enemies, with no interaction from player's side. And now they want to add scalable mobs. Those things are a killer to what is most important in RPGs for me - the feeling of my character's improvement and dealing with tougher enemies, ones which were hard in the past. If I see that every challenges are scaled down to make sure I have no trouble passing them then there's no fun.

All the time I feel like a 4 years old child in a playground - with my mommy holding my hand and leading me from one toy to another, making sure I'm safe and inventing stupid attractions for me. That was my rant, I'm aware that it sounds stupid in some parts, and some people might say "if you say that makes it too easy then don't use it" or "remove your gear to make mobs harder" and logically they will be right. But fun factor is not really logical. Sure, I can artificially make myself weaker, but large part of the fun for me comes from solving problems and making my character stronger and more efficient. And now I'd have to go against it and make my char weaker, or avoid some ways to make it stronger... It's like playing basketball, as a healthy person, with wheel-chair people, but to add the challenge - playing on wheel chair myself. Well, I don't want to play wheel-chair WoW.

Can't say much about low level content - last time I tried it in Cataclysm, and then I indeed seemed to 1-2 shot mobs, and they never made real damage to me. I didn't like it.