I am glad that we can buy level 90s.

[Total Crica]

The most fun part of the game at least before it was leveling and meeting new people in the zones.

and you will still be able to lvl and meet new ppl in the zones, just now it will be ppl who actually WANT to be there

unless you actually have fun with ppl who do not want to be there...?

[Xargoth6634]

I like it. I enjoyed leveling in the pre-Cata world, which felt unfinished and dangerous. Now you have zones that are way too easy with 15 flight paths per zone, quests very carefully laid out, etc. I've leveled 15+ toons all the way up, I'm done with the leveling game. It was ruined for me, and honestly even if they hadn't changed everything there are only so many times the same content is doable.

Really all depends on the price though. I'd pay $25 to have an alt on a friend's server, but I wouldn't pay $50.

[bolverick]

I'm personally excited for this, I think the profession boost will be enough to deter new players from just buying a toon and playing. The other thing that I think this will help eliminate, is people selling wow accounts. Now you have no reason to buy one. I mean its crappy for the people selling them but honestly you probably shouldn't be doing so in the first place.

[Kelimbror]

It's hilarious that people still think, or intentionally misstate, that the point of wow was the 'experience' (translation: leveling) when the end game has been the design focus since raids were added in vanilla. Oh yeah, leveling sure has been the focus of wow. That's why we have an end game, constant raid updates, only can have character progression at level cap through gear....it's illogical and naïve to think differently. It's also statistically and factually wrong, but there's no need to beat a dead horse.

[quras]

Well, then -if it's that important to you, why don't you level? They're not taking it away from you - just giving you options.

Tahts the same argument I heard when people talk about removing flying or leaving it in game. If you want ride on the ground and not fly then you have always had the ability to do that. However, no one does that cause it's not efficient and puts you at a disadvantage.

Kinda like leveling normally or buying a level 90. People will gravitate to just buying the level 90 - why waste the time.

Gamers will move toward the more efficient way to get what they want. So your argument is kind of a waste of time that gamers just wont buy what they want to skip.

Hell, Just like why level from 90 -100 when I can pay someone to do that for me and get me to end game faster so I can run dungeons and raid.

[mickybrighteyes]

Tahts the same argument I heard when people talk about removing flying or leaving it in game. If you want ride on the ground and not fly then you have always had the ability to do that. However, no one does that cause it's not efficient and puts you at a disadvantage.

Kinda like leveling normally or buying a level 90. People will gravitate to just buying the level 90 - why waste the time.

Gamers will move toward the more efficient way to get what they want. So your argument is kind of a waste of time that gamers just wont buy what they want to skip.

Hell, Just like why level from 90 -100 when I can pay someone to do that for me and get me to end game faster so I can run dungeons and raid.

you don't spend real world money to fly... and unless teh bought toons come with raid ready loot you're still spending the bulk of your time doing the same thing... getting gear. Leveling hasn't been hard or all that time consuming for years now, the real grind has been the gear.

[Caliph]

For all you insta90 haters you could you know not take part in it. Or you could level a new class through all of the 1-90 stuff again. Just don't expect us smart people who are already at 100 and gearing to carry your asses.

[smokii]

I don't know what's your JP goal, but I obtained 2 heirloom daggers from scratch in about 2 hours with my healer priest. Just a couple of mop "heroics" and it's done. Not exactly a retarded grind.

i got all the heirloom gear at 80 when it first came out as i played a lot then and had hundreds of badges going spare to buy them with. but to upgrade them to their level 85 counterparts, you have to pay full price for the item again, for a 5 level boost. for the amount i would actually use the pieces i upgraded, the grind required is roughly the same, if not longer than, the grind required to level those 5 levels.

for example, the heirloom staff 3500 justice points - another 3500 to upgrade it to level 85. that's 7000 justice points for 1 weapon that scales up to 85. thats 2 weeks of capping justice

multiply that by 4, for the 2 daggers, 2h axe, 2h spell staff and dual 1h maces and suddenly you're talking 28000 justice points - that's 8 weeks of capping justice points, just to upgrade the weapons - ok i could split it across my 90 toons, but that's still a retarded amount of justice points to grind and we've not even started on the armour, of which i have a full set of dps cloth, leather, mail and plate, as well as a couple of spell-leather pieces and spell-mail pieces.

altogether, to upgrade all of those heirlooms, would take more time than levelling all the toons that would use them through those 5 levels.

tbh, they should make the upgrade available for gold - but now they're giving me the option to never worry about it for real money instead.

edit: apologies for the late reply (like 3 pages too late, but i gotta work)

[Dormie]

It's hilarious that people still think, or intentionally misstate, that the point of wow was the 'experience' (translation: leveling) when the end game has been the design focus since raids were added in vanilla. Oh yeah, leveling sure has been the focus of wow. That's why we have an end game, constant raid updates, only can have character progression at level cap through gear....it's illogical and naïve to think differently. It's also statistically and factually wrong, but there's no need to beat a dead horse.

People realize it, they don't agree with it. Why should 100% of the focus be on a small percentage of the game? They do this and then wonder why people run out of content..

[Eviscero]

Yes because the entire game revolves around leveling. /facepalm.

This is actually one of the best things blizzard has done.

Says someone who apparently has AT LEAST ONE of every class at 90. I think you're happy about the change so you can more easily get the "complete deck"

[ProfessorTjc]

The reason why I think buying a level 90 is good is because a while ago I read somewhere that most new people that try out WoW quit before level 20 (or 10) and I really think this will catapult people into the best part about WoW. To me a new character doesn't start to get fun until like level 40.

[Santti]

The option to buy new lvl90's from the store is just easier way of doing it. Since you get one for free per account (for a good reason), you could make new accounts and transfer the free lvl90's from them to your main account. Would be quite expensive to do, but it would be possible.

[jimlow]

I seriously do not understand the arguments against this. All I see is people jumping to ridiculous conclusions.

The whole this is step one before they are just selling gear! STOP. No. It is not. Wow is about the gear grind at max level for pve or pvp or anything else. Blizz knows this, I know this and most of you know this. Are there other outliers? yes, but I'm being general for the sake of argument. My point is, until you see blue, purple, green or any other gear outside of transmog up for sale in the blizzard store then they are not selling gear. It would be a very poor move on their part.

Lets just speculate about this for a second. Say blizzard decided to sell full sets of BIS LFR purples in the blizzard store. If I paid for an instant 90 leveled to 100 and then bought a full set of 100 LFR gear. What would be the point of the game? judging by the polls on the front page the last couple of weeks the majority of the player base does not seem to be willing/able to make the jump from LFR to normal or heroic. Why? Time? Effort? Possibly. or it could be that they are content with just going as far as LFR. So if LFR is their prime motivation for endgame raiding and they bought a whole set what incentive to play does blizzard have left for them? So why would anybody do that? Why would anybody subscribe at all?

They wont sell gear because without incentive to do the gear treadmill endgame it would nullify the game and cripple subs. Blizzard knows this. So the whole argument that this is step one before they are selling gear is just WRONG. Blizzard will do a lot of things and I'm sure they are not done with the cash shop by a long shot.
JP and VP boosts
EXP and leveling boosts
profession boost
Extra coin to burn for drops
mounts
transfer services
race change services

All these things I can see in the in-game store, but the difference between this and selling gear is that none of the things I just listed would single handedly cripple the entire game like just selling the gear would.

[Thetruth1400]

When you have a open world game and you develop a system that allows skipping content instead of developing one that encourages you to see it in order to fix the boring / repetitive / obsolete low level zones ,then someone has taken a incredibly bad decision at Blizzard.

I agree. They're basically admitting that all of their old content is useless, boring, and can easily be skipped for a price. I disagree with the direction that Blizzard is heading with this option. They can claim all day long that it's just in the testing stages and might never go live, but the simple fact it exists and is being testing proves it's going to be a reality. You don't spend all that time, money, and effort for something that you never use.

They might as well just come out and say, "Yeah, we realize the game is crap, so here is an option to skip it all. Sure, you paid for all that content, by why actually play it? End game is where it's at, everything else is irrelevant and we don't care about it anymore."

[Joey Ray III]

i'd think newbs (as in people actually new to the game) are the least likely to use it. i mean who buys a game just to pay even more so they can skip what they just paid for?

[Aydinx2]

Lots of newbs don't know the recruit a friend program.
They also don't have heirlooms and gold to level faster, and waste hundreds of hours on obsoleted content.

Now it is more fair to them.

So it's considered unfair that you have to play a videogame so you can access the content at the end of said videogame?
I guess all other games are shit then since you can't pay to instantly skip to the last mission.

[Deleted]

So there's a problem with the game, and instead of Blizzard fixing it they say "pay us to skip it" and you're somehow glad? How utterly inane.
How about Blizzard fixes the leveling and actually earn that 15bucks a month they're charging? or if they are too lazy/preoccupied/can't find a solution, why aren't they offering level skipping for free? They could implement a system where there's an NPC at the entry to each leveling zone who offers you a quest which you can instantly turn in that grants you enough exp to skip that zone. That would offer level skipping in a very flexible, player controlled way which would be incredibly easy for Blizzard to implement (we're talking intern level easy here).
But nope. Instead "give us money to skip a problem we wont fix", and then people come out saying "I'm glad they are charging us".

Indeed. That's the actual problem, not that it takes much to level, but that leveling becomes boring after a while. That should be fixed, charging people money for it is a bold move from Blizzard... but to see so many people agree with this is just ... unbelievable.

[Santti]

So it's considered unfair that you have to play a videogame so you can access the content at the end of said videogame?
I guess all other games are shit then since you can't pay to instantly skip to the last mission.

The problem with MMO's like WoW is that you need the latest expansion to really play at all. You can go farting around on your own, but almost empty zones don't really give much of an impression when it comes to MMO's. You could do dungeons of course, but that isn't necessarily for everybody (especially if you are new to the game).

So the "instant skip to the last mission" is just plain crap. It's nothing like that.

[jimlow]

I agree. They're basically admitting that all of their old content is useless, boring, and can easily be skipped for a price. I disagree with the direction that Blizzard is heading with this option. They can claim all day long that it's just in the testing stages and might never go live, but the simple fact it exists and is being testing proves it's going to be a reality. You don't spend all that time, money, and effort for something that you never use.

They might as well just come out and say, "Yeah, we realize the game is crap, so here is an option to skip it all. Sure, you paid for all that content, by why actually play it? End game is where it's at, everything else is irrelevant and we don't care about it anymore."

What your stating is all ready pretty much proven as true. Do yourself a favor next time your leveling and your out in the world do a /who. More often then not you will see less then 10 or so people in a zone, and most of them are completely decked out in heirlooms. Everybody is concentrated in the new zones. Everything but current content IS USELESS. You cant even deny that. I don't disagree that the leveling experience should be looked at and overhauled but this game is almost 10 years old and there is no incentive for blizz to go back and fix it because in the end everyone is still only going to be tunnel visioning the latest content.

If World of Warcaft was ONLY the latest xpantion and you could only play in that and they only made this game 10 levels. You would still have the same experience regardless of the other 90 levels that you just went through.

[Deleted]

The reason why I think buying a level 90 is good is because a while ago I read somewhere that most new people that try out WoW quit before level 20 (or 10) and I really think this will catapult people into the best part about WoW. To me a new character doesn't start to get fun until like level 40.

Yes, because I'm sure new players will be thrilled to pay for:
The game + expansions
Subscription fee
A boost to level 90
all at once, right? If anything, it will make many not even try the game at all!