"Leveling sucks"

[Mad_Murdock]

What cross section of players do you actually interact with? Your guild?
i think you should probably accept the possibility that you might interact in an echo chamber of self-selected like-minded players.

Sure that's possible, though I have several alts and I have them in various guilds across the factions. It seems odd to me to see someone leveling alt and then use the Elixir of Ancient Knowledge to get to 90 and then say "I love leveling" and then there they are out farming more elixirs for their next alt.

So are you saying the majority of players enjoy leveling and only the minority of players thinks leveling sucks ?

A great test to see which is more true, is for Blizzard to offer a instant level 100 next Xpac and see how many people take it and how many choose to level.

[Reckles]

leveling is so goddamn fun i create new characters, level them, delete them, and start new character, just to level them again.

Cannot tell if trolling...

But what Dragore said is interesting. Why not just remove the 10% XP buff from heirlooms? Well they could, but the point of heirloom is twofold: 1) to help people's alt the second time around, but more importantly, 2) increase the number of people running end game content for justice points. A full upgraded set takes over 30,000 JP now. That's a lot of random heroics.

But not to derail, someone mentioned Rift. Two things. I love how out-and-about everyone is there. Always killing another random spawn with a new random group. What I don't like is that it takes 20-60 seconds to close the rift and everyone is out. There isn't much time to get to know people. Where with wow, on the off chance you team up for some random questing/dungeon queues, you'll make a new "friend"ish-kind-of-thing. Unfortunately, there's just very little incentive to do that.

[Abominax]

and here I thought I was the only one having fun leveling up toons as opposed to gearing them up when I max out at 90.

Well, that makes 3 of us now!

[nyc81991]

In a way that is like how Gw2 is. I think WoW would benefit a lot by making the world feel alive and not just a bunch of zones that are only good for "x - x" levels.

[Grubjuice]

Sure that's possible, though I have several alts and I have them in various guilds across the factions. It seems odd to me to see someone leveling alt and then use the Elixir of Ancient Knowledge to get to 90 and then say "I love leveling" and then there they are out farming more elixirs for their next alt.

So are you saying the majority of players enjoy leveling and only the minority of players thinks leveling sucks ?

A great test to see which is more true, is for Blizzard to offer a instant level 100 next Xpac and see how many people take it and how many choose to level.

i have no valid statistical data on how many players like and how many players dislike leveling
i think it is probably fair to say you do not have this data either,
so we will have to abandon this line of argument here, until such time as the aforementioned data is published.

- - - Updated - - -

leveling is so goddamn fun i create new characters, level them, delete them, and start new character, just to level them again.

Cannot tell if trolling...

Scouts honor i am not trolling i have leveled several characters that i have purposefully deleted to make room on the same realm to start a new character.

[Megraam]

You will get this INSTEAD of new raid. No, thanks.

[ACES]

I think that if you have leveled one character to max level, you should just be able to boost your others to max level instantly; or maybe if you have a max level character and the loremaster achievement. Obviously this would never happen but it would make switching mains a heck of a lot easier.

[enchanted]

A lot of people just aren't interested in leveling.

They want to PvP or PvE at max level, and anything that distracts from it sucks.

What about new players? One of the key features which attracted me to gw2 as a new player were dynamic events. I think they are fantastic and should be implemented into WoW as it does attract new players to level and try them. Make them get a reward or a buff from it and you'll see many people doing it. However, I doubt that blizzard can implement such a great feature o wait! we got them but instead... "Scenarios"...

[Cobaltius]

A lot of people just aren't interested in leveling.

They want to PvP or PvE at max level, and anything that distracts from it sucks.

Seems like it is just the opposite, and players have more alts now than any time in the history of the game.

[Mad_Murdock]

i have no valid statistical data on how many players like and how many players dislike leveling
i think it is probably fair to say you do not have this data either,
so we will have to abondon this line of argument here.
.

My data point is, they have continued to add heirloom gear and continued to speed up leveling. I find it hard to accept Blizzard is doing that against the wishes of the overwhelming majority of people just because they can. So we can extrapolate from them adding more heirlooms that a healthy chunk of their player base doesn't really care for leveling. If they are adding heirlooms just for the small minority of players who don't like to level, then hats off to Blizzard for caring about a minority of players

Seems like it is just the opposite, and players have more alts now than any time in the history of the game.

People have more alts after 10 years then after 1 year ? That sounds like something we should investigate future. Leveling has been made easier with Heirlooms and XP nerfs and more people have alts than before. I sense a trend here. :P

[Lovestar]

I completely agree. Blizzard's frequent solution to player's disliking something (or being impatient with it) is to just come in with a sledgehammer and completely annihilate it. This is gratifying for a few months, like conceptual candy. But then you come down from your "LOLOLOL THIS IS RETARDED WHEEEEEE" sugar-high and realize it's actually kind of sad and depressing.

If an MMO developer can find some way to perfect making all content, always relevant, at all levels, and keeping people participating voluntarily in the entire world... wow. That would be a really awesome MMO.

[thunderdragon2]

Leveling isn't a problem. Some forum-goers like to think about how to MAKE it one though.

very true but for most it is a problem of which the op is trying to convay i find it very boring now and ive lvled 6 toons for 1-90

[Grubjuice]

My data point is, they have continued to add heirloom gear and continued to speed up leveling. I find it hard to accept Blizzard is doing that against the wishes of the overwhelming majority of people just because they can. So we can extrapolate from them adding more heirlooms that a healthy chunk of their player base doesn't really care for leveling. If they are adding heirlooms just for the small minority of players who don't like to level, then hats off to Blizzard for caring about a minority of players

I use Heirloom gear but all that has done is shortened my alt cycle, instead of leveling in a month, i level in a week, but i still abandon most of my top-level characters and mail the gear to new alts over and over again

don't extrapolate to the exclusion possibilities not eliminated by the data.

[Mukor]

Problem: Leveling was fun the first time around, a bit less fun the second time around on your first alt, a tad dull on your third, then boring, then please kill me, etc etc.

Blizzard's solution: Heirlooms in every slot, reduce XP required to ding by 90%, make mobs die from being given a stern look, make instances 10 minuter zerg fests. Basically make it as quick and brain-dead as possible

Better solution: Make the world a living and exciting place. Add events. Make the world constantly changing. Make it change from what players do to it. I believe WoW has the best world and lore of all MMO's out there at their disposal but it's going COMPLETELY to waste. If I could change one thing that would improve WoW it would be this. Have everyone out in Azeroth experiencing and changing the world, meeting new friends and making new enemies in world PvP. Instead of sitting like a bunch of brain-dead chickens in capitals trying to pick gear off a conveyor belt in order to increase their ilevel.

Thoughts?

Sounds like everquest next. sure they could add somethings like more events but to make the world react to what the players do would need a new engine.

[Deathstyle]

I just feel like leveling routes have become increasingly limited since Vanilla.
-From 1-60 there are multiple zones that you can level in for whatever level you happen to be at.
-60-70 started streamlined, because everyone started at Hellfire Peninsula, but could spread out after that.
-70-80 we could quest in at least 2 zones at any level.
-80-85 we could start in 1 of 2 zones, but were then funneled into a single path. (-->Deepholm-->Uldum-->Twilight Highlands)
-85-90 we all started in Jade Forest and could choose where we went after that, but later always ended up in Dread Wastes at the end.

Aside from Vanilla, Wrath probably had the best leveling, because we didn't have to choose the same path with every alt, on top of the fact that it was a very story driven leveling experience. I personally see this as being one of the main reasons why people enjoyed Wrath so much.

Maybe Blizzard should look in to creating more options for questing instead of speeding up the restricted path that we have to do over and over.
I don't mind the time that it takes to level, as long as I don't have to see it again and again. How do other people feel about this?

[-Superman-]

I would gladly pay $79 in the Blizz store for a Refer-Myself token, letting me get from 1-80, just like RaF. I think a buck a level is fair

[Mad_Murdock]

I use Heirloom gear but all that has done is shortened my alt cycle, instead of leveling in a month, i level in a week, but i still abandon most of my top-level characters and mail the gear to new alts over and over again

don't extrapolate to the exclusion possibilities not eliminated by the data.

And you consider what you do to be the norm ? I look at the data at face value. You're asking me to assume that the majority of players enjoy leveling so much that they level with heirlooms, so they can delete that toon and do it again. That honestly makes no sense to me, But I understand there are people who do it. I don't accept that is the norm for the majority of players. I've met one such player out of several hundred that does that. Having toons in leveling guilds I would think I'd come across more people who were like that the past 7 years. Maybe I should proactively query more people to see who else might do it.

[Jaylock]

Problem: Leveling was fun the first time around, a bit less fun the second time around on your first alt, a tad dull on your third, then boring, then please kill me, etc etc.

Blizzard's solution: Heirlooms in every slot, reduce XP required to ding by 90%, make mobs die from being given a stern look, make instances 10 minuter zerg fests. Basically make it as quick and brain-dead as possible.

Better solution: Make the world a living and exciting place. Add events. Make the world constantly changing. Make it change from what players do to it. I believe WoW has the best world and lore of all MMO's out there at their disposal but it's going COMPLETELY to waste. If I could change one thing that would improve WoW it would be this. Have everyone out in Azeroth experiencing and changing the world, meeting new friends and making new enemies in world PvP. Instead of sitting like a bunch of brain-dead chickens in capitals trying to pick gear off a conveyor belt in order to increase their ilevel.

Thoughts?

I like your better solution. The even better solution would be to make the world varied in difficulty. We all know leveling gets tedious after doing it on an alt or two.. but if the player had the option to do harder things and be rewarded properly for doing the harder things (like group quests, solo challenges that pop up in zones, elite mobs, race against the clock quests, etc (things that add variation to the types of things / quests players are doing)) it would allow the players to choose how they want to level up, rather than just dungeon grinding or questing.

[Dvaldin]

There's no need to have multiple level 90s. World of Altcraft? No thanks.

That said, Bliz has stated they believe it's better to work on new content rather than updating former content -- hence the quickness to level cap. Not saying that I agree with that though ... I don't see why they can't do both and assign a small crew for updating. The holiday events should be something to look forward to and get excited about rather than "oh, it's that time of year again (yawn)."

[Cobaltius]

Interesting mind set. Are you saying the sole purpose of alts is to enjoy the awesome experience of leveling ? Once you level a toon, does everyone sit around and say "Gosh I want to do that all over again" ?

If you don't want to do it all over again then do it all at the same time;

I found the very best way to level toons was simultaneously; create say, 6 new toons have them all learn different professions and gathering skills, have two of them miners, two of them skinners and two of them herbers. As you level them and level their professions/gathering skills they will feed off of each others gathering skills, cloth drops etc...

This way they will all always have good gear, enchants, glyphs, potions/flasks etc... through the entire leveling process making it easier and faster. Not only that, sales of their excess items on top of the gold you will save not having to buy gear, enchants, glyphs, potions/flasks etc through the leveling process will ensure a nice stack of gold by the time you get them all to 90.