The leveling experience BADLY needs fixed.

[hyphnos]

1-119 Class design needs a major overhaul and without that pretty much everything is mute.

1-120 you mean.

[scart35]

Max lvl content/experience first and then they can mess around leveling.

[darklogrus]

1-120 you mean.

I don't really level at 120 though but I guess we should probably future proof the concept so 120+ :P

[The Stormbringer]

You're not supposed to experience the entire world in one go of leveling. If you did, you'd probably go nuts because it would take absolutely forever to hit maximum level.

[Deleted]

Here's a datapoint for you... never played a warrior before... 1-110 in 7hrs 46min played... Yes I had looms... and I did have a small (<5) stock of EXP potions... I did it all from killing and questing.. no dungeons, no BGs... when I got to 100 I did make use of the invasions in Legion.

(I did keep notes during legion on how fast it took to get to 110 with each of my characters.)

So, you levelled up a year ago, before the changes were made to XP in 7.3.5 and leveling became significantly faster, and used a bunch of items which don't exist any more.

You didn't read the thread, you started flaming the original poster, then you started flaming one of the best leveling experts in the world who keeps a permanent detailed guide that is constantly updated for no reason other than to help people, because you didn't seem to understand things change in different patches.

Your experience is irrelevant and outdated, in any case there is no excuse for being so rude and obnoxious.

This is why I don't read this forum much any more.

You really should apologize.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

There's a lot that goes into leveling revamp, and a LOT of it flows from one key question Blizzard has not answered for us yet. "What is the problem?" Is the problem that 120 is a huge level, and we basically run out of new things to learn (both as a character and a player) around level 80? Is the problem that leveling is too slow for today's endgame blitz alt culture? Is the problem that leveling is just boring as piss?

Each of those problems has a different solution, and follow-up questions that need to be asked. If it's a level squish we need, does that mean just cut the cap from 120 to 60 and have next expansion bring us to 70, or does that mean that Blizzard squish the "expansion spheres" so maybe you jump from a Re-Revamped 1-60 right into Legion then BFA?

And then we get into issues entirely unrelated to the leveling experience such as.......

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.

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.

As much as I'd love to see leveling be fixed, it increasingly seems to me like it's just flatly broken beyond repair because the repair would be in large part just "WoW 2."

[Seranthor]

So, you levelled up a year ago, before the changes were made to XP in 7.3.5 and leveling became significantly faster, and used a bunch of items which don't exist any more.

You didn't read the thread, you started flaming the original poster, then you started flaming one of the best leveling experts in the world who keeps a permanent detailed guide that is constantly updated for no reason other than to help people, because you didn't seem to understand things change in different patches.

Your experience is irrelevant and outdated, in any case there is no excuse for being so rude and obnoxious.

This is why I don't read this forum much any more.

You really should apologize.

Try again... I flamed no one... The fact you are a whelp with 1 post means you dont have the honesty to show yourself which means anything you say can be discarded as a fraud... shoo.

[Thagrynor]

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.

1) This is a horrible idea. Imagine you are walking up a flight of 10 steps. You get to the top, stand there for a spot of time, then step forward and fall to the ground. But, lo and behold, in front of you is ..... another flight of 10 steps. So you walk up those steps. You stand at the top for a spot of time and step forward and .... THUD! To the ground you go. But wait! What's that?! 10 more steps! Clearly, this will let me get higher! And then THUD! .... You hit the ground again. That kind of sisyphean nonsense is what would make all the long standing players flee the game and would cause new players to simply not understand why the hell they would engage in such tedious bullshit.

2) The Caverns of Time were to go back to a time before we were actually in game. They are not meant as a balancing device. They are meant for things like a dungeon or a raid. Not entire zones of questing content. The whole "time travel" aspect of WoD (in terms of lore, because the expansion had MANY flaws) was one of the things players hated as it made no sense. While, at first, it was cool to go to a place you could play with and against the huge names of lore, the idea was so out of left field compared to the game as a whole that the lore was entirely disjointed. And this idea presupposes that players WANT to revisit all that old content as "current" content. Most of that old content was designed using old design ideas. Players don't want to go back to strictly linear storytelling like many of the old zones had. And some were just terrible to deal with. Highmountain was horrible to level in because of the terrain and having no flying when it was "current". You would need to remove those things as well. And no one would want to deal with that.

3) Professions were rendered pointless with Heirlooms. You didn't need to craft gear for lower levels. And the problem you have with "item enhancement" (ie Warforging) in #5, namely that the gear is replaced so quickly, is even more so an issue here. The lower levels fly by quickly (not quickly enough, imo, but meh). Your crafted gear will be obsolete before you can really get much use out of it. The problem isn't fixed by "lowering numbers". The problem is that the gear is inherently worthless relative to dungeon drops, heirlooms, and the crap from the bags from random dungeons. And constantly "squishing" professions back into lower numbers again gives a profession-level feeling similar to what I describe in #1. It becomes a shitty treadmill that you get zero real purpose in. Since professions and crafted gear is rarely used beyond the opening bit of an expansion (the part while waiting for Mythic dungeons and raids to open) these days, you end up with a situation where, if you want the crafted gear, you just wait until next expansion and don't worry about bothering with leveling those 75 points for the expansion. The only professions that would get leveled were Alchemy, Enchanting and gathering professions. And the bigger issue is that it makes no sense within the game. "Hey, with a 300 skill, I can make you this ilvl 58 chest or this ilvl 340 chest. Which would you prefer?" Professions need a better design implementation that focuses on the viability and usefulness of the crafted items. The numbers (and especially now since they broke even expansion into its own profession progress bar) are virtually meaningless in the grand scheme of things. Additionally, while I would love to be entirely self sufficient, having all the gathering professions and 1 crafting profession would negate having professions at all and would remove choice. Right now, I can have an Enchanter/Alchemist as my main, using alts to supply materials, getting the benefits of both for the toon that matters most. With your system, I have to choose. And since you are locked to specifically 1 crafting profession, virtually everyone would end up as an Enchanter for their main with the other crafting professions on alts.

4) Heirlooms are honestly fine. To be honest, I wish they would go back to the way they were with making you a bit OP. Make it so you need a max level toon to buy the heirlooms. Since they give away a boost with each expansion, this negates the argument that new players would be screwed. They have to level a toon to max and then can buy heirlooms for quicker leveling of alts. Or they can slowly level a new, lower level toon if they want. Heirlooms were always meant to help those who had leveled through the content a bunch of times make it faster. Use the item scaling to make it so that, in PvP, your gear has the stats of what the heirlooms currently show. But when questing, they are a bit OP like they used to be.

5) Honestly, like you say, you will replace most of your gear fairly quickly regardless, so who cares? A warforged item gives you a little bit of a boost for a level or three and then you replace it. That is ALL gear throughout the leveling process. Whether it warforges or not doesn't change that. In fact, not warforging means it is likely to get replaced faster. At least let people feel a little thrill when they see that shitty downgrade green belt suddenly turn into a purple that is actually an upgrade. As so many people often say, an upgrade is an upgrade, even if only for a short while.

6) I agree with this to a point, but at the same time, in terms of its relevance to leveling, there isn't one. Reputation grinds can be done at any level without changing anything. They are still a grind. And the PvP reps especially feel exactly the same whether you do them at max level or at lower levels. You still get, say, 200 rep per BG. The BG scales with your level, in terms of the opponents you face. This really has nothing to do with leveling. But more ways to earn some of those PvP reps wouldn't be entirely unwelcome.

7) You are talking about achievement points. It is a point system that is literally worthless. There is NOTHING you can do with those points. They could literally make every one of those worth 0 points and it wouldn't make a difference. Because either you did a thing or you didn't. And the number of things you did wouldn't change. You are talking about things like "Well, this guy has 20k Achievement Points and I only have 3k! Oh noes!". You know what? If they dropped EVERY achievement to 1 point, so that the achievement points only counted the number of achievements you've completed, you would have exactly the same situation, except that you would have one guy having completed 2000 achievements and the other completing 300 achievements. How does that matter? Additionally, what "need" is there to "catch up"? Achievements points exist for no reason other than stroking your own epeen. They have zero other function, except for triggering another achievement for having over 9000 achievement points. It is literally an achievement for doing achievements. Honestly, this is the most pointless thing to even consider within the game as it pertains to leveling. Leveling is the point of leveling. Getting to max level is the point of leveling. Achievements for a bunch of fluff to give you something to do at max level when you did everything else, or as a means to a reward, like a title or a pet or mount. Tell me, honestly, what there is to "catch up" to, aside from some meaningless number that represents the amount of things you did in a game. And those things are only rewarded once. So eventually, you WILL catch up because I cannot keep doing the same achievements for points and keep outstripping you. I will literally hit a wall where there is nothing left to do while you still progress.

Leveling does need some fixes, but nothing you suggested would actually help. In fact, some of them would quite literally kill the game. Constantly knocking people back and regressing their toons would cause people to quit. There is currently still progression to be made and people are quitting. You remove any and all actual progression made and you might as well just shut WoW down.

You have problems with things while leveling that are still going to persist, except might actually be made worse with your ideas. Reducing numbers on a lot of things reduces the gap between the big steps. That means you get through them faster and ignore them more. These suggestions are akin to saying, instead of having 10 steps between floors, we are going to move the landing so you only have 2 steps. But, you will still get to the top of the building after you go through all, say, 10 landings. That just means you get there faster and ignore the climb. It does nothing to add depth or anything else.

TLR - Leveling needs fixes, but these ain't them.

[Powerogue]

"it makes basic profession development practically impossible."

Yes, but the separation of professions by expansion at least helps mitigate that. It's better than it ever has been since the problem started in WotLK with death knights, so I'm not complaining. What would you prefer instead?

"Because of the travelling that general questing requires,"

Scaling plus the flight path book, it's really not bad anymore at all.

"drop the level cap to 70"

And what, try to cram all the previous expansions into 60 levels? Ludicrous. How would that even work? Your next point seems to imply they'd be able to just pick one and scale to it, but why on earth would you? I don't feel like you've thought this through.

"nerf the crap out of heirlooms but also presumably the overall time it takes to level to 60 compared to current 110"

I guess I agree we wouldn't need heirlooms if it was nerfed that heavily but I again have to wonder what the point is of having all these expansions worth of content that aren't even touched on for the leveling process anymore. Would you just pick any ol' one you wanted to level in and that'd be your 1-60 experience? Not that much different from what we do now really, just expanded on from the current "pick one of these two expansions."

"remove item level random upgrades while leveling"

I mean I get that it doesn't accomplish much as the item gets replaced rapidly anyway, but it also doesn't feel like it hurts anything by that same logic.

[Soon-TM]

Levelling is FUBAR. The way I see it, it's a threefold problem:

1) Difficulty: nothing is threatening in the least, whether it's open world or dungeons (except some rare pearl like Armsmaster Harlan in Scarlet Halls). It's very difficult to have fun when you practically can't die, unless you go afk or something.

2) Story: it's one of the main elements in almost every game, moreso in an RPG (because WoW is an RPG, right? Riiiiiight...?). But the timeline(s), and everything actually is so !@#$ed up that a new player will often have no freaking idea about what it's going on.

3) Progression: due to the many item squishes, you don't really feel any more powerful when you get a new piece of gear, unless there is a ~20 levels delta. You stop getting new spells/skills at level 80, and gain only TWO talent points all the way until the level cap. You know the system is stupid when your toon feels more powerful at level 20 than at level 90, and more powerful at 90 than a fresh 120.

[Deleted]

Levelling is FUBAR. The way I see it, it's a threefold problem:

1) Difficulty: nothing is threatening in the least, whether it's open world or dungeons (except some rare pearl like Armsmaster Harlan in Scarlet Halls). It's very difficult to have fun when you practically can't die, unless you go afk or something.

Actually this isn't true, at least for new players without looms, because Blizzard messed up the stat squish so badly many mobs in game are genuinely dangerous. But you are right in general, by design, the game is tame as f***.

[Pua]

TLR - Leveling needs fixes, but these ain't them.

Then feel free to suggest some that you think ARE good!

[Nargrom]

I'll answer some of ur points.

The fact that there a scaling content lvl actually makes the content MORE ACCESSIBLE, since the scaling happened i can actually enjoy the vanilla story and get my loremaster achievements without the fear that after 2-3lvls i will outlevel the zone.

The dg Q is completly optional and it has to do with ur priorities as a player. Do you want to lvl as fast as possible? Do you want to do loremaster achievements? Do AFK a lot during ur lvling process etc. The character i lvled up was a lightforged priest. I wanted to do loremaster of easten kingdoms so i did ZERO dungeons in vanilla and managed to get my achievement. Then when i entered TBC/Wrath i wanted to Q for dgs while completing couple of zones i was missing for these areas so i Q as dps. Cata/MoP only dg Q as a healer. Then WOD... NO ONE I REPEAT NO ONE Q for a dg in WOD because it is 100 times faster to reach lvl100 by farming treasures with handynotes since they give tones of exp and few pieces of gear making questing and dgs useless. Then Legion is also extremely fast to lvl with questing so not many Q for dgs because u dont have to, except when u finish the zone and u have to retrieve the pillar of creation. Finally BfA is current so u do whatever. i prefer to quest because i like the storyline.

This sums up how u lvl these days, there are particular points mainly 60 to 80 where the lvling takes times hence why they nerf it but other than that i actually enjoy the lvling experience and it has given me ways to lvl up while completing achievements without wasting time or unequiping gear cause i do a lot of dmg on my main and you can view the story of old expas without feeling rushed.

PS and Disclaimer: Note the u cant get the entire loremaster thing with a single char tho, for example i did eastern kingdoms and outland with one and kalimdor and northrend with another, the later zones is when i started playing the game so i did them when they where current.

[Kokolums]

Leveling is currently designed by people who hate leveling. All the innovations to leveling are about skips or making it faster. People try to improve it by adding even more skips and making it faster still. This isn't innovation, this is just killing leveling as a game design.

[Thagrynor]

Then feel free to suggest some that you think ARE good!

Alright. These are based on what I experienced on my mage that I got through to 110 just this past week, so some of this is still a bit fresh in my mind, actually.

1) Scaling is an issue. There are HUGE problems with scaling currently, especially as it relates to movement between expansions. Moving from fighting a lvl 100 mob in Draenor Nagrand to fighting a lvl 100 mob in Azsuna is obscene with how things change. A non-elite in Nagrand has twice the health and does twice the damage as a non-elite in Azsuna. This was with literally no gear changes, based off the mobs in the Bonus Objective areas. The fact that the same level, same quality (non-elite) basic humanoid mobs have such wildly different sets of stats makes the leveling process stupid. When it is better to abandon the zone you are in 2 levels before reaching the scaling limit because you know that the next area is half as challenging defeats the purpose that scaling was meant to fix.

2) Revert changes to health adjustments. Scaling was meant to fix the main issue people had, which was leaving a zone 25-50% into it because you had outleveled the zone. The problem here was the amount of things you needed to kill and the XP gained relative to the amount you'd get as a whole for finishing the entire zone. Scaling alone does that. However, in fixing that issue, they also listened to the vocal minority that wanted leveling to take 3-4 times as long as it used. Most people hate leveling, as it is a means to an end. Doubling to tripling the health of mobs so it takes 10 seconds to kill a single mob is not improving the leveling experience, it is making it so much worse. They couple those changes with nerfing the stats on Heirlooms (which were somewhat OP for a reason). The Heirlooms were meant to make things go faster, and the XP bonus does assist, but when you offset the speed at which you level (in terms of raw TTK) the same or more than the bonus gives, it literally only means that you are making heirlooms virtually mandatory unless you want to take forever and a day to level a new toon. The speed at which things died was fine. This should go back.

3) Dungeons need fixing in terms of XP gains. As stated by others, there are certain brackets/expansions where the dungeons are simply not worth the time it takes to run them. The mobs give so little XP and while being so long that the LFG bonus XP reward for random queueing isn't worth the time. And given the length of queue times, this just means that, as DPS, this is even more of a worthless thing. In WOD, none of the dungeons are worth running, and with the questing being relatively awful after the first couple times of running through it, it just drives home further that the only decent want to level is grinding Treasures and Bonus Objectives. Dungeons had so much time invested that it makes it silly to let them all basically rot.

4) Professions need reworking with the scaling changes. Right now, you can go to Northrend at level 60, bypassing all of Outlands. Currently, when you do that, your crafting professions still have you crafting gear that is for the formerly appropriate levels of that expansion, namely Northrend still has you crafting 70-80 gear. Some sort of scaling tech should exist to either allow you to craft gear that would require 10 levels less (or 10 levels more, in the case of Outlands at 70) with the appropriate stats, depending on which level bracket you are in. Either that, or make the Outland and Northrend (and similarly, the Cata and MoP) recipes take either cloth type to craft, or add a recipe that converts the cloth 1:1 between the types, with some vendor bought mat as a reagent to convert. Additionally, let the trainers in each area train for both levels of crafting. This would fix the issue of "I want to level in Northrend, but need gear, so to craft it I either need to go to Outlands at 60 just to get recipes and training and mats or I need to just buy mats/the gear from the AH and ignore my professions." This hurts professions more than having them sequestered to their own leveling tracks.

5) Make heirlooms only purchasable after you get a character to max level. The argument that new players leveling for the first time speed through leveling with heirlooms would be offset if you had to level a toon to max level to even be able to buy heirlooms. A new player could level their boosted toon to buy them if they wanted, but it would give them the opportunity to level without them without feeling like they are doing something wrong, since they wouldn't have the opportunity to level with them unless they reached the current max level.

6) Steamline questing within older zones to more closely match the flow in later expansions. In the older zones, even after the revamp, the zone story chains are still very linear and very long. They still require a lot to get through just to "finish" a zone, and often, you cannot tell easily what are required quests versus what are side quests. Make the story quests clearer (have a different quest ! color, maybe Purple or something) and make sure that the story chain isn't showing requirements of what should rightfully be side quests that you could avoid. This would assist in finishing the main story without leveling so fast that you only end up in like 4 or 5 zones before leaving Vanilla, and similarly, you could see more than 1-2 zones before leaving later expansions.

My leveling from 20-60 comprised less than 6 full zones (which really was more like 5 if you consider that in Vanilla, Stranglethorn was only 1 zone). My journey started in Duskwood, went to Stranglethorn, then up to the Plaguelands (WPL then onto EPL) and then to Swamp of Sorrows where I hit 60. While leveling through Northrend, with only doing about 3 or 4 dungeons, I got from 60-69.7 (was about 30% from 70) in Howling Fjords alone. I went to Dragonblight, finished all of that and ended up with only like 1.5 levels to go before I was 80. I spent 1.5 levels in Grizzly Hills and then departed for Pandaria. With Pandaria, I hit 90 about 20% into Valley of the Four Winds. This is because I didn't know what I "had" to do to move the story forward so that I could unlock proper questing in the zone versus what was a side quest. I enjoy doing it all, but at least with this change, you can more streamline your way through and see more zones and more story. Given that I did 6 zones out 36 Vanilla content zones (there are 43 total zones, but I was leveling Alliance, so I wasn't counting things like Mulgore, Tirisfal Glades, Silverpine, etc, not did I count Deadwind Pass which is a zone but has no real questing for 60 or below), that means I effectively did less than 16% of the content, since I didn't even finish the 6th zone. That gives a very shallow picture of what is happening in the world. If I can get the whole story by knowing what the story chain is without burning my time doing side quests, I can see more stories in the world.

These are just a few of the problems/ideas to maybe fix them that popped in my head this morning. I would likely come up with more, but I am at work, so I don't have much more time. But the point is, the problems with leveling are many, but many have to do with slowing leveling down unnecessarily. I do agree that we need another Talent or something to give the 80-120 bracket something more than just 2 talents, where in some cases could both be passives. But, even there, you at least have all of what you need to get through the content. Is it rewarding? Not really. But leveling itself shouldn't need to be rewarding as it is simply the chores you go through to get to the real content.

And yes, some people enjoy leveling, but the answer isn't to make leveling horrible for everyone (especially just before an expansion where you add in a feature like Allied Races and Heritage Armor that basically taunt you into leveling new characters). The answer is provide options for those that want it super slow. Basically what those people are saying is, "I want this slow, but have no willpower to slow myself down, so Blizzard should force everyone to go as slow as I want so I cannot go faster."

[trapmaster]

I finally stopped leveling around 25th alts to 120. It was pure brutal and not fun but i finished my goals where i want it to be.

[Lodreh]

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.

Scaling is what makes those levels feel empty. When a level 14 can kill an elite in 3 globals and a level 56 takes closer to 40-60 secs... something feels very wrong. No amount of additional abilities will fix that. However, a passive increase in power to be one shoting those mobs would. In short scaling needs to go the other way. Your level should be a metric to determine how much damage you do to a mob. Gear is a bonus above that... without that progression levels are meaningless.

[Thagrynor]

Leveling is currently designed by people who hate leveling. All the innovations to leveling are about skips or making it faster. People try to improve it by adding even more skips and making it faster still. This isn't innovation, this is just killing leveling as a game design.

Leveling isn't a "game design" in terms of it being "the game" itself. Leveling is a means to an end, to get you to where you will spend about 80% of your characters lifetime. Leveling can be enjoyable if done right, but it is never a long term game element. It is like saying they should really make more engaging low level gear. Why? Once you level, which is inevitable unless you turn off XP, in which case, you likely don't care about "leveling" as a sense of progression, all that content is effectively meaningless.

And current leveling design is designed to keep players in the leveling brackets as long as possible. It takes so much longer to level now than it did pre-7.3.5 with that leveling revamp. It wasn't designed by people who "hate leveling", it was either by people who "LOVELOVELOVELOVELOVE leveling" (ie they delete characters when they hit max level and start over) or by people pandering to those people or by people who really just want you stuck in game as long as possible, the type of shitbag that works at EA being a prime example of what I mean.

A lot of the leveling changes need to be reverted with alternate systems put in place to placate those who love leveling without punishing those who hate leveling. After leveling 25+ toons to max level in Legion (and only a couple of those being boosts), I am quite done with leveling through boring old content.

For folks like me (of which is very much a more common attitude), WoD is, sadly, the best leveling experience 1-110 right now because you can burn through it quickly by flying around, picking up treasures and doing some bonus objectives and get through it all really quick, avoiding all the bullshit that leveling normally brings. And when WoD is the best at anything other than being the shittiest expansion, you know you messed something up.

[Lodreh]

To use Legion as an example: It makes no sense that we fight mobs in widely varying difficulty all labeled to be the same level. It would have made far more sense to have the levels mean something. The 4 leveling zones should have scaled from 100-109. Suramar should have been static 110. Broken Shore should have been static 111. Argus should have been static 112. Even with max level 110's Argus would have felt dangerous because the mobs would have been more dangerous and gear would not have made it trivial. However, once you leveled to 120 your innate power should be high enough to basically one shot anything on Argus even in quest greens.

Just a thought,
Kalium

[Eluvium]

Slinging quests together on a roll is more exp than LFD