Therein lies the exact problem. Players generally need to be given some sort of direction unless you have a sandbox style game. WoW is very much not sandbox. You can try to put it in achievements and quest story lines, but there are a good amount of people that wouldn't know to look there. Additionally, add in the extra pressure from friends trying to get you to do the newest dungeon or whatnot to get your gear, it's very easy to lose your place.
Plus, those with alts definitely spend more than 1% of their time leveling. Not to mention that it would likely feel very abrupt to get to 120 and have extra expansions worth of content, but no real guide as to where to go next. Getting into WoW for a brand new player is already enough of a fire hose as it is without getting to 120 and having four different expansions you need to hit up next with connecting storylines, but not really knowing where to go next.
I'm not entirely sure what removing leveling has to do with treating players like idiots or not. In fact, I'm not entirely sure what much of any of this has to do with leveling. Are you proposing a system where people have to go through all the raids and beat them at appropriate gear levels to raid with their friends? Because that seems like a really fast way to take down Blizz's admitted already low new player retention numbers. Molten Core is still fun IMO, but it is very much aged content at this point. Blizz has learned a lot over the last 13 years.
Even beyond that, how does someone know to go to Molten Core first before they can go to the other raids? Is your proposal hoping for a guild to tell them, or would you need to rework questing/leveling further to do this?
Nah - it should be 127, so that tech conspiracy nuts will for ever think it was limited for 7 bit reasons
Challenge Mode : Play WoW like my disability has me play:
You will need two people, Brian MUST use the mouse for movement/looking and John MUST use the keyboard for casting, attacking, healing etc.
Briand and John share the same goal, same intentions - but they can't talk to each other, however they can react to each other's in game activities.
Now see how far Brian and John get in WoW.
As someone who only has to level from current level cap to new level cap on all characters, i don't really care if they go up to 1000. It's always just 10 levels for me.
But i think for a new player, 120 levels may seem like quite a daunting task. It just "feels" long.
I think it'd be a compromise to go the swtor/cata/mop route, and go back, and adjust all expansions to only be 5 levels. This would make 95 the max level in BfA. But they just overhauled the entire leveling process, so i think this is off the table.
Or they could leave levels as is and introduce such a system anyway. Which is pretty much what they're doing except for the account wide part. The pruning wouldn't do much anyway, other than making leveling to cap feel longer.
This works just fine because the two systems are completely unrelated and fill different purposes. Artifacts/Azerite are max level power progression systems. Levels represent your current position in the overall WoW storyline and serve to reset player power after every expansion.
I agree with this idea. A leveling squish would feel harsh, but no more so than we are going to see with the gear squish that seems to be coming. Plus it would feel far less daunting than jumping straight to 120 as is. You could even split it straight in half here and make it somewhat feel like a WoW 2.0 if you so chose.
They went back to 10 levels per expansion because 5 feels to sudden a change.
Halving the levels would make the leveling process feel longer since you would also only get levels half as often.
I also find the "daunting" thing unconvincing, since for a new player those 120 levels are actual content they've never done before. Besides, you get a boost to 10 levels below cap anyway.
Statistically 50.499999999999999999999999999999999999 are below average. But I always figured allowing a 2% variance is worthwhile.
In reality, massive quantities are at the average intelligence with some above and some below because reality is closer to a Bell Curve, and intelligence itself is by and large an irrelevancy with importance attributed to it by Western Culture, while most of the rest of the world prefers Wisdom and Cunning...
But whatever.
When you are accustomed to privilege, equality feels like injustice.
Telling people "you are done" is a recipe for a lot of unsubs.
Artifact Knowledge exists and must exist to solve the crucial dilemma: how do you give people "endless" stuff to do without creating an ever growing rift between casuals and hardcores where hardcores get further and further ahead with no hopes from casuals to catch up? Wow is built around casuals, it needs to give them carrot on a stick without making them feel the goal is too harsh to reach for, while still trying to keep that 1-10% hardcores occupied without leaving them completely idle.
Same thing with ilvl / gear, we get frequent "catch up" patches for that reason.
It's still 10 levels for them because they get a boost when they buy the current expansion pack. You only need to explore past levels if 1) you want to 2) you care to level an alt and don't want to buy a boost for it.
Nope. They have already past 100, so there really isn't any reason to stop.
And they will most certainly NOT squash or prune levels. Sorry.
Mistweaver Monk | Holy Priest
I Like levels, I just wish they would be meaningful again.
like, they pruned our entire toolkit that we gathered over 13 years.
so maybe now we can get abilities during leveling again? or at least a new talent at 120?
I ment when new expansions come out.
like in TBC/wrath we got like 3-4 abilities per class in 10 levels.
in wod we got one, in legion we got one.
also they did matter, every single level was a new talent point in the old system. which made leveling up so much more meaningful imho.
I don't really see a point to having a "final level" in WoW. It's not like 120 being double the level of 60 is significant. Every expansion people try to predict/hope for a "final level" number, but leveling isn't going to go anywhere.
Levels tell players a lot more than people think. It tells players (veteran, new, casual, experienced) where they need to go to quest, which dungeons/raids are appropriate for them, what gear they could be wearing, and what content is the newest. Gaining levels also gives players a sense of accomplishment and strength. Sure, you could accomplish the same thing with only item levels - but it would be the exact same thing, and people would demand for there to be a cap on item levels as well.
Don't forget, item levels are being reset next expansion with the next item squish, as well. Presumably that will happen again in the future. So, what would that accomplish, then? People would feel downgraded by seeing their item level go down, if there were no more levels.
3 hints to surviving MMO-C forums:
1.) If you have an opinion, someone will say that it is wrong
2.) If you have a source, there will be people who refuse to believe it
3.) If you use logic, it will be largely ignored
btw: Spires of Arak = Arakkoa.
It's literally just a number.