PSA: Level all of your sub-90 toons NOW

[SirCowdog]

Leveling isn't broken. You can start a new character and level it through quests, dungeons, pvp, or gathering professions. You can gear up easily. You can reach high end content at your own pace. You can turn xp off or speed it up with heirlooms.

It's not a perfect system but if does the job it needs to do. Complaining that leveling is broken because the xp is coming in too fast is silly. It's not possible to "fix" leveling the way some people want. Blizzard has already tried this multiple times, including a few major patches (like 2.3) and two entire expansions (Cataclysm and Legion). Legion's scaling has its own issues. It diminishes the sense of character progression because everything is always your level. The changes Blizzard are making might seem great now....but they'll eventually wear thin when you're repeating the process.

I once had a friend who was constantly complaining that his computer was acting weird and being slow. He said that sometimes it would just randomly shut down with no blue screen of death or anything. He could still play modern games, if not at max settings. All in all, his computer "worked".

So when he asked me(I'm somehow the local computer expert in that circle of friends) if I could take a look at to see if I could figure out what was going on, I agreed. He hadn't done a windows update in 2 years, no anti-virus, HDD was 97% full, and when I opened up the side of his computer case, the heatsink on his CPU literally had a beard made from dust and the fan was doing that funny growling noise that means it's about to die.



That's what the current leveling system is. It works, but it's so badly out of tune and only serves its purpose in a very narrow sense. The new system coming with 7.3.5 is like blowing out the dust, running the windows updates, and putting a new fan in. Leveling still needs a lot of work and upgrades, IMHO, but at the very least the patch will clean things up a bit and make it work better.

Leveling might not be "broken" per se, but it DOES need updating.

[Deleted]

I am looking forward to this change so hard. I love leveling alts.

[Aurabolt]

I'm honestly not sure you guys would have made it to level 10 in vanilla.

Vanilla to Wrath you mean, process was unchanged until Cata with the 1-60 revamps (Which Blizzard told players to blame for the 80-85 experience).

Back then, you didn't move on until you leveled enough. You were in Northshire until level 5 and stayed in Goldshire until 8-9, then challenged Hogger (before he was soloable) or ran to Eastvale Logging Camp (FP added in Cata). If you weren't level 10, you still went to Eastvale and then had to pivot and go back west into Westfall for questing there. By the time you finished the quest chain you were level 14 or 15 at which point you could either go to Darkshire or Redridge. Most chose to bypass Redridge and go to Darkshire until 22-ish, then go to Arathi until 30. From there it's Hillsbrad/Alterac (Pre-Cata) and then Arathi until 40. At this point you FINALLY got Journeyman Riding (it was cut to 20 mid-Wrath). Everyone except Pallys and Locks went back to the faction capital for their riding skill + mount. Pallys and Locks had to do a Class Quest Chain for theirs. From there, it's the Plaguelands and then The Badlands, Burning Steppes, Swamp of Sorrows and finally Blasted Lands to 60. At that point you got Epic Land mounts (lowered to 40 mid-Wrath).

[xanzul]

I don't see this explicitly stated anywhere and only learned it from various forum posts, so I'm gonna help out and tell you here. They are DRASTICALLY increasing the time it takes to level in 7.3.5. Quest exp is nerfed up until either 90 or 100, 1 to 60 now takes more exp, and looms are being nerfed. This is a horrible change and if I hadn't already leveled every class to 100 in WoD I would be furious. So if you ever plan on rerolling in the future, do it now before this not-so-subtle ploy to sell boosts goes in to effect.

if you like this change then good for you. But I made this thread to inform those who are unaware and don't want to have to suffer through slow leveling. If I helped one person realize this and spared them the pain of slow leveling, then the goal of this thread is accomplished and I am happy. Sorry if me having a different opinion than you upsets you,
but I just want to inform those who share in my opinion even if I'm in the minority

Leveling isn't slower. Stop it.

[Deleted]

I am looking forward to this change so hard. I love leveling alts.

How many lvl 100+ do you have if you say you love lvling alts? 30-40?

[SirCowdog]

The fun is in the journey, not the destination.

Fun is subjective.

[HuxNeva]

They removed Elixir of the Rapid Mind and made leveling take longer. That's not tinfoil, it's just business.

You could get up to 1245% XP gain stacking all the XP increase bonusses. Before scaling you kinda ran into trouble as you were leveling so fast that traveling to places that still rewarded XP became an issue, so you probably didn't use all at once, but it was still ridiculous. With scaling, this limitation was gone. See the problem?

No, thought not.

It is not hard to make gold via the mobile app once you have a maxed character. With 3 you can get enough gold this way to pay for your WoW sub. With 6 you can pay for 2 subs and so on. So what is stopping everyone from doing this? The 'cost' is the effort required to get each character to the point where it can do the profitable gold missions (max lvl and ilvl900 followers). As long as that is reasonable, then 'most' people won't bother. But drop it down enough, and you have a substantial number of people not just making goldcap, but making 10 times or even 100 times goldcap as it is a self accelerating system. Say goodby to even a semblance of an ingame 'economy', and the number of people with thousands of dollars on their Blizzard account would become a liability.

So, they took out some of these accelerators, and made overall 'normal' leveling without them a little bit faster.

And btw, when was the last time you introduced a new player to the game? I did, and when they started on their journey, they though the game was designed for kindergarteners and just wanted to quit to go play a 'real' game. When I showed them 'private' vanilla servers, they loved it.

[Deleted]

I think it's a step into the right direction. I might finally get around to finishing "Loremaster of Kalimdor" this way.
Currently low level questing is just a turnoff; quests get outleveled 20% trough the story-line of current zone. :/

Oh no, it will take 10% longer to level than it is now!

The apocalypse is here! Run for your lives!

From what i'm hearing the increase will be higher; mainly due to how mobs won't fall over in 1 hit anymore. Not saying that's not a welcome change. :P
If they implemented the old "runs away to seek help of allies" additionally it would be even better. (Albeit i'm not sure wether that was ever removed).

[HuxNeva]

Honestly, to me the time consuming part has always been that you have to WALK for 20 levels, hell...in Classic (until what x-pac this stayed true, IDK) you had to walk until lv 40 and then got a slow ass mount.

These days, with the chauffeur and riding at 20, that major pain is gone. And that for me is the main thing...even if mobs now take 10% longer to kill.

Can't you use the chauffeured mount from lvl1?

[Deleted]

Life before death, strength before weakness, journey before destination.

[HuxNeva]

Life before death, strength before weakness, journey before destination.

Yoda before Soda?

[SirCowdog]

Life before death, strength before weakness, journey before destination.

Someone's been reading Brandon Sanderson.....

[Deleted]

Arguably, being able to continue questing in any zone you choose whether to continue quests that would have long been worth no xp or just to change the scenery means they are making it better. Why they would increase XP needed and not also increase XP gained from heirlooms to compensate is beyond me though. There are two camps of people, ones who want it to take longer and ones who want it to go faster. If you make my change, it pleases both groups.

Anything to the contrary does feel like an attempt at pushing one group into paying to skip, while also making leveling more diverse encourages slow levelers to continue subbing. Ideally I think this change is just to get the most money out of all play styles, which is ultimately shit.

But maybe I'm being too cynical.

It's very likely that with the world scaling to character's level the quest xp scales to character's level too. 61-90 you don't really get a steady increase in exp/quest, but from 1-60 the experience gained per quest and per mob kill goes up steadily and I think this is why 1-60 exp requirements are increasing, but not 61-max.

Currently you can enter a zone, and by the time you're halfway through it you've already outleveled it (receiving 6k exp per quest, where if they were your level you'd get 8k/quest) with exp required to level from 1-60 these changes would actually speed up leveling and I'm sure they saw that and decided to increase the exp requirement and disregarding monsters having more health, which is a welcome change (I hope they up the monster damage done too so new players feel the need to learn to CC/interrupt as they level, too many people only learn to do it long after they've finished leveling if ever). Above 60 the quest experience is more or less the same, thus no change in character exp requirements has been made.

[Deleted]

Someone's been reading Brandon Sanderson.....

Yeah, felt like I had to.

Or to be more specific, I could quote (Oathbringer spoiler: ) Elokhar. Journey before... (spear to the heart and eyes.)

That's more fitting for this crowd.

[SirCowdog]

I hope they up the monster damage done too so new players feel the need to learn to CC/interrupt as they level, too many people only learn to do it long after they've finished leveling if ever

This is a skill that should really only be picked up in dungeons. Which is likely now that players can't steamroll/facetank their way through solo due to the new monster health and scaling. Hopefully as people do higher and higher dungeons under the new system, they'll learn those skills along the way.

[Deleted]

How many lvl 100+ do you have if you say you love lvling alts? 30-40?

eeeeh. I have right now 15 level 110. but charcters at level 100+ i have around 20ish, and 70-99 i have 7 (only 1 DH and DK in this lot, so not just 30 DH)

[Deleted]

I think people forget the leveling experience is SUPPOSED to be a fun experience, it is mostly not fun for most of us because we all just dungeon hop our way to max level and ignore zones. We ignore zones simply because it gives experience and it has not been updated for years.

I feel this change will do nothing for the leveling experience. It's still way faster to que as a tank or healer and breeze through dungeons. They have not fixed the core problem that needs to be addressed.

[Deleted]

That's a terrible analogy. First off, if you were to build this theme park and offer to drop me at the end for free the first time, I might take you up on it if all I wanted was at the end. But what if the 10 miles between the ride was full of incredible scenery, shops, restaurants, art galleries, book stores, and many other interesting things? Also, if someone offered to teleport me somewhere 10 miles away, I think it would be worth $60.

Now, some people are still going to want to skip to the end of the theme park and jump straight to the ride, and you offer them several options to get there: A bike or a car that gets them around faster(heirlooms), or you say that if you run with a friend, you'll go even faster(RaF).

After that, you say..."Well now the theme park has 15 miles between the entrance and the ride, but we're arranging all the other attractions on the way to make the walk there more enjoyable, even if it takes a bit longer. You can still skip to the end with all the other options, but this might be nice too."

To which some people reply: "I don't care about all that, I just want to get to the ride."

You gesture to all the options that are still there for getting to the ride faster(including the first free skip each time a new ride is added), and they say: "That's not good enough!"

How do you suppose you'd react?



Oh I agree that the leveling process and older content could use more to make it better. Honestly I think the level scaling should go all the way from 1 to Cap in EVERY zone, and shouldn't cut out at certain stages(60 for Vanilla, 80 for TBC/WotLK, 90 for Cata/MOP, etc). It's weird. If they're going to use scaling, then SCALE. Still, it's a good first step, and was definitely needed.

It would be interesting to see experience required to reach cap reduced, but scale everything up to cap, and give rewards appropriate to a capped player no matter what content they're completing. Add world quests at max level to ALL zones. Let players spend their time wherever, and put expansion-specific rewards behind rep gates or quest completion maybe, to get people to focus on the recent stuff first.

Except the scenery isn't wonderful and is akin to a trip in a 50 years old suburb in the case of wow, as most of the content is dated and was designed with other battle systems in mind. Also, generally, when you go to a theme park you pay for the rides, if you wanted to just walk you could do it for free elsewhere. As such your reasoning is flawed. As well, the cost of skipping the 10 miles isn't worth the 60 $ if there aren't any reason in the first place to have those 10 miles (you might have missed my point here, I'm saying that the distance between the beginning and the goal is artificially long in order to compel you to skip it).

But carry on, blizzard may be happy to see some players are more than glad to be milked like cash cows and that their marketing is successful (by tricking you into believing there is actually value in having a max level character). To be honest I'm actually amazed people actually pay to skip all the outdated content, designed with other battle system in mind (that should be shippable for free), to reach the current game. And especially when it is obvious the game design starts to be obviously rigged to make you buy these boosts. Long leveling are ok when the game starts at level 1 (like it used to be in old mmo), not in modern wow where all the content is designed with the latest expansion in mind, and where most of the progression start at the level cap.

I mean for a new players the changes may be ok (however, I don't think that many new players actually start wow nowadays), but for veteran they are terrible (I think a large amount of players who reroll know every area very well by know). Especially when, as I said, a large part of the "content" was designed with different battle systems in mind.

[Deleted]

The biggest change is that now you won't have to spend half your leveling time traveling from zone to zone. You can just stay in whatever environment you fancy. Wouldn't that make the whole process faster?

Also no more outland. That's always a plus.

[Brogan117]

Except the scenery isn't wonderful and is akin to a trip in a 50 years old suburb in the case of wow, as most of the content is dated and was designed with other battle systems in mind. Also, generally, when you go to a theme park you pay for the rides, if you wanted to just walk you could do it for free elsewhere. As such your reasoning is flawed. As well, the cost of skipping the 10 miles isn't worth the 60 $ if there aren't any reason in the first place to have those 10 miles (you might have missed my point here, I'm saying that the distance between the beginning and the goal is artificially long in order to compel you to skip it).

But carry on, blizzard may be happy to see some players are more than glad to be milked like cash cows and that their marketing is successful (by tricking you into believing there is actually value in having a max level character). To be honest I'm actually amazed people actually pay to skip all the outdated content, designed with other battle system in mind (that should be shippable for free), to reach the current game. And especially when it is obvious the game design starts to be obviously rigged to make you buy these boosts.

I mean for a new players the changes may be ok (however, I don't think that many new players actually start wow nowadays), but for veteran they are terrible.

It's staggering how ignorant some people are. Have you even tried leveling on the PTR? No? k the stfu. Yes? Then you'd noticed that it doesnt really take any longer since you don't constantly have to look for the next level-appropriat zone to continue questign at max-exp-gain. You can skip taking all those ways to the next zone and continue questing, you dont ahve to bother with outleveled quests flooding your questlog etc. It's a good change for anyone since the bit longer it takes to kill those mobs equals out quite nicely with all the traveltime you had to do prior to 7.3.5.
At least try it out before being a mindless pawn to those conspiracy-morons.
If this ends up selling them more boosts, I'm okay with it, since everyone buying one is a total scrub to me and probably has more money than brains, but don't go around telling everyone it's their only motivation here, since your arguments simply won't hold up to any real examination especially those concerning the time it takes.
And I am by no means a Blizz-Fanboy, as you will surely call me. I've criticised them a lot in the last few months. Not on MMO-C since I'm not the most active forumhero, but in my Guild and with friends I gave Blizz a lot of shit especially for BfA and it throwing the major bad guys we learned about in legion aka the void lords seemingly out of the window to focus on a pathetic conflict between horde and alliance, which resulted out of a misunderstanding at the broken shore. And with all the time the horde and alliance spent together in suramar and on argus there hasnt been any chatter about what really happened? why sylvanas retreated? yeah not buying that. Rumours spread fast in armies.
I'm to be honest at a point where I play the game more for the people I have met in this game than for the game itself. At least thats the case during any filleraddon we get, was so in WoD (which was close to torture, its just so bad) and will most likely be that way during BfA if they dont shove this conflict up their asses real fast and give us mostly old gods related stuff asap.