Why does it take more then four hours to hit max level?

[Shadowferal]

I remember when I wanted a winterspring Saber for a mount, and I had the little cub that I had to feed, make a chew toy, play with the little rascal every now and then, feed again...a daily quests you do...and as you do them the cub gets bigger. Until he was full grown. And a week after I had been riding him about, Rivern Frostwind sends me a message...a pic of my cub playing with the chew toy. Such a sweet sentiment that hit harder for all the time it took.

[Utrrabbit]

Maybe for you.

No for literally the entire game. Anyone who thinks otherwise is braindead or just a memeing child.

[RoKPaNda]

No for literally the entire game. Anyone who thinks otherwise is braindead or just a memeing child.

"People who disagree with me / don't like the things I like are children." - I play this game for the raids, not the leveling. I haven't read a single quest text or cared about why I'm collecting bear asses since vanilla. For me, leveling is just a time gate to get to the content that I actually enjoy.

[Biomega]

Well this is a very convenient form of argument for you isn't it? That way you can refute anything.

I provided proof. If you disagree, all you have to do is refute that proof. That's... how arguments work.

Since you seem to think yours is such an obvious position, that should be very easy.

If you went and told DnD players that levelling should be done away with in their game, you would be laughed at.

I'm not familiar enough with actual D&D to make such a statement, and it's a misrepresentation of my position anyway - I am talking about leveling IN PRINCIPLE, concrete examples have more going on than one simple position. I've said as much, repeatedly. Did you just not read that, or did you not understand it?

I'm beginning to think you don't know how arguments work, if all you can do is come up with "but what about game X?" examples. How about you just argue the principle, as I've repeatedly asked?

Do you have any examples of what you're proposing that have been successful? I'm genuinely curious because I see this opinion pop up from time to time but I've never seen a example of how its been implemented in a satisfactory way. Till then its really nothing more than vapid ideas.

So I guess you can't argue in the abstract at all, and can only argue from concrete examples?

[Khaza-R]

So I guess you can't argue in the abstract at all, and can only argue from concrete examples?

I mean, the MMO genre has been around for decades. Surely, if leveling was just a vestigial aspect then there would be a game at this point who successfully has done away with it.

Its not really asking much to provide an example of successful implementation at this point. Should it even exist.

[Biomega]

I mean, the MMO genre has been around for decades. Surely, if leveling was just a vestigial aspect then there would be a game at this point who successfully has done away with it.

Its not really asking much to provide an example of successful implementation at this point. Should it even exist.

That's a fallacious argument, though.

It existing OR not existing proves nothing other than that people have or have not done it. Providing an example doesn't mean it was done well, or if it wasn't, that it couldn't be done well; similarly, not having an example doesn't prove it can't be done or shouldn't be done. It's a meaningless exercise, because examples are anecdotal here and the diversity of the genre makes it fruitless to begin with - it only applies to games that have the "WoW-like" model of leveling to cap and then doing endgame, and doesn't work (at least in the same way) for games without a cap or that end when/shortly after the cap is reached. Those are entirely different models of progression.

[Khaza-R]

That's a fallacious argument, though.

It existing OR not existing proves nothing other than that people have or have not done it. Providing an example doesn't mean it was done well, or if it wasn't, that it couldn't be done well; similarly, not having an example doesn't prove it can't be done or shouldn't be done. It's a meaningless exercise, because examples are anecdotal here and the diversity of the genre makes it fruitless to begin with - it only applies to games that have the "WoW-like" model of leveling to cap and then doing endgame, and doesn't work (at least in the same way) for games without a cap or that end when/shortly after the cap is reached. Those are entirely different models of progression.

It isn't. Material application trumps conjecture absolutely. So until you can bring up actual propositions of leveling being obseleted, even on MMOs that might have financially failed, you're really just talking into the void. As hard as you might trying to convince yourself otherwise.

[Celement]

I mean, the MMO genre has been around for decades. Surely, if leveling was just a vestigial aspect then there would be a game at this point who successfully has done away with it.

Its not really asking much to provide an example of successful implementation at this point. Should it even exist.

Guild wars comes to mind though that is for pvp. The issue isn't really with leveling but more about how abysmal it is currently. Leveling should be enjoyable and while for some people I am sure it is I personally cant see the draw.

There is no difference in how you fight your first mob while leveling till you fight your last. You are never challenged never in any danger and it's all so trivial you can complete it with white auto attacks on a priest.

It isnt compelling. The story is nonsensical and broken given how badly the zones are broken up and it doesn't teach anything. It's just a burdensome chore. Perhaps you could remake leveling from the ground up to make it engaging but wow never really builds up it tears down.

[Neuroticaine]

From a design point of view mind you. WoWs leveling is tedious to the point they monetized it. It bags the question of why does it last so long? There are maybe a dozen variations on quests with most of that only being use x item or x vehicle. The story is often irrelevant save for a few key zones.

Leveling a alt really has me questioning why it's like this. What purpose does a slow, tedious, and far to simple to be engaging leveling experience still exist in wow?

Leveling in WoW has become ridiculously fast. You can sneeze and get a character from 1 to 50 and 50-60 barely takes much longer than that. It's kind of ridiculous that some people still find it slow and tedious...

[tromage2]

Dont have a problem with the leveling time.

Altho i would like to see that once you leveled a mage that your 2e or 3e mage ect is max level right away.
Just make it so that once you got a class to max level that you from that point can create that class right away from max level.

[BurntOwl]

I haven't read a single quest text or cared about why I'm collecting bear asses since vanilla. For me, leveling is just a time gate to get to the content that I actually enjoy.

This is why I like quests that give context to the raid and background story for it, instead of the world quest AP grind and other time gate "systems" we currently have where you just spam the same dailies mindlessly.

At least when we were doing attunement chains there was a decent backstory going along with it that tied into the raid, and it was unique content.

[WowIsDead64]

In the past leveling was exactly about solo RPG content. I liked to start from scratch from time to time. That feeling of being noname unit, growing into famous hero. Getting my first helmet. First shoulders. Playing simple content, such as helping my home village. It was also infinite unlimited content for me. As we know, endgame has always had weekly and daily CDs. And leveling isn't limited. It also doesn't rely on any groups to do it, so it doesn't have schedule problems, such as being able to play at prime time only.

But then I'm not sure, what happened. May be several recent xpacks had too boring leveling, that was more about boring storytelling, than about fun, as it was back in old days. But I started to feel, that I didn't want to repeat story quests on every character. I started to feel, that I burn out, when I do exactly the same content again, again and again. I feel, like I rush to max level and get tired due to it...only to start leveling again.

[Spritz Bergak]

From a design point of view mind you. WoWs leveling is tedious to the point they monetized it. It bags the question of why does it last so long? There are maybe a dozen variations on quests with most of that only being use x item or x vehicle. The story is often irrelevant save for a few key zones.

Leveling a alt really has me questioning why it's like this. What purpose does a slow, tedious, and far to simple to be engaging leveling experience still exist in wow?

Making it last as long as the average coomer masturbation session has the effect that people roll alts more IMO.

Separating each expansion into its own leveling bracket was also a great idea, since that makes it a lot less monotonous.

[shise]

Leveling should be a mix of Vanilla, BC and Wrath.

Should take no shorter than 3/4 weeks and matter more. Why rush the leveling to jump into end game, and be stuck on it for 2 years?


Leveling should become a bigger part of the game. It was an amazing experience back then, they could work around it and make it so now too.

[Daffan]

And yet FF sing the praises of HAVING to go through EVERY expansions MSQ to get to max level, something that can take hundreds of hours, as a good thing. There's literally a thread up right now complaining that four hours is too long to reach max level.

What and how does this even counter what I am saying.

FF leveling is much different, with an actual narrative (although still grinding dungeon a lot). So what? Does that invalidate what the players or Blizzard thinks about WoW leveling currently? On top of that having ability to level multiple classes on 1 char to pad out the time/enjoy multiple on 1 persona, WoW does not have that either.

[Nalam the Venom]

From a design point of view mind you. WoWs leveling is tedious to the point they monetized it. It bags the question of why does it last so long? There are maybe a dozen variations on quests with most of that only being use x item or x vehicle. The story is often irrelevant save for a few key zones.

Leveling a alt really has me questioning why it's like this. What purpose does a slow, tedious, and far to simple to be engaging leveling experience still exist in wow?

You think 4 hours is ”Long” ?

What kind of weird mindset is this.

[Infernoxas]

From a design point of view mind you. WoWs leveling is tedious to the point they monetized it. It bags the question of why does it last so long? There are maybe a dozen variations on quests with most of that only being use x item or x vehicle. The story is often irrelevant save for a few key zones.

Leveling a alt really has me questioning why it's like this. What purpose does a slow, tedious, and far to simple to be engaging leveling experience still exist in wow?

Imagine a new player that doesn't know how to swim and is thrown in the deep end of the pool.

[bloodkin]

Guild wars comes to mind though that is for pvp. The issue isn't really with leveling but more about how abysmal it is currently. Leveling should be enjoyable and while for some people I am sure it is I personally cant see the draw.

There is no difference in how you fight your first mob while leveling till you fight your last. You are never challenged never in any danger and it's all so trivial you can complete it with white auto attacks on a priest.

It isnt compelling. The story is nonsensical and broken given how badly the zones are broken up and it doesn't teach anything. It's just a burdensome chore. Perhaps you could remake leveling from the ground up to make it engaging but wow never really builds up it tears down.

OP, why didn't you open this thread with these arguments? This is a far more constructive post that actually has something to be discussed (in contrast to your opening post).

On topic: the problems you describe here are the result of convoluted game design and stacking of nonsensical narrative and game decisions the devs made to make the game both more appealing to a broader audience (mainstreaming) and attempting to be at the cutting edge of MMO's (ahead of the competition).

However, in doing so they also diluted what made wow exciting and fun, took away the challenges players had to overcome and moved the goalposts as to where the content actually gets harder. Interestingly, thanks to classic being a thing alongside of current we have a good chance the compare, we can say little about popularity, but classic is successful enough to keep going into the next expansion, there is still a demand for old style gameplay. We can also see how much the game has changed, it's just not the same game it was q0 years ago, some might like that but personally I detest what the devs have done to the game (it hasn't had a half decen expansion since MoP imo).

In all honesty, I doubt blizz is going to improve or adres these issues in the future, and unless unimaginative devs such as ion leave, wow is doomed to become more and more mainstream and less interesting.

[Celement]

Imagine a new player that doesn't know how to swim and is thrown in the deep end of the pool.

How does the current leveling help with that?

[Hitei]

How does the current leveling help with that?

No leveling helps with it, because solo leveling and endgame group content are not the same thing.