Leveling overlooked every expansion?

[Deleted]

Don't want to turn this into a vanilla vs current discussion but I just want to say the absolute best thing about vanilla wasn't the endgame, it was the leveling experience. My first level 60 took 23 Days /played to ding max level and my only alt took about 11 Days. According to people on private servers the current average is 8-10 Days I Believe.

The journey was Amazing and for a casual, imagine playing for months and months Before even reaching max level! Unheard of by todays standards where everyone is max level within a week of the xpack release. It seems like such untapped potential, instead of having a final raid tier last for >1 year why not have the leveling experience in the beginning be an Epic 2 month journey or so? Remove the stress and hype to get to endgame and start raiding, let the first raid tier last a long time so people can enjoy just leveling and exploring.

They would need to change their zone and quest design though, because the last 2 expansions have been very claustrophobic in their design cramping quests and mobs in every nook and cranny in every zone and having Everything on rails.

I say build a huuuge new continent first, then populate with quest givers etc much like the original 2 continents in vanilla and don't design the maps around hubs and how to level most efficiently.

Anyone agree or am I just a ftard who should suicide?

[haxartus]

Basically, when the developers started considering raiding as the only true game experience, and everything else as just a time filler, the game started dying.

They have increased the pace of the game significantly, with short leveling, fast dungeons, dungeon/raid finders and etc. But now game content is being consumed so fast that they can't keep up with the development speed, which is causing millions of players to leave due to a lack of content. I'd say if anything is killing the game, it is bad design/development decisions.

When they started losing millions of players, do you think they made more content ? No, they virtualized the servers and they developed a a cross-realm technology so the players in the game don't feel the massive loss of active subscribers and the zones don't feel empty.

[Kelathos]

Vanilla combat was slow, regen between combat even slower, travel times abysmal, and many quests required thotbot to look up proper instructions. The quest hubs were often disjointed and could include considerable travel times. Your character probably didn't even have "proper" gear. 1-60 today is not the same journey. Much of the padding, the "time wasting" has been smoothed out.

Today WoW is developed with a clear identity and driven by efficiency. The devs know WoW is a themepark, they do not treat it as a "world" to get lost in. They craft the leveling content to tell a zone's story. Its function as a time sink reduced to a couple days, not months. All of us players at max level have gone through the "level grind". We've been there, we've done that, we do not want another large time sink standing between us and the endgame content.

In fact, if I had it my way... every new character would start at the beginning of the latest expansion. I'd place your new characters in Dalaran at level 100.

I think the nostalgia you describe is more befitting an online world. Something large and expansive to "get lost" in. To enjoy exploration, danger, and discovery. Those are just not significant features of WoW as a game. I mean, I found some joy in exploring the Broken Isles, but that can only take us so far. Vanilla WoW had "flaws" that enhanced the idea of those features, but WoW devs never actually embraced them. The game took a different direction entirely.

I'm afraid what you are asking for is another game. Though I do ponder if WoW could be reforged to suit your desired features...
Unfortunately, one should not expect the Dev team to "rethink" the game.

[Softbottom]

Vanilla combat was slow, regen between combat even slower, travel times abysmal, and many quests required thotbot to look up proper instructions. The quest hubs were often disjointed and could include considerable travel times. Your character probably didn't even have "proper" gear. 1-60 today is not the same journey. Much of the padding, the "time wasting" has been smoothed out.

As much as I love this old version of game that WoW has just evolved. In 2004 these things were the norm in MMO's and definitely not the norm now Do I miss them? I don't know to be honest. The game was definitely more open ended back then instead of on the rails leveling they have now.

[ChunkyCheerio]

Don't want to turn this into a vanilla vs current discussion but I just want to say the absolute best thing about vanilla wasn't the endgame, it was the leveling experience.

Unfortunately for you, those days are dead and gone. In today's world of FPS and VR and MOBA's... 80% of the player base don't even read quest or even care why they're doing the things they're doing. "I want to be quicker, better, smarter, awesomer, and cooler than the next guy, as quick as possible." Proof of this is eSports and the bringing of Mythic plus keystone challenges..."Who can do this the fastest and most efficiently... challenge". The simple fact is, Blizzard is a company that's making huge profits and you make those profits by appealing to the majority of players.

EVEN I, I love lore, I want as much as I can get. However... I have all 12 classes above level 100. NO WAY IN HELL would I want to lengthen the requirements to catch up my alts. I can't even stomach the thought of leveling some alts past getting their first artifact... If I was able to choose for the next expansion would I rather take 5 days or 3 months to level a character, NO way would I give more than 3 seconds to even considering leveling for 3 months.. maybe my main, but alts could all be deleted.

TL;DR Point being, people don't play this for trivial, repetitive and easy questing experiences, as enjoyable as lore is, people pay to play to compete at the highest level and progress the hardest difficulty possible before other people can.

If you'd like to participate. You can search youtube for things like the "Ironman challenge" or "Lord of the Rings challenge", OR a guy named Bellulargaming on youtube has created a whole addon that modifies all the quest into RP style interactions and creates a new story I believe revolving around the current world? or something like that.

[Aeula]

WoD did levelling the best imo. Short, story-driven areas with optional xp-granting side activities to break up the monotony.

Sadly they fucked this up in Legion by making the mobs slightly tougher, the storylines disconnected and cluttered the zones up to make them feel extremely claustrophobic. WoD was much less claustrophobic than Legion.

[tikcol]

EVEN I, I love lore, I want as much as I can get. However... I have all 12 classes above level 100. NO WAY IN HELL would I want to lengthen the requirements to catch up my alts. I can't even stomach the thought of leveling some alts past getting their first artifact...

Having all classes at full level wasn't a thing back then. Just that speaks volumes about the philosophy shift and exactly why, unfortunately they can't ever revert it.

You just told you you feel entitled to having 12 classes above level 100.. do you understand what that means? Do you really?

Back then people were happy having 1 class at max level and playing it. Yes, the game was a lot more time consuming back then but it also had a lot more depth to it. You could enjoy playing with that class forever.


Nowadays you're crying that leveling up 12 classes to level 110 is a pain in the ass. Well of course it bloody is... or it should be.

[emilylorange]

Truthfully leveling has always been one of my top things to do. I think I'm kind of weird that way? I don't know, I did it back before XP started getting nerfed. Back in 2005 I just swapped between characters as they ran out of rested and was perfectly happy never doing anything harder than sunken temple. I just like it.

This expansion made any investment in an alt sort of... painful tho. Even without heirlooms you blow through the old zones, and the clear goal is to funnel you to endgame. Which is funny, because it's really 'hurry up and wait' on the unlocks, legendaries, and AP you need to do their prescribed activities, via the same content you've already been doing for 8 months, versus wandering zones you haven't seen in two years.

I suspect old leveling is just gone, but if you want the feel of it and don't really care about the 'endgame' Wildstar does a decent job mimicking it.

[darklogrus]

Im curious how you would cram 3 months worth of leveling into 5/10 levels..

[bowchikabow]

Isn't this all sort of a self-inflicted wound though? We didn't say anything when wrath came out and leveling took less than half the time as TBC.. which no one even complained about the leveling. The pacing was a mess, sure, but the leveling was meaningful and provided good story for each zone. We started to complain some when Cata launched and we were essentially hand-held through each zone. Each quest hub was insular and led directly to another in a neat, clean path around the zone. Still, not enough was said. Then MoP/WoD both took what was good about cata leveling and put it through a wood chipper and thus we were left with THOSE experiences. The only salvation (to an extent) was the bonus experience objective in certain parts of each WoD zone. But other wise it was a mess.

The redeeming quality of legion questing though.. if you can call it that.. Was being able to pick your start zone, and pick your leveling path. If I am being honest, having mob level scaling was one of the best things they did for the leveling experience. I hope it is just a first step in changing the leveling experience going forward in expacks. The sad fact is they will never take us back to vanilla style leveling, they won't even take it back to TBC levels.. And I think that is OK to be honest. Though I do wish they could extend the leveling content in a meaningful and useful way so that it isn't a race to level cap in the first 12hrs.

I would not actually be opposed to things like MINOR time gating of things like heroic dungeons, mythic dungeons, then raids. We can have world quests for when you hit level cap, and have content for your class/heroes story. Something like this:

Schedule:
Day 1: launch, in all of its glory. with mob scaling, we can pick the start of our adventure

First lockout after launch: unlock heroic dungeons. These would not have titanforging.. you should, ideally, be wrapping up your first class/hero questline.

2nd full lockout: Mythic level dungeons release. Again, no titanforging, this is a chance to get a feel for the dungeons before keystones. At this point, you should be level cap, have your class quest done, and what not.

3rd lock out: Mythic Keystones become available, first raid tier unlocks. This would be a VERY busy week to be honest. I would change the Keystone system so that it is random whether or not someone gets a stone. And no more than one person gets a stone. This stone will be random and will increase in a manner similar to current. Also, Keystone gear will be allowed to titanforge, but it will cap (always) at heroic level raid ilvl. Also, keystones will be on a daily loot lockout, so that you may not spam one after the other after the other. If you complete (using current dungeons as example) a +5 maw, you won't be able to do a maw 5 again until the next day. You can do a 6, or 7, or which higher level version.. but not same.

And then follow most of the current legion formula for content release regarding raids/mythic resets, and class quest advancement.

I feel like this is the only best option.

And yes, I know there will be those who will still blast through it.. it will always happen, this is for the 95% of the player base, not the 5%.

[Kelathos]

The game even then started at max level

I suspect that's the gist of the complaint. We play WoW for the themepark rides, the best are found at max level. We agree, the game "starts" at max level.

What is spoken of in the OP is a desire for that "other game". One where leveling, exploration, danger, and discovery are key features. I think they could be crafted together in a way that suits both... but I feel the Devs dropped the other a long time ago. It requires a fundamental change in design philosophy and I think the WoW Devs just want to play it safe. In the end we get more rides, they get a small, specially crafted but ultimately unfulfilling "world".

[Paulosio]

Bet there's not many people around today who choose not to use their mount, heirlooms and miss having to drink / eat between every other mob pull while levelling... And that's even the people who are pining for a slower levelling experience.

I didn't mind running my night elf all the way through wetland and Dun Murogh to reach IF too much back then but I sure as heck wouldn't want to be doing that sort of thing today... certainly not more than once. The ammount of whining about lack of flying at at the start of every xpac also suggests such things wouldn't be popular... Imagine if Blizzard said not only will there be no flying but there will be no mounts either... "You think want it but you don't".

[McNeil]

Leveling was starting to get less important after every new expansion, to the point that it might aswell not exist today. They deliberately try to get you to max level as soon as possible because thats where all the content really starts off. It might not be a problem for some people, but others would love to be more in an open world instead of just instanced content with several difficulty settings.

[MoanaLisa]

Vanilla had 60 levels and several years to create them.

I can't even begin to imagine the uproar if an expansion had more than ten levels, much less 50 or more and took weeks or months to finish to endgame.

I mean I would personally be fine with that but that's not the game, nor is it even really practical.

Holy crap.

[WskyDK]

Leveling is interesting the first time I do it. After that, I'd skip it completely if I could.

[Aggrophobic]

No, leveling was not fun even back then.
I'd rather have more max level content.

[Teri]

Leveling 60 levels always will feel different then 5 or 10 expansion levels, and it's more a chore after doing it 5+ times.

Even so I prefer leveling via quests as I still collect many transmog that way.

I did loremaster before Cataclysm so missing a lot of quest unlocks even now, that the transmog unlock system needs basicly to do it 4 times+ (1 time per armor type, and then there's still faction specific stuff if you wanna nit-pick)

The on-rails style of questing does get boring however.

[Kazgrel]

This will venture perhaps too close to game vs. game...but I believe GW2 was kinda going in the right direction in that you have 5 different areas you can start in; had they stuck with the idea of level-less player classes (which was stated to be the case at one point in that game's development), you could have a world where all the outdoor areas are somewhat relevant. That's one thing I believe that game does a fairly decent job at.

Course, my ideal "leveling" system would be something more akin to what we had in pre-CU/NGE Star Wars Galaxies, but perhaps that, too, is a relic of MMO eras past, never to be seen again.

[Doogler]

Don't want to turn this into a vanilla vs current discussion but I just want to say the absolute best thing about vanilla wasn't the endgame, it was the leveling experience. My first level 60 took 23 Days /played to ding max level and my only alt took about 11 Days. According to people on private servers the current average is 8-10 Days I Believe.

The journey was Amazing and for a casual, imagine playing for months and months Before even reaching max level! Unheard of by todays standards where everyone is max level within a week of the xpack release. It seems like such untapped potential, instead of having a final raid tier last for >1 year why not have the leveling experience in the beginning be an Epic 2 month journey or so? Remove the stress and hype to get to endgame and start raiding, let the first raid tier last a long time so people can enjoy just leveling and exploring.

They would need to change their zone and quest design though, because the last 2 expansions have been very claustrophobic in their design cramping quests and mobs in every nook and cranny in every zone and having Everything on rails.

I say build a huuuge new continent first, then populate with quest givers etc much like the original 2 continents in vanilla and don't design the maps around hubs and how to level most efficiently.

Anyone agree or am I just a ftard who should suicide?

I could not disagree more. I hate it. I hated every second of it. The going back and forth from continent to continent to find enough quests to get you half a level only to turn around again was horrible. The quests themselves were incredibly boring kill 10 generic mobs and come back to only be sent right back to kill 10 more slightly different generic mobs. Begging high level people to help you do the group quests because no one else was in the zone sucked. Your toolkits were tiny so generally you would sit there and spam a single the same couple abilities over and over. Sure mobs took a lot longer to kill and people still say that made things harder and more fun but it was boring grindy button mashing with little strategy. Then every 2-3 mobs you would have to spend a bunch of time drinking.

If you enjoyed that, go have fun on the private servers.

[SirCowdog]

Leveling content is a massive waste of development resources. Players consume the content ONCE in a mostly linear fashion, then never go back. All that open world content goes to waste unless the devs can think of a clever way to get players to return to it. WoW handles this with world quests, FFXIV does it with their job system. DDO allowed players to restart at level 1, with more bonuses each time you leveled up to cap. EVE online does it by not having traditional levels at all, and I think this is the best way to do things.

The problem with WoW's content is that ALL of it is too linear. I really hope that in the following expansions Blizzard moves further and further away from that sort of thing. M+ is a massive step forward, as is world scaling. IMO the perfect "leveling" experience would be to have no levels at all, only gear and the artifact grind, and have the world scale with that. Set the story up to be consumed and progressed at the rate of those forms of progression rather than on arbitrary "levels" which don't matter after the first week of launch anyway.