Questing vs end game, how long should leveling take?

[impending doom]

Since this seem to be hot topic currently, I'd like to know how many % of people actually don't care much about questing/leveling part of WoW and would like to skip most of it and just focus on end game. In other words, should the questing content be more optional, or remain "mandatory" part for everyone who wants to progress to the end game content(raids/pvp)?

[Selky]

I'd much rather level in dungeons/PVP/invasions than questing, the thought of leveling through WoD or Legion again makes me ill.

[Lochton]

I like leveling through quests, dungeons, battlegrounds and events (Scenario, not the invasion). I think it should take about 5 days of casual gameplay to go from 1 to 110, then again, that is just me and my own opinion.

[Sencha]

Quests are boring as hell (kill x, collect y), so this part of the game could be removed. No need to design new zones every xpac = ton of development time that could be dedicated to creating challenging content and also to design proper and engaging specs (not rushed specs like we have in Legion).

[Ryzael]

What's even the point of leveling with scaling?

[Deleted]

All we do now will soon be done in 10minutes. That is endgame preparation. You have fun now? Well blizzard hires people for 10x amount of money to do raids encounters.

[Deleted]

I enjoyed the leveling process a lot in Legion even though I dinged 110 today there is still a reason to quests - one of them being surumar. I like it, like I still got leveling to do even at max level.

[ablib]

What's even the point of leveling with scaling?

This. I'm struggling to understand this. While yes it's really cool to choose 1 of 4 zones to start in. It also really helps on server side congestion. It's also nice to just start in a zone, and end in a zone, and not out level it. I started in Aszuna at level 100, and left at 105 (half way to 110, in one zone? ok).

However, it's weird that it feels like I made no progress in that zone. All the mobs should be green to me, but they're not. It's fun to hit max level and go back to that starting zone and blow shit up (for whatever reason I need to go back to the starting zone).

More to the OP's point...leveling is part of an MMO. And people complain about this every expac. At the very least, this is the 6th time we've had to level up our mains in 10 years. I can handle that.

[Pull My Finger]

Questing should always be a part of the game and there should be new zones added as content patches regularly, just like they do with dungeons and raids.

People have it completely backwards regarding the "endgame". They think that the endgame is where the game is really at while questing is just a "phase". You always hear the term, "the leveling phase". However historically, the endgame is just a device to prolongate a game cycle after it has already reached its completion. It's just something to keep people somewhat busy in a repetitive manner to buy yourself time to work on the next expansion.

That's also the reason I totally disagree about the sentiment that you can't judge an expansion early, and find it silly when people come up and say stuff like, wait until 6 months from now. That's nonsense. The stuff that the expansion comes with IS the game. The world, the zones, the content, the initial dungeons and raids, all of that. THAT's the meat of the game, that's what counts. The stuff they patch in later are encores.

Outdoor content and questing should never stop. It's World of Warcraft and not Instance of Warcraft after all.

[Gen4Glock21]

Let me guess you are one of those who loved WOD because it only focused on raiding/garrison garbage and you hate the fact that they gave us something to do other than jerk it in our garrisons for everything from gathering to professions. So far I personally love Legions. I have a couple beefs with it, like how they have you switch talents now, not a fan of how artifacts work either. I feel like you are pigeon holed into the artifact you start with, but that is minor. I like that you can progress even in 5mans which is awesome for those of us who can not make raids due to work/etc. Alts is another minor beef.

[melodramocracy]

Questing / leveling should take far longer than it historically has, though I'm in the camp that believes that you never actually stop leveling your character, it simply moves to a completely gear based progression system at some point.

From an objective viewpoint, you wind up with situations where an expansion lasts 2 years. Questing zones are, environmentally, a vast majority of what an expansion offers, yet get consumed within a few weeks by most average players, and fall into the "trivial" content bucket. This is a silly situation from a design perspective.

Legion seems to be at least going in the right direction with things.

[deniter]

Can't really choose any of above.

Leveling - or questing - as some call it, should not even be in mmorpgs as it's currently designed in World of Warcraft. A player should never reach max level, where the infamous endgame starts, but the whole game - or leveling/questing - should offer the same kind of experience than what the endgame currently does for players.

So in a way i'm saying "Questing is the best part of the game, I don't care much about raids/pvp", but at the same time i mean "I mostly care about end game, leveling should take less time and questing should be mostly optional".

[impending doom]

What is great about WOW is that it has a lot of different activities to do for people who like different things, quests, dungeons, raids, pvp, roleplaying, and alternative activities like exploration, achievements, pet battles, economy, soloing challenging content, etc. And for most part you have a freedom to choose what kind of activities to do, and what to not do.

RPGs are about progressing your character, I get that, but I'd say questing is about as far from end game raiding as pet battles are from pvp arena, so they're all completely different activities and obviously not everyone likes everything.

One solution could be to have a separate progress for questing, just like we have a separate progress for raiding and pvp. In the best case scenario this would benefit everyone, even making questing more meaningful and perhaps last longer, when it would be its separate ongoing progress, instead of just a step before getting to end-game content. Heck, there could even be a "mythic-mode questing" for those who want more challenge. I know it's unlikely to happen, but it's good to have dreams..