Diarrhea is faster too, but I don't think many people would claim it's better.
The issue is not the amount of time it takes. It's the quality and nature of the content. The famous Einstein quote applies pretty well here:
“When you sit with a nice girl for two hours you think it’s only a minute, but when you sit on a hot stove for a minute you think it’s two hours. That’s relativity.”
SL leveling is not fun relative to me. My subjective opinion. People who want to get tribal and angry because that opinion doesn't agree with their own have that right, I guess. But that doesn't mean it's alright to twist what my point was, as Soon-TM did. I very clearly was speaking about the LEVELING process, not "playing the game". In fact my point was that the leveling process was blocking me from playing the part of the game I DO enjoy.
Disagree with me all you want. But don't change the meaning of my posts.
first xpack i don't like at all. I don't even log on much since release of shadowlands.
i quite enjoyed the leveling this time around. i feel like the story should be skippable, or at least you shouldnt have to stand around and listen to them yak. lookin at you unskippable maw... just stfu jaina, if time is of the essence, shut your mouth and lets go. no, dont walk, run! holy jeebus.
It's always interesting the first time around but the last few expansions have bored me a lot when running alts through them, and I feel like Shadowlands will be the same, at least in terms of the campaign. Threads of Fate shows promise but it sounds like it needs a few buffs. My biggest gripe is how crap the XP from Party Sync is. One of the things I was looking forward to most was being able to level characters from 50 - 60 in old expansions with my friends through Party Sync, but the XP is awful and doesn't make it worth it. It's not fun having to level through the same expansion dozens of times, no matter how it's designed.
Personally, I disliked Bastion, and I absolutely hated Maldraxxus, almost to the point where I was going to refund the game (after returning to play after the shitshow that was bfa which I played for 3 weeks, having previously stopped playing in 7.1, this is NOT what you wanna come back to.)
However I stuck it out, and I thought that Ardenweald was great, and Revendreath was absolutely superb.
Completely subjective.
I've only taken one character to 60 thus far as I am taking my time and not jamming through content in such a rush to raid or run mythics. We've beeb 2 years without new content, and anyone who spoils it by reading ahead and seeking advantages is just asking for a self-imposed boredom. Honestly, Maldraxxus was not my favorite. Nor Revendreth. However, I felt like all 4 zones had their own interesting story to tell, and there were some great cinematics and animation that came with each.
Rushing through content is a fool's errand and simply puts one off from wanting to do more. Aside from two very specific quests, this expansion is rapidly climbing into the number one slot as my new favorite expac, nudging both TBC and Wrath out of the way. This is the apology letter I have been waiting on from Blizz for the sadness that was WoD, Legion, and BFA. It's been a very LONG time since I was impressed with anything Blizz delivered, but that day has finally come. I am sorry you are not enjoying yourself, but given your forum name, I am somehow not surprised.
“Be the change you want to see in the world.” ~ Mahatma Gandhi
I've only finished questing once, and have a few Alts that are Ardenweald/Maldraxxus/Bastion areas, so this is only an early opinion. I also haven't done Threads of Fate, as I want to try out the Covenant Abilities in the world.
I don't really enjoy spending my time waiting for NPC's to move or listening to long bits of dialogue on quests. I want to be in the action, attacking and exploring. I feel especially in Bastion that I'm being very held up in the first part, with a lot of escort here, listen, follow, escort things. Redoing the Campaing on Alts (I want to try the abilities in the World instead of a training dummy in Oribos) the Oribos intro and Bastion first part is horribly slow. The Maw is an absolute drag with this kind of thing and already want to skip it and never go again.
Regarding the zones, I don't get any sense of closure when leaving some of the zones. I assume that the Stories are continued in the Covenant Campaigns, but seeing Uther in Bastion twice and not seeing him again just felt odd. Maldraxxus is the traitor and Revendreth is a bit more of a clifthanger, which I was fine with. The only one that felt decent to me was Ardenweald, as I really enjoyed the Wildseed rebirth with the memories (Not-a-friend, great mob names ) and the cinematic at the end was really good. Bastion and Maldraxxus I didn't get much feeling from the ending, it was like, 'oh, are we done?'.
I strongly dislike the linearity of SL. After BFA and Legion being go wherever, it feels really jarring to go back to a linear levelling experience, and rubbish that dungeons don't scale so at 55 the mobs in Necrotic Wake are green, side quests don't scale and you can actually be too low level to progress further through a zone (My Mage is 52 and requires 53 to get further in Bastion :/).
In terms of questing, Warlords still stands out to me as by far the best, very cinematic, varied through treasures and bonus objectives, variety for Horde/Alliance and options of where to go. Legion was also strong and felt good to me, with Val'sharah being brilliant with the best cinematic. Shadowlands currently doesn't exactly stand out to me in terms of it's levelling experience but I still have lots of Alts to level before I give it a final opinion.
Dristereau - Axxolentus - Infernus - Sequentia - Nulo - Desterrar
Silvermoon - Shadowsong/Aszune - Tarren-Mill/Dentarg (SL Mage Tower: 29/36)
Leveling is ALWAYS boring, but Shadowlands has been the least boring leveling experience since Vanilla for me.
How in the Eternal Sun's name did I ever "twist your point"? If anything, l agree with you to a large extent, my only disagreement being that not all of the levelling process is as bland and overall crappy as in Bastion. Maldraxxus is already a bit better, if only because it is easier to get around - although I cba to give a flying #@$& about this orc lady whose only merit seems to consist of having spawned Thrall, "but not actually" (as with all things WoD).
Ardenweald is pretty, but once again, I can't give a damn about this Disney version of fairies and the like. They randomly threw Ysera in the mix in order to try to link the zone to... Well, something better known by players.
Only Revendreth stands as something better thought and overall more polished. But it's too little, too late, since I was on the verge of quitting after enduring a huge cba stroke during Ardenweald and especially, during Bastion.
Leveled two characters to 60 the traditional way and had a blast. Have two characters going through threads of fate and it feels alot slower than progressing through the story. Each way has it's benefits though
For me yes it was boring, hoping the alt experience with world quests will be more fun.
He asked when was any leveling experience with any expansion fun. And, yes, while this is not really expansion leveling, it is kind of their rework of leveling that came with/just before SL.
All I'm trying to say is that all those comments like "you are just getting tired of wow", "you don't like wow anymore and should quit", "wow isn't for you", "all leveling is boring", "when was leveling ever fun", "looks like you should quit c ya thx buy" are wrong.
Some leveling in wow is fun, not all leveling in wow is fun. And it is straight up proof that it's not people getting old or bored, that they've played too much and know everything about wow. It really does mean that certain game designs are simple bad and boring.
Current 10-50 feels fun. (due to how leveling works in older zones)
Classic (sure, may be not for everyone) is fun.
I personally like Legions leveling even though it was on rails. (didn't love it, but liked it enough)
But most on the rails force story leveling systems are boring and feel very pointless and single player which is pretty obvious based on playerbase's reaction.
If a game sells well - all it means is that marketing was done right and nothing to do with expansion quality.
Refunds and people quitting before getting 60 or right after getting 60 - says that game design is bad and leveling is bad / boring.
Most on these forum use these weird metrics for quality. Everyone praises Wotlk for how many people played it, but a huge part of wrath's success - is TBC's success. People heard how good TBC was and when wotlk came out they jumped right on it (and obviously stayed since it was a very good expansion).
Unusual spikes in sales for other expansions are caused by smart blizzard's marketing. Most of them were based on nostalgia and bringing old wow back.
Cata - going to old revamped world is basically like classic again (then playerbase drop off since it wasn't)
BfA - it's like orcs vs humans again, basically gonna be like classic wow all over (it wasn't)
I know a lot of people that skipped pandaria and legion on a sole reason that Cata and WoD were terrible and they didn't want to get burned again. And unfortunately for those people those were the good expansions.
To sum it up - leveling experience in SL ain't that great.
Last edited by Randomfellow; 2020-12-09 at 01:26 AM.
I'm SHOCKED that OP, whose forum name is "WoWIsDead64" finds fault with the new expansion. Utterly shocked.
I have to say, I'm enjoying Threads of Fate more than 3 out of the 4 leveling zones during the on-rails campaign...
Yes, it's slower, but it's just so damned FREE! And even as a DPS, I never have longer than 3 minute queues for dungeons.
If they just up the XP on bonus objectives for the amount of effort they require, it'd be golden.
It's always fun to look back at decades-old posts.
https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...2#post14417092