Leveling in WoW is pretty meh - discussion

[Baroclinic]

I would say an alternative path would be better. They should split leveling up like theyre doing professions where you can jump into current content or go back.

I'm sure they could "time walk" characters and gear to expansions and maybe unlock full level when they max the content. That would be fun as hell. Of coarse that would take a ton of programmer time and resources. And the lvl boost would be worthless...

Then again they did build an expansion once partially around redesigning old content.

[Deleted]

---snip---

What do you expect? Why do you create this discussion? It pisses me off, let me tell you why:

1)IF YOU HAD THE PERFECT leveling experience - how many alts would you create? 50? 100? 500 alts?
2)If they did it perfectly, how much will the value return, compared to, if they invest the time in end game and general functionality development(things that the majority ends up playing anyway)?

Stop creating idiotic threads(this is nothing personal, just general trend here).

Mod Edit: In the future, if you're going to respond to a long post with a few brief sentences, please snip or reduce the quoted portion like the above.

[Azerate]

Everyone wants something else from leveling and it's clearly visible in this thread. They did what they believed was a good idea and IMO the idea itself is okay - some parts are overtund though, which makes it a pain.

The only thing I really want is to make it as fast as possible. Scaling is fine, but make it like 50% faster and we're done here.

[Grevmak]

What do you expect? Why do you create this discussion? It pisses me off, let me tell you why:

1)IF YOU HAD THE PERFECT leveling experience - how many alts would you create? 50? 100? 500 alts?
2)If they did it perfectly, how much will the value return, compared to, if they invest the time in end game and general functionality development(things that the majority ends up playing anyway)?

Stop creating idiotic threads(this is nothing personal, just general trend here).

Dude. Learn to quote posts before you complain about idiotic threads.

I don't see how a thread discussing leveling, the first part of a new player's experience, is idiotic. I put down a fairly well thought out list of points, added 2 different TL;DR's and you still go on blatantly insulting me for no reason other than...Yeah I don't see the point. But just for the heck of it, let's dissect what you wrote

1) I already roll a ton of alts because I love the feel of levelling, I am however in the minority I guess, since no one ever rolls alts in WoW...Wait.
Regardless, since the playerbase shits itself whenever content that isn't endgame PVE pops up, I proposed some systems to make leveling a more enjoyable experience without costing Blizz a fortune. If you tell me this discussion is moot cause Blizz does what they want, then congratulations! Forums themselves are entirely irrelevant when discussing games then.

2) This argument is incredibly silly. WoW is still made by an insanely large AAA company. If you pick away a handful of developers for maybe at most a few months and tell them to make something akin to what I proposed - or heck, just tell your database engineers to go ahead and pump up the scaling tech some more (which won't take ANY important devtime away from your precious endgame, I heard someone tell me warlocks were designed by 1 dev so scaling the world could make the difference...Now that's moronic) and there you go. You won't lose a raiding tier because 5-10 developers made a leveling side project, especially since assets, mechanics and everything inbetween can simply be reused.

With this logic you brought up, every expansion loses SO MUCH ENDGAME because Blizz makes a new leveling experience at the beginning. Except they are making stuff that can later be used for World Quests, design systems that can scale to endgame etc.

As much as y'all like to pretend that leveling is fully redundant, it really is not. I've met a LOT of new players, none of which just use the level boost and completly skip the 1-110 experience. They all go through it, because just getting to endgame is

A) Insanely overwhelming for new players
B) not fun, you wanna see your character grow
C) Confusing in regards to lore and the story (Not really perfect during leveling but atleast somewhat better than nothing)

so this whole "Tell em to boost" attitude doesn't work from my personal experience and also while reading forums.

Add to that no guidance towards how to play endgame at all, whether it is your class or how group play works (Again, Wildstar did this fantastically, with a guide on what tanks, Heals and DPS do in dungeons and a first trashpack in the first dungeon that only allows you to continue playing if you get this idea without seeming like a boring tutorial).

If you don't wanna read any of that since I am fairly certain you haven't read what I wrote regardless:

1) A billion.
2) The value would make WoW become the #0 MMO, beating itself in subnumbers, WoW would get monthly expansion and all wars would stop. The happiness of the playerbase would then become so dense that it'd form a singularity, wiping out all existance in one big Bang.

Except not really, but you overestimate the value of abbreviating existing systems - take assets we already have, make some simple minibosses with mechanics that already exist, plop em down on a zone you can make with the 3d model editor they have, presto. Doesn't take 500 devs to work fulltime on it.
The other thing I proposed takes even less effort: Scaling. Did the scaling hurt Legion endgame? Not at all. Broadening that was one of my proposed ideas. Stop pretending that if Blizz does anything regarding endgame we'll lose a raidtier.

Also new players boost but then level their own character first, source: Personal experience, forums, Q&A with blizz IIRC that stated that that's a thing.

[Deleted]

I don't see how a thread discussing leveling, the first part of a new player's experience, is idiotic. I put down a fairly well thought out list of points, added 2 different TL;DR's and you still go on blatantly insulting me for no reason other than...Yeah I don't see the point. But just for the heck of it, let's dissect what you wrote

1) I already roll a ton of alts because I love the feel of levelling, I am however in the minority I guess, since no one ever rolls alts in WoW, which is why I proposed some systems to make leveling a more enjoyable experience without costing Blizz a fortune. If you tell me this discussion is moot cause Blizz does what they want, then congratulations! Forums themselves are entirely irrelevant when discussing games then.

2) This argument is incredibly silly. WoW is still made by an insanely large AAA company. If you pick away a handful of developers for maybe at most a few months and tell them to make something akin to what I proposed - or heck, just tell your database engineers to go ahead and pump up the scaling tech some more (which won't take ANY important devtime away from your precious endgame, I heard someone tell me warlocks were designed by 1 dev so scaling the world could make the difference...Now that's moronic) and there you go.

As much as y'all like to pretend that leveling is fully redundant, it really is not. I've met a LOT of new players, none of which just use the level boost and completly skip the 1-110 experience. They all go through it, because just getting to endgame is

A) Insanely overwhelming for new players
B) not fun, you wanna see your character grow
C) Confusing in regards to lore and the story (Not really perfect during leveling but atleast somewhat better than nothing)

so this whole "Tell em to boost" attitude doesn't work from my personal experience and also while reading forums.

Add to that no guidance towards how to play endgame at all, whether it is your class or how group play works (Again, Wildstar did this fantastically, with a guide on what tanks, Heals and DPS do in dungeons and a first trashpack in the first dungeon that only allows you to continue playing if you get this idea without seeming like a boring tutorial).

If you don't wanna read any of that since I am fairly certain you haven't read what I wrote regardless:

1) A billion.
2) The value would make WoW become the #0 MMO, beating itself in subnumbers, WoW would get monthly expansion and all wars would stop. The happiness of the playerbase would then become so dense that it'd form a singularity, wiping out all existance in one big Bang.

Except not really, but you overestimate the value of abbreviating existing systems - take assets we already have, make some simple minibosses with mechanics that already exist, plop em down on a zone you can make with the 3d model editor they have, presto. Doesn't take 500 devs to work fulltime on it.
The other thing I proposed takes even less effort: Scaling. Did the scaling hurt Legion endgame? Not at all. Broadening that was one of my proposed ideas. Stop pretending that if Blizz does anything regarding endgame we'll lose a raidtier.

Also new players boost but then level their own character first, source: Personal experience, forums, Q&A with blizz IIRC that stated that that's a thing.

YOU... YOU LOVE IT.

I get it. You love creating alts. I think we all do from time to time.

But you ask for something that is not possible. You cannot create a perfect leveling experience, meanwhile the game is all about max level content(and you have 2 years to release it).

If you want to discuss something like this(and I give you that, you put up good effort), but you also have to see this major detail.

I think you will be happy, when release Classic WoW, simple the fact it takes up all your freetime to level up.

[Re4leader1]

I enjoyed 1-60 the most maybe just cause since I've been playing, the only way to lvl was dungeon grind your while way throug. so I never got into the original zones. 60+is just way to God damn slow especially since were going up to 120 now. I enjoyed the 7.3.5 leveling in the first alt I did it. After that it lost its touch and I was ready for the old fast dungeon grind

[msdos]

Dungeon scaling = good.

World scaling = bad.

They should just double down on the ARPG and make world leveling about blowing up creatures. I dunno if anyone remembers, but back in vanilla you used to see warrior and mage power level together by just using blizzard on giant packs of high value mobs.
They've basically turned leveling into something you would be doing in a single player RPG, except you don't get a reward every level and you don't get stronger every level, at some spots you even get weaker until you round up the zone's leveled gear.
(Imagine playing Skyrim. Everything from mudcrab to bandit is a healthsponge, you kill everything one by one and when you level nothing happens. Then after that, you continue to whack away at Sodden Mudcrabs and Eastern Bandits, killing them the same speed, again, just in a different zone, nothing happening, even though you're now 20 levels higher. This is WoW leveling now.)

This makes zero sense to me. I may never level another class because it's really boring and unfulfilling.

[Deficineiron]

It's a good design choice - of course the gouging comes from the pricing - but I doubt the people who designed it and the people who set the price are in the same team. I guess they could introduce incremental boosts like you suggested, but I bet those would be priced similarly.

pretty safe to assume that marketing sets the prices on this stuff.

Dev's knew it would be a paid service, knew how much blizzard charged for other automated services, and likely had a very good idea of approx. how much it would cost- roughly the same as other services.

I have long suspected blizzard makes game changes intended to encourage paid-service use.

First thing that caught my eye was when Every Man for Himself became the human racial. Humans suddenly became much better pvp toons. min-maxers might pay to swap to human.

I don't remember the new racials on cataclysm races, but I remember thinking at least one of them looked like something a min-maxer would want to move to.

Pandaland I recall panda's got a food buff that made it bis pve buff at one point, or so it looked.

There may have been other racials which seemed to alter best pvp or pve racial and encourage faction/race changes.

[Deleted]

Questing and leveling up to Legion is definitely significantly less enjoyable because of how much slower and more tedious it all is with this scaling. The mobs hit way harder, you hit way weaker, and the XP per level is higher, so everything is less rewarding. I don't feel like it's 'challenging', it's just annoying.

It is just tedious, not challenging/immersive/engaging at all.

[craigw]

10 seconds is probably okay, basically because you want the dpsers to get out a full rotation at the very least. Any less than that results in a very unfulfilling experience where part of the group doesn't feel like they're adequately contributing to the success of the dungeon.

10 seconds of trash also prevents the tank from constantly running throughout the dungeon while the rest of the party chases after them. Ideally you would want an average tank to be able to pull 1 good sized pack and keep themselves alive with moderate effort, but a good tank could pull 2 or 3 packs at a time and keep themselves alive. This would offer a very rewarding and fun experience for every caliber of player in my opinion.

Having a tank run through the dungeon non stop without fear isn't fun for anyone, and having the dungeon so difficult that a single trash pack is scary for even experienced groups is clearly the wrong way to go about things.

There's one thing that people need to keep in constant mind here and that is LEVELING DUNGEONS are supposed to be accessible to the entire playerbase. If we were talking about mythic + on the other hand, my opinion would be the complete opposite of everything that I've said here.

running thru a dungeon as a tank and pulling everything you can was in fact fun for any tank who played. I loved it.

- - - Updated - - -

trash in random dungeons and the "world" should be a faceroll. up the health and time it takes to kill elites (bosses) and make mechanics during bosses important, but make trash a faceroll in the world and dungeons. actually prep people to play the game. trash has and always will be a joke now. standing in everything during a boss encounter while leveling thru old content does little to no damage even now.. it "trains" people to tunnel.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

I used to enjoy leveling a 1 to max character about once an expansion. Then slowly over the course of the current expansion getting those 5-6 characters up to max level. Usually didn't do much with any of them outside of 1-2 beyond "world quest" and "heroic 5 man" level stuff but they were just toons I enjoyed once upon a time and use as slaves for some professions reason usually. But I will admit I did not do this in Legion. I couldn't stand leveling to 60 at all.

It is pretty clear to me they want you to just buy the boost.

[Haywire5714]

running thru a dungeon as a tank and pulling everything you can was in fact fun for any tank who played. I loved it.

good for you dude, but tuning dungeons so that tanks can charge through and kill everything themselves without fear of dying is bad for the game. I hope you realize that.

[Osmeric]

Yet they put cosmetic rewards behind leveling from a scratch, they incentify leveling yet its still as unenjoyable as it was before, i simply don't believe that their designers are that bad to put it in and forget about it, from everything i see they did with leveling recently - they are probing for changes and look for feedback to make further, bigger changes

Perhaps the allied race thing was an experiment to see how much people dislike leveling. Offer a reward, and if people still don't do it, then you know they dislike it at least that much.

[Fumu]

All I want, all it would take to make Azeroth fun again, is

1. Allow you to quest in mainland Azeroth to level cap
2. Add WoD-style treasures to other leveling brackets

There are so many zones with “new” storylines that I’ll never get to see because even after the nerfs to exp, you level quickly. The pace is fine but feeling like crap because 57 rolled to 58 and you habe to go go HFP, AGAIN, feels terrible. Not to mention the lorelol of going from Cata era, to BC era, to LK era, back to Cata and onward. Pretty sure newbies think the Warchief is a shift job with different people clocking in every few hours.

As for treasures, we can all fly in old zones so just sticking some new treasures randomly scattered in would be fun to hunt down. It would not only allow you to blast through if you wanted to target them, it would also add something new to do in old zones without (presumably) taking too much precious dev time away from new and endgame content.

[Deficineiron]

Perhaps the allied race thing was an experiment to see how much people dislike leveling. Offer a reward, and if people still don't do it, then you know they dislike it at least that much.

I don't know the answer to this so the question is completely serious.

If I choose an allied race, and buy the instant 110, do I get all the cosmetic stuff?

If affirmative, you know what I think. Otherwise, I wonder if it will be turned into a 'yes' later.

[SL1200]

What is leveling for? You don't get more powerful. You don't earn new abilities. Everything scales up with you, including players. What is the point in leveling anyway?

[Deleted]

What is leveling for? You don't get more powerful. You don't earn new abilities. Everything scales up with you, including players. What is the point in leveling anyway?

If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and costs...$60....

[Osmeric]

I don't know the answer to this so the question is completely serious.

If I choose an allied race, and buy the instant 110, do I get all the cosmetic stuff?

I believe the answer is "no".

[Lazuli]

Leveling in 99% of MMO is insanely archaic and tedious with no or nearly no account wide progress, the only MMO that breaks this mold that I know of is GW2 which actually has enjoyable levels. It gets boring too doing tons of random events but at least it isn't accepting hundreds of quests with retarded dialogue about collecting 10 bear asses. They don't add new levels just masteries which replace them that are FAR better designed AND account wide. 1 grind with huge convenience account wide so it's actually enjoyable to level alts, this is how it should be, we should be rewarded not PUNISHED for leveling an alt!

WoW keep adding levels to the game yet expect us to keep playing beyond 1 character ? Well not likely because they ruined every class playstyle in Legion for me and I made every one to 110 - of course before the aids patch that ruined leveling. I've been playing this game for what seems like eons and it's simply tiring now, apparently this game is casual yet they are obsessed with making every fucking road block humanly possible and gating every single little thing just to be douche nozzles? I really don't get it.

FFXIV is apparently a good game at max level, but I wouldn't know, it takes ages to reach the cap and their questing is just as if not more aids than WoW is. I don't understand how devs can even pass this garbage as content, it's really embarrassing, I thought it was 2018 not 2004.

[Deleted]

Leveling especially since Cataclysm has been relatively easy but at least the mobs were somewhat of a threat. Legion leveling takes longer due to the scaling and while scaling has its benefits it also makes the game mundane, you're in no real danger and you generally kill monsters in a few hits, when they actually reach you they do no damage and because of scaling it doesn't matter what type of mob it is because you just 2 shot them all, it's like WoW went from a fun adventure game where you grind and do the occasional spread out quest to just going A to B until the zone is completed and due to the difficulty it feels like an interactive movie. Dungeons used to feel powerful because you had to clear elites on the way to the portal etc and the elites were significantly stronger than general mobs, now it doesn't matter if the mob is elite.