Ion Hazzikostas on leveling and pristine servers

[Segus1992]

You should be OK with fun/slow leveling. There are all these heirlooms and 300% potions and whatever available if you prefer not to wait around.

Is it a ploy to sell boosts? Are you serious? I'll give you a secret strategy tip. If you don't want to pay for a boost ... don't buy one!

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.

Every time I see the bolded genius argument, I just know that whoever I'm talking to is (to appease to MMO-C forum rules) less than intelligent.

The more annoying leveling is, the more likely you are to buy a boost just to avoid it. Leveling should be fun - it being slow does not necessarily mean it is.

[Deleted]

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.

Yep, that would be a perfect solution.

[Deleted]

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).

Levellingis something that should be done with. Not something that is time consuming. I can level chars cause its fast. And thats what i enjoy. I would never level another toon, if its slower and more "epic". What is epic about something you have done on a few chars already though?

[Vaelorian]

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

What kind of guide?
1. paper magazine? This official one (if it is) was from the beta. Everything pretty much changed. That guide didn't help me much anyway.
2. leveling guide from a powerleveler from someone during vanilla? Not many people used these. Mostly because you had to pay for it. Not many of these guides were free.

Something full and complete just was not there. You had thotbott or something. That was basically it. And that site was a mess.

Ofcourse there are guides all over the internet now. So if you just looked one up... yeah.

[thilicen]

If all zones scaled like in Legion with scaling quest rewards then one could solve a lot of these problems without slowing down the pace. Granted there would be some issues like how to deal with leveled proffesion mats like cloth etc.

[mysticx]

It's true though, levelling is pretty messed up ATM, i'm levelling an alt with as only heirloom the weapon (So no XP bonus at all, just the fights not dragging on for ages), and eastern 1K needles (The Speedbarge area, where the racetrack used to be) was the first time i didn't get breadcrumb quests leading away before finishing the questlines, but two quest areas after that i got the "Move on to Tanaris"-quest, so that was the exception...

Every zone i went to before that i got lured away before finishing the questing, and the whole timey-wimey thing, my alt is level 42, so as far as she's concerned Garrosh is still there, it's probably pretty messy and confusing if you're new to WoW, my alt is a troll, got a lecture at level 5 that we're doing what Garrosh wants despite Vol'jin's misgivings, 5 levels later up in Orgrimmar, Vol'jin is the warchief, later up in Outland, Thrall is the boss again and i'll bump into emo-phase Garrosh in Nagrand... @_@

[Deleted]

Without heirlooms leveling is completely ok now - no location outleveleving happens.

Wrong. Zone outleveling is happening without heirlooms.

However XP rate is just a minor part of problem. Classes are so badly tuned that leveling is like playing in god mode. Heirlooms contribute to that issue by being overpowered, though because of bad class scaling it doesn't really matter. Questing is entirely single player experience in what supposed to be MMO, other players not only aren't needed, but they are hindrance to leveling process.

Even if XP rates are fixed, leveling will still suck. Badly. Lack of challenge and single player experience makes it boring.

- - - Updated - - -

Every zone i went to before that i got lured away before finishing the questing, and the whole timey-wimey thing, my alt is level 42, so as far as she's concerned Garrosh is still there, it's probably pretty messy and confusing if you're new to WoW, my alt is a troll, got a lecture at level 5 that we're doing what Garrosh wants despite Vol'jin's misgivings, 5 levels later up in Orgrimmar, Vol'jin is the warchief, later up in Outland, Thrall is the boss again and i'll bump into emo-phase Garrosh in Nagrand... @_@

Lol, yep. That's so messed up.

[Eon Drache]

Blizz is greedy. They're slowing down leveling and playing on our nostalgia just to boost their Cash pig sales!!!

/s

[zmp]

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.

I bet half of those who are all for "advance with more and better content" are currently unsubbed

[Magruun]

Levelling should be more challenging and take a bit longer than it does now.
It's exactly that I can take on multiple enemies with ease even without heirlooms and outlevel a zone before I even completed the main storyline even when I am not doing any dungeons. It is too fast and too easy, people who want fast and easy should have options like using heirloom gear, xp boost potions and the option to buy a level 100. But it should not be forced upon those who don't want to go fast but are fine taking 2 months to reach the level cap.
to support this the LFD system should also try to match heirloom geared people with each other and those without heirlooms in a seperate group so dungeons can be cleared at a normal pace again, perhaps even using some CC.

I am not asking mythic level challenges during levelling but the current system is LFR tier, a complete joke to which you don't even have to pay attention.
I think a more challenging levelling experience will also make people cooperate and interact with each other again instead of feeling like other players are a nuisance.

[Vaelorian]

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.

I knew you were on my side - ty for clearing that up

[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 sooo true and soooo important, and it is one of the main factors in killing the fun the game has.
Seriously try to imagine anyone of those single player games we all enjoy so much, if before release you have a ton of information, a throng of videos in youtube, you have taken part on the totality of it in Alpha, and in Beta.
There is no way any of those games can survive that.

Also try to convince anyone to go blind into raiding, you can do that with friends only, but in a pug? they would kill you for doing that.

[Deleted]

Everything is better now, it's alot smoother, simpler and streamlined. You don't need to tab out to check a website on where certain quest destinations are, don't really need a group to complete certain content. Sure it does make it more of a race to max level, you do skip majority of the content and story created but at the end of the day, that content you are skipping is years old, it's impossible to keep it relevant. And as much as I enjoy the LFG system (makes manually searching and waiting forever to find a group via trade chat gone) it did pretty much ruin the community experience I think so there is trade-offs. Same goes for no need for CC in instances, you can just sprawl through it aoeing everything pretty much and not say a word to each other, no communication. It just can't be helped unless Legion makes dungeons overly difficult to force coordination

[WowIsDead64]

Wrong. Zone outleveling is happening without heirlooms.

However XP rate is just a minor part of problem. Classes are so badly tuned that leveling is like playing in god mode. Heirlooms contribute to that issue by being overpowered, though because of bad class scaling it doesn't really matter. Questing is entirely single player experience in what supposed to be MMO, other players not only aren't needed, but they are hindrance to leveling process.

Even if XP rates are fixed, leveling will still suck. Badly. Lack of challenge and single player experience makes it boring.

I've leveled 2 characters via quests recently - have never gone to next location without completing previous one. May be it's because you're playing Hunter? Yeah, Hunter is OP and one-shots everything. But this is Hunter's problem - other classes are OK. I guess, it's due to Blizzard always making one class noob-friendly. Paladins in WotLK for example. Try playing Priest or Warlock before making any conclusions.

[Seefer]

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

What's so fun about out leveling a zone before the story is even done?

[Deleted]

Use the level tech and break it up by expansion, so Vanilla stuff scales up to 60, bc stuff starts and 58 and scales to 70 etc. That would be awesome, because then you would get to do zones you normally never got to do because you would be into the next expac by then. I would love to level up from 58-70 in netherstorm instead of shitfire peninsula.

This all day long. Take note Ion.

[JustRob]

What's so fun about out leveling a zone before the story is even done?

The problem is, zone storylines aren't fun anymore when you're levelling your 10th character. Hell, they're not fun anymore when you're levelling your third. There are so many people who have levelled so many characters, if you make levelling slow and challenging, it's going to be so fucking painful to level more.

And before you say "Just buy a boost then", fuck that. I'm not paying 50 euros for that. I just want to have the option to go through the levelling quickly: AKA heirlooms. People who want to enjoy the storyline can just not use heirlooms and do it the normal way.

[dd614]

Slowing down leveling will sell more boosts. Clever Blizzard.

[Deleted]

There's no need to rush players through leveling now cos if you buy an expansion you get a boost. This boost comes WITH an expansion, your main character will always be up to date. As for alts, well its your choice.

Something needs to be done cos currently leveling is in shambles. It has 0 challenge and it's poorly constructed, one dungeon run greys out all the quests from the zone you're currently in.

[Segus1992]

What's so fun about out leveling a zone before the story is even done?

When did I ever say leveling was currently fun?