How should leveling be handled in 10.0?

[Amnaught]

Leave everything as it is and have the new expansion at levels 60-70?

Squish Shadowlands down to 10-50 to replace Battle for Azeroth as the default new player experience?

I honestly wouldnt mind playing the next expansion worrying only about Renown/AP level instead of character level, doing the whole thing at Level 60

How would you handle it?

[Daedius]

With a spirit level.

[CalamityHeart]

Leave everything as is, imo. Shadowlands can still become the default new player experience next expansion, but for 1-60 instead, and Chromie Time would follow, ending at 60 instead of 50, and the new expansion goes from 60 to 70.

[DechCJC]

I would prefer that the cap stayed at 60 but I’m not sure how exactly it would work with our initial transition, going back to 50 would suck, so would we just stay at 60 and be forced to do the campaign at cap instead?

I think increasing it past 60 is a mistake and defeats the point of a squish. The current ‘pick an expansion then do the current one’ is nice.

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Leave everything as is, imo. Shadowlands can still become the default new player experience next expansion, but for 1-60 instead, and Chromie Time would follow, ending at 60 instead of 50, and the new expansion goes from 60 to 70.

Yeah I guess you could scale the experience up but then you have the old issue of going many levels without learning new abilities again.

[Puri]

It's pretty clear that we have another level squish coming with time. But I also don't think they will have a squish to 50 after every xpac, the effort to reshape the old leveling zones is probably too much work for every single xpac.

Unlikely we will see 120 again, but the question is how high they let us go. 80? 100? My guess is at 80 - so two more xpacs to go - until they implenent another level squish.
So I guess we will just "normally" level to 70 for the next xpac.

[shadowmatrix]

Leave it as is and only do level and story squishes once the level cap hits 100.

[Khaza-R]

Depends on what the new expansion is.

That said, I think its time to allow level scaling for all content up to max level. At least if you've gone through the 60-70 on one character.

[Dracullus]

Depends what next expac is. BfA zones not only were most modern expansion, but also most "down to earth" zones among modern expacs. It would be strange to lead new players into crazy SL zones as their first experience.

So imo:
- if 10.0 is regular expac, don't touch system and continue it 60-70,
- if 10.0 is revamp, squish back to 60 and make 1-60 doable entirely on new EK/Kalimdor (and as default path of course).

[huth]

I think increasing it past 60 is a mistake and defeats the point of a squish. The current ‘pick an expansion then do the current one’ is nice.

The point of a squish is having more room to grow. So staying at 60 would defeat it.

[Unlimited Power]

Just make Chromie Time last until level 60 so players can choose which expansion they want to level in until they reach "current content". Make Shadowlands the new default 10-60 leveling experience for new players. Just so they're somewhat caught up on recent lore.

[Accendor]

Just add 10 levels and don't make us weaker again the more we level up.

[ro9ue]

I really don't want to see them add more levels. Been playing a lot of ESO lately with a power cap and it just makes everything so much better.

But I still think an end game progression system should exist - like a blend of the strengths of ESO Champion Points and EQ Alternate Advancement would be great. With the extra caveats that it has a limited slot design for choices to avoid future bloat and most importantly is account wide.

That + a Destiny 2 or ESO Stickerbook design for item collection would be massive, massive improvements.

[Relapses]

Just add 10 levels and don't make us weaker again the more we level up.

We have to become weaker as we level otherwise gear from the new expansion is pointless.

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I really don't want to see them add more levels. Been playing a lot of ESO lately with a power cap and it just makes everything so much better.

But I still think an end game progression system should exist - like a blend of the strengths of ESO Champion Points and EQ Alternate Advancement would be great. With the extra caveats that it has a limited slot design for choices to avoid future bloat and most importantly is account wide.

That + a Destiny 2 or ESO Stickerbook design for item collection would be massive, massive improvements.

There's about a 0% likelihood that 10.0 doesn't increase the level cap to 70.

edit: OT --

Drop the amount of experience from 50 to ~58 (enough to start 10.0 content) by another 30%. Level cap to 70.

[Kathranis]

With the new player starting experience leading directly into BFA, and BFA into SL, I don't think it makes sense to Chromie Time it yet.

So they'll probably just raise the cap again.

[Temp name]

Just add 10 levels and don't make us weaker again the more we level up.

It's either become weaker as you level, or be forced to farm last expansion content for gear, or have gear become basically meaningless because you'll have way too many stats
Pick one, there is no alternative

[DechCJC]

The point of a squish is having more room to grow. So staying at 60 would defeat it.

But one of the main issues before was that we went multiple levels without receiving anything and it was unsatisfying. Why do we want to move towards that again?

[RobertMugabe]

Leave everything as it is and have the new expansion at levels 60-70?

Squish Shadowlands down to 10-50 to replace Battle for Azeroth as the default new player experience?

I honestly wouldnt mind playing the next expansion worrying only about Renown/AP level instead of character level, doing the whole thing at Level 60

How would you handle it?

I'd say they should definitely keep 60 as the max level and just keep scaling down all >lvl50 characters back to 50.

However I am generally against having the default 10-50 experience always be the previous expansion. IMO the BfA leveling zones are really great for new players and they show you the "real" world with the faction conflict, being on azeroth and all that. Meanwhile, playing through Shadowlands would feel odd for a new player as you're going to a different plane of existence and its "inhabitants" are ultimately irrelevant to the grand scheme of things.

Anyways, a lot of people expect a world revamp in 10.0, so I'd assume what Blizz will do is they will make the old revamped zones the default 10-50 experience (once again).

All in all, just adding more levels again is a bad practice and would kinda defeat the purpose of the level squishy in the first place.
People leveling alts and especially new players would have to once again spend more and more time to reach the endgame until Blizz gets forced to do another squish again.

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I would prefer that the cap stayed at 60 but I’m not sure how exactly it would work with our initial transition, going back to 50 would suck, so would we just stay at 60 and be forced to do the campaign at cap instead?

I think increasing it past 60 is a mistake and defeats the point of a squish. The current ‘pick an expansion then do the current one’ is nice.

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Yeah I guess you could scale the experience up but then you have the old issue of going many levels without learning new abilities again.

An easy fix would be to basically just level down everyone who is 51-60 to 50 and everyone who is 1-50 just stays the level they are. SL then gets moved Chromie Time as all the other expansions.

[MyWholeLifeIsThunder]

I think the lvl cap will be increased and there will be a squish in a couple years, but for now the new leveling experience will be 10-60 and take roughly the same time than the current 10-50 takes.

But I don't think Shadowlands should replace BfA as the default new player; it would be super weird to start the WoW experience in such an expansion.

Even if BfA was also set in an specific moment in time, at least it feels like a more down to earth adventure on an island.

Now, considering this is "the end of a chapter of the Warcraft saga" maybe a new leveling experience is necessary for new player, and to feel like the world is entering a new stage tbh.

[Kyux]

I'm not sure. The fact levelling was squished for SL makes me thing they want 60 to be the cap going forward, and all pre-current expansion content is 1-50. But then you're perpetually levelling 50-60 every time. That diminishes the sense of progression in an RPG.

It's almost like they need to apply the profession levelling system to character levels. So each expansion has it's own set of levels. That could be an idea?

[Khaza-R]

But one of the main issues before was that we went multiple levels without receiving anything and it was unsatisfying. Why do we want to move towards that again?

This is a fair point since "empty levels" were an issue with the old system.

Normally I would say it wouldn't be a big deal since level would still grant you relative power over previous expansions. But the way they made BfA scale at max level in SL was really bizarre so even that isn't the case anymore.