The leveling process needs to be slowed down

[Jubus]

I can't say I can complain about the speed of leveling, but for an mmoRPG, it is quite ridiculous. I completed not even half of Hyjal and all of Deepholm lvling from 78-85 on a recent alt, that's not even seeing 1/3 of the content in that span. Another tank alt has done maybe 15 quests since htting 20, and is almost at 80 now. It's incredibly easy to lvl now, and very little of the content is seen. If you do an instance while lvling before Northrend, you've already outleveled the zone you were in when you Q'd. WoW isn't an MMORPG anymore, it's lost it's right to call itself an RPG.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

It should be slowed down so new players can actually learn how to play the game.

Don't need to slow it down. 10,000 derp enemies cannot teach you what 500 raid-boss mechanic using enemies can.


And on the subject of speed, I think it was a tad fast, but it also felt fast because you were sitting on a train (railroaded through content) the whole time. Blizz recognizes this and wants to adjust that back toward the Wrath style.

[Lucetia]

My question is, why can't you just complete the entire zone like others said. The quests might be grey, but they still give the same amount of XP as if they were orange. The only difference is that the grey quest means the XP gain will be insignificant than if you were to complete it at "appropriate" level. For instance if the quest is orange at level 15 it would give you 2 bars of XP, but at 20 it would give you 0.5 bars.

The questing experience is fine where it's at. Where people can level fast if they want and skip stuff or if people want to do the entire zone. No one is stopping you, but yourself.

[Deficineiron]

Making the leveling process slower is only going to make it more and more daunting to bring in new players as more and more levels are added with expansions. The last thing WoW needs right now is a greater barrier to entry while the subscription numbers are dropping. They should be focusing on making people who've yet to play WoW want to start playing it, rather then giving them more reasons not to.

do you, personally, want players in the game who are daunted or dismayed to the point of quitting by having to work a few hours for a level, perhaps even dying some?

Blizzard wants these people and literally ANYONE else with a credit card they can get - I don't think there is any dispute on this.

The question is, do you want to focus on the player-type that meets the above criteria? When did you level your first toon to max? If it was long-enough ago, do you want to deal with someone now who cannot take 1/10th the effort without whining? (I leveled 2 70s in pre-2.3 bc, and am just amazed at the current state of affairs.)

[Abysal]

do you, personally, want players in the game who are daunted or dismayed to the point of quitting by having to work a few hours for a level, perhaps even dying some?

Blizzard wants these people and literally ANYONE else with a credit card they can get - I don't think there is any dispute on this.

The question is, do you want to focus on the player-type that meets the above criteria? When did you level your first toon to max? If it was long-enough ago, do you want to deal with someone now who cannot take 1/10th the effort without whining? (I leveled 2 70s in pre-2.3 bc, and am just amazed at the current state of affairs.)

I leveled my toon to max a long time ago and most of my learning about my toon came at the max level. I and most people didn't spend time figuring out the proper spell priority or stat priority while they were experiencing content for the first time. They just wanted to experience the content. That would be true no matter what the leveling speed was. The problem in Cata is that the difficulty of the content took a much larger leap then in previous expansions. In Wrath you could pretty much spam inefficient heals in any non-raid setting and do pretty good. It's not that players are leveling too fast, it's that the content difficulty doesn't increase at an appropriate and linear pace.

[Deleted]

I understand that with more expansions it has to be somewhat slowed down - But you have multiple zone choices for every 5 levels up to 60. At least make it that you have to fully complete -ONE- of the zones to get those five levels you need :/

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10charactesresiu hfeis

[Hanto]

For me, I have had over 12 85's and I still have multiple other characters that are between 70 and 85 scattered across different servers. I say I've had multiple 85's because on my main server I level alts for fun and money, so I get one up to 85, sell everything and delete them; then rinse and repeat (working on #13 now). I'm sure there is a majority of other players that have more than 2 85's at this point in the game.

Leveling has become just another thing to do in the game. The quests themselves aren't fun after the first or second time (aside from maybe The Day Deathwing Died, good stuff Bizz, good stuff) and I'm also sure the majority of the player base feels the same. The middle stuff gets boring and old after a while and really I think it's a great idea that it moves quickly. Sure everyone has their own preference but Blizz will cater to the bigger profit.

I do, however, feel like XP gains should be more easily disabled for those who would make use of it (maybe let inn keepers give you the option).

[DechCJC]

They could decrease leveling speed globally, but increase the power of heirlooms.

Yeah, that's not a bad idea.

[Deleted]

agree. the leveling process feels really awkward. It is not just so ridiculously fast, but there is now almost no chance to die, because the mobs die so quickly and pose no threat.

[Deleted]

They could decrease leveling speed globally, but increase the power of heirlooms.

Fine, but only when heirlooms can be sent across realms.

I don't disagree with what the OP said though. I've wanted to check the new Feralas, all the Southern Barren Horde vs Alliance quests, Stonetalon Mountain (did Horde side with the nuking), etc. but in the end, the wish to hit 85 is bigger than that. At least yesterday I stayed in EPL for longer than I needed because I like the quests there and I wanted to see the end of Fiona & friends questline.

[yuca247]

It should be slowed down so new players can actually learn how to play the game.

All the slowing down in the world won't teach a player how to play this game through questing.

[Deficineiron]

I leveled my toon to max a long time ago and most of my learning about my toon came at the max level. I and most people didn't spend time figuring out the proper spell priority or stat priority while they were experiencing content for the first time. They just wanted to experience the content. That would be true no matter what the leveling speed was. The problem in Cata is that the difficulty of the content took a much larger leap then in previous expansions. In Wrath you could pretty much spam inefficient heals in any non-raid setting and do pretty good. It's not that players are leveling too fast, it's that the content difficulty doesn't increase at an appropriate and linear pace.

thanks for your reply.

My view is that today, early content requires nearly no effort/etc., and then they jack it up to some higher expectation much, much later. This is, in my view, motivated by leveling tuning changes which were in tune motivated by the entire new-sub retention game.

As long as they keep reducing leveling difficulty to try to increase newsub retention, this matter is only getting worse.

I agree about some things - I leveled from 2.0.x to 2.2.x only learning major class utility effectively in the tbc content, but this was in part to lack of groups on my server for leveling instances lower then. also, no one ever explained simple stuff like focus and setting distracting shot to focus to bring the damn mob to my trap.......

---------- Post added 2012-03-11 at 07:52 AM ----------

agree. the leveling process feels really awkward. It is not just so ridiculously fast, but there is now almost no chance to die, because the mobs die so quickly and pose no threat.

AND thus the face of marketing and the holy grail of new-sub retention reared its ugly head. Many denied its face, but there were those who saw the beast and knew that it was a fell creature, come to eradicate their values and skills from the list of the named dead.

but seriously it is pitifully boring. I have much more fun leveling on a 1.12.1 server. It is so much slower, but I can die, I can have to think about how to make certain pulls with running humanoids, I have to in generally invest some portion of my braincase in each level, usually, except blasted lands animal parts and spheres if I can prebuy them and green hills pieces, which I haven't bothered with since 2.3.x.

[yuca247]

I do not believe slowing down leveling would cause players to become better at the game. There were plenty of bad players back in Vanilla. Plenty now.

As others have mentioned in countless other threads, the process is as fast or as slow as you want it to be. Wear all the heirlooms or none at all. Disable leveling. Don't get rested XP.

As someone who enjoys endgame a lot more than leveling, I wish I had the option of leveling even faster.

This is spot on. Leveling is mostly as fast or slow as you want it to be. Besides if you have several alts and you really want to experience a zone for the lore and the exploration, it's much easier to just go back with one of your 85s that did not finish questing in that zone.

[Deficineiron]

Sorry to put it so indelicately but... I think you're everything that's wrong with this game.

Mr. Panalfik, I agree with this statement wholeheartedly. the diablo2 analogy is frightening in that it may be what blizzard hopes to normalize in wow, if they haven't already;.

[yuca247]

I don't want to "finish the zone" at all costs. I just want the leveling process to feel less awkward. You can't achieve this with such cheesy tactics like disabling the XP gain.

Well the truth of the matter is the people that want leveling to slow down and want to finish lower level zones are the vast minority. Most people have multiple alts they just want to level as quick as possible and even many new players just want to get to endgame as soon as possible. If Cata taught Blizz anything is not to cave in to the whiny minority no matter how vocal they are.

---------- Post added 2012-03-11 at 02:04 AM ----------

But there are also people who want their max level asap, so slowing down levelling process could be done only by providing players special options:
1. "No rested exp" option.
2. "No exp from gathering profs" option.
3. 2 Modes for levelling - easy mode for "gifted" people (aka "I want max level NOW to enjoy endgame"), and normal mode for players (exp. curve same as pre 2.3.0).
4. My half-joke suggestion: all heirlooms to have "of the Cheater" added to the name and automatically giving title while wearing heirlooms - "the Cheater". Levelling is now quite easy in full greens 10 levels below wearer, heirlooms make levelling unimaginably far beyond easy which equals to cheating.

I do believe giving both type of players the option to level the way they want is a far better suggestion than just slowing down leveling for everybody.

[SaltLakeAtrocity]

After having played this game since the release of BC, I can say that i find very little to no enjoyment in leveling whatsoever. *its a worst grind than just about any rep grind or achievement grind i can think of thus far (except maybe Insane in the Membrane), and offers little to nothing in return for this effort until you finally do grudgingly make it to endgame content (which as of late has been more and more disappointing).

if it wasn't for the fact that you'd see too many people level-capped people people who don't even know basic functions of their characters (not that those don't exist anyways >_>), I'd be all for a instant level-cap button. *

[Keristrasza]

my first toon was a hunter and leveling in TBC when it first came out taught me nothing of how the class worked. My friend who got me into playing said, you wear leather until 40, then mail. And you want agi. So thats all I knew. send pet, click mob, press some button that looks cool, mob dies. Slowing the leveling process down won't teach anyone anything. I also hate leveling. I think once you have leveled a toon to max level you should have the option to auto level any other toon to max level at any time. I really see no reason not to. I mean, I already did the quest, I know the lore, and everything I'll need to know to play at max level is found on outside resources anyway. Why not?

Because a huge part of all MMO's isn't the end game but what you have to go through to reach it. Being able to skip the stuff you dislike is no different than being able to walk into a heroic mode raid as soon as its launched skip to the end and get all the best gear in one kill. While many raiders would like to complain that is what happens with the LFR it's not the case, easy as it is stuff still has to die, many times before you get everything you want.

[MoanaLisa]

If you like to complete zones while leveling, simply disable experience gains every five or ten levels until you've finished all the zones in that range you want to do. It's costly if you're low on funds, but otherwise it makes questing much more enjoyable.

It would be nice if they'd scale the price of this like they do the price of training, etc. I understand the whole thing with twinks but it's virtual money so if they're going to make you level before you're halfway through the zone, you should be able to do this cheaply. I do this from time to time, usually about every 10 levels, so I can track back for things I want to do that I missed.

[araine]

Saying the XP gains are too fast and needs to be slowed down is like getting a Lamborghini and complaining that you pick up speeding tickets so they need to make the lamborghini slower so i dont get so many speeding tickets.

leveling as is, is boring and slow enough, not that it is slow per se but slowing it down to old school level speeds everywhere, no thanks thats a no deal since leveling is just the grind to get to the actual game everything you have and do is outdated and replaced by the next quest you do, just a grind.

[Cinnamohn]

I think it should be slowed down just a touch for 1-60. But for people to learn how to play, rather than just mash buttons, Blizzard needs to add a helpful tutorial hint specifically stating "Read your damn ability tooltips! To do this, hover over each icon on your toolbar and read the message displayed on the right side of your screen."