What is up with the leveling complaints?

[Gamespud]

I don't get it. Are people getting triggered because they want to prove that they can suffer longer than you? Or is it that they simply think you are having fun "the wrong way"?

It's so laughable that you have on one hand a more arduous leveling process. "You gotta WORK for that character" ... and in the backdrop there's always ... "or pay $60". So all of those arguments about how you need to play the game the "right" way are always in the context of a game where you can pay $60 for literally instant progression.

Why can't it be... slow progression for those who want it or fast progression for those who have played the hell out of the game already?

Because we used to have an option for slow progression or fast progression, its called.. wearing heirlooms.. want fast? Wear heirlooms.. Want slow? Don't. But now we don't have the option because blizz has slowed down the progression for everyone so now there is no real fast option.

[Deficineiron]

And every time someone mentions MAU's I roll my eyes at yet another paranoid conspiracy theorist.

The A/B acct dept and their outside accountants seem to suffer from this too. Also senior mgmt, they even spout this stuff on conference calls!

I think using 'paranoid conspiracy theorist' as some kind of substitute for any kind of rational debate or discussion counts as 'word-thinking.' Using the label 'paranoid conspiracy theorist' is expected to have the magic power to make Stelio's actual point go away or be invalidated, since the word-hex was placed on him by you (and you aren't the first).

it is certainly an easier approach than discussing how MAU's matter to blizzard (since blizz is suffering from the same 'paranoid conspiracy theory' as Stelio) and how they go about trying to modify player behavior.

I wonder that there are actually people who do not believe blizzard makes changes to wow principally in order to make more money.

[Stelio Kontos]

And every time someone mentions MAU's I roll my eyes at yet another paranoid conspiracy theorist.

Nah, man utilizing well known business terminology to explain a business's behavior isn't conspiratorial.

A conspiracy theory would be that you're an alien sent to Earth to lower our aggregate intelligence with your shitposting.

[ShiyoKozuki]

I see more people out leveling than I EVER saw before. Anyone complaining is the minority. Leveling is actually enjoyable and content now, before it wasn't even playing a video game.

[rda]

I see more people out leveling than I EVER saw before. Anyone complaining is the minority. Leveling is actually enjoyable and content now, before it wasn't even playing a video game.

It's end of an expansion, it's a week-end, and there was recently a swooping fix to mob health / damage which appeared solely because people revolted en-masse. Your "anyone complaining is the minority" is hilariously myopic, you managed to miss 99% of the picture.

[Xath]

This won't work. Because I, you and everyone else knows that if a faster option is available - EVERYONE - will use it.

Leveling was slowed down on purpose to create a better gaming experience overall. For a lot of people (who were acknowledged by Ion before the change came out), this change will create a worse gaming experience, because they were used to another way of doing things. What Ion was saying was that the experience you were used to was bad gameplay design, and needed to go away for the games health. Personally, I agree with him. This same logic applies to the GCD change.

Ah so you believe in a complete lack of logic no point in arguing then.

[kamuimac]

The problem is, people complain about having leveled so many times that they no longer enjoy it, and therefore want it to be free.

If you dislike leveling, then stop doing it.
You don't need any more characters.

Leveling serves no purpose other than enjoyment and the progression of our character to max level.

There is no need to keep leveling characters over and over again if you dislike doing it, or wont actually play the toon at max.

and why not ? what is the harm in for example letting people who have 30+ max toon have next ones starting instantly at max level ?

after all they pushed it that many times

imo people who have less then 30 max level alts shouldnt even take place in discussion about leveling as they have jack shit to say about process .

[lappee]

and why not ? what is the harm in for example letting people who have 30+ max toon have next ones starting instantly at max level ?

after all they pushed it that many times

imo people who have less then 30 max level alts shouldnt even take place in discussion about leveling as they have jack shit to say about process .

Why would people who have 30+ max toons be able to start at max level? They liked leveling so much and have already so many characters that it'd make sense to let them actually have reduced XP gains in order to balance the amount of max level characters between players.

See how much sense that made, rite? Just use your 50% extra XP from heirlooms if you really want to level for the 31st time.

[cparle87]

Nah, man utilizing well known business terminology to explain a business's behavior isn't conspiratorial.

A conspiracy theory would be that you're an alien sent to Earth to lower our aggregate intelligence with your shitposting.

Way to completely and totally miss the point. MAU's are a thing, I'm not denying that. I'm also not denying that a higher one is better for Blizzard. The way guys like you use MAU, though, is a totally different beast. You guys seem to envision the Blizzard developers sitting around a table plotting how to make us have to be logged on more frequently or for longer times to achieve the same effect in some insidious plot to fatten their wallets.

Change levelling, a scheme to increase MAU.
Change pathfinder, a scheme to increase MAU.
Change anything, a scheme to increase MAU.

I have seen virtually every topic and facet of this game pointed at as some evil plot to subjugate the players to the MAU gods Blizzard now worships. Hyberbolic? Only slightly.

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Snippity

Read what I said to Stelio above.

[Deleted]

The problem is, people complain about having leveled so many times that they no longer enjoy it, and therefore want it to be free.

If you dislike leveling, then stop doing it.
You don't need any more characters.

Leveling serves no purpose other than enjoyment and the progression of our character to max level.

There is no need to keep leveling characters over and over again if you dislike doing it, or wont actually play the toon at max.

Actually, the antiquated server structure , guild and faction system is the reason why people who already have a lot of characters at max level would be interested in rerolling. When you need to jump faction/server to join X guild on Y server with Z class, either you reroll or you pay the insanely high cost to switch server/faction.

But only the most gullible player won't see that this antiquated server structure and guild system, as well as the broken leveling system, is merely kept in place to make players buy boosts and faction/server change. They even had the nerve to provide some so called explanation to explain why they didn't implement a level squish (that made the most sense due to the stat squish) when they performed the stat squish.

I mean, BFA seems to be built with the exact purpose to make players want to level several characters (different content for the 2 factions and allied races), while making the leveling take way longer. CRZ has been a thing for years now and there are basically no real reasons why we couldn't have a megaserver per region, yet blizzard made the choice to a) keep that structure in place and b) forbid CRZ mythic raids. They even went as far as nerfing the recruit a friend system. If you really don't see a pattern here I can't do anything for you.

Way to completely and totally miss the point. MAU's are a thing, I'm not denying that. I'm also not denying that a higher one is better for Blizzard. The way guys like you use MAU, though, is a totally different beast. You guys seem to envision the Blizzard developers sitting around a table plotting how to make us have to be logged on more frequently or for longer times to achieve the same effect in some insidious plot to fatten their wallets.

Change levelling, a scheme to increase MAU.
Change pathfinder, a scheme to increase MAU.
Change anything, a scheme to increase MAU.

I have seen virtually every topic and facet of this game pointed at as some evil plot to subjugate the players to the MAU gods Blizzard now worships. Hyberbolic? Only slightly.

Well it is known that MMORPG before wow used all sort of tricks to keep players subscribed for longer, and a slow and very tedious leveling has always been amongst these.

[Deleted]

The Thing that interests me the most is why the whiners have leveled up so many alts to begin with and want to continue on doing so, even though it's obvious that they don't enjoy it.

I mean I absolutely understand it that everyone is eventually gonna Level up alts, but 10+? I can even get the reason why some People have leveled up each of every class, but many here have even more than that.

I leveled so many because i like leveling and trying factions/class/races combos, but for most people who have as many as i do, the reason is either gold or mount farming.
I get all the mounts that drop from all old raids in like two weeks maximum, because i go there with a throng of alts.
And the gold part since WOD, well as much as i want.

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If you dislike leveling, then stop doing it.
You don't need any more characters.

Oh yes unfortunately, in this game you do need more than one, because due to the fact that balancing never works in this game, there are always classes that stink either for PVE or PVP, and NOBODY enjoys the game when their class is there, absolutely nobody, so yes, more than one char is needed.

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Do you think their might be some in-game economy consequences if it the time to max level was inconsequential? I mean imagine if a majority of players had a dozen/two dozen characters pulling 3-5k a day from missions alone, not to mention daily quests? The inflation would be so massive, you'd have to play alts or buy tokens with real$ just to be able to participate in the economy.

Remove follower gold missions from the game then, and i have been making a ton of gold from this since wod, but still remove it, and now that we are at it remove all the followers missions, and the followers.
This way there is zero issues to the economy with the instant alts.

[hyphnos]

Way to completely and totally miss the point. MAU's are a thing, I'm not denying that. I'm also not denying that a higher one is better for Blizzard. The way guys like you use MAU, though, is a totally different beast. You guys seem to envision the Blizzard developers sitting around a table plotting how to make us have to be logged on more frequently or for longer times to achieve the same effect in some insidious plot to fatten their wallets.

Change levelling, a scheme to increase MAU.
Change pathfinder, a scheme to increase MAU.
Change anything, a scheme to increase MAU.

I have seen virtually every topic and facet of this game pointed at as some evil plot to subjugate the players to the MAU gods Blizzard now worships. Hyberbolic? Only slightly.

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Read what I said to Stelio above.

Yeah, because we are to believe one of two things:

1. Levelling and flight were terrible awful things that destroyed the game for 8-10 years and nobody noticed or cared
OR
2. Levelling and flight were non issues until the in metric on Wall Street and in ATVI's internal accounting made wasted player time have value and then the devs decided to please their bosses by finding every little way to increase player time inputs.

As the second is far more rational and has a monetary explanation I think it is far more likely to be true.

To believe the first, is to believe in a level of incompetence that even these devs haven't demonstrated.

[Jikate-Stormrage]

The problem is, people complain about having leveled so many times that they no longer enjoy it, and therefore want it to be free.

If you dislike leveling, then stop doing it.
You don't need any more characters.

Leveling serves no purpose other than enjoyment and the progression of our character to max level.

There is no need to keep leveling characters over and over again if you dislike doing it, or wont actually play the toon at max.

I partly agree. Blizzard introduced heirlooms to combat a shoddy (at the time) leveling experience. I didn't have any issues with that system, I felt if I really wanted to just take my time leveling... I didn't equip the items. This made it slower, but not by a whole lot. And the experience was still unsavory.

I think an acceptable middle ground is to allow those that wish a faster experience to use the heirlooms they purchased. Have this increase the leveling speed by say 20% max. They get faster leveling, but I don't think 20% would be overly too fast (adjust the number if need be). Or better yet, removed heirloom gear and give a "Veteran" buff that can be enabled after leveling a character from 1-max level (read: no DH's or DK's). There, you have seen the content.. and now can choose.

For those "new players" (which must be a small number) and those who "enjoy leveling" (hey, we all play differently, that's cool) can have a leveling experience that feels unified, challenging and worthy of their time.

My largest concern moving forward for leveling... for those who do not level in current content. In BFA, a player leveling from 1 is going to get their last talent point at lvl 100. From that point on, they will get an artifact through a quest (not empowered) and level to 110. Will they be able to empower their weapons with power tokens? If not then it sucks having a single weapon for 10 levels. That doesn't feel satisfying. You gain a single artifact ability. That's it, nothing else. You are merely changing the artifact's ilvl with relics as you level.

Shoot this same concept past BFA, now you have your last talent point at 100. You gain 1 ability for 10 levels thru Legion, and in BFA you are given a few talents in azurite gear... that could seem quite disjointed.

But to say "if you don't like leveling, don't do it".. idk, that seems like a cheap answer. It doesn't bother me if someone who went through leveling before has a stable of 110/120 alts that they do not play. I have all classes at max level, and I keep them up with current content, but I understand not everyone plays exactly like me. If you get your jollies from playing only one toon... then fine on you. That's cool. But we shouldn't tell others what they "need or don't need".

[lappee]

Oh yes unfortunately, in this game you do need more than one, because due to the fact that balancing never works in this game, there are always classes that stink either for PVE or PVP, and NOBODY enjoys the game when their class is there, absolutely nobody, so yes, more than one char is needed.

No, it doesn't. Unless you're seriously competing in PvE or PvP scene there is no need (other than self-proclaimed "gotta be top dyps") to have multiple characters. And if you are seriously competing then you're doing a lot of other "shit" too just to get the advantage.

Remove follower gold missions from the game then, and i have been making a ton of gold from this since wod, but still remove it, and now that we are at it remove all the followers missions, and the followers.
This way there is zero issues to the economy with the instant alts.

You'd also have to make all instances account wide so you couldn't run old raids for the gold, make professions account wide etc. Basically anything that is character specific should be account wide if you want to take away the benefits of having alts.

At that point you would just make classes another toggle on one character, just like specs are.

[Deleted]

No, it doesn't. Unless you're seriously competing in PvE or PvP scene there is no need

I do not seriously compete, i do only play this game because i do it with friends, and still i would absolutely hate dragging my friends progress because my class is broken, and i think most people feel the same way about their class being at the bottom of the barrel, it is not fun playing with a broken toy.

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You'd also have to make all instances account wide so you couldn't run old raids for the gold, make professions account wide etc. Basically anything that is character specific should be account wide if you want to take away the benefits of having alts.

Removing follower gold missions it is more than enough, that other ways of making gold with alts are not comparable in terms of time needed/effort with the follower gold missions.

[SirBeef]

This won't work. Because I, you and everyone else knows that if a faster option is available - EVERYONE - will use it.

Leveling was slowed down on purpose to create a better gaming experience overall. For a lot of people (who were acknowledged by Ion before the change came out), this change will create a worse gaming experience, because they were used to another way of doing things. What Ion was saying was that the experience you were used to was bad gameplay design, and needed to go away for the games health. Personally, I agree with him. This same logic applies to the GCD change.

It's still not slow by any means IMO. If it were it would be like 15-20 days played to hit max level. Leveled a HM Tauren after 7.3.5 and it took just under 4 days played. Currently my Nightborn, who I started leveling in 8.0, is sitting at 100 with just over 3 days played. That is still ridiculously fast.

[zaino]

No one cares about leveling when the focal of each expansion is max level content.

I leveled a nightborne to max in 7.3.5, and won’t be leveling from scratch ever again as long as the current system is in place.

[riptal]

No one cares about leveling when the focal of each expansion is max level content.

Please can you just talk for yourself? I care about leveling all the time! No matter wich expansion we got. Believe me a lot more people that you think care! Maybe lot of you complain in forum about the leveling being that long but a lot more dont complain and stay silent because they're just happy with the change and the leveling pace. So if you want to speak for everybody, at least, make sure everybody agree with you!

Without the leveling process, Wow will die pretty fast! Blizz had to do something about that! Majority of players today are not those only raiding hardcore and only caring about max level content! Majority are those playing only few hours a week here and there, playing ending content but also enjoying leveling alts.

[Deleted]

Without telling others what they can/should/must do Im just going to explain whats wrong with current leveling (since 7.3.5 actually, the problems have not been fixed) and I dont need anyone here telling me that my opinion is wrong because XYZ.

Leveling in WoW is really bad by modern standards and nothing has been done about it over the years. Lets see why.

1) Quests are written while voice acting is (becoming) a standard these days (face to face "conversation" with voice acted NPC is more immersive and actually makes you remember more quests, especially if they are well written).

2) Quests are often very generic (we all know the story about killing 12 boars over and over again, in every single zone there is). They lack any kind of "main quest" feeling you have from latest expansions. There is also no player´s impact on the world from his/her actions. Also no player´s choice but we can live with that. Whole journey from 1 to 110 (120) is one giant mess, new player sees a BFA commercial, jumps into game only to deal with some deadly dragon causing cataclysm. Dragon is not dealt with, newbie is suddenly sent to either deal with Lich King or Burning Crusade...then returns to deal with the deadly dragon again...or maybe face enemy faction (finally!) in pandaria. After that there is timetravel into alternate reality to kill bad orc who (if newbie chose pandaria) did something bad (if newbie did not choose pandaria then its to stop some random bad guy). In Legion things finally start to make sense and BFA is what matters (if people cant see how everything besides last 2 expansions is meaningless I dont know what to say anymore).

3) Leveling is not rewarding. The goal is to get to max lvl asap, everything below that does not give you anything nor does it mean anything. There should be more rewards for leveling, not just heritage armor for few subraces. Why cant we get more rewards? Anything would be cool, even second location for your hearthstone at lvl 30/40, doesnt matter, just anything. Whole RPG character progression should be remade from scratch. That awesome feeling when you become stronger by lvling up? Choosing new talent, getting (not learning) new spell? Where? When? Every 10-15 lvls? And get weaker actually? Yeah, try lvling a caster...gradually you need another cast to kill a mob, then another and another...

4) Its easy, there is no challenge, no reason to team up with other players to defeat some rare mob (we are still talking about MMO here).

5) Yes time is subjective, but it takes too long especially with points described above. Its mindless grind.

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To debunk some ever-present "arguments", no it does not teach you to play a class properly (low lvl mobs dont have many crucial mechanics) and no its not there to attract newbies, there is literally free character boost to attract newbies because devs know that leveling sucks by modern standards and all the main content is at max lvl. Leveling is at best a side activity, for some its like a fun profession crafting, for others its a mindless grind. The amount of dev time they dedicate towards improving leveling does not reflect what many fanboys here promote (engaging, meaningfull, "insert anything positive"). Unless they make it super-fast again (honestly 30% reduction in total experience needed would be just fine) we will see people whining about it.

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The biggest problem always is a lack of plan. Scaling is by all means great, I think it should go from 1 to previous expansion cap (now from 1 to 100). Whats the future? Is this lore mess it? How long should it take from 1 to max lvl? What should it reward? Just cosmetic gear for few subraces?

This is such a mess that only WoW 2.0 or all old zones revamp is needed if we want to seriously improve leveling...without it this discussion turns into whether we should increase leveling speed with heirlooms (loremaster tabard), make a level squish or some other bandade fix. BFA´s theme is great for revamping old zones, they dont even need to change much of the zones as we can see in darkshore, just make some new quests. They obviously dont bother with voice acting so why just not use the advantages of written texts (cheaper, faster and easier to make)? Plus ongoing faction conflict will always be relevant.

[Aydinx2]

This won't work. Because I, you and everyone else knows that if a faster option is available - EVERYONE - will use it.

That's their own fault then.