Does heirlooms ruin the leveling experience?

[Charge me Doctor]

Yes. They are intended to. You use then only to make leveling process as short as possible

[torque6]

It takes me 2 days 5 hours to get to level 100 on a healer class; by queuing dungeons. So I don't do much questing before I leave the zone. The only exception is that I do the catalysm start quest to have the portals pop up in Stormwind.

I believe that WOW has always been "progressive" and old whole content is hardly visited/used (mats) after MOP I think.

[ShiyoKozuki]

I want an option to turn off the "boosted" exp everything 1-89 gives so I can level through the zones at the proper pace if I want to relive that expansion in it's release again.

[Lochton]

The leveling experience is still garbage without heirlooms. Mobs are too easy, there is zero challenge. Hardly anyone wants to group up for anything because the vast majority of people leveling up do it in dungeons with heirlooms. Most zones are ghost towns even on full servers.

If you can't see this is a problem for the game and that a large portion of the game is invalidated, then that's really sad.

I can agree and disagree with some of your points.

[ShiyoKozuki]

They're only feasibly viable to someone who has already leveled. No first time player is getting thousands of gold to get them before leveling.

And leveling a second or third time has nothing to ruin, it's a slog you've already been through.

WOW token for $20 - > 40k gold.
Got your new player $20 for base game, then $40 for current expansion, then $15 monthly sub. Now give us $20 more so you can level 50x faster!

It's like the new heirloom design of being gold only was intentional.

[Drpizka]

Yes. They are intended to. You use then only to make leveling process as short as possible

Started a new char (pandaren shaman), didn't use a single loom, only greys and whites from quests.

From level 1 to level 12, when I finished talking with Garrosh (please fix that Blizzard), I had spent 3 hours playing! And I read all quest texts, plus watched all cinematics!

It's questing that is broken I think eventually

[akse]

Leveling experience is already ruined by the game since Cataclysm or something.

Too easy, too linear, no challenges , no adventure, too fast to level up (content goes grey before finished).

You don't need heirlooms to ruin the experience.. it is already ruined by the game.

[Bosen]

If I'm in a dungeon and I'm not in heirlooms,I feel pretty weak if other people are in heirlooms.

I've had many characters, so I like the power boost and time saving of heirlooms. If I'm doing a new alt run,it makes everything easier. You accomplish all goals faster. I don't want it to take longer.

If I were a brand new player,I wouldn't care.

[Laronda]

Depends what way you look at it I suppose. After levelling so many times, heirlooms are a great way of making the experience a bit more bearable.

For a new player though (not that many new players will have heirlooms), I can see where it could ruin the experience. Whenever I quest with looms, I am done with the zone level-wise before I get to the quests I really enjoy.

[xenogear3]

$50 for an instant level 100 ruins everything.

[caervek]

No because to have max level heirlooms you must have leveled a char to max level, at which point the leveling experience is nothing more than a tedious time sink.