Hardcore casuals ruined leveling

[Eggroll]

I love the new leveling. And the new dungeon difficulty <3

I am also absolutely guilty of being a hardcore casual, leveling an army of alts just for the fun of it. Just leveling a rogue, now at level 86. I even got rid of my heirloom armor, just so the trip takes a little longer <3

[Marmot]

42 hours to level to 110? Even in MoP I was taking up to double that from 1 to 90, so if it's averaging at 42 hours now, that's pretty fast.

[Krigaren]

I mean, he's not wrong. Even if you include the entire questing section of achievements, it's a small fraction. The bulk of the achievements in the game are all things that - at least when the achievement was implemented - were all for content to be done at max level.

That's correct - when achievements first came out (and even today) there were a large number of them dedicated to raiding. It's not like raiding has never been a focus of the game, and it's not as though Blizzard didn't adjust the game to make raiding more accessible starting in TBC. But to say that raiding has always been the meat of the game is incorrect, and for vanilla and at least the first two expansions, both leveling and raiding were extremely difficult in comparison to today's game.

Also, here's the breakdown for achievements:

Dungeons & Raids: 957
Everything else: 2064

Raids don't even have their own category, yet even combined with dungeons (which I would argue is part of the leveling process) is still only 46% of total achievements in the game. So I re-iterate my point that the OP is wrong that raiding is not and has never been the "meat" of the game.

Lets even break that down more into achievements that could be considered "leveling" such that it requires people to grind and level up in order to complete them or are acquired in the process of leveling, such as pet battles, exploration, professions, quests, rep, garrisons, and it's still more than raiding (1102 vs 957).

[Verithros55]

The problem is most of the things you listed require skill in addition to the allotted time, so they don't actually want that. Grinding makes them feel as though they have skill because they misconstrue the willingness to invest large sums of time doing repetitive yet simple tasks with skill.

I don't think raiding heroic requires any skill at all just time as well. A pug can do heroic if they have enough time and can invest a large sum of time doing repetitive yet simple tasks. Does that mean what they are doing is meaningless to them? they do it because they enjoy it.

[Zyrinx]

While i agree with the first part this is not how it works. People choose the path of least ressistance if the reward they want is the same. If that what you propose would be really a solution they would not be a level scaling in the first place in need because people who wanted to level slowly could do ironman challange or something like this

Well apparently not though. Because some people appear to LOOOOOOVE taking way longer to level, but there's no additional reward. To be clear, I have less than zero hope that Blizz would actually give people a way to level faster if they wanted to; clearly it's good business for people to go slow. Unless of course they actually bleed Subs because of it and the sale of boosts doesn't offset it. But I doubt that.

[Alfador]

The problem is most of the things you listed require skill in addition to the allotted time, so they don't actually want that. Grinding makes them feel as though they have skill because they misconstrue the willingness to invest large sums of time doing repetitive yet simple tasks with skill.

So where's the "skill" of the many thousands of "hardcore raiders" who "invest large sums of time" into failing over and over until they eventually fail their way to success? Honestly the skill argument is a fallacy for 90% of the people it usually gets applied to. Any marginally competent player can and will progress in heroic (and yes even mythic) raiding if they're willing to put "hardcore" quantities of time into it and follow all the requisite steps of raid prep. At the end of the day it's as simple as people invest their time into different parts of the game based on what they want out of it.

[Aeula]

Leveling is torture. It’s so boring, such a tedious, crappy grind. The only way to fix it is to destroy everything that’s there right now and rebuild it from the ground up.

Quests, Dungeons, The World Content, the amount of levels, the rewards for leveling. All of these need radical changes to make questing a fun and less repetitive experience.

Why is it the only way to level efficiently is to do quests or get boosted in dungeons? Why is there no dynamic content to keep things interesting? Why the fuck did they think making the crap that’s already there take even longer was a good idea?!

The quests are so outdated and boring, making them take longer will just drive new players to more modern MMO’s.

[Eggroll]

Well apparently not though. Because some people appear to LOOOOOOVE taking way longer to level, but there's no additional reward.

The "reward" is the enjoyment in doing it^^

[Zyrinx]

The "reward" is the enjoyment in doing it^^

Unless you're of the percentage of people that hate it, of course.

[Eggroll]

Unless you're of the percentage of people that hate it, of course.

You can always make a premade for dungeon spam, with heirlooms its still pretty decent xp, plus all the dungeon quests.

Edit: Bye bye, I'm off now leveling my cute Gnome rogue lady

[Chloral]

Unless you're of the percentage of people that hate it, of course.

That's why you can purchase a boost. Just because YOU hate it doesnt mean it needs to be ruined for people that enjoys it.

[Verithros55]

Leveling is torture. It’s so boring, such a tedious, crappy grind. The only way to fix it is to destroy everything that’s there right now and rebuild it from the ground up.

Quests, Dungeons, The World Content, the amount of levels, the rewards for leveling. All of these need radical changes to make questing a fun and less repetitive experience.

Why is it the only way to level efficiently is to do quests or get boosted in dungeons? Why is there no dynamic content to keep things interesting? Why the fuck did they think making the crap that’s already there take even longer was a good idea?!

The quests are so outdated and boring, making them take longer will just drive new players to more modern MMO’s.

It doesn't matter what mmo you play whether they be new or old. Once you get into the alt game, no matter what, the same people will love it and the same people will hate it.

Just look at Suramar one of the best zones they have made, but i would be caught dead before i go through that shit again

[Tinykong]

Blizzard always fixes one problem and creates two more.

Leveling was fragmented and weird, you would out level zones before finishing them and wind up jumping from expansion to expansion. They fixed the leveling, but now it's a slog and takes way too long.

[SoulSoBreezy]

42 hours

Oh the HORROR.

[Eleccybubb]

Blizzard always fixes one problem and creates two more.

Leveling was fragmented and weird, you would out level zones before finishing them and wind up jumping from expansion to expansion. They fixed the leveling, but now it's a slog and takes way too long.

42 hours is too long? Or 48 in my case?

Man I would love to see some people here back in Everquest, FF11 or any of the older MMOs that came before WoW.

[Zyrinx]

That's why you can purchase a boost. Just because YOU hate it doesnt mean it needs to be ruined for people that enjoys it.

Just because you love it doesnt mean it had to be ruined for people that enjoyed it.

Listen I'm being pedantic here on purpose, because it would be so easy to accommodate both sides.

[Wilfire]

To the people bringing up vanilla:

Taking weeks if not months to level up (it took me a month of real time) was okay because leveling was a big part of vanilla content. You'd either level or only log on for raids. You didn't have WQs, M+, arena, multiple raid difficulties, pet battles, and all other sorts of minigames that you have nowadays. You'd literally only level or grind consumables outside of raid hours. You could PvP too but it was nowhere near as involved as it is now. You can't compare vanilla with Legion. Legion is not about leveling, it's about endgame content.

[Verithros55]

You keep saying it is easy, like Blizzard can just waltz in and change programming that has been integrated for who knows how long. is it possible? hell ya, but i highly doubt it would be such an easy fix as you like to suggest.

[hyphnos]

And lazy ass "hardcore" like you, who want all classes and even more at max level for free, ruined the game.

42 hours /played for 110 levels isn't even that much. Leveling is part of the game.

Is it really? It is a transient experience and one that lasts for such a brief time that unless you are constantly leveling characters for the fun of it (which is fine if that's your thing) it is over before ONE MONTH'S SUB TIME. If a game is sold in 2 year expacs and playtime by the MONTH, then no, leveling is really not a substantial part of the game because it's done and over with in a tiny fraction of the time the game is designed to consume. If leveling were important, they'd release new leveling content with every patch, like they do max level content. The only thing leveling is good for is padding Blizzard's time played metrics and putting enough obnoxious shit between new players and the actual current game that they probably lose 90% of them.

[Halyon]

That's cute. Moving on.