How would YOU fix leveling?

[Dhrizzle]

Without heirlooms or rested XP the leveling curve through 1-60 zones isn't too far off. Clearing every zone with across 3 characters (following the 3 leveling paths) I never had any quests turn grey, in fact when doing southern Kalimdor I ran out of quests in Un'Goro before Silithus unlocked.

Anyway to fix leveling I would make the old-world mobs a bit tougher to kill, adjust the leveling curve so players are slightly behind forcing them to either run a few dungeons or occasionally do two zones in the same level range, then scale it so you go 1-80 and straight to Cata content without going to Outland or Northrend. The aim is for the Old World content to take longer than it currently does, but 1-80 is overall faster and you don't break up the story of the Cataclysm with historic events.

TBC and WotLK content should be accessed by a bronze dragon (who explains that the events take place before the Cataclysm,) and scale to your level.

[Maslenka]

Now most shit is sharded because they have heirlooms that shit on current level items and scale up with you. If anything they should be weaker at current level than dungeon drops.

In many cases dungeon drops (warlord procs, some crafted items) are already better than heirlooms at equivalent character's level. Yet players obviously don't feel need to swap items for 1-2 levels for small and temporary boost.

[Soeroah]

I reckon there should be limited scaling on a continent-by-continent basis. Leveling these days is so quick anyway that they can get away with scaling such that you can do 60-80 in Outland OR Northrend, 81-100 in your choice of Pandaria, WoD or the Cata zones where, and 1-60 in Old Azeroth, where every zone scales up from the current "minimum level required" up to 60, for example.

The idea essentially being that instead of being railroaded into the same set of content as you level, you can choose either EK or Kalimdor, then pick between a couple of continents to get to Legion, and then continue on linearly for a while. Doing the story, the zones will scale such that whenever you enter a new zone you are directed to, it will be an appropriate level, and will give you an appropriate amount of experience, but you can't, say, start a level 10 character off in Tanaris.

-IF- they ever do a "revamp Azeroth" expansion, I think they should keep the current Azeroth and make the new one a seperate instance so you can travel between the two as a max level, but they ought to also use scaling tech to allow you to choose which Azeroth to level a new character on, reflecting that expansion's story.

[Nyalite]

1) Take the exp bonus off heirlooms. They are just a power thing now.
2) Make 1-60 be 50% of the leveling experience
3) Make the distribution of exp in a zone rewarding from start to finish, no more leveling out of a zone when you are only 20% done with the story.
3) (most important) Use scaling tech so that players choose from 2 of the 5 of the old expansions to level from 60-100. I.E If after you hit 60 you decide to do wrath. You do ALL of wrath to be rewarded 20 levels. Then you choose another.


Why?
Lots of basically unused content out there. Currently the fastest way to level is to do the first 20% of a zone and move on. This isn't even because of heirlooms, its just because they keep nerfing exp requirements. I have done the first 20 quests in Hellfire and nagrand so many times I'm sick of it. I believe they can tune my idea such that you ultimately level faster, while getting the choice to experience some rarely visited content.

I especially would like to revisit northrend as the zones there all tie together in a nice way. I'd like to do some of the revamped vanilla zones without the quests becoming green half way through.

[Maslenka]

Reduce xp earned by whatever % so it takes 1+ week /played time to reach max level

But WHY?

- New players want to level up and catch up with their friends asap. And they don't have looms and flying unlocked in later expansion packs, so leveling already takes way longer for them.

- When leveling alt you are probably not interested in leveling part at all and treat is as a necessary evil.

- If you want to do "old" zones to enjoy story, you can do it on max level pretty much.

Now please explain me why they should make leveling take longer than now? Which group of players would actually benefit from it?

[Sanguinerd]

I don't think scaling would work for every zone. Having some zones be just for high level adds mystery and danger for low level players.

The issue is that those zones are empty as heck nowadays... So maybe they have to somehow implement world quests for the entire world. Have several factions around Azeroth that you can "work" for and they'll give you daily quests - but only one zone per day and one faction per week or something. There are already plenty of factions they can use for this and just up the rewards to max level, add mounts, pets, tabards, toys, transmog to give people plenty of incentive to do the content.

Another thing that would really help is if they update the old world visually. Once the old world looks a little better and is more full it's a lot less boring to level.

I'd also remove heirlooms and instead give the players a tome that would increase their %XP gain by Xamount. That way you'll have to quest, do dungeons and level profession(s) for gear.

[Krawu]

One of the best ideas I've seen thrown around is to have scaling, but only within a certain level range per expansion, say whatever level range that expansion originally added.

Vanilla WoW areas scale from 1-60
Burning Crusade areas scale from 60-70
WotLK areas scale from 70-80
Cataclysm areas scale from 80-85
Pandaria areas from 85-90
Draenor areas from 90-100

and then keep Legion as it is.


What this does is to reduce the balancing work Blizzard would have to do, but it'd still be a whole lot. Maybe too much if we still want them to make a decent new expansion at the same time, so it might result in another Cataclysm or Draenor, which are most frequently called the worst ones.

This way you'd still not do every single questing area of an expansion, but you could pick and choose your favorite one or two from each expansion and always be able to finish those, and likely even more for vanilla.

[Rogalicus]

Don't see why heirlooms need to be removed. You can either use them or not use them. No system is forcing you to use them, and it's player choice in the end. It's actually a system that helps those who don't want to pay money to boost to 100 deal with the grind from 1 to 100 if they choose. After 30+ chars and having done every zone quest at least once (yay storylines!), I've finally reached the point where I'm tired of leveling from scratch.

I personally don't mind bonus XP part, but they are also atrociously overpowered, which turn already easy leveling dungeons into mindless faceroll.

They should not. Certainly not if you want to attract NEW players. Many of them don't know how to move their character and use skills from scratch. Difficulty similar to Legion's leveling at launch would make them quit very fast...

You mean new people who use bonus character boost from Legion and are dropped into Legion from the get-go are way more skilled than those, who start at level 1? You also overestimate Legion outdoor difficulty and severely underestimate human intelligence.

[Dark-Zarupia]

I'm all for zone level scaling like we have in Legion, Its a good feature that should be used in future expansions and maybe even on old content

[Corroc]

Hello guys/girls, I am an older WoW player who quit during Cataclysm, and I have recently started playing again. Although Legion gives you a free lvl 100 boost, I decided to level the traditional way, to see what has changed since I last played. Alas, I've found that the leveling experience is a complete mess imho: stories are all over the place, you outlevel the zone you are playing in *way* before you can complete the main story, not to mention the need to trudge through Outland and Northrend and the corresponding gaps in the game story... and some really cringy jokes along the way. Uldum comes to mind... /facepalm

Once you arrive to Pandaria, the issue is far less pressing, and in the WoD/Legion zones things start to make way more sense. Even if I am really enjoying this xpac, I cannot help but to think how off-putting might be to level for a brand new player. So, I'd like to ask you guys, since I've been lurking these boards for quite some time, and I've seen very smart suggestions. How would you fix leveling in WoW (if you think it needs fixing, ofc)?

I'm someone who leveled all classes to max level in wotlk and after that never touched 1-60 levelling again. I recently levelled a character from 1-80 with heirlooms but I did 1-60 only doing quests. I was doing it mainly to get the new quest achievements from the revamped cataclysm zones. So my main priority was to finish the zone as a whole before moving to next.

When I compare the quest experience in vanilla to the revamped zones I must say that the revamped zones are beating the old fashioned quest 100-0. THere is absolutely no competition.
- The quests are logical now, you move from one hub to another hub instead of running from one or two different hubs to all over the map
- Alot less clutter quests, good ol nesingwary type quests where you just have to randomly kill stuff, there is small bit of lore behind and actual reasoning
- Alot of the zones are covering 5 levels instead of the old 10 levels in this zone

I have to say that I did my levelling with heirlooms so I gained alot more exp than you would do if you wanted to go old fashioned. But in the end the heirlooms didn't matter that much. I only outleveled a zone with maybe one or two levels.

Now since I levelled my way to 80 I got to experience burning crusade and woltk again. And oh boy, do those places suck. I was actually talking to my friend during the 1-60 levelling and said that blizzard has really learned from the mistakes when they design the quests zones. Knowing this since I have been playing since the beginning. But I immedietly had to withdrawn my words when I started to play BC zones again. If something is a mess its those zones. They are good reminder of what questing used to be.
When you start to do wotlk you will notice that there are alot more quest hubs in the zones but the quests are still a huge clutter. For example the northern part of howling fjord. You run from the taunka quest hub to 3 different spots multiple times just so you can do two quests and then go back to hub and then return to the same spot again. That can easily drive you nuts if you are levelling long periods. Its unnecessary repetitiveness.

So yeah thats my 10 dollars on the subject.

[LilSaihah]

Level scaling and world quests for every zone.

[Serissa]

Level scaling across all zones with minimal level restrictions staying the same. Most mobs HP and damage should be multiplied by at least 3. Heirlooms should be deleted from the game.

Are you trying to fix leveling or alienate players even more than it is already?

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

Scale them all. That way we could finish whichever story lines we liked without moving constantly as we leveled up.

[Schweddy]

Level scaling and world quests for every zone.

How would world quest in every zone change leveling?

[Rogalicus]

Are you trying to fix leveling or alienate players even more than it is already?

I don't see how making it interesting would alienate players, could you please give more details?

[Piesor]

Level scaling and world quests for every zone.

Would definitely be to similar to Diablo3. Yes it works perfectly there, but imo WoW should have a slower pacing.

I think the best solution would be (like already mentioned) scaling mobs and zones. Just play the part of the story in the zones you love. Skip what you hate to play.

[LolFrank]

In addition to the other suggestions, replace Pet Battle weekend with a 100%(that only stacks with heirlooms) xp week. That'd cause everybody to get groups together to make new alts or finish leveling old forgotten ones.

[Nyalite]

The issue with legion scaling tech is it puts people of different levels in the same zone. This is fine when the max difference between them is 9 or 10 levels. But when you have 20 or 30 it's awful.

There's no way NOT to obliterate some low level player with passive aoe a lot of classes have.

I think scaling tech for old stuff should be the way timewalking works. It scales you TO the level of that area, not the area to you.

[Cryonic]

I stopped leveling when the Weapon artifact arrived. Can't stand to do the questchain on all toons.

[Nyalite]

I stopped leveling when the Weapon artifact arrived. Can't stand to do the questchain on all toons.

They should just allow you to skip over it. The heirloom weapon isn't far behind the artifact while leveling, makes up for lack of weapon drops in legion.