Wait a second, when did we ever ask for leveling to be long? Just hard, not long!

[ManiaCCC]

this removing mania! why peoples is unable to make a choice and want to force other into their pow? I like heirloom i like how they work and the feeling of having them, don't like them don't use them.

because it is not a choice as long as you want play it as mmo. I tried it, few times actually. But while leveling and questing is super easy, I wasn't competitive with others in simple dungeon runs and in world pvp, I had literally zero chance to fight back - and with current servers infrastructure, world pvp skirmishes during leveling are happening quiet often (and I like it).

I understand why heirlooms are good for many players, but these items are too mandatory and they are removing almost whole gearing process from the leveling. So IMHO, they should either at least reduce numbers of heirlooms just to bring back some of the gearing (especially if leveling will take more time now) or use whole phasing/server sharing technology and separate people into two groups so guys without heirlooms are not inferior in every way to other guys around all the time.

[Goondicker]

If there a debuff that drop your damage by 25% your gonna want to kick, or out range it. If there is a spell or buff that letting a mob 1-4 shot your probably want to spell steal or kick it.

Vanilla had these sorts of things. I think you would enjoy Classic leveling.

[MasterHamster]

Really, Do you really believe that?

If this is your first time and you feel like that then damn dude but seeing how you have been on this website since 2009 which i will hazard a guess and say you have been playing this game for a quite some time then iam not sure what to call it either you are like i said a nostalgia hound or a masochist please tell me which?

Uh "believe" what exactly? I've leveled quite a lot of characters with heirlooms throughout the years and it is a goddamn joke. Now it's to the point where even leveling without heirlooms is a joke. Tried it pretty recently, but gave up because it was still insultingly easy, and it quickly felt pointless since it was still mindnumbingly boring as a result. Actually equipping heirlooms didn't do too much of a difference because going from 3-shotting to 2-shotting doesn't really feel all that different.

It's sad to see that thinking that leveling shouldn't be an insult to players, ie actually have a reason to use your spellbook, and bosses not dying in 10 seconds in dungeons is taken as being a nostalgic or a masochist. Pray forgive me for not wanting leveling to be a 72 hour twoshot fest, while 75% of my spellbook is unnecessary, irrelevant fluff.

Did you know that one of the requirements for something to be called a "game" is to have failure states? In WoW of course one such failure state is dying. It's just sad that when leveling the most likely failure state is "afk for 5 minutes while a mob chipped your health away".

[Prifter]

They want us to buy those character boosts

[Varvara Spiros Gelashvili]

Vanilla had these sorts of things. I think you would enjoy Classic leveling.

Vanilla didn't have mobs that could one shot or had dangerous debuff. It was just kind of a mindless time sink in comparison to dark souls. I mean there was some spell worth kicking but that's it.

You couldn't even stop most of the debuffs because they're were instant and took away like 3 strength which was meh and unavoidable. You had to fight mobs way to long and drinking was something you just did not a punishment for poor resource management that did make it worse though.

[gobio]

While content being "long" is not always same as content being "hard".
But in this particular case, it is exactly that.

Problem : MOBS dies too fast making the game easy.

Which means in this case long == hard. what you mean is they need to compensate you for correctly making longer kill time by increasing experience. That is a separate bargin, which also involve exp GAIN due to much less travel time when you can stay in same zone without forcing to move on.

[Nurvus]

Leveling shouldn't be harder.

Actually, it should be harder - way harder. Just not slower.
Challenge != Length

Make quests take longer to complete because they're harder, but also give more XP.
Make dungeons take longer to complete because they're harder, but also give more XP and loot.
You should feel danger. But it should never feel like a waste of time.
Blizzard does not need to mess with leveling speed in order to make leveling hard/challenging/fun/exciting.

Instead, Blizzard decided to just make leveling slower. It doesn't give us anything we need:
It does not teach new players how to use their character.
It does not make leveling more exciting.
It does not make leveling challenging.

Leveling has been boring for quite some time, but its saving grace was that it was fast.
Now it's not fast anymore.

[Kyux]

Why would any one in their right mind spend so much time leveling for the billionth time? We wanted leveling to be HARDER, not longer! This would allow people to level multiple toons in different regions so that it doesn't bore us to death and make people quit. Remember, what made it worth while in Vanilla was that Vanilla was the end game, we weren't thinking of the many more expansions to come...How many more levels do we need? why not stop at 120 and introduce other kinds of leveling?? This is just stupid.

I want leveling to be harder AND longer. I think it negatively impacts the game when people can too easily have alts. Alts should be something you have to work hard to get by leveling for ages. There is so much of the game that is pre-110. By making leveling harder you make all of that relevant again. Instead of leveling being an hurdle towards the real game at 110 leveling becomes the other half of the game. By making leveling harder you get back to what you said was good about vanilla: leveling was the game.

[Nurvus]

I want leveling to be harder AND longer. I think it negatively impacts the game when people can too easily have alts. Alts should be something you have to work hard to get by leveling for ages. There is so much of the game that is pre-110. By making leveling harder you make all of that relevant again. Instead of leveling being an hurdle towards the real game at 110 leveling becomes the other half of the game. By making leveling harder you get back to what you said was good about vanilla: leveling was the game.

If you want leveling to be meaningful, Blizzard must stop making End Game a separate universe. It has nothing to do with leveling speed.

Want to make alts harmless? Make all the passive gold income account-wide (garrison, order hall, etc).
Blizzard can also adjust Loot rules in a way that makes it useless for guilds to have alts to feed gear to mains for progress.

Slower leveling is not needed. Meaningful leveling is.
I would rather spend a day to get 40 levels in Westfall because it's super hard - but rewarding - than spend that same time rushing Westfall, Redridge, Duskwoodto get 40 levels, let alone 20.
That's what level scaling should be fixing.

In Classic WoW there was just 60 levels. Now we are going to have 120.
What Blizzard is doing with leveling scaling is good.
What Blizzard is doing by making leveling overall slower is bad - completely useless on its own.
In Classic WoW you didn't have so many gated systems in end game, such as researching artifact knowledge, dailies, weeklies.
Now End Game is URGENT.

[Thelxi]

The thing with Blizzard is that they are very calculated in the changes they make to the game. It is very rarely a black and white matter. In this particular situation for example, this might be going on:

-1-90 leveling is in need of a revamp. It is an outdated and inconsistent experience. (Benign change and motive)
-Considerably increasing the time it takes to level 1-90 makes cash shop boosts all the more attractive. (Business change and motive)

Blizzard being the corporate gaming and microtransaction goliath that they are, know that they could not push change 2 out of the blue. Even sheep would notice and be unhappy. By combining greed with benign motive, they disorient the playerbase and force them into endless discussions such as these.

Who wins? both sides. The leveling experience is improved and Blizzard will probably meet yet another microtransaction goal next quarter without having ruffled a feather. I have no degree in marketing or business, but I am sure there are textbooks on these kinds of practices.

[Xires]

Vanilla babies can't clear current content so they want leveling to be like it was back in the day because in their twisted minds this is true difficulty lol.

WAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!! I WANT IT ALL NOW!!!! WAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!! <-----You.

No, it was the adventure and needing others to complete elite quests helped formed friendships and all this other shit you don't care about. It's cool. Classic servers are coming out, and we'll have our version of the game, and you'll login, clear LFR, and think you've actually played the game. GG with your free purples. No, we raid mythic endgame and we'd like leveling to not be monotonous and boring. With no danger leveling is nothing more then a chore, rather then feeling like an adventurer out in this huge MMO world. See...that's what made WoW popular in the first place. It wasn't even the raids...it was the leveling and the community.
You'll never understand that of course because you pay your $14.99 a month and you want your purps and you want them now!!!!! lol

[Berndorf]

That's what she said.

[fooliuscaesar13]

I'm not against leveling being longer, but I'd prefer it to be more difficult. Even bringing back the larger aggro radii / harder hitting mobs from Vanilla would be a good first step in the right direction with the scaling tech. Cutting through mobs like butter without them being an actual threat to survival isn't fun to me.

/shrug

I'll keep leveling alts because I love the game, but that's what I'd change before making leveling longer via XP.

[Bumbasta]

I asked for longer! I hated how I outleveled classic zones without doing half of its questline. You can hate cata, but the revamp brought some great questing.

[Deleted]

Healers have dispelling and sustain to make up for the increased damage.

Except when you have mobs which want to heal themselves or their allies. :/

[Aggrophobic]

In vanilla you pretty much were guaranteed to die if you pulled 3 mobs your own level on any class, so...

Not really. There were many classes that could handle more than 3 mobs at a time.
Sure, you might have to sit down and eat afterwards but you would not die.

There were some like low level warriors and such that struggled more than others but still.

[Deleted]

I'm not against leveling being longer, but I'd prefer it to be more difficult. Even bringing back the larger aggro radii / harder hitting mobs from Vanilla would be a good first step in the right direction with the scaling tech. Cutting through mobs like butter without them being an actual threat to survival isn't fun to me.

/shrug

I'll keep leveling alts because I love the game, but that's what I'd change before making leveling longer via XP.

At the core, we don't need harder or longer leveling. We need a consequent leveling storyline, which you can follow from level one to max level. People have been complaining about hopping from quest to quest because they stopped to give a reasonable amount of experience. Scaling tech solves this problem.

The other problem can only be solved by giving characters their complete ability roster from the beginning, and only unlock talent rows with leveling, so you don't have such a boring experience with pressing same 2 buttons over and over. After pruning, we don't even have enough abilities so a new player could be overwhelmed with choices.

Finally, harder / more challenging content can be achieved without blizzard doing anything. Just pull more mobs. Do 5 man quests all by yourself. Clear dungeons alone. I have been doing all of this if I wanted challenge. And if I was more into auto-piloting through content to get faster to max level, I had the option just as well.

The only thing which we needed was scaling.

- - - Updated - - -

Not really. There were many classes that could handle more than 3 mobs at a time.
Sure, you might have to sit down and eat afterwards but you would not die.

There were some like low level warriors and such that struggled more than others but still.

Yeah. My warlock was fine with killing a group elite and some none-elite ads on top in one quest of roughly level 28-30 or something like that. Tank pet, dots, fear, self-heals ftw. You just need to know what your class is capable of and plan your pulls accordingly.

- - - Updated - - -

WAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!! I WANT IT ALL NOW!!!! WAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!! <-----You.

No, it was the adventure and needing others to complete elite quests helped formed friendships and all this other shit you don't care about. It's cool. Classic servers are coming out, and we'll have our version of the game, and you'll login, clear LFR, and think you've actually played the game. GG with your free purples. No, we raid mythic endgame and we'd like leveling to not be monotonous and boring. With no danger leveling is nothing more then a chore, rather then feeling like an adventurer out in this huge MMO world. See...that's what made WoW popular in the first place. It wasn't even the raids...it was the leveling and the community.
You'll never understand that of course because you pay your $14.99 a month and you want your purps and you want them now!!!!! lol

I have done all this on more than 20 characters. I am now leveling the 3rd duplicates of all classes to max, because they are Alliance and I want to be flexible in playing classes in BfA. I enjoy leveling to some degree, but after some repetitions, things get boring.

[fooliuscaesar13]

At the core, we don't need harder or longer leveling. We need a consequent leveling storyline, which you can follow from level one to max level. People have been complaining about hopping from quest to quest because they stopped to give a reasonable amount of experience. Scaling tech solves this problem.

The other problem can only be solved by giving characters their complete ability roster from the beginning, and only unlock talent rows with leveling, so you don't have such a boring experience with pressing same 2 buttons over and over. After pruning, we don't even have enough abilities so a new player could be overwhelmed with choices.

Finally, harder / more challenging content can be achieved without blizzard doing anything. Just pull more mobs. Do 5 man quests all by yourself. Clear dungeons alone. I have been doing all of this if I wanted challenge. And if I was more into auto-piloting through content to get faster to max level, I had the option just as well.

The only thing which we needed was scaling.

We'll have to agree to disagree, because what you "need" and what I "need" are two different things. Auto-pilot is boring as fuck to me and I dislike how easy it is to cleave through everything. I'm not a huge fan of "round up and AoE to max level". I also dislike the idea of "grab more mobs if you don't feel threatened" or "solo a dungeon if you want it to be more difficult". That's fine if you do, but like my solution/suggestion doesn't work for you...yours does nothing for me.
The current solution certainly fixes the problem of unfinished stories/zones, and I'm happy with that and I'll play the shit out of it. I am simply listing what I would have changed first.

[Firefall]

I've done some testing, if anything I levelled faster. There's a much more natural curve now, you just plod on through the quests. you never have to run across 1/2 a zone to get to the next one because it's not worth doing the quests anymore, you can just do everything and follow the intended questing path, which is insanely efficient. at the absolute max you are running for 1 minute to the next hub, instead of 15+ in most cases.

The fastest way to level 1-60 right now is to quest and do specific dungeons (only once for the quests). Each time you come out of a dungeon you are pretty much guaranteed a zone swap, you are chasing zones while queued because you outlevel zones before even reaching them this way sometimes. With the changes? You'd be able to queue up for dungeons while questing westfall. Come out after doing DM and RFC at easily level 17/18+, and still do wesfall instead of having to run to redridge. in the time it would take you to run to redridge, you'd be able to run BFD and hand in the first bunch of quests from westfall, that would put you around 20, and wait... Your still in wesfall. you finish westfall, go straight to duskwood probably around level 25 now, skipping redridge completely, and avoiding that 20 minute run. you've generated XP in the 20 minutes you saved, avoided a long and boring run. Finish off duskwood and do the other available dungeons, the scarlet monastery ones. Bam, your level 30+
after duskwood, because the questing path brings you close to redridge, you can go there, even though its a 15-20 zone, because scaling! This is where I stopped, because I was convinced without a shadow of a doubt that this was infinitely faster.

I got from 1-26 faster as a human on the PTR than I can on live, and it's all because of the scaling and the reduced running times. I've yet to test the difference with heirlooms / the chauffeur. I suspect it would actually make the difference slightly bigger tbh, after discovering the massive difference not running to redridge from wesfall makes. Heirlooms will likely make you leave RFC / DM at 20+ as it does on live. I intend to test this, but I think it may be possible to continue straight onto burning steppes after redridge on the route I did. Searing gorge afterwards.

A thing I keep seeing people miss aswell, although XP requirements are going up, XP gained is going up, possibly more. Imagine you are in westfall, which is a 10-15 zone. At level 10, the quests give you 100% XP, but at 11, they give you 95% (Comparatively - XP requirement goes up, reward stays the same) with the scaling, every quest you ever do is 100% XP, it's as if you are the minimum level for the zone, even if you are 30 levels beyond that. If you have 3 quests to turn in, and the first levels you up, the tooltip on the other 2 bumps up the XP reward, to the point where it fills almost the exact same % of a level.

Needs confirmation but Elwynn -> Westfall -> Duskwood -> Redridge -> Burning Steppes -> Searing gorge. With each dungeon done once available - may be possible. That would line you up to continue straight onto Outland / Northrend, and take maybe 4 hours? 5? With the scaling Dragonblight is just going to be an XP orgy, Sholazar too. both zones are extremely good for XP, which is why you only do 1/4 of them before leaving on live. You can do both to 100% which would easily be 10 or more levels. I'm happy to assume 60-80 would be faster due to those 2 zones alone. Then the glorious Jade forest time, the difference is, now you can fly there at 80. and the XP would potentially be even better than it is on live, because the "always 100% XP" thing I mentioned. You'd possibly get more than the standard of live, which is 85-90 (the entire MoP levelling from the first zone). it's safe to assume you can get 80-85 as a minimum. I'd bet you can hit 86 or 87 though. You can now go and do any pandaria or Cata zone until 90, at which you can go to Draenor. Assuming the good old Gorgrond XP orgy is still a thing, your gonna be level 100 30 minutes after you land in your garrison at level 90. From here, it's the same as it is today in the Broken Isles.

I don't know how long 1-110 is going to take, as I've not done it, but I'm gonna guesstimate it to be considerably less than it is now.

The beauty of this is, that although I found levelling itself to be faster, combat time is maybe, 3 or 4 times longer. You can do a full rotation at level 20, which is really nice, since you one hit everything upto level 100 with heirlooms normally.

This has my seal of approval, and I'm looking forward to the allied race's. Levelling is so nice now, I'm almost disappointed they start at 20 instead of 1.

Signal boosting the objectively correct reply. They increased XP to level slightly to offset the quest diffilculty system being completely changed by this.

[Tiwack]

Taking longer = more challenging
Zzz
/s