Patch 7.3.5 PTR - Build 25632

We Need You on the 7.3.5 Public Test Realm!

Why?

90% of the reported Bugs make it to Live anyways. Might as well use Live for testing.

Originally Posted by ombus

its not irrelevant.. its part of the game..
by your logic its not fair to demand others to do mythic to get the artifact skins.. or mounts... simple.

Indeed, it's still a part of the game right? You get a free boost when purchasing the game. If you want more character at max level, play the game.

Originally Posted by TheDeeGee

Why?

90% of the reported Bugs make it to Live anyways. Might as well use Live for testing.

In all seriousness, I almost feel like I'm paying them to test their game... Want to encourage people to legit test their product and provide real feedback, then get people to sign up for a tester pool, those accepted are the ones that get the invites, access to special forums, etc. and when they login and provide proper feedback and submit bugs, etc. they get WoW credit towards live or some kind of special ingame pet/mount/item to reward them.

Originally Posted by TheRevenantHero

I am not looking forward to the scaling update. An increase of experience needed for leveling by 60% is turning an already tedious experience an even worse nightmare. As a DPS, this is hell. With full heirlooms, it took me 5 hours to go from level 68 to 80. The experience given by quests is not enough for it to be any quicker. Increasing that by 60% will make leveling feel like pulling fucking teeth. I will never level in this game again without Recruit-A-Friend again. The increase in experience needed is 100% a way to push people to buy boosts and I fucking hate it.

Or maybe Blizz is trying to make a leveling experience that doesn't feel like a plotless snoozefest for new players so that they don't quit the game before they hit max level. I could have sworn people citing slower leveling as part of what made the vanilla wow experience enjoyable.

Originally Posted by shoc

Or maybe Blizz is trying to make a leveling experience that doesn't feel like a plotless snoozefest for new players so that they don't quit the game before they hit max level. I could have sworn people citing slower leveling as part of what made the vanilla wow experience enjoyable.

The problem is that every new expansion increases the time it takes to level by a significant amount. For an average player who puts in 5-6 hours a week, it would take a very long time to get to max level, which is what most new players (who just bought their NEW EXCITING LEGION CONTENT! game) really want to see. It is this that really makes new players ditch the game during the leveling process I think.

The pacing also feels very bad, mostly due to how long it takes. There are a finite number of class abilities so with 110 levels you only get new buttons (and feel more powerful) maybe once every 6-8 levels.

With yet another expansion coming, what Blizz really needs to do is revamp the leveling system so that there are multiple shorter paths you can take. For example, let players skip 2 expansions, for example BC and Cata, and go from 1 to 110 via Classic -> Wrath -> Mists -> Legion, scaling the XP you get. Cut the overall time in half, increase the pacing, and make the quests that people do actually feel like a story and I think you will see more new players stick around.

For better or worse, the experience of just getting to max level is no longer a fun feature of WoW like it was during vanilla -- it's now just a chore that everyone has to do, a price you have to pay, to get a new or alt character to max level where you can play the "real game". The fact that Blizz sells boosts now proves that point.

Originally Posted by nicode

The problem is that every new expansion increases the time it takes to level by a significant amount. For an average player who puts in 5-6 hours a week, it would take a very long time to get to max level, which is what most new players (who just bought their NEW EXCITING LEGION CONTENT! game) really want to see. It is this that really makes new players ditch the game during the leveling process I think.

The pacing also feels very bad, mostly due to how long it takes. There are a finite number of class abilities so with 110 levels you only get new buttons (and feel more powerful) maybe once every 6-8 levels.

With yet another expansion coming, what Blizz really needs to do is revamp the leveling system so that there are multiple shorter paths you can take. For example, let players skip 2 expansions, for example BC and Cata, and go from 1 to 110 via Classic -> Wrath -> Mists -> Legion, scaling the XP you get. Cut the overall time in half, increase the pacing, and make the quests that people do actually feel like a story and I think you will see more new players stick around.

For better or worse, the experience of just getting to max level is no longer a fun feature of WoW like it was during vanilla -- it's now just a chore that everyone has to do, a price you have to pay, to get a new or alt character to max level where you can play the "real game". The fact that Blizz sells boosts now proves that point.

I think there are other factors that you missed that lend itself well to the new system, for example, the fact that you can now experience the whole story of a zone without being booted out due to moot experience gain and useless quest rewards. The fact that zones also scale means that you'll be more likely to see other players questing in the open world, and you can already choose to skip TBC in favor of Wrath and Cataclysm in favor of Pandaria, that will be big.

Originally Posted by nicode

For better or worse, the experience of just getting to max level is no longer a fun feature of WoW like it was during vanilla -- it's now just a chore that everyone has to do, a price you have to pay, to get a new or alt character to max level where you can play the "real game". The fact that Blizz sells boosts now proves that point.

And that is what Blizzard is trying to fix with these changes. Trying to fix it so that people once again might feel like leveling is something more than a 72 hour long, sad joke. By not having lowbie-levels being so pathetically easy that your brain turns off completely, like leveling is on Live. Because on Live leveling is exactly how you describe it. A pre-game mode that insult you as a player, for XX hours until you get to "endgame" where there's content that might actually kill you, so that is feels like an actual RPG.

If you want to actually enjoy leveling, mobs have to hurt, your abilities other than damage/speed has to make a difference (which they don't when a mob cast spell hits you for 2% of your total health), bosses in dungeons aren't supposed to die in less than 10 damn seconds. They are supposed to be bosses. Instead the tank doesn't give a shit about his health because it doesn't move and the healer is falling asleep, while the dps who was 2 seconds behind start doing damage to a boss that is already a quarter dead.

Complete joke and I cannot wait until scaling hits Live, so that I can once again level a caster and actually have time to cast something before it dies.
World mobs are still a bit of a joke and hopefully Blizzard aren't too scared of buffing them further.

Here's the thing... I'm about to level several characters... I think the changes are a great idea, I pretty much out level every zone by about the halfway point.

But...

I am not going to level characters on the PTR... I hate leveling, it's alright right up to 60. But once you starting hitting those expansion XP increases questing becomes absolute hell.

If there was an incentive to level on the PTR that would help me get a few max characters on live (because getting max level characters into raids is my only right now) I would not only level on PTR, but would also put real time and effort into providing detailed feedback... But, since I will probably be max level on several characters before 7.3.5 even hits live, doing so will have almost zero impact on my experience for the foreseeable future and will also not get me any closer to one of my only goals in WoW at the moment...

If you want people on the PTR testing the changes, give them an incentive. Because as it is right now, for a lot of people, leveling is nothing but a necessary evil.

Originally Posted by MasterHamster

And that is what Blizzard is trying to fix with these changes. Trying to fix it so that people once again might feel like leveling is something more than a 72 hour long, sad joke. By not having lowbie-levels being so pathetically easy that your brain turns off completely, like leveling is on Live. Because on Live leveling is exactly how you describe it. A pre-game mode that insult you as a player, for XX hours until you get to "endgame" where there's content that might actually kill you, so that is feels like an actual RPG.

You must try to remember that this game is quite old and we're a couple of expansions in. To drag out the leveling process, especially for players who have been playing the game for a very long time isn't a very good solution. As for mobs dying, that's kinda the point of leveling? If you want a challenge that's what raids are there for. You see when it comes to pve leveling content in a mmo it has to be properly balanced so that all classes are somewhat equal, that usually means that they have to make it "easier". If they did not, then you'd have some really awkward scenarios like in some very old mmos(yes, older than wow) where say you're leveling a healer and you're beating on a mob for a couple of minutes to kill it. Does that sound fun to you? No, it is not.

Let's just get ONE thing straight here, wow has *NEVER* been hard when it comes to leveling, not in any way or form. That's what made it stand out from the rest back then. You didn't need 2 accounts with a buffbot just to ease the leveling, you didn't have to spend months leveling grinding to get anywhere in the game. It was aimed towards casuals. At most wow was tedious while leveling some classes, shadow priest comes to mind, you know when they actually had mana issues and it was the least fun class to level by far. I'm glad they made changes to the game since then because honestly, that wasn't fun at all.

I don't mind them increasing the experience cap while leveling, but I think they took the easy way out when it came to the scaling. It was very cheap and lazy in my book. It should have had a far broader range. Nothing should stop you from going to hellfire at level 15 and quest there. It's just *leveling* content. Anyways, that's what would have made the leveling more "fun" for me, getting to pick what zones I wanted to level in, but we don't really get to do that. I mostly level through dungeons these days anyways(or rather before I actually hit 50 100+ characters).

I actually feel quite annoyed that they are trying to get us to test their new levelling experience for them for free on the PTR. A free in game shop pet, or feat of strength, for the effort and time they are asking for people to volunteer wouldn’t go amiss and would also be a nice gesture of good will. At the moment it just feels completely presumptuous that they would ask people to do this for them.

Originally Posted by Peacemoon

I actually feel quite annoyed that they are trying to get us to test their new levelling experience for them for free on the PTR. A free in game shop pet, or feat of strength, for the effort and time they are asking for people to volunteer wouldn’t go amiss and would also be a nice gesture of good will. At the moment it just feels completely presumptuous that they would ask people to do this for them.

you just said " people to volunteer "... volunteer is the key word... if you dont want dont do it..

Originally Posted by ombus

you just said " people to volunteer "... volunteer is the key word... if you dont want dont do it..

And I won’t be. But if they think there is going to be a surge of people super keen to test their game for them for nothing, just because they’ve put out this ‘nicely worded’ post, then they will be disappointed. It will just be the usual crowd of people who enjoy doing this. Maybe they should hire people to do this rather than lean on the good nature of the community whilst offering nothing in return.

Originally Posted by Peacemoon

And I won’t be. But if they think there is going to be a surge of people super keen to test their game for them for nothing, just because they’ve put out this ‘nicely worded’ post, then they will be disappointed. It will just be the usual crowd of people who enjoy doing this. Maybe they should hire people to do this rather than lean on the good nature of the community whilst offering nothing in return.

First point me to a post when they have not communicated with the community with " nicely worded " words...
you wont get a post in that say " heres the ptr ... test if you want.. "

And i am sure they have tested the ptr internaly before opening it.. a lot of stuff arent in ptr and appear later on live .. of course they are tested.

People who cite that are literally masochists. I played through Vanilla. It sucked. There is nothing fun about needing to spend several days to level 10 times. This increased experience is literally like a death sentence to people with multiple characters or people that want a new character. They either have to spend 2-3 weeks getting to max level or pay for a boost. If I bought the expansion, I want to be able to play it. Not be forced to grind for a month first.

Originally Posted by shoc

Or maybe Blizz is trying to make a leveling experience that doesn't feel like a plotless snoozefest for new players so that they don't quit the game before they hit max level. I could have sworn people citing slower leveling as part of what made the vanilla wow experience enjoyable.

People who cite that are literally masochists. I played through Vanilla. It sucked. There is nothing fun about needing to spend several days to level 10 times. This increased experience is literally like a death sentence to people with multiple characters or people that want a new character. They either have to spend 2-3 weeks getting to max level or pay for a boost. If I bought the expansion, I want to be able to play it. Not be forced to grind for a month first.

Originally Posted by TheDeeGee

Why?

90% of the reported Bugs make it to Live anyways. Might as well use Live for testing.

They sort of do.

Also, a while back we all got bitched out for "complaining too much" during the PTR about things that were very, very broken. It was put to us that, no, the PTR was not about finding and fixing anything broken; at this point in the development cycle, everything is locked in and we don't care if it actually works out or not - someone's hung their yearly achievement bullet point on this content, mechanic, or whatever, so it's going in. The PTR is for load testing and fixing "critical errors" (only things that directly affect whatever this patch's gimmick is - generally PVP or raid content).

Most of us who did honest burn testing on patch content checked out after that, leaving the PTRs to endless premade seekers to punch each other in the face, apparently as God intended.