Should Level 120 be the final increase?

[Deleted]

So ... Level 120. It is twice the maximum we had when WoW started.
Would further increases in Level do us any good other than wiping the Gear-Slate clean again? Would simple increases in ILevel not accompish the same with future expansions?

What does our level even express anymore? Gameplaywise it was once a key to the content we were able to play, at least from 1 to 60. A guide on where to go next in Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King, with places and stories to be discovered that were left unexplored and unsolved for years and years since we played Warcraft III. Cataclysm was the first expansion introducing truely new concepts soely original to WORLD of Warcraft. But ever since then we all knew what we had to do. Get to the max level, period. Not to get to see new content but to see the "real" content in the Heroic Dungeons we already beat. Pandaria was all the same in that regard, unlocking the whole Rep-Grind then and only then. Warlords needed the leveling as content padding. Legion started the trend of "We don't care what you do anymore as long as you do something." Leveling in all expansions past Wrath of the Lich King was simply an arbitrary time-gate.

Story wise it expressed our character's growth. Going from a simple squire or apprentice to becoming a capable adventurer going to more dangerous parts of the world and finally a hero capable of felling dragons. Then demons and the mightiest characters we have known in warcraft's story since then. We became not just any kind of random hero, but the hero of the alliance or horde, feller of the Lich King and defender of Azeroth. And then? We helped out Thrall taking down Deathwing, but we already showed we were capable of fighting old gods. We found peace with our inner self and conflicts in Pandaria and helped take down a mad warchief ... twice. We raised an army of heroes, warriors capable of striving to become as good in protecting the world as ourselves. Considering what we did before, this all was just busywork. Then in Legion we first felled more corrupted beings, then mages, warlocks and demons. Stakes that, considering what we have already done, were not really high. Then we marched upon the Legion itself, defeating demon after demon after demon of ancient legends. We felled the avatar of the mad titan himself, all of his leutenants, just to march upon his source of power itself, going so far as to even fell not just one but two titans in succession. What the hell is out there to even stop us? What would a Level Up even mean?

I say that as a final representation of our growth, Level 120 should be the final one. Getting to 120 should place a Crown upon our character's portrait and simply say: "You. Are. Done!"

[Socialhealer]

the horse is already dead, please just staph.

[delus]

Why do you care so much about numbers? Besides, levels serve the purpose of entry into content. Sure they could implement a system of ranks that serve the same purpose, for instance Legion ranks 1-10. Still, that is essentially the same thing as levels.

[Steampunkette]

"Meh"

From the designer's perspective it's irrelevant whether it increases or gets replaced by another number that scales upward. The end result of forward advancement is sated.

But -players- consider Levels to be a milestone, and thus we'll need to continue using them until players get tired of that milestone.

And while you might be tired of it, sooooo many players aren't. They value that incremental bump of Skinner Box endorphins and taking it away would make them angry.

And so we will continue to have levels as long as Marketing exists.

[God Save The King]

I don't mind levels. They create that sense of power difference and incrementalism that comes with levels. Capping at 120 doesn't really make a lot of sense. If we stopped leveling, Blizzard would feel the need to create a new progression system that simply did the same thing as leveling.

The alternative is to just perpetually create new content, without separating it by levels/zones. That would quickly overwhelm players, as current content would eventually include dozens of raids, loads of Argus/Broken Shore esque zones, and the power differential between the first raid and final raid would become massive. So they'd need to implement ever increasing catch-up mechanics. Expansions and levels allow for a "reset", and progressing through 2-3 raid tiers is not as ridiculous as 10. Imagine if they kept the level at 60, the introductory raid would be Molten Core, and the current raid would be Argus. That content would span every continent, 21 raid tiers, and 3 dozen raids.

[AngerFork]

What would turning off leveling accomplish, aside from giving people a way to rush to endgame without actually seeing the story/leveling zones? Leveling itself already gives a lot of extremely solid items, from giving a good display of how far you are in the story to giving you something to strive for with each character. Not to mention how many low gear people already sign up for content they really can't yet handle...why wouldn't people just do the big stuff the first day the content is open?

I'd far rather have something to accomplish and something to work on per character...so again I ask, what does making 120 the last possible level in WoW accomplish for the game going forward?

[Katie45]

100 should be the last levels, theres no way they can go more than 100

[TheramoreIsTheBomb]

honestly they shouldve made leveling artifacts the new leveling thingy

[Allegresse]

They can keep going with the level cap increases every expansion and I'd prefer they stay 10 level increments. I despised the 5 level crap.

IF and when WoW has level caps like MapleStory i.e. where it's 250+ and you spend years trying to max 1 damn character, THAT'S when I'd say to Blizz just stop now.

I never even fully leveled anything on MapleStory cause after about 50 levels, I was sick to death of killing things for hours just for a level.

[Shadowsgrace]

As long as World of Warcraft is the Cash Cow that it is, they will keep adding more levels, I just hope there are no more of those "5 level" expacs. Those kinda pissed me off.

[Shadochi]

"Meh"

From the designer's perspective it's irrelevant whether it increases or gets replaced by another number that scales upward. The end result of forward advancement is sated.

But -players- consider Levels to be a milestone, and thus we'll need to continue using them until players get tired of that milestone.

And while you might be tired of it, sooooo many players aren't. They value that incremental bump of Skinner Box endorphins and taking it away would make them angry.

And so we will continue to have levels as long as Marketing exists.

Couldn't agree more with this.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

If we were doing a final we'd have stopped at 100. Onward and upward I say.

[Vynestra]

No.

/thread

[Deleted]

''100 final expansion''

The levels are going to increase FOREVER guys

[Deleted]

What would turning off leveling accomplish, aside from giving people a way to rush to endgame without actually seeing the story/leveling zones? Leveling itself already gives a lot of extremely solid items, from giving a good display of how far you are in the story to giving you something to strive for with each character. Not to mention how many low gear people already sign up for content they really can't yet handle...why wouldn't people just do the big stuff the first day the content is open?

I'd far rather have something to accomplish and something to work on per character...so again I ask, what does making 120 the last possible level in WoW accomplish for the game going forward?

The first thing it would accomplish is closure for a system that covers essentially only 1% of the time you spend in any expansion.

Guild Wars 2 actually never had levels for example until game testers said they had no idea what to do. So they introduced arbitrary levels just so people would not get lost. As far as I know, they did not increase the cap for their expansions since then, as it was clear to each player what they needed to do and what they needed to accomplish as soon as progression through the content became linear and story focused. We reached that point around Cataclysm.

Story Progression is nowadays tracked with Achievements and the Quest-Story-Line Counter in your Journal. The way leveling worked previously actually forced you to leave storylines unfinished because you progressed faster in levels than the story in plot. No levels means no reason other than bad storytelling to leave a story behind.

I am a stern paragon of the concept: "If you don't treat players like idiots, they will not act like idiots." That said, creating honestly hard content that forces you to play good will mean bad players will stay away from that content as long as there is OTHER content to do. Imagine having Molten Core as the raid where all the bads can learn to play instead of having to pull them through Tomb of Sargeras because it is the only content relevant enough to be challenging and easy enough to overgear to mask mistakes.

And 120 just seems neat for being twice with what we had, just as 100 seemed neat because they would never possibly add a 3rd digit ...

[Steampunkette]

The first thing it would accomplish is closure for a system that covers essentially only 1% of the time you spend in any expansion.

Guild Wars 2 actually never had levels for example until game testers said they had no idea what to do. So they introduced arbitrary levels just so people would not get lost. As far as I know, they did not increase the cap for their expansions since then, as it was clear to each player what they needed to do and what they needed to accomplish as soon as progression through the content became linear and story focused. We reached that point around Cataclysm.

Story Progression is nowadays tracked with Achievements and the Quest-Story-Line Counter in your Journal. The way leveling worked previously actually forced you to leave storylines unfinished because you progressed faster in levels than the story in plot. No levels means no reason other than bad storytelling to leave a story behind.

I am a stern paragon of the concept: "If you don't treat players like idiots, they will not act like idiots." That said, creating honestly hard content that forces you to play good will mean bad players will stay away from that content as long as there is OTHER content to do. Imagine having Molten Core as the raid where all the bads can learn to play instead of having to pull them through Tomb of Sargeras because it is the only content relevant enough to be challenging and easy enough to overgear to mask mistakes.

And 120 just seems neat for being twice with what we had, just as 100 seemed neat because they would never possibly add a 3rd digit ...

49% of the population is below average intelligence.

A lot of them are WoW players.

And the other 51% are just as susceptible to Skinner Boxes.

Leveling will never leave WoW.

[ro9ue]

My OCD tells me 100 should be the cap. 110 and 120 are icky.

- - - Updated - - -

The first thing it would accomplish is closure for a system that covers essentially only 1% of the time you spend in any expansion.

Guild Wars 2 actually never had levels for example until game testers said they had no idea what to do. So they introduced arbitrary levels just so people would not get lost. As far as I know, they did not increase the cap for their expansions since then, as it was clear to each player what they needed to do and what they needed to accomplish as soon as progression through the content became linear and story focused. We reached that point around Cataclysm.

Story Progression is nowadays tracked with Achievements and the Quest-Story-Line Counter in your Journal. The way leveling worked previously actually forced you to leave storylines unfinished because you progressed faster in levels than the story in plot. No levels means no reason other than bad storytelling to leave a story behind.

I am a stern paragon of the concept: "If you don't treat players like idiots, they will not act like idiots." That said, creating honestly hard content that forces you to play good will mean bad players will stay away from that content as long as there is OTHER content to do. Imagine having Molten Core as the raid where all the bads can learn to play instead of having to pull them through Tomb of Sargeras because it is the only content relevant enough to be challenging and easy enough to overgear to mask mistakes.

And 120 just seems neat for being twice with what we had, just as 100 seemed neat because they would never possibly add a 3rd digit ...

I always found that interesting. I feel like EverQuest solved that a long time ago with Alternate Advancement. Essentially a near infinite grind of minuscule increases to stats by filling a bar out. WoW got really close to that system with Artifact traits but the WoW version was a lot weaker and boring, especially with Artifact Knowledge.

[Sigxy]

250 sounds like a nice number!

[CaptainV]

Id say when the next expansion comes they need to do a prune of levels down to level 100, and once you hit 100 instead of giving you more levels you get some kind of artifact power grind but its an account wide leveling system, aka: Paragon Levels.

Think of the honor leveling system currently but for pve and account wide for every toon. Ilevels become the default end game with the addition of paragon levels which are designed to do two things:

- Lengthen the end game experience so it feels less artifical and more natural, each level could be a significant increase of progress such as unlocking the right to access a raid, or mythic dungeons, etc.

- Giving people a new found *reason* to grind something again that isnt the same old boring crap you did 60 times before. Adding a slightly fresher view of levels that will carry into future expansions.

[huth]

So ... Level 120. It is twice the maximum we had when WoW started.
Would further increases in Level do us any good other than wiping the Gear-Slate clean again? Would simple increases in ILevel not accompish the same with future expansions?

No, they wouldn't. In fact, it would lead to pretty serious issues with secondaries very quickly. One of the reasons they keep increasing the cap is facilitating gear and, far more importantly, secondary stat resets. Not increasing the cap would break the game.

I say that as a final representation of our growth, Level 120 should be the final one. Getting to 120 should place a Crown upon our character's portrait and simply say: "You. Are. Done!"

I say you're wrong. Mostly about the "being done" part. Not that you made any actual argument as to why the cap should remain at 120.