Ion Hazzikostas on leveling and pristine servers

[Al Gorefiend]

I think Blizzard should take the harder, but more rewarding road of disintegrating Outland and Northrend from the leveling cycle and reducing the XP curve from 60-80 so you can level in that bracket faster without having to leave EK or Kalimdor zones. For example, instead of Silithus being 55-60 it will be 60-70 and previous zones are stretched upwards as well. Hyjal and Vash'jr can be stretched down to 70-75 and 75-81, and at 81 go into Deepholme or Uldum to continue as normal.

[TheWindWalker]

I always find this discussion to be a bit strange. If you've played WoW for at least an expansion, then you've likely leveled at least a few alts. If you've been around for two expansions, you've likely got most of your character slots close to or at max level. If you've been here since Cataclysm it's not unlikely you've filled one server and moved on to another.

How big can the audience be for "above all else, wants to level yet another toon from scratch" in 2016?

It just sets off the "Grandpa's talking about kids these days" alarm again.

[ShiyoKozuki]

Leveling is hundreds of hours of content just sitting there for the devs to use to keep people busy, or to entertain people who actually ENJOY leveling.

I'm glad they're doing this, it makes me happy. As a player who enjoys the journey much more than the destination, I'm very excited!

If they also add 100-110 scaling technology to 1-100 zones I will be beyond happy.

- - - Updated - - -

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.

Yeah it looked like they were actually paying attention to the game and *gasp*, PLAYING IT. Something I never notice devs doing these days. Hopefully they notice all the issues with the game, legion seems to be that fix to most of them so far.

[Echo of Soul]

Yeah it looked like they were actually paying attention to the game and *gasp*, PLAYING IT. Something I never notice devs doing these days. Hopefully they notice all the issues with the game, legion seems to be that fix to most of them so far.

Well it seems to fix a lot of the problems we had in WOD. Past content is still untouched, but maybe for the next expansion we'll have a more polished complete package from lvl1 to max.

[Vaelorian]

I always find this discussion to be a bit strange. If you've played WoW for at least an expansion, then you've likely leveled at least a few alts. If you've been around for two expansions, you've likely got most of your character slots close to or at max level. If you've been here since Cataclysm it's not unlikely you've filled one server and moved on to another.

How big can the audience be for "above all else, wants to level yet another toon from scratch" in 2016?

It just sets off the "Grandpa's talking about kids these days" alarm again.

Dunno about you ofcourse. But I am a one character kind of guy. Ofcourse I do have alts.
On my main (paladin) I have played about 500 days.
On my alt warrior I have about 70 days played.
On my alt druid I have about 35 days played.
On my alt... hmmm I seem not to have any other alts.

But I am not inclined to make alts right now. Content is so trivial that I'll likely never learn the tricks of the trade well enough before I go into Mythic dungeons. Which would make me a bad player on that alt. Besides I'll not enjoy leveling currently.

[Deleted]

The best gaming experience I ever had in my life was leveling from 1-60 in vanilla on my first character which took me 23 days /played. Nothing even comes close to that. The second time wasn't as awesome and took about 11-12 days /played iirc. I never managed a third max level alt.

It's hard to motivate that long leveling time when the replay value isn't the best. I would focus more on making the expansions leveling experience much longer rather than old content. Everyone is max level withing a week at new expansions, drag it out a bit more imo. Make the average 1-2 months real time at least (based on the average wow players daily playtime, which I have no idea what it is).

[Adoxe]

I'm just happy that they finally realize there's a problem with leveling.

[Flurryfang]

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.

First of all, the people who still play apperantly cares. Just because something is broken, does not mean it is impossible to fix.

And secoundly, why do you think Legacy servers will improve the condition? While you fix some areas of the leveling process, you are just gonna replace them with the old ones, which they tried to repair in Cataclysm.

- - - Updated - - -

I always find this discussion to be a bit strange. If you've played WoW for at least an expansion, then you've likely leveled at least a few alts. If you've been around for two expansions, you've likely got most of your character slots close to or at max level. If you've been here since Cataclysm it's not unlikely you've filled one server and moved on to another.

How big can the audience be for "above all else, wants to level yet another toon from scratch" in 2016?

It just sets off the "Grandpa's talking about kids these days" alarm again.

I have played since Vanilla and still lvl up new characters once in a while. Do you know why? Because i like the leveling experience. Since blizzard pretty much changes the classes and specs, every expansion, i find a new experience each time i play a new alt. I can also see in the number of players i meet out in the world, that i am by far not the only veteran player, who still enjoys leveling characters up. Hell, the best feature in Cataclysm, in my opinion, was the world revamp, since there was new content to explore while leveling alts.

Ofcourse, we can then talk about the many problems there is with the leveling content, but leveling characters is for me and some others, a pretty big part of the game, which we enjoy.

[melodramocracy]

Huh. It only took Blizzard this many years to figure out that hustling your playerbase through 90% of your content in a matter of weeks is a really terrible idea in an MMO.

I mean, who knew?

[PosPosPos]

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.

Sorry, making leveling even more tedious than it is, is not fun.

If you want to feel like a blue collar worker working 18 hours a day just to get anywhere, there's real life for that.

[Vaelorian]

Sorry, making leveling even more tedious than it is, is not fun.

If you want to feel like a blue collar worker working 18 hours a day just to get anywhere, there's real life for that.

But why is it tedious? What is your beef with leveling? My beef with leveling is that currently there is no challenge in it. I don't like the fact that the gear that I receive is replaced under 5 minutes by another set because I level so fast. I don't like leveling because I have no need of a brain to kill mobs. Instead of avoiding danger and being smart about pulling, I only have to think about how many I can pull at a time before I use my AoE.

So how could leveling be made better for you to be actual engaging content?

[Zantos]

We are going to 110 levels. Its not too fast. Its just right. You need to think about a new player coming to the game. They will have to level from 1 all the way to 110. No heirlooms. No boosts. No experience or knowledge in the best questing areas. No experience to maximize their characters potential. It's only fast to a veteran player.

[Etselion]

Retrieving 20 boar ass's doesn't get more fun by being slower...

[ShiyoKozuki]

We are going to 110 levels. Its not too fast. Its just right. You need to think about a new player coming to the game. They will have to level from 1 all the way to 110. No heirlooms. No boosts. No experience or knowledge in the best questing areas. No experience to maximize their characters potential. It's only fast to a veteran player.

New players quit because the game is too easy and boring and not fun at all if they try to level normally.

The new player experience is absolute garbage, it's actively keeping new players AWAY from the game. I'm sure this game gets VERY VERY few new players because of it.

Blizzard knows what's best for the game, I'm glad they're finally realizing it.

[PosPosPos]

But why is it tedious? What is your beef with leveling?

It's long, and it's boring. When your friends are waiting and counting on you to reach endgame to do endgame content and you are chugging away merrily doing a level a day just because there are people like you with rose tinted glasses on complaining to no end about making irrelevant content relevant for the sake of nostalgia.

My beef with leveling is that currently there is no challenge in it. I don't like the fact that the gear that I receive is replaced under 5 minutes by another set because I level so fast. I don't like leveling because I have no need of a brain to kill mobs. Instead of avoiding danger and being smart about pulling, I only have to think about how many I can pull at a time before I use my AoE.

Oh okay, so that has nothing to do with leveling quickly. Other than useless and pointless whining about how gear gets replaced quickly. Whoop dee doo, that totally warrants a redesign to satisfy a vocal minority.

So how could leveling be made better for you to be actual engaging content?

I don't have any problems making the content challenging per se, so when people come along and try to market "tediousness" as "challenging" and "fun", I can only say to get a grip.

[Narsys]

All of the things Blizzard is unhappy with about leveling...they created. Heirlooms, dungeon finder, cross realm play, etc.

They nerfed their own game into the ground and no clearly have no idea how to get it back on track. Wouldn't you be scared if the large portion of your playerbase craved 10+ year old content over the shiny, new stuff you keep making? Its not because Vanilla was necessarily better, but because you had to actually Play & invest time/effort into your character. Something which is missing from the game now.

Now we all have every max level toon and sit in our Garrisons queing for the game.

[Zantos]

New players quit because the game is too easy and boring and not fun at all if they try to level normally.

The new player experience is absolute garbage, it's actively keeping new players AWAY from the game. I'm sure this game gets VERY VERY few new players because of it.

Blizzard knows what's best for the game, I'm glad they're finally realizing it.

Its boring at the very start. Then it gets more fun. Leveling is just dull in most mmos in general. The problem is that the real fun content is at max level. Blizzard Doesnt know whats best. Thats how we ended up with WoD and only 1 content patch that was lack luster.

[Snackpack]

We are going to 110 levels. Its not too fast. Its just right. You need to think about a new player coming to the game. They will have to level from 1 all the way to 110. No heirlooms. No boosts. No experience or knowledge in the best questing areas. No experience to maximize their characters potential. It's only fast to a veteran player.

isn't that why they're giving out lvl 100 boosts to new players?

[FuxieDK]

The only bad thing with levelling, is 68-80 and 90-100..

[Armourboy]

isn't that why they're giving out lvl 100 boosts to new players?

Yup or you know you can purchase one.

I don't know what the solution is, but when 90-100 can be done a the matter of a few hours it's gone to far the other way.

I personally thought TBC was about right. A couple of weeks even if you can't play every day seems reasonable to me. At the same time you don't want to get to the point where it takes 6 months to go from 1-110.

Having the boost as a solution for those that don't want to level is one thing, it being the best choice is bad as well.