My Leveling Experience in 7.3.5

[Zyky]

Ha, I had totally forgotten about those. Thanks.

good part is, a recent buff made it so you get both the Alliance and Horde toy now instead of just the faction you buy!

[Stelio Kontos]

I don't understand why they don't just make heirlooms overpowered and give a huge XP boost. That way the attention span-challenged folks who just want to level fast can, and the masochists who like taking forever to reach max level can have it their way as well by not wearing heirlooms.

Why not just give both camps what they want?

[Blamblam41]

Would love to see them give a large amount of XP as a zone completion bonus. Without heirlooms, the leveling process seems like it would overwhelm players with how much shit they need to go through while getting basically nowhere. Trying a character without one and it's a total slog.

Then for players with heirlooms, the XP bonus and faster kill speed will let them knock down the zones faster and increase the bonus.

Basically, provides a few fixes while encouraging and rewarding you for staying through a zone to completion.

I'd also be down for that if those also rewarded you with things that matter at endgame.

At this point, there is 0 reason not to mesh working on early game and endgame systems. Since they scale and the vast majority of other systems were removed or made irrelevant, it would allow for a more nuanced reward system than the current slog while also providing returning players with a sense of "Oh you're doing something for the 12 time again, here is something to help you out because you're clearly an alt."

I'm so amused at how half assed these changes are, though. RaF change is a nail in the coffin for sure.

[Pipboi]

Maybe base XP needs to be buffed, and heirloom bonus XP needs to be nerfed.

I wouldn't mind this. Heirlooms aren't just a perk because of the EXP but also because of the upscaling stats that let you maintain your characters power without having to find upgrades for your gear.

[Deleted]

Prior to 7.3.5 if you were to follow a "normal" leveling path, questing in each zone until that zones cap, and then moving on, you would basically be going through 12 zones.

Dun Morogh > Loch Modan > Wetlands > Arathi Highlands > Hinterlands > WPL > EPL > Badlands > Searing Gorge > Burning Steppes > Swamp of Sorrows > Blasted Lands

Keep in mind, that that was with or without heirlooms. Granted you could skate by with heirlooms and overlevel in a zone or two, but in the end you still had to hit at minimum 10 zones.

Yeah but you'd do half the quests in a each of these zones, maybe more for some, but never all the quests.

[Benefitzs]

That is why the boost is available for players like you.

then get some gold or some money and get a boost.

This attitude is terrible. Levelling should not be a painful, time-wasting process that you are forced to sit through for 30+ hours. This is not vanilla anymore. Old content is not core gameplay anymore. We are about to have 120 levels, they should be speeding up the levelling process, not slowing it down. the option to waste your time levelling slowly was already there. Just don't wear heirlooms, simple. Saying I have to either waste several days of my time earning nothing on my character, or spend my $80 to pay for a boost that shouldn't exist, is incredibly toxic. Heirlooms should be powerful, and if they are going to be weak, then they should make them baseline to 110, and reduce the cost to upgrade to 500g, because spending thousands upon thousands of gold to upgrade green items makes zero sense.

This change to levelling a character is terrible, theres no reason to be forced to "experience" content I have completed 15 times over. I honestly can't wait for them to release vanilla servers so everyone who likes to waste their time can go do it over there.

[Deleted]

It took me ~25 hours to reach level 60 with ~2-3 hours afking on full heirlooms except rings. Problem for me wasn't the speed, but monsters. They have too much health and are boring. About 95% of the monsters just auto attack you until they die. There was zero chance of me dying, other than boredom. They really need to add more skills and abilities to monsters. Skills needed to be interrupt, flash bangs, ground effects and such.

[Dergiab]

When you are used to Vanilla and TBC, no there is no need for a higer XP buff.

- - - Updated - - -

This attitude is terrible. Levelling should not be a painful, time-wasting process that you are forced to sit through for 30+ hours. This is not vanilla anymore. Old content is not core gameplay anymore. We are about to have 120 levels, they should be speeding up the levelling process, not slowing it down. the option to waste your time levelling slowly was already there. Just don't wear heirlooms, simple. Saying I have to either waste several days of my time earning nothing on my character, or spend my $80 to pay for a boost that shouldn't exist, is incredibly toxic. Heirlooms should be powerful, and if they are going to be weak, then they should make them baseline to 110, and reduce the cost to upgrade to 500g, because spending thousands upon thousands of gold to upgrade green items makes zero sense.

This change to levelling a character is terrible, theres no reason to be forced to "experience" content I have completed 15 times over. I honestly can't wait for them to release vanilla servers so everyone who likes to waste their time can go do it over there.

If you have done it 15 times now, why the fuck care? You have more than enough to enjoy the endgame content.

[Kantoro]

The most interesting (and best) change is dungeons. They are back to being more than a walk thru. Mobs hit harder, healing is fun again, dps that just pull everything gets WREKT. I am loving the lowbie dungeon experience again.

[Phuongvi]

You're doing something seriously wrong if you're only 23 in 4 and a half hours...I hit 60 with no heirlooms in just under 10 hours...

I was doing my laundry

[Th3D0n]

These are my thoughts on leveling in 7.3.5 please feel free to reply with your experiences and whether you agree with my last point.

So, after the patch hit I decided to level a new Alt to get a feel for the zone scaling for my soon to be Void Elf.

As I would probably use them on the Velf I used my full Heirloom set (- the ring) giving me a 45% xp increase and a few trinkets and neck items to help with downtime. My zone progression was, Dun Morogh > Loch Modan > Wetlands > Arathi Highlands > The Hinterlands > Western Plaguelands > Eastern Plaguelands > Burning Steeps > Redridge Mountains.

Up until Western Plaguelands it felt pretty cohesive as a progressive storyline and questing goes for a typical Dwarf, with Burning Steeps and Redridge being a bit of an oddity too get me to 60.

Now to be honest everything progressed smoothly most zones gave me roughly 5-6 levels after Loch Modan which I left around level 23-24 and I hit 60 pretty easily after the 9 zones. I made a point to get the questing achievement for each zone to help towards my Loremaster and did the odd dungeon when it felt right in the story.

However, for a new player who is fresh in the game to reach level 60 that’s another 45% worth of xp needed, pushing my 9 zones completed to 12-13 + id imagine as a new player that I would feel a bit overwhelming and disheartening that after completing the best part of an entire content I was only half way to max level and hadn’t reached the first expansion yet.

I can understand why so many people are angry that it takes too long to level, using heirlooms feels to me what base leveling should be.

I would like to suggest a XP bump 20-30% should to it and the scaled zones would take care of the rest.

With Heirlooms I think 7 zones in classic should be enough to hit 60 without feeling too slow, finishing my story at around the Western Plaguelands sounds about right, as it was here I started to feel a bit burnt out.

Posted this on the official forums as well but wanted to see what the MMO-Champion community thinks as well.

So how long did it take from lvl 1 to 60?

[Tiwack]

Level bloat.

I don't think they should even tweak it. I think the best way would be one of 2 things.

Give massive XP upon completing a zone fully

Remove 60 levels, leave required XP alone

One of these or just award 2 levels at a time up to current expansion level zones...

[Crudence]

The most interesting (and best) change is dungeons. They are back to being more than a walk thru. Mobs hit harder, healing is fun again, dps that just pull everything gets WREKT. I am loving the lowbie dungeon experience again.

I know right? I have legit fun healing low lvl dungeons now. They just felt dumb before. I just ran after the tank and sometimes put a shield on him, just to feel like I did something. Now I have to use all my abilities, pain suppression and rupture has been life savers at many overpulls. I even see people using cc in dungeons now. Mostly stuns, but every now and then I see a sheep or a hex and I am like "What game am I playing? Surely this can't be derp of warcraft? People are not supposed to know they have abilties that don't do dmg" xD

[Deleted]

I don't understand why they don't just make heirlooms overpowered and give a huge XP boost. That way the attention span-challenged folks who just want to level fast can, and the masochists who like taking forever to reach max level can have it their way as well by not wearing heirlooms.

Why not just give both camps what they want?

Because human nature always follow the easier and faster route. It's like the argument that pro-flyers always say: "Let us use fly mount as soon as possible, the others can always go with ground mount".

That's why we need a third party (Blizzard in this case) that enforce something (usually a mid choice) to both side, for good or worse.

[Darkpoison324]

You are all ridiculous and need to stop complaining, the leveling is fine and alot better then it ever was
I cant wait for vanilla

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

I hate it so much.
All I care about is hitting max level and doing endgame :|

This, imho, is exactly the problem. By that I mean the game is not healthy if the only part worth playing is current endgame. Current endgame content comprises what... maybe 2% of all content that's available? If 98% is not enjoyable, that's a problem that needs fixing. 7.3.5 may not have been the complete fix, but I support them in working on it.

[Blackmist]

Roll back the HP buffs.

Introduce a difficulty setting that increases XP gain at the cost of more HP and damage on enemies.

Ta-da! A game suited to new players and veterans alike.

[Zka]

I'm lvl 44 at the moment on the new alt, my only problem is low amount of mobs and/or low respawn rate in Cape of Stranglethorn. It is VERY problematic, I had to run around looking for just a few mobs for several minutes PER MOB very often. The experience in this zone is far from seamless.

Durotar, Northern STV, Northern Barrens were fine with similar amount of other levelling players running around me.
I'm also using full xp heirlooms (sans ring) and also the +50% xp buff for monk. Leveling speed is roughly what I expected. On a class that is completely unknown to me seeing quests I never had the chance to see due to outleveling zones it almost feels like a new game.

- - - Updated - - -

You are all ridiculous and need to stop complaining, the leveling is fine and alot better then it ever was

I agree. There is still tuning to be done (respawn rates, mob hps here and there) but it's an excellent direction.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

This attitude is terrible. Levelling should not be a painful, time-wasting process that you are forced to sit through for 30+ hours. This is not vanilla anymore. Old content is not core gameplay anymore. We are about to have 120 levels, they should be speeding up the levelling process, not slowing it down. the option to waste your time levelling slowly was already there. Just don't wear heirlooms, simple. Saying I have to either waste several days of my time earning nothing on my character, or spend my $80 to pay for a boost that shouldn't exist, is incredibly toxic. Heirlooms should be powerful, and if they are going to be weak, then they should make them baseline to 110, and reduce the cost to upgrade to 500g, because spending thousands upon thousands of gold to upgrade green items makes zero sense.

This change to levelling a character is terrible, theres no reason to be forced to "experience" content I have completed 15 times over. I honestly can't wait for them to release vanilla servers so everyone who likes to waste their time can go do it over there.

Your right it’s not classic it’s way way faster then classic.

You also don’t need to spend a penny if all you care about is end game make some gold buy a boost with that.

[Darkpoison324]

This attitude is terrible. Levelling should not be a painful, time-wasting process that you are forced to sit through for 30+ hours. This is not vanilla anymore. Old content is not core gameplay anymore. We are about to have 120 levels, they should be speeding up the levelling process, not slowing it down. the option to waste your time levelling slowly was already there. Just don't wear heirlooms, simple. Saying I have to either waste several days of my time earning nothing on my character, or spend my $80 to pay for a boost that shouldn't exist, is incredibly toxic. Heirlooms should be powerful, and if they are going to be weak, then they should make them baseline to 110, and reduce the cost to upgrade to 500g, because spending thousands upon thousands of gold to upgrade green items makes zero sense.

This change to levelling a character is terrible, theres no reason to be forced to "experience" content I have completed 15 times over. I honestly can't wait for them to release vanilla servers so everyone who likes to waste their time can go do it over there.

This post is asinine.
Why are you even playing this game with that mentality you're basically saying lets take the rpg out of wow.
Im sure the reason why your still playing this game is because you feel In love with it on your first journey to max
And for alot of us my self.included leveling is the best part of this game
And if end game is all that matters why do you need boa upgrades to cost less the game hands you 10s of thousands of gold