All the progress and 13+years goes down the toilet

[Jazzhands]

I've still never forgotten about the older Stat Squishes. I still to this day despise any kind of squish.

You should try EverQuest 2. Trust me, squishing is eventually a necessary evil.

[Lurker1]

Why will Blizzard just wipe all the character progression and all these years just goes down the toilet. 120 to 50 is just big slap to the face and all these years feel now pointless. Why not just stat squish?

Huh you do know it's just number we will still be doing the dam and heals we do now?

[JoeGood]

1-10 is starting zone, 10-50 anywhere, 50-60 shadowlands. There will be new 1-10 zone (if it's alt, you can pick old starting zone as well). New players will have to level 10-50 in BfA, so whole leveling will be 60-70% fasfer. 120 will become 50 most likely in prepatch, you can calculate rest.

And this is a thread where people whine about this.

Thx. alot.. its not the way that i hoped it would be, but hey.. it will do

[Anoikis]

Cain't wait to see all these new players who are afraid of "higher numbers". I didn't even know "120" is already a higher number.
Has to be a Gen Z thing....

[Jazzhands]

I already stated why I disagree with it. It is the removal of something that I earned. And if they were so worried about leeling taking too long they shouldn't have nerfed it to begin with during 7.3.5 and should have just sped leveling up from 1-120. All you have to to is require the same amount of XP from 1-120 as you would 1-60. Leveling is no longer daunting and you aren't taking anything away from anyone.

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Because it is the best representation of the years I have played the game. Now I am going backwards because Blizzard took the lazy way out of making leveling rewarding.

You will likely get a feat of strength once the levels are squished. Essentially what you want is a visual representation of your effort and time, which is exactly what said feat is. Achievements are by far a better representation of your "accomplishments" in game, because we accomplish a lot more than simply leveling.

[prwraith]

Why will Blizzard just wipe all the character progression and all these years just goes down the toilet. 120 to 50 is just big slap to the face and all these years feel now pointless. Why not just stat squish?

You're conflating issues, this is hardly wiping 13+ years of progress away.

[Nightstalker]

The cluelessness in some of these doomsday posts is just ridiculous.

[glowpipe]

because why even do work for 120 lvl when u can delete 60 lvl so ppl think u 'did' work?

you aren't losing 60 levels. They aren't taking them away, they are compacting them. If you are 120 before, you will be lvl 50 when the squish happens. If you are say 50 before the squish, you will be around lvl 15. So how the fuck are you losing anything and why is this `such a problem for you ? Your character will perform the exact same after the squish, you will only read 50 instead of 120. and 60 instead of 130

[Bosen]

I felt kind of upset when they changed the way mounts could be obtained. I was an Orc Hunter and grinded rep with Silvermoon forever until I could get my Green Hawkstrider. Then they made the account wide mount thing and all that time spent meant nothing.

In the time when it mattered,it was a nice thing to show off,but eventually things move on. You can't hold onto every past victory. It becomes outdated and it's time to move on.

[bullseyed]

who cares? why can't you people let things evolve and change why does how a video game genre was 20 years ago have to be the rule of law for how it is now?

What if people evolve football to include a bat and bases?

Or is turning football into baseball an inherently bad thing because we already have baseball and don't need a second baseball with a different name?

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The cluelessness in some of these doomsday posts is just ridiculous.

It is too bad we don't have a site with a moderated forum that restricts that kind of thing.

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Their way of fixing the talent trees lol

You can't have 30 meaningful talents.

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Because the big number is daunting to newer players and the current leveling process is a disjointed mess.

They're fixing both problems with this. I really can't understand why people would be so against this idea.

The big numbers thing is mostly a red herring. New players are most dissuaded by the many hours of leveling.


- Hey Bob, wanna play WoW with us?

+ Sure!

- Ok, just go do a month of quests by yourself and then you can hop in to some dungeons with us!

+ ... what?

- Well the game doesn't really start until 120 and we're already there and we don't really want to do it again... so you'll just have to catch up to us so we can play.

+ Oh. Well, maybe.



Sure, leveling can go faster, but not if you're a new player and don't know where anything is and no exp boosts. That's why expansions include a character boost, so people can start playing right away. But what's the point of even having leveling if new players boost through it and alt levelers dislike it?

[TheRevenantHero]

for one, level 60 is far less daunting to a new player than level 130. For two, the squish needs to happen because the level bloat is insane in WoW.

[bullseyed]

When I first started playing, max level 80 seemed daunting to me. Especially when my guild mates kept telling me "hurry up and get to 80, game starts at 80!" I hated having to rush through and the pressure, first time around grinding 80 levels wasn't fun, but I did it. 120 today doesn't even take as long as 80 levels in 2008, and with a free boost with expansion purchase, I don't even see the point of having to squish. If I had a boost back in 2008, I'd have used it to play with my friends and not cry that the number seems daunting. New players have the option to bypass leveling altogether and the number still had to be squished?

With the separation of tiers in Shadowlands for "game" and "game + boost + mount", one may reasonably assume expansions won't include boosts going forward, after the new leveling system is put into play.

[Drusin]

Again, its like changing your name.. and then saying your childhood doesn't count anymore.. cause your name changed.

That does sound terrible D: imagine winning a championship and having a trophy with your name on it in the school but that's not your name anymore D: All your accomplishments gone

you are just being difficult for the sake of something that is happening regardless and don't want to lose face.

"lose face" what am I fucking Chinese lol

Also I'd like you to reference this quote

Having said all this though it doesn't fucking matter, it's going to happen.

I don't fucking care, it's going to happen regardless

[sam86]

you aren't losing 60 levels. They aren't taking them away, they are compacting them. If you are 120 before, you will be lvl 50 when the squish happens. If you are say 50 before the squish, you will be around lvl 15. So how the fuck are you losing anything and why is this `such a problem for you ? Your character will perform the exact same after the squish, you will only read 50 instead of 120. and 60 instead of 130

unless they give even more rewards than wrath system every 2 lvls, then yes they are cheating by remove half of their work
if u didn't get it, in older traditional system, u expect an upgrade - even tiny - every 2 lvls, that mean for 120 lvl u expect 60 reward that diverse between minor and major, with confirmed major upgrades at least every 10, that means 60 reward at least 10 of them are major, while some classes had strong spells in odd lvls like 52 as reward for example, in the cramped system, will u get that ? the answer is no, to do that means they will have to make every single lvl give reward, which they won't
hence why remove half of lvl is remove half of work expected, because in rpg u expect reward and upgrade with lvling

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I don't fucking care, it's going to happen regardless

we have a literal proof that it does matter, they reversing (some) pruning, so no actual show that this is f8cked up will make change
and worst case scenario if they will do it anyway never let it be that status again, where u'll lvl to 120 with reward every 10 or 20 lvls, not to mention the far worse part that u get weaker every few lvls due to scaling

[Suggs]

I will admit i prefer the big numbers, used to love the big chaos bolts crits in the millions but when they do things like this in game i really couldnt give a dam.
I get to see big crits when i do old school raids for mounts and transmog stuff at least so let them do whatever if it betters the game,i just want out of bfa....too long wait :F

[exochaft]

Sure, leveling can go faster, but not if you're a new player and don't know where anything is and no exp boosts. That's why expansions include a character boost, so people can start playing right away. But what's the point of even having leveling if new players boost through it and alt levelers dislike it?

It's still pretty fast, even for neophytes... well, assuming they normally play games. My kid started up a new account recently and has plowed through the leveling process pretty well without guidance from me. Time-wise, I'd say leveling up from 1 to 120 in BfA fresh is pretty comparable leveling 1 to 60 on a Classic server for my kid, probably even less time considering how streamlined the leveling process is by comparison and auto-scaling of zones. However, if you're not used to gaming like my kid, I'd easily agree that the leveling process can be arduous.

Putting aside just the level squish on its own, the combination of the level squish and the proposed leveling path changes are a huge boon for new players. For example, when my kid was leveling up, he was soooooo insanely confused about the story. Can't blame him, we have 15 years of content where there's no guiding force in the leveling process for a story-oriented progression. My kid was leveling through expansions out of order, so almost all the questions I got weren't "where do I level next?", but "what is going on with the story????" I think having the leveling path fixed for new players is a good thing, as one will be much less confused by just going through BfA to Shadowlands than going through expansions in random orders and the story jumping everywhere.

I believe the person I quoted above stated that Blizz can't implement 60 talents/perks every two levels (paraphrasing here). Technically they could, but that's not an option they're looking at. They could go D3 paragon system to have a large pool of points every level where everyone ends up the same a la paragon 800. They could go PoE style with a massive talent tree where you're always gaining something. However, such solutions don't line up well with changing the leveling process as a whole, especially if you squish. Now Blizz could go various alternate direction to allow additional paths of progression while leveling beyond what we're used to, but the easiest to implement and balance is to squish to lvl 60 so they don't have to redesign current systems and/or create new systems from the ground up. I'm secretly hoping they add another path of progression that sticks with you regardless of future expansions, but it's not a system they'd likely implement or even discuss at this time.

[razorpax]

Cain't wait to see all these new players who are afraid of "higher numbers". I didn't even know "120" is already a higher number.
Has to be a Gen Z thing....

im all for the squish
not because im "afraid of big numbers"
because it helps leveling feel a bit more meaningful to new players and is less daunting
right now levels are meaningless
you get through expansions sooooo quickly they are absolutely wasted
new system means if you are a new player you get a nice little intro and then continue to the previous expansion so they understand the current plot
if i want to level through pandaria again then i can and i wont skip 90% of the quests.


i think everyone that says people are scared of big numbers are just afraid of smaller numbers and if you place progression on each and every level then that is not something we can do

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It's still pretty fast, even for neophytes... well, assuming they normally play games. My kid started up a new account recently and has plowed through the leveling process pretty well without guidance from me. Time-wise, I'd say leveling up from 1 to 120 in BfA fresh is pretty comparable leveling 1 to 60 on a Classic server for my kid, probably even less time considering how streamlined the leveling process is by comparison and auto-scaling of zones. However, if you're not used to gaming like my kid, I'd easily agree that the leveling process can be arduous.

Putting aside just the level squish on its own, the combination of the level squish and the proposed leveling path changes are a huge boon for new players. For example, when my kid was leveling up, he was soooooo insanely confused about the story. Can't blame him, we have 15 years of content where there's no guiding force in the leveling process for a story-oriented progression. My kid was leveling through expansions out of order, so almost all the questions I got weren't "where do I level next?", but "what is going on with the story????" I think having the leveling path fixed for new players is a good thing, as one will be much less confused by just going through BfA to Shadowlands than going through expansions in random orders and the story jumping everywhere.

I believe the person I quoted above stated that Blizz can't implement 60 talents/perks every two levels (paraphrasing here). Technically they could, but that's not an option they're looking at. They could go D3 paragon system to have a large pool of points every level where everyone ends up the same a la paragon 800. They could go PoE style with a massive talent tree where you're always gaining something. However, such solutions don't line up well with changing the leveling process as a whole, especially if you squish. Now Blizz could go various alternate direction to allow additional paths of progression while leveling beyond what we're used to, but the easiest to implement and balance is to squish to lvl 60 so they don't have to redesign current systems and/or create new systems from the ground up. I'm secretly hoping they add another path of progression that sticks with you regardless of future expansions, but it's not a system they'd likely implement or even discuss at this time.

the bad side to adding something every two levels is that the majority wouldnt feel meaningful
that extra 1% crit talent is just boring compared to something taht changes your playstyle and if you have those kind of talents constantly then you essentially start playing twinkle twinkle little star and end up playing through the fire and flames

alternatively the game has suffered from them doing the "character progression tied to the expansion" because now we go 20 levels without any character progression

just give me more talent rows
heck give me a new row every other expansion and an extra talent per row every first expansion

also my warrior level capped in about 40 hours

[MrLachyG]

Their way of fixing the talent trees lol

and the levelling process. and character progression. using paladin as an example, currently we get 21 abilities (not passives) from level 1 to 80. then you get 7 talents but not all of those are new abilities some are passives. meaning that after you hit level 80 you basically get lvl 90 and 100 talents and that is it. squishing it down means that they can keep the same amount of talent rows (I would assume) and means you get 21 new abilities spread out over 50/60 levels rather than 80. it is the most common sense thing to do in terms of character progression, attracting new players etc

[Timewalker]

It's just a number my dude.

[Charge me Doctor]

And THIS is the REAL problem in a RPG.

Which is being fixed by a level squish

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1. It's the lazy way becausae all they are doing is re-arranging what they already have instead of making the effort of being creative in making the current leveling more rewarding.

When something is broken, like leveling, it requires fixing. Then thing becomes fixed. You can't have the same thing fixed AND broken at the same time. That's why level squish is happening - it's an attempt to fix multiple things - leveling experience, story coherency, better learning curve

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so how u measure progress ?

Content completion. All the content you could do before is still there and still doable, while new content also appears, now you are behind on the progress scale than you used to be. It happens every time something new gets added to the game. New pet got released? Now you 0,01% behind on progress. New raid gor released? That's whooping 6% of progress, better start filling that progress bar, right?