people who prefer retail to classic: do you feel the level phase in retail is ok?

[Salty Maud]

Do you like the level phase in retail?

No, but it could be that i've seen it more than enough times already over the years. But still no.

Do you think it's a good experience?

Leveling is monotonous and you're not getting any real character progression done because, you know, leveling shit it utterly irrelevant in the endgame and you only start getting meaningful stuff at max level. Feels like a waste of time or at the best a glorified tutorial (and frankly the easier max level content does a much better job at that). First time leveling could be interesting enough because you're seeing everything for the first time, but after that there is no novelty left.

If no, would starting the game at endgame be preferable?

Absolutely.

Too fast / too slow?

The current leveling pace isn't too bad. Being able to speedrun the (new) leveling content overnight when a new expansion launches is an attainable goal and in the current game it feels somewhat meaningful to work thru it fast so you're not missing one set of rep and other rewards from dailies.

Should you be able to skip whole expansions worth of content?

Once you've already done them, yeah. Repeating leveling content is not at all entertaining or rewarding so it's a pretty bad piece of content to make players endure each time they want to reroll or play an alt in a videogame, that is supposed to be those exact things.

[bmjclark]

Becouse classic isnt about instat gratification. Classic pull you trought struggle and being powerless in order to increase sense of acomplishment and gaining power as you level. If you would get your main skills at lvl 10 you would not care at all and you would feel luke chat progression doesnt matter becouse you alredy have your most powerfull skills. Why you think retail is such boring drag after getting your core spells at lvl 30? Becouse nothing above thay level have any signitificant impact on your character. You just get some high cds skills what you use here and there.

Plenty of classes have their core skills by 10 though on vanilla. Some just got the shit end of the design stick (warriors being the biggest one i can point to). Rogues have all their core damage abilities by 10 (backstab, eviscerate, slice and dice). Hunters have most of their core skills by 10 etc.

[Garymorilix]

I agree that this would be too much. On the other hand I don't like the fact that you only have to do one zone of an expansion to get to the next, while all the others are skipped. (I got from 60 to 67 in Hellfire Peninsula alone).

My suggestion here would be a different scaling, allowing each expansion to level the player to the starter level of a new expansion (currently 110).

Outland 60 - 110
Northrend 60 - 110
Cata 60 - 110
...

Why would you have to do every single zone in Outland to go from 60 to 80? The whole point of the current system is that you can basically level in whatever zone (roughly) in whatever order. That means you go Hellfire -> Whatever else you want next. 67 is still far from 80.
I did Borean Tundra + Dragonblight fully on my most recent toon, full heirlooms + xp potion + 25% alliance bonus. So I maxed it out basically and still had to do 2 full zones. I coulda went anywhere else than Dragonblight too, it didn't matter. It's up for player choice.
If I had to do every single zone in Northrend to get to 80 i would have given up straight after Borean. That's surreal to even suggest.

If you want to do all Outland zones, just do them. There is no need to change the leveling system just so you feel better about doing the zones. Nothing's stopping you from doing them for the feels/story/whatever even after they don't give exp.

The leveling suggestion is fine, but you would basically kill Outland and Northrend with it. Nobody would choose those to level, ever. They are very outdated in terms of leveling. But if you're fine with that, then it's okay. I'd happily welcome that system.

[Wingspan]

Prefer it by miles but I will admit the classic beta made me pretty nostalgic.

I seem to remember an awful lot of level 40+ Vanilla quests that started running you to the other continent (and then back)... and if I remember right, there was kind of a dead area around level 50 where the quests just started to dry up.

It was entertaining enough at the time, but it makes me shudder just thinking about it.

[crakerjack]

The way stories are told and the layout of quests in retail is drastically better than classic. While playing classic, I don't really care for the quests I'm doing, it's just a grind. What I do enjoy is the satisfaction of getting a new green after using that old grey weapon for the last 5 levels. Or that feeling of getting your first rare. None of these relate to questing, but we make this false correlation because they all occur while we're leveling. What makes classic great is the pacing. Current WoW is all about dopamine releases and keeping you constantly engaged with easily accessible rewards. Classic is more about the suspense, the grind that's hard to bare until BAM, you get that new piece of gear that'll make questing just a tad bit easier.

Some players prefer constant rewards while others like a build up. Doesn't make one better than the other, just a "To each their own".

[PaladinBash]

Leveling? It's fun and dynamic the first time. I'd argue that since BC, leveling has gone downhill dramatically in terms of actual replayability but I'm gonna guess that's because I have done every fucking zone a gorillion times and by the time I get to the new ones on alts, it's already a long slog I just want over. You know why I didn't mind leveling in vanilla? Because I leveled one fucking character to max level. You know why I liked BC even more? Because I leveled 2 characters to level and shit was smoother then, plus the zones were bigger and awesome. Wrath onwards it was a grind and nothing else.

If you're talking about leveling in the new zones as zones, they're fun and awesome the first time. Storywise they have been great for Pandaland onwards. I actually really liked the zones in Warlords and whatever failures that game had (and it had many), the zones weren't it. Leveling as an overall process (as in new characters to max level), it's gone downhill progressively because you've done it so many times and it's very rarely a different experience. The big revamp they did to leveling was good and necessary but even that got old after a couple more characters.

Is Classic better? I mean so far yeah because I haven't done this shit in 14 fucking years and it's nostalgic and 'new' again. I'll probably even level another couple of characters. As a gameplay experience? I don't even fucking know dude. I'm enjoying it. I'm having fun. I don't really question it unless I hate it and I don't hate it.

[Master Factician]

I leveled my Shaman from 1-120 almost entirely in battlegrounds. It was pretty dang enjoyable, much more so than questing in any version of the game.

[Renixis]

The way quests and stories unfold has improved massively over time. That being said, I believe there are several issues which badly need addressed in the leveling process.

There needs to be more consistent rewards and unlocks as you level. There are simply too many levels to have rewards for and it only gets worse as you get higher in level and then go longer and longer without gaining anything meaningful. That doesn't mean I want to go back to the old talent trees, +1% parry is not engaging either, but there is a better middle ground than what we have now.

The order you unlock things during the current leveling process makes no sense for many specs and actively hurts learning them. You should not have to reach level 60+ to unlock your one AoE ability or level 70 for your interrupt.

I'm hoping the planned level squish will address both of these issues and improve the leveling experience for it. I would have no problem with levels taking twice the xp they do now if it meant that when you ding, you get something interesting or exciting.

[Echeyakee]

It's pretty decent in 1-60 range, acceptable at 60-80 and then falls apart somewhat. The 80 to 90 is a fucking slog, mainly because nobody queues for cata dungeons, and you get much less XP from dungeon quests. It picks back up in wod, once you're done with the fucking garrison building, as you can powerlevel with treasures and bonus objectives, although I still miss the good old days of 92-102 in 15 minutes. After about 30-50 minutes of prep.

My main gripe is the shitty XP scaling between expansions. Like how you go from 80-100k xp from a bonus objective in wod to 40k, and double (if not triple) the work in legion. Same happens with invasion in bfa vs legion. It just feels shitty and cheap, like you've been coned. Also the iLevel squishes are showing their ugly consequences, where a dungeon drop item from the next expansion and like 8 levels (not item levels) above is considerably worse than what you have because nobody tried to unify the stat budgets between expansions. And legion artifacts now feel awkward and out of place, and I bet the same thing will happen with the neck, once the next expansion rolls around.

Oh, and in terms of questing, it fucking sucks. And it gets worse the higher level you are. Legion and bfa are the worst offenders, with their bullshit approach of "do all the zones the first time around", but around cata activision gave up on having leveling options, so even the second time around you're already stuck replaying something you've done before.

[Uselessrouge]

nope boring and meaningless , more like CoD character creation than a mmo

[Ryzek]

Leveling could be a lot better, I think Classic wins at that hands down. I will continue to play retail because I still enjoy it and like being a raid lead for a small group of friends.