The leveling experience BADLY needs fixed.

[Pua]

Okay, so, I finally put together the time to get my Mag'har orc to 110, but it's also allowed me to look at the ridiculous pile of problems that the current "leveling" experience currently has. Here's a short list:

First of all, the actual game itself (rather than expansions) is now almost completely ignored. The scaling of mob levels and experience helps the problem by keeping a single zone appropriate for all of your levels, but what this does is effectively remove three quarters of the original world. If you're random-queuing for dungeons, it will remove even more than this. Not only does this dramatically reduce the encouragement to play a far bigger game than any expansion, it makes basic profession development practically impossible.

Then, of course, there's the random-queuing for dungeons. The opportunity is wildly out of line throughout, as it's not up to you which one you get, which means the potential time-demand can vary dramatically. Despite this frustration (or continually getting the same dungeon), random-queuing for dungeons as a tank or healer is by far the fastest route to level 60, at least. Because of the travelling that general questing requires, random dungeon-running is extraordinarily more beneficial, particularly for those with the heirlooms. The provision, of course, then changes dramatically when you reach level 90. Not only do the waiting times seem to rise, potentially even slightly earlier, the next two past expansions are considered singular which unloads substantially less dungeons than the rest of the game. The 90 to 100, for example, drops to a single dungeon every two levels... Making questing suddenly worthwhile, especially for damage dealers who have longer queues.

Of course, there's the class development. It stops at level 80. That's when pretty much your entire class skills package has been unlocked, and is on your button bars. That means there are effectively FORTY levels about to be worked through, without a single development. Sure, you could include the additional two talents, but two 'choices' over forty levels and no choices over the live expansion? That's extremely poor and smacks of lazy design. Of course, class performance also randomly changes due to the scaling that gets randomly applied as far as the character is concerned. Moving into Warlords drops item quality, as does the live game, which has a nuisance impact on the heirlooms you've piled gold into.

So, to summarize, the majority of the original game is skipped which is a real shame, you can't develop your professions which guts the content's depth, random-queuing for dungeons obliterates the pace of any other content which demands random groups you won't get to know, the dungeon experience then changes dramatically at level 60 which is wholly pointless, class development ends at level 80 which is fundamentally absurd, while the gear scaling changes see your character drop its power for no explicable reason whatsoever.

It's little wonder that new players are being boosted, but that essentially gives them barely any content or experience, makes the achievement screen utterly pointless, provides precious little experience or learning environments, guts other systems (particularly ALL professions) and destroys the means in which that new player can learn some actual lore that'll help them understand why things are happening.

As far as I'm concerned, I think this is potentially the biggest damage to new player retention. There's no way that I can prove that, of course, but there seems a huge pile of issues that would stop anyone from retaining their subscription.

So... Do I have any ideas that might fix this?

Unsurprisingly, I do.

1. First of all, the level number has got to drop. Dramatically. My belief is that the maximum level should be 70... And should always be 70. The original game should reach level 60, with the Cataclysm zones being re-scaled as part of it because they are consistent with its timeline. From here, every expansion should take you from 60 to 70 with the maximum players returning to 60 when a new expansion is released. This reinvigorates the original game itself, recreates the means with which to develop your professions, makes class design much more fulfilling, and keeps dungeons advantageous but not ludicrously so.

2. All expansions, once passed, should be made part of the Caverns of Time. In-game mobs therefore give players a chance to go and experience them at level cap, with all mobs scaled to the level cap... But have large powers removed in order to maintain the cosmetic availability to players. Not only does this remove a HUGE stack of bizarre problems, it gets rid of the item scaling issues, gives players choices, rebuilds the entire story, and lets players choose what they want to be involved in. The choice then becomes the full game to the current expansion, rather than the full game, to Outland/Northrend to Cataclysm/Pandaria, to Draenor, to Legion... So on.

3. Drop the numbers in professions. Honestly, it's gotten silly. We're now in a system that effectively guts the early versions, where there is some really nice cosmetic items, and creates a 'current' level of 150 for the most recent expansion. It removes the depth, the fun and the variability. The original level of 300 is just fine, with the current expansion jumping to 375, and the drops happening with the new expansion the same way character levels do. Suddenly, there's a chance to wholly recreate the depth the systems once had, and even let the system build powerful items that can be competitive given a players expertise. It makes sense, and could relaunch professions. I also support a change to one creation profession, and all collection ones.

4. Heirlooms should be renumbered. The fact that they change, as expansions change, is just a nonsense. And because the character level has been cut in half, there doesn't need to be a 50% to 60% increase. Remove the levels of each heirloom (while returning the gold to the players that spent it), they always work to level 60, and increase your experience to a maximum of 10%. It's a simple one.

5. Item enhancement is removed. It's great when those quest rewards proc into something more powerful, isn't it? Well... No. When you're leveling, it's absolutely and completely pointless. Once you hit the cap, it'll be gotten rid of extremely quickly or, even worse, if you get it too early, then all it'll take is a couple of levels to see it gotten rid of. It could have an impact on enchanters, but it would do nothing for anyone else, so there's effectively no argument, at all, to keep doing this. Personally, I dislike it at level cap, but I understand the intent; I've no intent what it's supposed to be doing for people who are leveling.

6. Fix the PvP reputations. It seems unrelated to this thread, because it is, but the reputation demands have become really needless given the number of battlegrounds that now exist. Rather than having a separate reputation for all of them, or the random no reputation found with a few, group them all up and reduce the number of reputations that the game has linked to PvP. So battlegrounds that are similar should be applied with the same reputation.

7. Drop the maximum of the achievement pane. Given that the entire game, other than the current expansion, is being skipped effectively, the number of achievement points make it a fundamentally broken piece of content. Even if a new player nailed every single one from the current expansion, he or she is absolutely miles behind and will never catch up. Cut the number in half, dramatically reduce the ones that have been needlessly expanded, and then turn current expansion achievements into the pointless rewards when the expansion is replaced. That keeps the achievements for those who earned them, but doesn't count them to make the content so broken.

At this point, there are so many other things I'd like to suggest but a great many of them are more of a level-cap, current-expansion argument so I'll leave them out. Of course, it's also noteworthy to remember that this post is too big for the vast majority of people to read, but maybe a designer will. And lastly, because I reckon new players are now less likely to stay than ever before, buying games that encourage you to skip the overwhelming majority of the game just shouldn't be chased.

That's the start of this thread - what do you guys want to continue with?

[Donald Hellscream]

Having levels be on an infinite loop really kills the sense of progression though.

[crusadernero]

TBH, leveling is the least of our worries right now.

For new players, its endless content. For those who have done it, we just want it done quickly.

[Pua]

Having levels be on an infinite loop really kills the sense of progression though.

Funnily enough, I do agree that this could be a problem.

I simply think it's better than forty levels that are completely empty, while players are rammed through piles of old content for no real reason.

If you've another solution, I'd love to hear it.

[Muajin76]

I guess you didn't see the part about 8.1 having a 30% *40% being from lvl 60-80* exp nerf?

[Pua]

TBH, leveling is the least of our worries right now.

For new players, its endless content. For those who have done it, we just want it done quickly.

I guess you didn't see the part about 8.1 having a 30% *40% being from lvl 60-80* exp nerf?

Yes, I did.

I recommend you both read the post.

I know it's a long one, but it'll make these points pretty needless. Pinky swear.

[Seranthor]

.

Seems to me I've read this... at least a dozen times by a dozen different people.. What makes your idea of breaking the game any more appealing than someone else's?

1) Level squish? good way to lose the rest of your customers by telling them their hardwork over the past X number of years isnt' worth shit.
2) Another stupid idea.
3) Dont wanna do Professions? Bully for you, leave them alone. dont fuck them up for everyone else.
4) Dont wanna use Heirlooms? Bully for you again, dont use them. dont fuck them up for everyone else.
5) Yea, Break more shit... No... leave it alone.

If you truly are too lazy to level... buy the level boost...

Thats my response to the eleventy billionth thread of people crying (yes, I used that word) about leveling.

[Deleted]

They should fix current max level content before they touch the leveling experience. :P

[Seranthor]

They should fix current max level content before they touch the leveling experience. :P

Here is someone that gets it.

[Muajin76]

Yes, I did.

I recommend you both read the post.

I know it's a long one, but it'll make these points pretty needless. Pinky swear.

Okie Okie!

[Deleted]

Leveling is fine right now. If you have any problems with anything leveling up then you've probably leveled way too many characters and you are just burned out. For new players the biggest problem with the leveling process is that it takes too long. Other than that, new players experience the game for the first time in a good way.

[Smokeybones55]

First of all, the actual game itself (rather than expansions) is now almost completely ignored. The scaling of mob levels and experience helps the problem by keeping a single zone appropriate for all of your levels, but what this does is effectively remove three quarters of the original world. If you're random-queuing for dungeons, it will remove even more than this. Not only does this dramatically reduce the encouragement to play a far bigger game than any expansion, it makes basic profession development practically impossible.

The reason why I love the world scaling is because the speed of leveling makes hopping from zone to zone ridiculous. Previously, you'd complete maybe a fourth of a zone and then out level it. Especially if you're also queueing for dungeons along the way. You could complete one or two of the 'chapters' in Westfall before the rest of the zone was green/grey and have to move onto Duskwood.

What I would prefer? Just make every zone and old dungeon scale 1-110. I would much rather spend my time questing in the old world Azeroth than have to be forced into Draneor/Broken Isles 90-110. The story line is so chopped up and not fluid as it is, it wouldn't really matter if it was made any more broken.

[Donald Hellscream]

Funnily enough, I do agree that this could be a problem.

I simply think it's better than forty levels that are completely empty, while players are rammed through piles of old content for no real reason.

If you've another solution, I'd love to hear it.

I agree that having long stretches of nothing really doesn't feel interesting. I guess an easy fix would be some sort of system similar to the old talent trees. I personally think the talent trees weren't all that amazing because frankly most of the talents were uninspired and boring like 1% crit or 1% reduced mana cost but it gave something every or every other level.
Another way they could do it if they don't want to do something like the talent trees could be something like maybe every 5th level could award players with a token that could be used to buy cosmetic stuff like mounts, pets and transmogs.

There are probably also ways they could improve on the narrative so that it doesn't feel so odd hopping back and forth between time periods ( 1-60 cata zones - Wrath and back to cata ) I guess if they don't wanna put a huge amount of effort they could maybe just make a short scenario where Chromie informs the player that she need to send them back and forth in the timeline.

[Pua]

Seems to me I've read this... at least a dozen times by a dozen different people.. What makes your idea of breaking the game any more appealing than someone else's?

1) Level squish? good way to lose the rest of your customers by telling them their hardwork over the past X number of years isnt' worth shit.
2) Another stupid idea.
3) Dont wanna do Professions? Bully for you, leave them alone. dont fuck them up for everyone else.
4) Dont wanna use Heirlooms? Bully for you again, dont use them. dont fuck them up for everyone else.
5) Yea, Break more shit... No... leave it alone.

If you truly are too lazy to level... buy the level boost...

Thats my response to the eleventy billionth thread of people crying (yes, I used that word) about leveling.

Again, you've either not really read or not managed to understand what I've said. To reiterate:

1. So keeping forty empty levels is important to people, when their achievements can be kept by the achievement pane (which my suggestion makes more valuable)?
2. Explain why you think it's stupid. I'm genuinely interested.
3. You've completely misunderstood the point. I clearly say to drop the 850 total back, and not to actually get rid of professions themselves. I can't be clearer.
4. I didn't suggest 'fucking them up'. I suggested changing their numbers, so that the impact they have (prior to current expansion) is equivalent.
5. You haven't even attempted to make a point why you think low-level item procs in quality are worthwhile. I'd love to hear it.

All you've really shown by this post is that you haven't the slightest clue what's being suggested, and didn't even understand clearly articulated arguments.

Sigh.

They should fix current max level content before they touch the leveling experience. :P

That's a fair view, to be honest.

I don't agree (hoho), but it's perfectly reasonable.

The reason why I love the world scaling is because the speed of leveling makes hopping from zone to zone ridiculous.

No, sorry if I wasn't clear, I'm not suggesting we should get rid of the scaling with a lower level. Quite the opposite, I'd be very happy to keep it.

[Oholyknight]

I think making all of the zones scale from 10-110 would help to make the game feel a bit more cohesive story-wise. I was already level 60 before I could even finish all of the "undead" zones. I would also love to stay in Azeroth all the way until 110, doing my favorite zones.

[Casperite]

Okay, so, I finally put together the time to get my Mag'har orc to 110, but it's also allowed me to look at the ridiculous pile of problems that the current "leveling" experience currently has. Here's a short list:

First of all, the actual game itself (rather than expansions) is now almost completely ignored. The scaling of mob levels and experience helps the problem by keeping a single zone appropriate for all of your levels, but what this does is effectively remove three quarters of the original world. If you're random-queuing for dungeons, it will remove even more than this. Not only does this dramatically reduce the encouragement to play a far bigger game than any expansion, it makes basic profession development practically impossible.

Then, of course, there's the random-queuing for dungeons. The opportunity is wildly out of line throughout, as it's not up to you which one you get, which means the potential time-demand can vary dramatically. Despite this frustration (or continually getting the same dungeon), random-queuing for dungeons as a tank or healer is by far the fastest route to level 60, at least. Because of the travelling that general questing requires, random dungeon-running is extraordinarily more beneficial, particularly for those with the heirlooms. The provision, of course, then changes dramatically when you reach level 90. Not only do the waiting times seem to rise, potentially even slightly earlier, the next two past expansions are considered singular which unloads substantially less dungeons than the rest of the game. The 90 to 100, for example, drops to a single dungeon every two levels... Making questing suddenly worthwhile, especially for damage dealers who have longer queues.

Of course, there's the class development. It stops at level 80. That's when pretty much your entire class skills package has been unlocked, and is on your button bars. That means there are effectively FORTY levels about to be worked through, without a single development. Sure, you could include the additional two talents, but two 'choices' over forty levels and no choices over the live expansion? That's extremely poor and smacks of lazy design. Of course, class performance also randomly changes due to the scaling that gets randomly applied as far as the character is concerned. Moving into Warlords drops item quality, as does the live game, which has a nuisance impact on the heirlooms you've piled gold into.

So, to summarize, the majority of the original game is skipped which is a real shame, you can't develop your professions which guts the content's depth, random-queuing for dungeons obliterates the pace of any other content which demands random groups you won't get to know, the dungeon experience then changes dramatically at level 60 which is wholly pointless, class development ends at level 80 which is fundamentally absurd, while the gear scaling changes see your character drop its power for no explicable reason whatsoever.

It's little wonder that new players are being boosted, but that essentially gives them barely any content or experience, makes the achievement screen utterly pointless, provides precious little experience or learning environments, guts other systems (particularly ALL professions) and destroys the means in which that new player can learn some actual lore that'll help them understand why things are happening.

As far as I'm concerned, I think this is potentially the biggest damage to new player retention. There's no way that I can prove that, of course, but there seems a huge pile of issues that would stop anyone from retaining their subscription.

So... Do I have any ideas that might fix this?

Unsurprisingly, I do.

1. First of all, the level number has got to drop. Dramatically. My belief is that the maximum level should be 70... And should always be 70. The original game should reach level 60, with the Cataclysm zones being re-scaled as part of it because they are consistent with its timeline. From here, every expansion should take you from 60 to 70 with the maximum players returning to 60 when a new expansion is released. This reinvigorates the original game itself, recreates the means with which to develop your professions, makes class design much more fulfilling, and keeps dungeons advantageous but not ludicrously so.

2. All expansions, once passed, should be made part of the Caverns of Time. In-game mobs therefore give players a chance to go and experience them at level cap, with all mobs scaled to the level cap... But have large powers removed in order to maintain the cosmetic availability to players. Not only does this remove a HUGE stack of bizarre problems, it gets rid of the item scaling issues, gives players choices, rebuilds the entire story, and lets players choose what they want to be involved in. The choice then becomes the full game to the current expansion, rather than the full game, to Outland/Northrend to Cataclysm/Pandaria, to Draenor, to Legion... So on.

3. Drop the numbers in professions. Honestly, it's gotten silly. We're now in a system that effectively guts the early versions, where there is some really nice cosmetic items, and creates a 'current' level of 150 for the most recent expansion. It removes the depth, the fun and the variability. The original level of 300 is just fine, with the current expansion jumping to 375, and the drops happening with the new expansion the same way character levels do. Suddenly, there's a chance to wholly recreate the depth the systems once had, and even let the system build powerful items that can be competitive given a players expertise. It makes sense, and could relaunch professions. I also support a change to one creation profession, and all collection ones.

4. Heirlooms should be renumbered. The fact that they change, as expansions change, is just a nonsense. And because the character level has been cut in half, there doesn't need to be a 50% to 60% increase. Remove the levels of each heirloom (while returning the gold to the players that spent it), they always work to level 60, and increase your experience to a maximum of 10%. It's a simple one.

5. Item enhancement is removed. It's great when those quest rewards proc into something more powerful, isn't it? Well... No. When you're leveling, it's absolutely and completely pointless. Once you hit the cap, it'll be gotten rid of extremely quickly or, even worse, if you get it too early, then all it'll take is a couple of levels to see it gotten rid of. It could have an impact on enchanters, but it would do nothing for anyone else, so there's effectively no argument, at all, to keep doing this. Personally, I dislike it at level cap, but I understand the intent; I've no intent what it's supposed to be doing for people who are leveling.

6. Fix the PvP reputations. It seems unrelated to this thread, because it is, but the reputation demands have become really needless given the number of battlegrounds that now exist. Rather than having a separate reputation for all of them, or the random no reputation found with a few, group them all up and reduce the number of reputations that the game has linked to PvP. So battlegrounds that are similar should be applied with the same reputation.

7. Drop the maximum of the achievement pane. Given that the entire game, other than the current expansion, is being skipped effectively, the number of achievement points make it a fundamentally broken piece of content. Even if a new player nailed every single one from the current expansion, he or she is absolutely miles behind and will never catch up. Cut the number in half, dramatically reduce the ones that have been needlessly expanded, and then turn current expansion achievements into the pointless rewards when the expansion is replaced. That keeps the achievements for those who earned them, but doesn't count them to make the content so broken.

At this point, there are so many other things I'd like to suggest but a great many of them are more of a level-cap, current-expansion argument so I'll leave them out. Of course, it's also noteworthy to remember that this post is too big for the vast majority of people to read, but maybe a designer will. And lastly, because I reckon new players are now less likely to stay than ever before, buying games that encourage you to skip the overwhelming majority of the game just shouldn't be chased.

That's the start of this thread - what do you guys want to continue with?

Gonna be honest, I stopped reading when I saw you complain that LFD is best for leveling and then complain it's worse for leveling at later levels. Pick a lane.

[Pua]

I personally think the talent trees weren't all that amazing because frankly most of the talents were uninspired and boring like 1% crit or 1% reduced mana cost but it gave something every or every other level.

Honestly, I always liked it but playing a Protection warrior had a lot of viable and different options.

To improve what used to have snags, I'd actually rebuild the trees but make them all one-point choices rather than 2/3/5 point choices. I think that'd solve an awful lot of problems that were (in my view) badly overstated.

[Azerate]

Leveling is fine.

All it needs is some nerf to the exp required, especially in the BC/WOTLK part, which is by the way exactly what we're getting. And no, the majority of the original game is not skipped. With the current system you choose what you do, and what you skip. If you want to experience every single zone, the best way to do that is to level multiple alts.

Not sure how many alts you have, but I guess not many. Also, why would you level up a toon pre 8.1, after having learnt what is coming in 8.1 as far as leveling is concerned? You do raise some legitimate points in the OP, but the lack of expertise in the alt-leveling clearly shows. I would recommend leveling a couple more toons after the leveling changes, this should allow you to better understand the process.

[Pua]

I think making all of the zones scale from 10-110 would help to make the game feel a bit more cohesive story-wise. I was already level 60 before I could even finish all of the "undead" zones. I would also love to stay in Azeroth all the way until 110, doing my favorite zones.

Yeah, story wise it's not bad what you're saying.

It doesn't fix the forty dead development levels, though. It's not as if this development team is going to make 120 skills available, haha.

[JoshuaNLG]

You basically described GW2 to an extent, maybe you should just play that instead?