Why Is A Free 90 A Bad Thing To Some?

[Blackmist]

Because some people on here believe that time spent levelling somehow helps you to play well at end game, despite them being completely different. One requires you to kill individual targets using basic abilities, and the other requires you to know all your max level abilities and the basics of tanking, healing, DPS, threat tables, boss mechanics, loot priority and a whole bunch of things that are never explained while levelling, no matter how long you do it for.

Good players play well. Bad players play badly. This happens now with no paid level 90s. It will happen in WoD with paid level 90s. Nothing will change, besides the ability for people who don't want to see the sodding Barrens again to skip it for the price of a meal.

[Palinn]

If you're going to spend enough to get the base game and the expansions and pay for a character, you do in fact care about the game on some level.

Paying to have something given to you does give some investment, I agree. However, I believe that making something yourself, rather than buying a finished product, makes you care more.

As per how easy it is to level right now - This is how Blizzard works IMO. "Feature A" exists and serves a purpose within the game. Blizzard makes that purpose less meaningful over time. Eventually it becomes to a state where the feature may as well not even be a part of the game - ie: talent trees, reforging, justice points/badges.

- Leveling used to be a decent factor in the game. Slowly it has become less and less involved. Now it is becoming obsolete. Building up, customizing characters is a large part of RPGs (be it by levels, or skills, or another means). What does WOW become when leveling is gone? What will replace it? (anything?)

I can understand your concern about friends/SO's not wanting to play the game because of the grind. However, from my point of view - if someone won't sit down with you and level (ie: recruit-a-friend or just grouping) then how are they going to handle the REAL grind at max level - dungeons, honor, etc... IDK.

Repetitious grinding is an inherit part of video games IF you want to keep playing the same one.

[Chaosturn]

Because the game is multi-player. Meaning other's skills in their class affect you.

No - I'm not an elitist, but I'd like people to at least have to TRY their best in their class, not PAY their best.

You learn nothing about the class from leveling 1-90. Just queue up for lfr and watch how much leveling teaches people.

[Palinn]

hahahaha

You think you learn that from leveling 1-90?

OT: Haters love to hate, EVERY single thing blizzard does will be hated on and people will moan and bitch about it, I don't think I have seen a single announcement that people have not moaned and bitched about.

I remember when they announced everyone could play ever race regardless of if you owned the expansion or not (Goblins, Worgens etc) and people complained about that.

I know I learned quite a bit about the game while leveling. On my first half-dozen or so characters back in BC/Vanilla I certainly didn't learn about endgame rotations or things like that but I did get comfortable with playing the game itself. I like to think that by the time the last class (I think it was DK) hit 85 back in Cata I had an appreciation for how to play it in raids at least basically.. just from leveling.

Regarding your other comment... OF COURSE every change will have complaints. This is a community of varied interest and EVERYONE has their own opinions. Using this as a reason to tell people not to state their opinions is just silly.

- - - Updated - - -

You learn nothing about the class from leveling 1-90. Just queue up for lfr and watch how much leveling teaches people.

You learn about the game from leveling. How to raid on your class commonly comes from raids. Since LFR isn't really a raid environment, and I imagine most people who do LFR never really do more than a handful of raids - you can't expect them to understand how to play their characters as if they were in a real raid.

[Deleted]

If WoW is only another mmorpg to you you have a far more stretched "general" mentality towards the game than some active wow raider. Former don't care about how it impacts the game but about how it impacts the entire gameuniverse they live in and judge it thereby bad since the leveling is always a major part of games especially when they fail to deliver good esport multiplayer content that could survive on it's own. People who don't play WoW seriously for the multiplayer PVE or PVP max level content will thereby argue against "free 90" since that would make their enitre gamestyle invalid.

[Eroginous]

I don't seem to understand it when people on the forums try to explain that selling a level 90 is a bad thing. How is it anyway? Think about this. The game has 5 expansions, 6 stages of content to level through on WoD, and that can be quite intimidating to a new player. Furthermore how is this "pay-to-win"? You still have to complete current content. And if you were dumb enough to skip the learning process of the game you'll have to just keep yourself stuck in "tourist mode" as blizzard is calling it now. Selling armor seems to be a worry but NO MMO currently on the market is doing it. And besides they removed the D3 AH why bring back the "pay-to-win"? Especially for a subscription MMO.

Bottom line: Why is a free 90 a bad thing? Why are you all freaking out about it? I want to explore this as a specific topic. Since just talking about it in a separate thread will devolve away from my main question. Is all of this just a shock to the system and people are just scared?

It's a bad thing because it's a clear admission on Blizzard's part that everything before 90 is irrelevant and badly designed. Badly designed because they won't fix it to make it fun enough to be relevant. Irrelevant because now anyone can just skip it.

Elitism has nothing to do with it. It's about the general feel of the game and it's playability.

[Duridi]

I believe that making something yourself, rather than buying a finished product, makes you care more.

If raiding is all you care about, then whether you leveled from scratch or from level 90 won't change how you care for your character.

I'd honestly say that the value placed on leveling in MMO's, is starting to get outdated. MMO's offer so much more than that, which will be much more valuable to some players, than the leveling process.

[Isheria]

If you actually played this game long enough you would know by now that:

1) Levelling is the most mind-numbingly boring experience because the difficulty is non-existant, except for the first time cause it's new.
2) Levelling doesn't teach you anything other than moving forward and learning to press autoattack and most importantly it doesn't teach you at all how to perform your role at an acceptable level in group activities.

Being able to buy a lvl 90 which won't be max level only allows you to bypass the most boring part of character progression aka levelling especially if you have multiple characters. Blizzard can very easily alleviate the complaining going on right now by putting a simple requirement that prevents you from buying a level 90 char unless you have a current max lvl char on your account.

[Deleted]

What do you think the leveling experience is supposed to be? Might it be a learning process? If you skip that, and go directly to 90, how will you know how to play properly or even at a decent level?

Do you play your toon the same at 90 as you did when levelling? Actually I'll answer for you, no of course you don't, mobs that die in a few seconds spaced apart tell you nothing about how a longer fight will go.

Why do people keep trying to peddle this rubbish, as if the levelling process is some magic "this is how to play" guide that it really isn't.

Just FYI, you know you can level through pet battles and the gathering professions right? Did you jump on a soap box when that was introduced? I mean what does picking some flowers teach you about the game?

They are going to give you a fresh 90, in probably full epic armor, because anything less would get totally decimated in WoD leveling content, being controlled by a new player who is totally clueless, and most surely at least 500 gold, maybe 1000. Do i have inside information to sustain my claims? Of course not. Am i making assumptions here? Of course i am. Do my assumptions make sense, or at least are not entirely tinfoily? At least a bit.

Congratulations on being part of the problem!

You ignore the current and established system to spin bullshit you made up in an attempt to make things seem scarier than they are.

My free level 80 Shaman from the Scroll of Resurrection didn't come with any gold and with green items at about the right level to get into the 80+ content, explain why you think this will be different for a paid 90?

I'm not buying the "I'll have to be epic" crap either because of the green items on the free level 80 I mentioned above and the levelling greens you could buy at the start of MOP (with the gold you made from the introduction quests for Pandaria).

[Itisamuh]

Correct - it requires SOME knowledge of the class. It requires the person play it for a few days (or weeks or what ever).

And that won't change. Low levels don't teach anything about the class that really applies at high level. The 90 will still have to level to 100 and learn the high level basics anyway so it's all good. Getting rid of low levels won't affect anything.

Besides, contrary to what some fans like to think, this really isn't that hard of a game. It requires very little time or skill to get a class down, at least to the maximum of the person's individual talent. Bad players will still be bad, and good still good.

[Duridi]

Blizzard can very easily alleviate the complaining going on right now by putting a simple requirement that prevents you from buying a level 90 char unless you have a current max lvl char on your account.

That won't work the way you'd think tho. Every single account buying WoD, will get one free level 90. Level that to 100, and you would by this suggestion be allowed to buy more. That's not much different to the way it will be at this point.

[Self Inflicted Wounds]

You learn nothing about the class from leveling 1-90. Just queue up for lfr and watch how much leveling teaches people.

I think you are being dishonest here. You CAN learn a great deal from leveling. You aren't forced to though, just like you aren't forced to even try when you do queue for LFR.

[Kindahuge]

Whiners gonna whine is basically all I can think of here. The game is already inundated with bad players and at this point you absolutely cannot say that a free 90, when the level cap will be 100, is going to make things any worse.

[Frozen Death Knight]

It's a bad thing because it's a clear admission on Blizzard's part that everything before 90 is irrelevant and badly designed. Badly designed because they won't fix it to make it fun enough to be relevant. Irrelevant because now anyone can just skip it.

Elitism has nothing to do with it. It's about the general feel of the game and it's playability.

The reason for this has not really to do with bad design rather than expansion packs pushing the end game further up in levels. The end game likely would have been different if every character still was lvl 60 and all end game content was made for lvl 60 in mind.

Only way of solving this is at this point is if they make your character scale with the content so it's level appropriate. Plus, it would mean that they would have to give out proper end game rewards for doing that said content as well. Hopefully Blizzard will find a solution to this, since they have been talking about it for some time now. Frankly, I thought this would have been a good idea even back in TBC when it pretty much made Vanilla content obsolete.

[Frozenbeef]

To me it means 3 things

1. Players that use this service without having a 'normal' level 90 would be doing themselves a huge disservice by skipping 90% of the games content/story, Imagine level 100's in trade chat who have no idea who people like deathwing, the lichking, garrosh etc are let alone never seeing places and events from vanilla-cata... "ashenvale, what's that? 0o" ""Malfurion? Never heard of him" "Anyone know how to get to northrend?" It would be like playing fallout 3/ skyrim and just doing the main quest >.<

2. Blizzard don't have confidence in their game, if they agree that leveling is boring it suggests that they don't like the stuff they have created and feel it's bad enough to be skipped entirely...why should we play stuff that the developers don't even like? 0o

3. Requiring money to have a HUGE in game advantage, this is not a useless cosmetic helm, a mount or pet. By skipping 90 levels it saves weeks of effort over people that can't afford too. I don't like the idea of having to pay additional money to have an in game advantage over other people that can't afford it, in an mmo that also has a subscription.

All in all the latest blue post just screams "GIVE ME YA MONEYS" There are multiple other ways blizzard could improve the game for new players without skipping it all and making players pay for it -.-

[ComputerNerd]

Correct - it requires SOME knowledge of the class. It requires the person play it for a few days (or weeks or what ever).

But that has no bearing on how they perform at level cap.
I have seen many stupid things from players who have levelled to 90, things they should know not to do.
The levelling at present is teaching them nothing, so what difference will a boost make.

The community is not conducive to learning as you level, instead expecting some amount of knowledge and insulting anyone who does not magically have skills without prior experience.
Blizzard cannot fix the community.

[Deleted]

Because not everyone plays WoW for the endgame. In fact I'd argue that the majority of the playerbase is so casual that they consider leveling to be the most fundamental and central part of the game.

Anyone who plays the game for the levelling and then pays to skip the very levelling they want to do is doing something very wrong...

[xdrop]

Because the game is multi-player. Meaning other's skills in their class affect you.

No - I'm not an elitist, but I'd like people to at least have to TRY their best in their class, not PAY their best.

Getting to 90 is braindead and requires zero skill, its a useless grind. Personally I love the fact you can get a free 90, because I want to play other classes but hate leveling, its the worst aspect of the game to me. The only reason I can see why people disagree with a free 90 is a slippery slope argument, like maybe next you can buy the best gear, etc. But I don't think that'll happen.

[Deleted]

2 bad things about this for me:

1. they start to sell even more stuff while still asking a monthly subscription
2. they might stop changing the levelingcurve like they did with everything until cata just to anoy you so much so that you buy the character.

i dont mind that everyone gets one extra in wod, but selling them extra pisses me off. just like they put a crap ton of unique mounts into the shop and only VERY few unique are obtainable ingame.

[Zka]

Now this I can agree with. The leveling needs another redesign - not graphically, but the challenge level, items, professions, pvp, groups, etc. need change badly.

Definitely. I'm leveling a sub rogue now, only 2 heirlooms (the weapons). I'm at 53. Mobs die in 2-4 gcds, most die under cheap shot. Should I have no heirloom weapons, the situation wouldn't be much better.
Dungeons are even worse. I switch to combat most of the time here. Packs die in 10-15 seconds, that's enough to put 1-3 CPs on mobs before they die and I have to switch, killing my dps. If most of the group has no heirlooms and/or they suck, I may even get to 4 CP sometimes. Maintaining SND or using rupture is just a dream, even on bosses. Current leveling content does really not teach anyone anything, I could literally just spam sinister strike or backstab in dungeon groups, never even attempting a finisher and my DPS would barely drop. As I remember previous leveling experiences, even 70+ dungeons are like this.
They should remove half the trash, triple their XP value and buff their HP by at least 200%, bosses 300-500%. Mob damage should also be buffed.

Even heirlooms should be looked at. The DPS boost they give can be pretty huge and this makes content very hard to tune.