What expansion made leveling content faceroll?

[Tekkommo]

BC nerfed EXP needed and so did WotLK, that's it.

Incorrect, the WotLK patch made your character far more powerful.

Examples of this can be found on a private server that is in vanilla, but uses the WotLK patch, it results in it being faceroll and they had to make all mobs have higher health and decrease healing.

Another example, when the patch hit, anybody could clear Sunwell easily.

[Dracullus]

Leveling was never hard, just tedious. It only changed from "kill 50 Zhevra for 4 Hooves" to "experience story". And it improves with every single expansion, in Cata they also repaired 1-60.

[Queen of Hamsters]

Nowadays the learning curve is a flat line until 110 and beyond until players hit a road block at the actual content because they were never prepared for it.

All them people leveling 1-60, yet it was incredibly rare for players to actually understand how to play their class in the objectively easiest raiding content this game has ever had. :d

While I want them to make leveling mobs require more to kill, new unpredictable AI, actual ABILITIES, I'd be hard-pressed to find a person whom learnt how to perform optimally in instanced content from plowing through world mobs. They hit harder and classes had less tools to fight with during Classic, but the AI has remained as dumb as always.

[Perryn]

Cata would be my opinion as well. Before that time you'd occasionally have to spend a little time if you were solo questing to plan out how to complete a given quest, to avoid getting killed even by normal mobs during it (at least as some classes & specs). After Cata's workover of everything mobs were easier to kill, hit less hard, a number of tricky quests were removed, Elite's were nerfed or made normal, and most of the dangers out in the world were now at best annoyances.

Sure it made it quicker to level, but also meant leveling went from an experience in and of itself, an adventure where you had something to lose, to a more or less mindnumbing "go to point a, do something, go to point b, do something else, return to questgiver" rinse and repeat. The actual content of questing wasn't so different before that, just in how you went about it and how much work it was to do, before.

[Chaelexi]

I'm going to assume that 'does' was supposed to be a 'done.' Mind explaining what 'tap levelling' is? Some lowbie forms a group with a high level, taps a mob, and lets the high level obliterate it?

Tap leveling, was lowbie gets together with a group of higher players but not in the same group. The lowbie taps an elite mob that is a higher level than him and the group of players kill the mob, lower player gets the full XP for killing the higher mob, upwards of 3-4k per kill. In Vanilla and early BC you could level from 30-50 in 5-6 hours outside of BRD and then just move up to the elites outside of BRS or the winterspring blue dragon cave for the last 10 levels in 2 more hours.

[time0ut]

Currently, the leveling content is tuned to be facerolled by naked characters. Things got easier in TBC, WotLK and Cata, but I don’t remember it being that easy.

[owbu]

Im somewhat sure that every expansion made it a bit worse. Bc made it easier to level for lots of specs, but it still took a while. Wrath made it easier across the board. And then cata started the trend of making the leveling shorter and shorter.
Hopefully at some point they just remove leveling and integrate zone questing into the max level. Was fun the first couple of times, but this 5h of forced questing before you can play the game again is getting annoying. I would much rather just keep playing the game with occasional questing, when I feel like it.

[cparle87]

Tap leveling, was lowbie gets together with a group of higher players but not in the same group. The lowbie taps an elite mob that is a higher level than him and the group of players kill the mob, lower player gets the full XP for killing the higher mob, upwards of 3-4k per kill. In Vanilla and early BC you could level from 30-50 in 5-6 hours outside of BRD and then just move up to the elites outside of BRS or the winterspring blue dragon cave for the last 10 levels in 2 more hours.

Ah, so this basically. Except without the betrayal. =-)

http://darklegacycomics.com/74

[Deleted]

it was a gradual thing I believe. In TBC I think they did a couple of XP nerfs to make the levels shorter as well as the mentioned removal of elites in many places.

WRONG. The elite quest mobs where removed with cata.

[Blackmist]

Cata made it so you couldn't do things from a few levels above you. Those red or orange quests that you used to get? Gone.

At this point most of us had some heirlooms as well, so it made it trivial. So trivial, I left my Worgen druid languishing at level 40 for about a year. Levelling a new toon just didn't interest me at all...

[hulkgor]

Three things made leveling content faceroll over the years :

The first, was their notion that the game had no place with elite\group outdoor content, and decided to stop developing elite areas like Jintha'Lor (Hinterlands), Dun Modr (Hillsbrad), Orc Castle (Redridge Mountains), etc. They even went as far as reverting those that existed into normal hubs. This happened at the end of BC before WOTLK. Only thing that was left by Cata was the 5 man arena, and even that was scrapped going forward.

The second was including a quest helper into the game. With arrows, circles and overall directions to every quest in the game. That sucked big time. Yes, people usually checked thotbot or wowhead for certain aspects of certain quests, but it worked very well. At one point people stopped even reading the quest log, and just moved to the blue circle in the minimap. That sucked, BIG TIME.

The third and last was their change to a 'chapter, linear quest experience' in WoD\Legion.

I consider those 3 changes to have been bad to the game overall, and to the leveling\questing experience in particular.

[Chaelexi]

Three things made leveling content faceroll over the years :

The first, was their notion that the game had no place with elite\group outdoor content, and decided to stop developing elite areas like Jintha'Lor (Hinterlands), Dun Modr (Hillsbrad), Orc Castle (Redridge Mountains), etc. They even went as far as reverting those that existed into normal hubs. This happened at the end of BC before WOTLK. Only thing that was left by Cata was the 5 man arena, and even that was scrapped going forward.

The second was including a quest helper into the game. With arrows, circles and overall directions to every quest in the game. That sucked big time. Yes, people usually checked thotbot or wowhead for certain aspects of certain quests, but it worked very well. At one point people stopped even reading the quest log, and just moved to the blue circle in the minimap. That sucked, BIG TIME.

The third and last was their change to a 'chapter, linear quest experience' in WoD\Legion.

I consider those 3 changes to have been bad to the game overall, and to the leveling\questing experience in particular.

THe quest helper was added because the number one downloaded addon was a quest helper and they figured they could do a better job of it, which they did by putting on the mini map the area of where your quest items can drop. And the Chapter/ Story quests are the best change, it actually provides you with a progression in the story instead of go to this farm and kill some wolves because you know wolves...... The questing experience in Vanilla was horrible in general as many times you would finish a questline and not even know that you are done, what the quest was other than go kill some <insert mob name here> for <mob's stinky yet pristine condition bowels> and they have a 2% drop rate........ and then he does not even have you do anything with these bowels.....

[God Save The King]

Each expansion did their own to lessen the burden of leveling. Several changes were made during patches as well. It's hard to pin point the time when it became faceroll, since it was gradual, and not one big change.

Reducing mounts to level 30, then to 20/40 helped. Flying at 60 helped. I recall several exp nerfs during BC/LK/Cata as well. Heirlooms during LK, the new spec system in Cata made some classes very strong. New talents in MoP allowed for some "broken" builds. I remember leveling my hunter and lock during MoP. The hunter took a talent to make crits basically guaranteed when the enemy was above 90% hp, so using aimed shot would often one shot enemies. Destro warlocks could usually one shot with chaos bolt, but that cost embers, so you'd take off like half your gear so you wouldn't one shot, and then soulburn after chaosbolt.

WoD did weird stuff with character power as well. Due to the squish, everything before cataclysm was fairly easy, while 85+ was a bit tougher. That's pretty much the system as it is today.

[Maulis425]

Every expansion has been faceroll, there is no need for it to be anything other than a faceroll to max level. You'll play the daylights out of the toon at max level any way, I don't need or want artificial roadblocks in the way.

[hulkgor]

THe quest helper was added because the number one downloaded addon was a quest helper and they figured they could do a better job of it, which they did by putting on the mini map the area of where your quest items can drop. And the Chapter/ Story quests are the best change, it actually provides you with a progression in the story instead of go to this farm and kill some wolves because you know wolves...... The questing experience in Vanilla was horrible in general as many times you would finish a questline and not even know that you are done, what the quest was other than go kill some <insert mob name here> for <mob's stinky yet pristine condition bowels> and they have a 2% drop rate........ and then he does not even have you do anything with these bowels.....

Just goes to show how the playerbase changed.

I personally enjoyed the 'liberty' in exploring the world, finding quest hubs, having to read quest text to understand their locations. I liked wandering around every corner of every zone and finding a hidden quest (there were hundreds on vanilla), it made the world feel HUGE and amazing. Like an actual RPG. The mindset on players nowadays is just ignoring leveling, since they consider it has no place in the game. It's also too fast, bland, too easy and with no exploring to be done. If leveling takes more than 8 hour, they start whining.

Also, it was vanilla, what did you expect to do on quests? Most leveling zones threats were minor. Wild animals, bandits, the occasional demon... ever since Cataclysm every expansion theme has been "WORLD IS ENDING!", so the stakes are higher, and you still kill wolves and yetis anyway.

That being said, yes, there were a couple of annoying, extremely low drop rate quests, and those could be annoying, but i just consider it part of the game. Didn't really bother me so much.

[Celarent]

Cataclysm, no contest.

Toward the end of Wrath, this headline revealed a data point that Blizzard interpreted as "easy leveling means better retention."

In 4.0+, through a combination of class changes, sub-15 adjustments, heirloom additions and other changes, the expansion with the most unexpectedly challenging endgame had a trivial lead-up.

Anecdote, but FWIW, a friend of mine played entirely questing casual, and the boredom of one-shot kills drove him from the game.

[CostinR]

Wrath. BC had already made it much faster and less challenging, especially when they removed the elite quests and reduced the XP requirements while having higher DPS then vanilla but it was Wrath with it's talents and heirlooms that made it a faceroll experience.

[Linri]

i think that wrath began making content easier, i can't recall many times i was questing or wandering around that i was truly watching my moves to make sure i didnt pull certain packs of monsters i wouldnt be able to handle

[epLe]

The answer to OP is at patch 1.12. - This was the big change.
This patch made you actually get decent stats on gear from 1-60, which made leveling faceroll in comparison to "Vanilla".

Then came cataclysm, with the revamp of old world, making the content so much easier by itself (bye bye group quests, elite mobs/areas).

[Laqweeta]

Incorrect, the WotLK patch made your character far more powerful.

Examples of this can be found on a private server that is in vanilla, but uses the WotLK patch, it results in it being faceroll and they had to make all mobs have higher health and decrease healing.

Another example, when the patch hit, anybody could clear Sunwell easily.

Uhm no.

You can’t solo clear sunwell at level 80

You can’t take on 6 mobs at level 10 in WotLK like you can in Cata either.