Poll: The real game starts...

[glowpipe]

The real game starts when you start raiding Heroic + and start with mythic keystones. Leveling is outdated and need to be changed

[Bangdingow]

Maybe I've been playing the game for too long but there really is no sense of adventure at all anymore. Blizzard has tried so hard to craft a certain player experience that they've removed ANY RPG feel from the game. They can call it a theme park MMO all they want but it's barely even that anymore. It's more like Farmville than anything else. You log in and do the shit you "have" to do then log out. I have to get my M+ 10 done for the week, I need to get my Uldir clear in for the week, I need to get my Island expeditions done for the week, I need to my WQs done. Sure, it's occasionally fun but more often than not it's a chore that I keep doing out of habit.

The endgame is like being in a hamster wheel. You keep getting more and more powerful, they keep releasing more and more powerful foes. You get to "feel" more powerful for a month or so then start the entire cycle starts over again and you get to repeat that process over and over again until the servers shut down. You don't even know if you've ever really even killed a boss because Blizzard could bring them back to life in any capacity they see fit. The story of Sysiphus come to mind when I think about modern wow except I'm choosing to do this. Fucking Masochist.

[Nikkaszal]

Level cap, purely for the reason that this is where you stretch your wings, flex your muscles and actually use everything you have.

As an example, being a healer - nothing matters at all until you're in challenging content. Right up until you hit something you're not quite, or only just, geared for, you barely even need to LOOK at your party's HP. Your healing kit is usually relegated to the cheapest instant cast or HoT rolling on someone to top them off while you spend your time doing damage. Cooldowns, defensives and utility might as well not exist until level cap, since you never need to use them.

[Lochton]

When does the real game start and why do you think that way?

The real game starts at the adventure you embark on. As you progress in strength and might, your story unfolds and welcomes more chapters to the game for you.

[Azerate]

At level cap, of course. And it's been like that at least since Wrath, which is when I started playing.

[Rozz]

With how Blizzard has so far been offering a leveling boost with each new expac since WoD, I think it's fair to say that the "current" game starts a max level. It's the issue of a game where you can't "skip" old content.

Expansions for WoW are set up so that new players can just jump in without any regards to what came before them. That's good for marketing, but sucks when:
1) New players who just want to play the stuff advertised find out they have to play the "old stuff", unless they use their boost.
2) Old/Current players have to constantly replay the same game just to make another character, which you don't get much added satisfaction from replaying the content. This wouldn't be so terrible if so much end game content wasn't geared towards having multiple characters in the first place.

Leveling design def needs to be looked at to some degree, because I'm glad there is always content for someone...but the quality of that content doesn't always stand the test of time.

[TheFirstOnes]

It should start at level 1...

[Soon-TM]

What a facetious question. Of course, technically the game starts at level 1, which the usual white knights have rushed to point at. But if they were actually honest, they should realize that levelling, in its current state, is nothing but a tedious, uneventful and long af tutorial blocking you from reaching the real action. The game is so tilted towards max level-only raids/M+/RBGs/arenas as the only form(s) of player progression, that the open world feels like a huge chore to complete, rather than the stage where all of the game content is taking place.

The scaling zones in 7.3.5 and the XP nerfs in 8.1 are nothing but bandaids. They are welcome, but don't fix the core issue at all.

[Maarius]

At level cap, of course. And it's been like that at least since Wrath, which is when I started playing.

Fun fact: they reworked all of the old zones with Cata, the expansion after Wrath. When you started at level 1 every quest was new to the players at that time.