Blizzard made leveling longer to entice paying for boosts

[r3gul8r]

As the title states, I fully believe they made the leveling system in 7.3.5 overtuned (longer/slower) to entice players to buy 110 boosts.

Don't get me wrong, I believe they needed to fix some leveling/dungeons issues with it being too easy but even with heirlooms, leveling is just dreadful now in my eyes.

I've made a few new allied toons and just going from 20-30 seems like forever. And now with BfA coming in a few months, there's 10 more levels on top of that.

No thanks.

[Tommi]

People bitched about leveling being too easy and quick and players learned nothing while leveling.

Blizz slows leveling and increases mobs health to allow people to learn class skills.

People bitch about leveling taking too long and it's all a ploy to sell boosts.

Blizz sighs with hands in head.

[Svetox]

As the title states, I fully believe they made the leveling system in 7.3.5 overtuned (longer/slower) to entice players to buy 110 boosts.

Don't get me wrong, I believe they needed to fix some leveling/dungeons issues with it being too easy but even with heirlooms, leveling is just dreadful now in my eyes.

I've made a few new allied toons and just going from 20-30 seems like forever. And now with BfA coming in a few months, there's 10 more levels on top of that.

No thanks.

Are u really that lazy to say no thanks to that

[Socialhealer]

this thread is both new and interesting.

[r3gul8r]

Are u really that lazy to say no thanks to that

Lazy, perhaps some, but realistically I'm not wanting to invest the time. I'd rather be spending my time on a max leveled toon to do end game content. I've been here since 2005. I know the game, I'm confident enough I know how to play, even being able to learn a new class etc.

Making the mobs hit harder and have more health is fine. But slowing down the experience is the real problem.

[Hypasonic]

Nah honestly, it was needed. I don't like the slower routine bet lets be honest, did anyone actually level via questing pre 7.3.5? Sure, you'd do one or 2 quests here and there before your dungeon queue popped. If you played a tank or healer, what are quests? Its made the world feel more relevant and it will atleast get people inthe right mindset for classic, because if you think this is slow well you have a whole new meaning to the word to encounter.

[r3gul8r]

Nah honestly, it was needed. I don't like the slower routine bet lets be honest, did anyone actually level via questing pre 7.3.5? Sure, you'd do one or 2 quests here and there before your dungeon queue popped. If you played a tank or healer, what are quests? Its made the world feel more relevant and it will atleast get people inthe right mindset for classic, because if you think this is slow well you have a whole new meaning to the word to encounter.

I agree with you. I don't think you are wrong. But I feel like they pushed it TOO much. This game is coming around to 120 levels. The leveling rate is just absurd now, which proves my point-- they are just trying to push 110 purchasable boosts.

[McFrotton]

Nah honestly, it was needed. I don't like the slower routine bet lets be honest, did anyone actually level via questing pre 7.3.5? Sure, you'd do one or 2 quests here and there before your dungeon queue popped. If you played a tank or healer, what are quests? Its made the world feel more relevant and it will atleast get people inthe right mindset for classic, because if you think this is slow well you have a whole new meaning to the word to encounter.

man STV and tanaris....the worst pain I ever endured.

[Powerogue]

It's not particularly longer or slower in my experience. If anything at the end of each "bracket" I found myself going "noo I really like this zone!" Which is good, it meant I had enough time to get immersed into the zones instead of zipping from one to the other.

The fact you barely have to swap zones massively reduces that boring downtime, coupled with the heirloom maps and more than doubled variety as far as access to dungeons at any given time really cancelled out the reduced xp. (edit: and letting you fly in any expansion instantly, huge help) (edit2: and due to the zones scaling with you, you don't ever encounter quests going green/grey and rewarding massively reduced xp. This increases xp gain!)

Use heirlooms. They still help a ton. I was actually surprised how much a good enchanted heirloom weapon was able to help since enchants scale down. Well worth adding to the arsenal even though it doesn't technically give an xp boost, functionally it does.

man STV and tanaris....the worst pain I ever endured.

That's the best part: Every zone I hated I was able to skip. Even entire expansions I was able to skip. "Eh, I'm not a fan of outland, I think I'll just do my favorite zones out of northrend and see how far that gets me" wound up getting me all the way from 60-80 and I didn't even get to Storm Peaks and Sholazar Basin.

This was barely doing any dungeons, mind you. The XP is decent for them but what was particularly nice was the gear actually being relevant for a good chunk of time.

I thoroughly enjoyed leveling my first alt from 1 since Cataclysm (and even those I gave up on at 60) and intend on leveling up some allied races next.

[De Lupe]

My HM Tauren just hit 100 yesterday. Haven't even hit 100 hours yet. Not even close to too long.

And the fact that I can skip Outland was an insane morale boost. Fuck Outland. Did all of Horde side Kalimdor quests minus Azshera and N.Barrens, then went straight to Borean Tundra, Scholazar, Dragonflight, and about half of Icecrown. Then I went to Jade Forest, Four Winds, and K.Wilds. Hit up Frostfire, Taladar, and half of Arak. Out of all of those zones, the only ones I didn't 100% complete were Icecrown (too many fucking group quests) and Arak (went to get my Artifact at 98 and was surprised to see I could quest in Legion.) Never once been tempted to use the FREE 110 I have collecting dust.

My only true nitpick is that I want ALL of the expansion zones to go from 60-start current expansion. That way, I can cherry pick the zones I love from the whole game.

[Ombree]

They're literally giving transmog rewards for leveling from 1 to 110

[Nalorakk]

Lazy, perhaps some, but realistically I'm not wanting to invest the time. I'd rather be spending my time on a max leveled toon to do end game content. I've been here since 2005. I know the game, I'm confident enough I know how to play, even being able to learn a new class etc.

Making the mobs hit harder and have more health is fine. But slowing down the experience is the real problem.

Then don't invest the time?
I like casually leveling alts, for me the change is great and I've already got a full cast of max level classes. If I were new to the game, I'd feel better about leveling instead of flying through a joke of a leveling curve.

It may make you more inclined to buy a boost because you couldn't care for leveling, for me it's more the opposite (not that I would've bought a boost in the first place).

[kraid]

They're literally giving transmog rewards for leveling from 1 to 110

20-110,
/10char

[De Lupe]

20-100,
/10char

20 to 110.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

that argument will never hold up as long as you get rewards for leveling the legit way. not to mention they could make more money by lowering boost prices.

[Thage]

As others said, they did it because there was a vocal presence online who thought the leveling pre-7.3.5 was broken and gave you no reason to feel invested in a character. To those people, leveling feeling like a pointless slog rather than its own fun minigame felt like Blizz pressuring them into buying boosts. Now, some feel the opposite is true because Blizz gave players who like leveling a reason to go back and level up again, along with new Allied Races to give players something to do in the pre-expansion slump rather than just hang out wondering when the next raid gets released.

edit: Also, the fact that you get locked out of unique Allied Race transmog sets puts lie to the assertion that the 7.3.5 changes were meant to sell level boosts. They released these in tandem to give players something to do.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Lazy, perhaps some, but realistically I'm not wanting to invest the time. I'd rather be spending my time on a max leveled toon to do end game content. I've been here since 2005. I know the game, I'm confident enough I know how to play, even being able to learn a new class etc.

Making the mobs hit harder and have more health is fine. But slowing down the experience is the real problem.

if you would rather play end game play end game and get the gold for tokens.

[Thage]

if you would rather play end game play end game and get the gold for tokens.

Right? Any raid guild worth its salt probably has more than enough gold banked that they could fund level boosts for any raiders looking to reroll to a class they don't already have at at least the previous-expansion level cap.

[PogChamp]

people are focused on this all wrong, which then leads to dumb responses. the responses are like "well people said they wanted leveling that was slow like it used to be" when you just say "leveling is too slow"

the real issue is that leveling is too boring, and that boring experience drags on for a very long time now. i have leveled many characters to 60 in vanilla and have a lot of fun doing it, but i can't stand leveling in the current game, vanilla leveling was unquestionably longer and harder than it is now, but players enjoyed it because the leveling systems and pacing all made you feel like you were slowly getting stronger and progressing your character, whereas in the current game you get 1 talent every 15 levels and it usually doesn't change the playstyle at all, you never need to see your trainer, you don't need to go on long adventures to get quests done, there are no class quests along the way, and the list goes on and on.

the game used to be engaging and it felt right, now it's a very boring process which was just made longer, so the mind-numbing leveling seems to just drag on forever.

it personally doesn't affect me because I have 48 characters and level 100 or higher since I knew this day would come eventually, but it's shitty for new players to have to go through such a long and boring process just to tryout a new class, and most of them won't be willing to do it, so they'll either quit or just pay the money for the boost. so the OP was right, it was changed to get more money for sure, but the reason for it being bad isn't because of how long it takes, it's because of how boring that long process is.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

Blizz can't figure out if they want leveling to be hard or easy. Because they recognize making new "pristine servers" for people that want hard leveling wouldn't work. And they refuse to add some kind of "hard mode" toggle for leveling.