Suggestions to improve the leveling experience of new and veteran players

[SoggyBranflakes]

I'm posting this here because it exceeds the character limit on the official forums, and MMO-Champion's forums usually attract a high caliber of discussion than Blizzard's official forums. If this is the wrong place to post this in than I apologize.
Before I begin I think it's important that I say that I'm not a game developer, I don't have a career in the industry, and it's probably not my place to tell blizzard how to design their game. I'm simply a person who plays too much World of Warcraft and is somewhat unsatisfied with some aspects of the 1-90 leveling experience on live. I hope that someone at Blizzard might potentially see this post and find some of my suggestions valuable.

Furthermore the ideas in this post aren't intended to address the very large and very vocal group of players who want legacy realms. The wants and desires of those players are equally valuable, I just don't happen to share them. I enjoy live WoW, and I want to see it continue to improve.

The Speed of Leveling

Even Without heirlooms leveling speed is entirely too fast. The new player and the veteran who levels 1-90 will frequently find themselves outleveling zones. This is compounded even more if the player chooses to take part in normal dungeons while leveling.

I think that the rate of leveling without heirlooms should be reduced to it's original rate in the expansion zones, and reduced by ~30%-40% in 1-60 zones. I also believe that the amount of experience gained from 5-mans should be greatly reduced, and that quests in these dungeons should give equal experience to a quest in a equal level zone. The incentive to complete dungeons while leveling should be socialization, gear, and adventure.

But what about the player who wants to breeze through leveling, and is only interested in endgame content?

Some people simply don't enjoy leveling, and that's okay. For these players more options should be given to speed up their experience leveling. Furthermore, having the ways to gain these leveling boons be only available to high level or capped characters does not significantly inconvenience these players as everyone who has purchased WoD in the past or has purchased legion has access to at least 1 high level character to work towards these items with thanks to the level 90, and level 100 boosts, as well as the ability to create a nearly level 100 Demon hunter.

First off I would have more experience heirlooms added, and more ways to acquire them implemented. Complete the sets already available in game with gloves, boots, belts, and bracers. Make all endgame PVE content drop valor, and add opportunities to come into the possession of these heirlooms through, gold, valor, professions, pvp, old raid content, and world quests.

In addition I would like to see a reliable way to farm, or craft +50% +100%, and +200% xp potions. Make them cost the legion equivalent of felblight/savage blood, and make them battle.net account bound.

The Difficulty of Combat While Leveling

Recently I've been leveling a survival hunter in preperation for legion, and while leveling, and I've found combat as a whole to be entirely unsatisfying. This isn't because of the quality of the class design or Legion's combat design as a whole, but because combat doesn't last long enough.

Survival's design centers around mongoose bite. You're initially given three charges on a 12 second recharge. Each time mongoose bite is used the player is given a stacking buff that increases the damage of additional mongoose bites. The issue while leveling is that I find 99% of mobs I've encountered so far have been dead either immediately after I've opened up combat with flanking strike or after the first application of mongoose bite. Enemy health is entirely too low to the point where my class feels unsatisfying as a result.

In addition to the issues with enemy health, enemy damage is also far too low. As a hunter with a pet who tanks most of the mobs I pull I have never died, and my pet has never felt at risk of dying. Enemy damage done should be greatly increased to a point where the player should at least feel at risk of death fairly frequently. I'm not saying that leveling in WoW should be like Dark Souls, but the player should not feel invincible either. Extreme lack of difficulty does nothing to help a player learn the game, and is damaging to quality of the player base in the long run.

Conclusion.

I hope that my post hasn't been too long or excessively verbose, and that in reading it some value has been gained by someone. I believe that these changes would be beneficial to World of Warcraft as a whole, and would help to improve player satisfaction. Thank you for reading, and have a good day.

-Irollou-Stormrage, Level 100 Alliance Mage
(Looking for a semi-casual Heroic guild on Stormrage for Legion )

[Delaios]

Some additions:

- Re-design low level questing so it no longer sends you back and forth to the same area. BC and WotLK can suffer quite heavily from this. Especially Hellfire Peninsula if you go there immediately at level 58 (meaning no flight).

- Allow low level zones to scale up. It allows all players to fully experience a zone. A player with no heirlooms, no XP bonuses and no rested XP might just be able to finish a zone without over leveling it. Add just one of those and you out level it. Combine them all and just a hub or two will make you out level a zone. Scaling content up fixes this issue. Removing the XP cut-offs between expansions would go well with scaling zones.

- Auto-enable flight-paths to all starting quest hubs in zones. Wouldn't be as big a deal with scaling zones. But currently getting to your next zone can be very time consuming.

[Sluvs]

What I really want to see, and something that will probably help solving those problems is zone scaling, so you would never outlevel zones. I would love to see the dungeons better integrated in the leveling experience too.

[Katchii]

I'd settle for simply scaling the zones from 1-100 the same way they are scaling them in Legion. Feeling like I have to leave a zone to maximize my experience gain while I'm not even 1/3 of the way through and therefore have several quest chains I don't get to see the conclusion of is frustrating. I'm generally OK with the leveling speed, just frustrated that I feel I can't experience the story in leveling zones without gimping myself on xp for not leaving for a more level appropriate zone.

Filling out the Heirloom options so you can have a full armor set would be great too. Give at least one ring option that most people can easily get while we're at it. I don't mind the kill speed, but understand that some classes feel boring from 1-90 because they never get to even use their full kit. I like dungeon leveling experience, wishing only that from 50-60 there were more options besides BRD and the Pandaria dungeons provided more xp (mobs in Pandaria dungeons are practically worthless).

[Cinnamohn]

Multiply the health and experience reward of enemies by like 10. I've never seen leveling so unbelievably faceroll before.

Remove the experience reward from quests and turn it into a system where you're granted X stacks of a new buff - kills grant 25% more experience, each kill removes a stack, no duration, persists through death.

Could even reduce the base amount gained per kill and increase the quest's buff percentage, putting more emphasis on doing quests. Could also make it an option upon quest completion to choose between the buff stacks or gold.

[shonist]

So you are new on the game, and you have to spends 5 months to lvl to 110 to play the current content... nah

[Softbottom]

Id prefer to just pay 50$ to be 110. I cannot stand leveling anymore; ive done for 12 years im sick of it. Wod was the first xpac i didnt level alts because it was mindnumbing.

[Gadzooks]

So you are new on the game, and you have to spends 5 months to lvl to 110 to play the current content... nah

So why bother having all that old content? Right? That's the dilemma for the devs - they're the ones who created the problem, by ignoring old content and making it pointless to bother with, since all the action is in the new expansion, and making it too easy to race or boost to it.

So what do they do? If they fix the leveling experience, everyone complains that it takes too long. If they make it easier to boost to current content, everyone complains that nobody knows their class. If they spend on minute on old content, the raiders start crying that it cost them content.

So, what do they do? It's pretty obvious they don't really know yet, either - scaling zones might work...but not if the prevailing attitude is that low level stuff isn't worth bothering with if it takes more than a week to get from 1 to 100.

[SoggyBranflakes]

So you are new on the game, and you have to spends 5 months to lvl to 110 to play the current content... nah

If you're new to the game and buy Legion you get a lvl 100 and a can make a Demon Hunter at lvl 98 immediately.

Id prefer to just pay 50$ to be 110. I cannot stand leveling anymore; ive done for 12 years im sick of it. Wod was the first xpac i didnt level alts because it was mindnumbing.

This is what the expanded heirloom and xp potion options I mentioned are for.

[Softbottom]

If you're new to the game and buy Legion you get a lvl 100 and a can make a Demon Hunter at lvl 98 immediately.



This is what the expanded heirloom and xp potion options I mentioned are for.

It was a struggle even on my main. Everyone praised WoD's leveling; I thought it was shit. Leveling as a whole is boring to me. The game basically starts at max level, they shot themselves in the foot by negating previous xpacs and post TBC by negating previous tiers.

[Nurvus]

The game basically starts at max level.

That's the real problem that needs to be fixed.
Fixing the symptoms won't help.

The "game" needs to start at the beginning. Everything you do should feel meaningful from an end game point of view.

1 - Make end game recipes use low level materials as well, by introducing a "refining" process with various grades, perhaps 1 grade per expansion:
<insert badass metal> = X badass ore + Y (grade) Refined Copper + Z ingredient.
2 - Make all content meant for your level reward you stuff you can use at end game, like the old Justice Points.
3 - Make crafted stuff relevant while leveling.
4 - Create a link between experience gained from gathering, leveling and even crafting.
Gathering and Crafting would grant an "Inspiration Bonus" to XP which would function like (and stack with) Rested Bonus.

[Kokolums]

See the link in my signature for a new leveling system. Leveling would be its own progression path that you play by throwing a switch.