Is the leveling experience going to be as terrible as BfA?

[Porimlys]

BFA is far and away my favorite expansion to level in haha

edit: oh i actually read the OP lol, this is more about losing the borrowed power. I guess that feels bad but even before borrowed power systems, leveling in a new expansion usually was always that way ie: each level is harder and harder the closer you get to cap. Whether you're losing your azerite traits or just losing whatever tier bonus you got at the end of the previous expansion. They could "solve" this by having really powerful questing gear but, well, yeah.

[Doffen]

I doubt it'll be as bad, since the HoA didn't affect you as much as your artifact did and there won't be any legendaries to loose

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Only for your first character, once you level an alt it'll be much more sandboxy.

Yeah, if you ignore corruption, essences and the cloak which does majority of your throughput lol....

Not to mention the weapon was already gone from BfA launch with the traits and it was only the ilvl left. You only noticed it got harder at 117-118 because scaling was off. From 110 to 113 it wasn't much difference, but then the weird stat scaling started to show its weakness. At 116 you might have seen a drop because of leggos, legion trinkets etc that lost the effect, but that you did from WoD to Legion as well.

It seems with Shadowlands we get a few buffs to our abilities while leveling up from 50 to 60. It might offset some of the power we lose.

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BFA leveling wasn't that terrible.

This.

/Ding

[Nak88]

Not at all.

BfA leveling was indeed the worst experience I've ever had in 15 years of playing this game. However, with the revamped leveling system, it will take way less time to reach cap level and you will choose which expansion to level with, no more linear bullshit needed, forcing you to go through most expansions, even though you really disliked them.

[Kehego]

Difficulty didn't make BfA leveling terrible. Poor story design and tedium did.

so the same as its always been, gotcha

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yeah,its really jarring feeling yourself geting weaker and weaker with every level,losing stats,losing legenderies,the artefact etc,the experience itself was fine but this is an inevitable part of wow,you cant just get to 100% crit etc and stay there with no feeling of progression in an expansions life

you got weaker as you leveled in every expansion, assuming you actually did content at level cap. Literally every one.

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Leveling in BfA was boring because you didn't feel the obligated power up usually tied with leveling up. The reasons were:

1 - You didn't gain new abilities at all. 10 levels of no changes in rotation.
2 - Enemies level up too, so you don't feel stronger.
3 - Since enemies level up, their stats are adjusted to a player wearing gear of the same level. But since you are wearing lower level gear, you actually are weaker.
4 - And if you had your Legion legendaries... level 116 was the worst twisting point where you feel weaker than ever.

Also, only 3 dungeons until level 115 and a fourth one until level 120... booooooooooooring.

They should have made it so leveling is just one level and it would have been better.


When your legendaries stop working you DO feel it. For example, when my Mannoroth Bloodletting Manacles stopped working on my warrior... let's say leveling became waaaaay worse.

that's because you were bad
If you need more than victory rush + speccing either furious charge/second wind to live as a warrior, yikes

[cparle87]

no,this started feeling really impactful from mop to wod,and it got exponentioaly worse by the xpac,in wrath to cata you actualy felt stronger because of the bonuses to specs added and the fact that skills scaled with levels for the first time

In Wrath you could get 70-96% crit all the time purely from your stats, no procs needed. What bonuses were added to specs in Cata? Were you talking about the specialization thing giving you your level 50 skill and most of the baked in passives at 10? We've had those ever since, they weren't taken away. The scaling I kinda gotta give you. Your spells felt really weak the last level before you trained a new rank.

[BeepBoo]

I know from another post of yours that you spent $200 on corruption, so I'm guessing you're fairly geared. The more geared you are at the end of one expansion, the more you will feel a loss of power leveling through the next expansion

That's not really true at all. I was full t2 in vanilla and when BC came out by the first dungeon I was already way more powerful as far as numbers went. In addition, my gameplay experience didn't take a massive fucking hit (the haste issue).

But it is not reasonable to expect you would continue to get more powerful anyway. There has to be some kind of reset with each expansion or you would have like 800% haste now. Maybe there is a more graceful way they could accomplish it, but I don't know what that would be.

Two issues cause this:
1) the amount we gain in a secondary between the beginning and the end is dumb.
2) secondaries have way too much influence on the feeling of a class.

They need to deaden the curve of gear gain during the xpac. 15 ilvls is bonkers. 300% increase in power start to finish is ridiculous. People would chase those 5% increases, regardless of if it's that big of a gain or not. Players have routinely proven they will go to the nth degree for any little bonus.

[Accendor]

BFA levelling experience is fine, you might not like the zone design or lore or whatever but issues about player power are completely irrelevant.

See, we have completely different opinions here. First of all, the story in the leveling zones was basically the only good thing about BfA in general (together with most of the zone design). That aside, they, of course I had a problem with getting weaking every level. It is not about "was your damage an issue", it is about negative power progression and that just makes 0 sense.
And again, its kinda "ok" and to be expected when it is only damage NUMBERS, but when it is changing rotations (see my example for BM hunters above, even if we just remove corruption, you suddenly introduce a lot more empty GCDs there because of the corruption bow)

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leveling has never been hard and it is literally going to be faster than it has ever been in Shadowlands.

Nobody is talking about leveling being hard in this thread.

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welcome to every expansion ever, the leveling does not get harder, its your gear from the past expansion being weaker and weaker.

Which is literally the same in the end and makes even less sense.

[Aphrel]

Alpha is making good progress,some specs still need work like shadow priest because it feels really terrible,most specs start to feel good in their base form without the borrowed power.

but yea some specs do need some work so one can only hope

Fire mage would like a word.

[MrLachyG]

After seeing after yesterdays raid again how approximately 50% of my characters damage comes from Essences and Corruption and half his Rotation only works because of double Azerite Traits I fear that the leveling process in Shadowlands will be even more painful than in BfA. It was already terrible in BfA to get weaker every level without getting anything in return and it currently really looks like Shadowlands is repeating the same pattern.
How are your experiences in the alpha there?

yeah I feel ya. especially once you hit level 116 and you lose the legendary ability. Hopefully Shadowlands will be better and from what I've seen of the alpha via streamers it certainly seems better

[Lei]

Are you really asking for people's experiences and then saying they are wrong because Ion said so?

Vengeance Demon Hunter felt pretty much the same to be honest. Guardian Druid wasn't the best, but it still isn't because apparently being the worst at everything is acceptable.

Should't even reply to a 8 post fresh acc, but here it goes. Getting weaker and raising this issue to the devs was a thing.
And then if you personally don't play classes that are weaker, or you pick the "good" zone where it's not that noticable, then your own leveling experience can be vastly different from others.
Not to mention that the scaling doesn't even stop at when you reach max level, and that was an issue too. The scaling was really off at the start of bfa.

BfA leveling was defiently the worst for me. Following with Legion.
Why wasn't this weakening this apprent in WoD or MoP? Or even in Cata?
I mean as a hunter I destroy everything in every expac, gear pretty much doesn't matter. on other chars its pretty apparent. Try leveling one of each class, doing the same route, in the first month or so.
Oh yeah, for sure you can "cheat" later with invasions incursions, you just tickle a mob for the objective and bam one level up. That's not what's this thread is about.

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yeah I feel ya. especially once you hit level 116 and you lose the legendary ability. Hopefully Shadowlands will be better and from what I've seen of the alpha via streamers it certainly seems better

Leveling is being itareted on on the alpha-beta cylce. Don't take it as granted as it is now.

[Raetary]

It's actually gonna be worse in the long run since they are returning to linear leveling instead of pick a zone.

They are not.

Your first playthrough on your first character will be a linear experience.
Once you are lvl 60, it reverts back to pick a zone for your alts which includes picking a covenant from the get go and being able to progress end game related things while lvling.

[Trumpcat]

We had several months with intense negative feedback about the character regression in BfA, losing powers and abilities and getting nothing in return. Ion and others had to address it more than a few times, even adjusted the power scaling...

Now a bunch of folks here would explain to you how there was no such a thing. Mind boggling. No wonder Blizzard try to listen and keep getting things wrong.

As of now Shadowlands seems slightly better than BfA, but far worse than Legion. In Legion you were levelling the artifacts in parallel and they were granting new abilities and buffed older ones. If SL starts getting you new stuff at Max level from Covenants then yes, levelling will still be a regression.

Bringing back clutter abilities with 15 years old design concepts won't replace getting new stuff during levelling.

[Saltysquidoon]

Yeah, everyone saying "dude LMAO you always got weaker leveling, bfa levelling was perfectly fine," is either misremembering the bfa feels bad moments or being disingenuous. The fact is was addressed by the dev team and changers were made attest to this.

[Bigbazz]

It is not about "was your damage an issue", it is about negative power progression and that just makes 0 sense

But that happens every expansion, you progressively get worse with each level and then you gear up in the new expansion and begin the journey again.

Shadowlands will be fine, they will disable corruptions or whatever but the Shadowlands content isn't going to be balanced around you being a raid geared god, like every expansion it will be balanced around you being a green geared noob. And the gameplay aspects of azerite/corruption/essence, they are relevant only to BFA and Shadowlands will have its own flavour just like Legion did.

Going from Legion to BFA the artifacts were already disabled in the pre-patch and BFA combat/gameplay was designed around that, maybe some specs gameplay suffered more than others but anyone who levelled in BFA with Nighthold or better gear + 2legendaries were gods up to 116 and still more than strong to 120. BFA had a lot of problems with the Azerite gear early on, but that was only a problem because of Blizzard design choices with tying Azerite traits behind unobtainable AP levels, no reason that kinda problem exists in SL.

[Accendor]

Leveling is being itareted on on the alpha-beta cylce. Don't take it as granted as it is now.

Yeah because they also fixed the issue in BfA when people reported it on the beta

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They are not.

Your first playthrough on your first character will be a linear experience.
Once you are lvl 60, it reverts back to pick a zone for your alts which includes picking a covenant from the get go and being able to progress end game related things while lvling.

There are many people out there for which alt progress is really not that big of an issue and that would prefer the focus on the main character.

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Yeah, unless you were decked out in your bis-legendaries from Legion levelling was a bad time.

My favourite was the completely broken scaling between 115 and 116 when some specs (e.g. Shadow priest or balance druid) could not kill simple named quest mobs anymore until they reached 117 again. A dream.

[Nephys]

After seeing after yesterdays raid again how approximately 50% of my characters damage comes from Essences and Corruption and half his Rotation only works because of double Azerite Traits I fear that the leveling process in Shadowlands will be even more painful than in BfA. It was already terrible in BfA to get weaker every level without getting anything in return and it currently really looks like Shadowlands is repeating the same pattern.
How are your experiences in the alpha there?

I've always wondered how is it that people have trouble with the leveling, I have leveled +10 alts to max, most of them had quest gear and never had trouble, how do you manage to do that? And actually BFA leveling was very good, its one of the few things Blizzard managed not to screw up is with the leveling, it is 1% of the game for most people so its quite insignificante but lets not get carried on the hate train just for the sake of hating. Believe me, I probably hate BFA more than you do, I won't ever forgive blizzard for what they did to sylvanas, but the leveling was something that they never failed, even on their worse expansions (BFA, WOD) the leveling was always great. I remember being really hyped with WOD leveling, such interesting characters, Ga'nar's death is still one of the best cinematics even today, its a shame it ended as it did.

[Raetary]

There are many people out there for which alt progress is really not that big of an issue and that would prefer the focus on the main character.

If your main focus is on your main character, then the state of lvling is largely irrelevant to you as you just do it once and are over it.

Besides, a linear experience is a lot better at conveying the story than having you pick and choose from the get go.

[Accendor]

I've always wondered how is it that people have trouble with the leveling, I have leveled +10 alts to max, most of them had quest gear and never had trouble, how do you manage to do that? And actually BFA leveling was very good, its one of the few things Blizzard managed not to screw up is with the leveling, it is 1% of the game for most people so its quite insignificante but lets not get carried on the hate train just for the sake of hating. Believe me, I probably hate BFA more than you do, I won't ever forgive blizzard for what they did to sylvanas, but the leveling was something that they never failed, even on their worse expansions (BFA, WOD) the leveling was always great. I remember being really hyped with WOD leveling, such interesting characters, Ga'nar's death is still one of the best cinematics even today, its a shame it ended as it did.

the main issue is that you interpreted something in my starting post that was not there and assumed this thread is about "trouble with leveling"

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so the same as its always been, gotcha

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you got weaker as you leveled in every expansion, assuming you actually did content at level cap. Literally every one.

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that's because you were bad
If you need more than victory rush + speccing either furious charge/second wind to live as a warrior, yikes

You too are misinterpreting the post you are quoting.

[Doffen]

Yeah, everyone saying "dude LMAO you always got weaker leveling, bfa levelling was perfectly fine," is either misremembering the bfa feels bad moments or being disingenuous. The fact is was addressed by the dev team and changers were made attest to this.

What changes did they do? And its not about being dishonest or anything like that. Yes, scaling was off, but it had very little to do with the power from Legion and more to do with stat scaling. Was that the thing they changed btw?

But in all honesty, I leveled 4 chars from 110 to 120 within first 4 weeks in BfA. And the only noticeable weak character was my mage around 118-119 when I had barely any secondaries left. I had no issues with the others but they might have been stronger baseline. And I have leveled up 17 characters in BfA, 14 of them from 110-120. So I should know what I am talking about. Maybe I don't, but let me believe it anyway.

Just to sum it up. Was it worse than other expansions? Most likely. Did it matter much? Not really. And for some of us who says it wasn't so horrible, maybe we are just not looking at the negatives so much that it affect our experience.

So stop implying that we are lying. An experience can be seen quite differently by different kind of people.

[TorAndre]

Some issues people experience is their own fault. How the leveling experience felt in BFA after Legion depends entirely what people expect.

After doing worlds quests in with mythic gear, insanely high concordance, set bonuses and legendaries, it would be utterly insane if you would start leveling BFA feeling even stronger and stronger.

The reset of your stats and gear you feel has been there always. First time I felt it was during Pandaria.

If you level now and go out from Legion into BFA it feels great to be honest.