When will the level squish happen?

[Sylar Hao]

In my opinion, one single level boost per expansion is not enough to combat this.

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Because every expansion now include a level boost. You don't have to quest old content unless you want to. Why would anyone remove a part of that ?
For new players it's about trying out different classes at max level before they boost (yes you can actually do that!).
If anything *new* it would be about world scaling. However that destroy the narrative and in general is a bad solution. I think it's fine as it is.

Why would they want to boost after trying different classes at max level... if they are already at max level? :S

[Deleted]

Bullshit! #1 you got boost to 110 by then #2 it takes like 2 days to get to max level
bullshit again. compared to vanilla its as fast as a flight from east to west cost

No, cause scaling failed already in Legion and players need char progression.

Its not really all bullshit. I mean i dont have alts cuz its offputting to start from 1, ofc u can buy a boost but meh.
And its does take time, not "vanilla" time but still time.

[Deleted]

Just make that after hitting 60 (or from the very beginning) all zones scale to your level except the last expansion zones, for which scale from 100 or 110 onwards.

That way you can level wherever you want.

The stat squish...next expansion we might see it.

[jettzypher]

Why would they want to boost after trying different classes at max level... if they are already at max level? :S

It's the class trial system that exists which lets you see what playing a class is like. It's only temporary; you don't keep the trial toon (unless you boost it).

[MoanaLisa]

There is a solution: New players or anyone that buys an expansion start at over a hundred.

Players can go back and explore the rest of the game at their leisure.

These threads seem to assume that new players must start at 1. They don't.

[Dracullus]

next expansion we will level up to level 120!!!

|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| <- this is 120 levels

if you are a new player 120 levels are simply too daunting. especially because it actually takes quite some time if you are a completely new player with no account bound items and no experience.

I would actually like them to go all the way back to level 60 and make all zones scale with your level.

what's your solution?

I said this in another thread:

1) Make 100 pernament max level
2) Current expansion zones scale 90-100
3) Old zones scale 1-90 (+ they can fix levelling this way and make it little harder, something like 90-100 levelling)
4) With next expansion pre patch all 90+ chars and zones go back to 90.

It would solve two problems at once - new players won't be scared looking at 120+ cap and we could reroll very easily in the future - there is no need to cap every char, just ones you want use in endgame.

[Blazur]

Lv max=60. Vanilla zones are 1-40. TBC,WotLK,Cata,MoP are 40-50, you can level in any continent. WoD and Legion are 50-55 and the new xpac continent are 50-60. Level squish is not that important to me compared to stat squish though.

This is the best suggestion I ever see when this topic comes up. Would support

[huth]

I said this in another thread:

1) Make 100 pernament max level
2) Current expansion zones scale 90-100
3) Old zones scale 1-90 (+ they can fix levelling this way and make it little harder, something like 90-100 levelling)
4) With next expansion pre patch all 90+ chars and zones go back to 90.

5) Realise that this is dumb and doesn't actually achieve anything while creating a bunch of extra work and discard the plan.

[Eon Drache]

Fun fact Vanilla WoW was originally going to be levels 1-100 in the alpha. We don't need a level squish. New players is a very small percent of players for WoW. Most players have been playing a while at this point or are returning players that come to check stuff out when patches/expansions launch. There are many reasons players don't check out WoW for the first time but the "Daunting number of levels" it takes to get to max is probably not one of the main reasons.

A Paragon system would probably work pretty well since they will need something to replace the character progression that artifacts brought with the expansion. I can see them calling it "Path of the Titans". When you sacrifice your artifact next expansion it could set your level to 100 and give you 10 "Titan points" or something like that.

[Dracullus]

5) Realise that this is dumb and doesn't actually achieve anything while creating a bunch of extra work and discard the plan.

Stat squish also is cosmetic thing that "doesn't actually achieve anything", but they still do this. Level squish is the same - only retuning number to look more clean.

And in the part you cut I said about two problems that it would solve - for new players level 100 looks more achievable, for veteran players - you don't need to cap every char, just ones you need for endgame, next expac you can switch main without doing same levelling content again.

[Deleted]

for me, the best memories come from exploring the unexplored! and with exploring I don't mean flying around on my mount oneshotting everything.
the world should feel huge and scary at the start, to make the game fun.

Let's look at this from the angle of a NEW player, on their first character. Not someone running through their 117th alt:

The world feels more huge and scary when you know you have 120 levels to go until you reach the endgame. Huge, because 120 levels is a lot and if you've run (on your feet) around for hours and not even gotten through the easy levels yet and only managed to see 3-4 zones, there is going to be a hell of a lot more to see and do for you. Scary, because some of those mobs you've faced (as a brand new player with no previous experience of the game and no heirlooms to help) were actually harder than expected, as you're still learning your class and how to fight properly in this game.

You WILL be exploring the world while leveling up, because EVERYTHING is new to you. Regardless of if you're going from the snowy areas of Dun Morogh through the tunnels to green Loch Modan, or passing through The Barrens from any direction, you'll be seeing everchanging biomes with all that entails. It will feel like taking a long time if you know you have 120 levels ahead of you when you start and new players will be going much slower than experienced players, so psychologically it will feel like you have more time to explore and you will then TAKE your time exploring. If you reduce the number to 60, and you're already level 20, you're already 1/3 through and you've only seen 3-4 zones. You'll think that the game can't be that big and it won't take that long to finish. You're just going to rush through and go explore later. It can wait.


To us veterans of the game, it may seem like it's putting off people, knowing that there are oh so many levels to go. And we dislike it because we have to take yet another alt through that damn place AGAIN, whatever the place may be. We just want our alts to max, we want them there now, we don't give a rat's ass about the lowbie stuff. That's why we use heirlooms and xp potions and invasions to boost that effort. But new players? They don't think like us. New players that are genuinely interested in the game, not just the endgame, they will play it and not care about 120 levels.

[Marston]

I would like a level squish for 3 reasons:

- A lower level automatically reduces our stats. We still get stats each level and if the max level is 60 instead of 120, we loose 60 level of these stats. That in turn helps with the ever growing numbers and may prevent another stat squish for 1 or 2 more expansions.
- A lower level also allows Blizzard to pace the skills we learn at certain levels better. Currently, the higher we get the less skills we learn. It's not unusual to have 5-10 levels without a single skill. A lower level overall would allow blizzard to give us something fun to use every other level, like it was in Classic.
- Finally, a lower level would allow Blizzard to consolidate several expansions into one level range. So no matter if we get level scaling with a minimum level (and a maximum) or if we do not get it for all zones, if we reduce the level to 60, we could get someting like:
Level 1-30 = Current 1-60 content, Level 30-40 = TBC, Northrend and Cataclysm Zones, level 40-50 = MoP, Warlords and Legion zones, Level 50-60 = New expansion.

Considering they can balance the exp that it could take anywhere from 50 hours to 5000 hours to go from level 1-120, that's not really a problem. I see much more benefit in the 3 above points.

[Joycemiester]

next expansion we will level up to level 120!!!

|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| <- this is 120 levels

if you are a new player 120 levels are simply too daunting. especially because it actually takes quite some time if you are a completely new player with no account bound items and no experience.

I would actually like them to go all the way back to level 60 and make all zones scale with your level.

what's your solution?

What new players? The new players that exist are a very small percentage of the player base and I think enough changes have been made to the game over the years for "new players" at the detriment to the veteran players. Damage and health squish makes sense though.

[Hctaz]

what's your solution?

I want to preface all of this by saying that I have, and still do, greatly enjoy World of Warcraft. This isn't some "Oh boohoo whine" post. I don't think anything could have been done differently with the circumstances they were given, and I'm glad that WoW has not ended after all this time.

My solution's ship has already set sail. I've been thinking about "classic" WoW a lot lately due to a few things. I've seen a lot of videos on the topic of the world content from Vanilla and also some friends of mine recently quit retail to play on a BC private server due to Legion burnout. My solution would have simply been to make a new game starting off after Wrath.

The way I see it, things are kinda screwed. Cataclysm was obviously the turning point. I'm 100% sure the WoW team sat down after Wrath and said something like "Look, we did it. We finished the game we originally wanted to make. (context: WoW was originally planned to include Outland and Northrend from launch) Everything from Warcraft 3 has been told. We have more stories to tell but it's all mostly new." They had the choice at that time to either make WoW 2 or to revamp as much as they could. They chose to do the latter. I don't agree that they should have for the health of their franchise but I completely understand why they had to.

I know it would have been scary and they probably looked at their overwhelming number of subs in Wrath and decided that potentially splitting the playerbase and/or losing a bunch of subs would be bad. I don't fault them for that. Unfortunately WoW was really the only thing making them money. They hadn't released something outside of it for a LOOONG time. If Wrath had come out in an age when Blizzard had Overwatch and Hearthstone to support them then I have a hunch we'd have seen a new Warcraft MMO instead of Cata.


I look back at what WoW was and realize that it should have stayed there forever at level 80. Our heroes should have retired after their service, and a new game with a new story should have come out of it. The game has changed so much with every expansion revamping something that it literally isn't the same game anymore, and the systems in place should have been updated to represent that.


TL;DR They should have made a sequel MMO to WoW and left legacy WoW at Wrath to deal with all of the problems they've faced thus far in terms of squishes. The game has evolved so much it's basically a sequel running on old systems that they keep trying to update instead of revamp. Still love the game though.

[Crimewave]

Never.

/10char

[Hctaz]

Fun fact Vanilla WoW was originally going to be levels 1-100 in the alpha.

Well yeah but it was also going to include Outland and Northrend as well.

Could you even imagine a Vanilla WoW of that scale? Somebody bring the original developers forward in time and see what fucking crazy ass Warcraft MMO they could have invented in 2017.

[Deleted]

Well yeah but it was also going to include Outland and Northrend as well.

Could you even imagine a Vanilla WoW of that scale? Somebody bring the original developers forward in time and see what fucking crazy ass Warcraft MMO they could have invented in 2017.

World Of Warcraft as a new game in 2017 would be vastly different from what it was then, what it is now and what it will become in the future. It would be designed with current gamer-mentality in mind and be nowhere near as good. Things have changed since they were working on the game, not just in the technical department, but with us gamers. And not for the better....!

[Joycemiester]

I want to preface all of this by saying that I have, and still do, greatly enjoy World of Warcraft. This isn't some "Oh boohoo whine" post. I don't think anything could have been done differently with the circumstances they were given, and I'm glad that WoW has not ended after all this time.

My solution's ship has already set sail. I've been thinking about "classic" WoW a lot lately due to a few things. I've seen a lot of videos on the topic of the world content from Vanilla and also some friends of mine recently quit retail to play on a BC private server due to Legion burnout. My solution would have simply been to make a new game starting off after Wrath.

The way I see it, things are kinda screwed. Cataclysm was obviously the turning point. I'm 100% sure the WoW team sat down after Wrath and said something like "Look, we did it. We finished the game we originally wanted to make. (context: WoW was originally planned to include Outland and Northrend from launch) Everything from Warcraft 3 has been told. We have more stories to tell but it's all mostly new." They had the choice at that time to either make WoW 2 or to revamp as much as they could. They chose to do the latter. I don't agree that they should have for the health of their franchise but I completely understand why they had to.

I know it would have been scary and they probably looked at their overwhelming number of subs in Wrath and decided that potentially splitting the playerbase and/or losing a bunch of subs would be bad. I don't fault them for that. Unfortunately WoW was really the only thing making them money. They hadn't released something outside of it for a LOOONG time. If Wrath had come out in an age when Blizzard had Overwatch and Hearthstone to support them then I have a hunch we'd have seen a new Warcraft MMO instead of Cata.


I look back at what WoW was and realize that it should have stayed there forever at level 80. Our heroes should have retired after their service, and a new game with a new story should have come out of it. The game has changed so much with every expansion revamping something that it literally isn't the same game anymore, and the systems in place should have been updated to represent that.


TL;DR They should have made a sequel MMO to WoW and left legacy WoW at Wrath to deal with all of the problems they've faced thus far in terms of squishes. The game has evolved so much it's basically a sequel running on old systems that they keep trying to update instead of revamp. Still love the game though.

I second that

[Denarius]

everyone will use the boost and the game will lose some of its magic once you log on that char.

My wife's account has been active for about 7 months. (our RaF bonus ran out in January) and she hasn't used her boost. She doesn't plan on using it until she's already got a max level toon. So, not everyone will use it right away.

OT- I vote no level squish

[Lochton]

I have my doubts if ever.