Level Squish Survey, Summer Cup #1, Diablo Sale

[chaoticcrono]

This would give a lot of people that are just playing WoW out of pure addiction a chance to quit. They've put so much time and effort into their characters and collections, so losing that would make them lose all the attachments to the game. So... probably not something Blizzard wants to do.

with blizz removing content and progression people are already losing attachment because blizz is basically nullifying the time and effort people have put into their characters.

[MrLachyG]

I have one of every class on both factions at 120. I don't feel like this is a disservice at all. Please don't try to speak for everyone when you speak for yourself.

where was I trying to "speak for everyone"? I was simply stating my opinion, going off your logic I could turn your words back around onto you for giving your opinion

[AceofH]

no problem with a level squish, but the leveling speed should remain roughly the same, its already insanely fast to level.

[ChairmanKaga]

I hope they take the opportunity to squish the number of levels and tie it into better parallel leveling/scaling ie more freedom to progress through old zones.

[MCJOHNS117]

I just dont see the point. A few expansions from now and they will have to squish again because of the precedent set. Level doesnt matter unless your at max anyway. I agree that a WoW2, or god forbid a different blizzard IP MMO offering; should be the way to go. WoW has been fun, but no king rules forever, and at the end of the day we are talking about a game that is 15 years old.

[majesta]

Level squish will be the end of my 15+ year Warcraft career. Blizzard has no idea how damaging this will be.

[Sinaa]

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Putting it that way, everything in the game is meaningless. All the numbers. All the gear. Everything.

It is indeed distressing that thanks to scaling gear is becoming increasingly meaningless.

I just don't see the problem with level numbers in general. Will someone really enjoy playing more if instead of 120>130 they get to do 60>65? It should be about facing increasingly stronger enemies whilst growing ever more powerful, but now it's all messed up anyway. Are there really new players that are put off by the max level being a very high number instead of a low number? I would have thought that it's almost a positive thing from a new player's point of view, "such wow, so many levels".

I personally would probably enjoy playing quite a bit more if there were no more level cap increases at all, but rather in an expac I had to clear the storyline in a zone to get a new ability & need to clear all of them to become dungeon ready.

[Adamas102]

I always hate hearing them talk about “new players this.. and new players that..”. What about your current players? At one point you had 10 millions... maybe if you had focused on keeping those players instead of always attracting new ones, WoW would be in a better state..

That said, I think the lvl squish is a good idea.

You are aware that to get to 10 million they had to attract more new players than they were losing, right? New players are what keep a game alive because you CANNOT have a 100% retention rate over 1, 2, 10, 15 years. The issue isn't new players vs current players because the point is to still have a game that people keep coming back to play. The ever increasing level cap is a legitimate roadblock to attracting new players and it should be addressed.

I think a level squish is a step in the right direction, in conjunction with massive decrease in the time it takes to get to max level.

[tmamass]

Level squish will be the end of my 15+ year Warcraft career. Blizzard has no idea how damaging this will be.

Amen to that. Squishing the level for Zero reason will be the last straw for many people after 15 years.
(A Level squish achieves NOTHING and solves NOTHING and like the 2 stats squish that already happens just lead to these squish sooner or later happening again ruining the game even more....)

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I think a level squish is a step in the right direction, in conjunction with massive decrease in the time it takes to get to max level.

massive time? when have you leveled a toon last? 15 years ago?

[Parad0x86]

At this point levels are nothing more than benchmarks for sections of the game and they keep things in context making a level squish completely unnecessary and potentially damaging. There is little to gain from this but confusion as to which level 80 you're referring to and relearning which zone/instance represents which level. The current level is still low enough for anyone to comprehend so it does not compare to the motivations behind stat squishing and the squish would be an entirely arbitrary fudging of numbers. Reducing the time required to level is already managed by experience tweaking so there is no benefit in terms of that. Its a lot of effort and risk just to move around numbers in hopes that it will bring in a handful of players that for some reason might not play due to the presentation of progression. On top of that I have a feeling that the number used to represent max level is low on the list of reasons as to why WoW is not regaining popularity so I'm not convinced that that is the motivation either; the game is old, washed up and MMOs are not as appealing to gamers as they once were, especially younger ones. My favorite part about this idea is that Blizzard originally went from 5 levels per expansion back to 10 because with only 5 levels players felt a slower sense of progression and ultimately less powerful at max level. Blizzard flip flops a lot so that doesn't surprise me but overall I'm scratching my head on this one.

[Kaver]

New players are what keep a game alive.

I don't agree. Blizzard are making too many changes to accommodate new players that the current player base doesn't like. They are "dumbing" down the game in way too many areas because they think new players will be turned off if they don't.

I like the level squish though. But not because of new players.

[Druidzorz]

where was I trying to "speak for everyone"? I was simply stating my opinion, going off your logic I could turn your words back around onto you for giving your opinion

No, I specifically stated I. Not a broad generalization of "people" Just because you feel like you were shafted doesn't mean everyone does.

eitherway its a huge disservice towards people who have many alts

Right here, this is where you were trying to speak for everyone who has multiple alts. Stick to I's and Mes. Then it's an opinion on how YOU feel and not an opinion on how you want EVERYONE ELSE to feel.

[Willias]

I wonder if halving the levels would be too much. As in:

Classic Zones	1-30
Outland/Northrend	29-40
Cataclysm Zones/Pandaria	40-45
Draenor	45-50
Broken Isles	50-55
BfA Zones	55-60

So essentially, let's say a zone would currently give you 2 levels, requiring 100K experience for the first one, and 120K for the second one.
After the squish that zone would give you a single level, over the course of getting 220K experience.

Talents would be gained at 8, 15, 23, 30, 38, 45, and 50. (Or alternatively they could be rounded up or down, if the aesthetic of having "round" numbers is of a bigger concern than keeping them as close as possible to the current system. 5, 15, 25, 30, 35, 45, and 50, for example). Death knight and demon hunter talents would end up being a bit weird due to being so compacted to begin with, which might even require gaining 2 talents per level early on.

In the end though, as with all other squishes, it won't really chance anything meaningful. The power curve will be slightly less smooth, but other than that, it's basically just the displayed number that is changing, which is why I don't really mind it.

The current expansion will still be a +10 level range, I'd think. So something like

Classic Zones	1-25
Outland/Northrend	25-35
Cataclysm Zones/Pandaria	35-40
Draenor	40-50
Broken Isles	40-50
BfA Zones	50-60

Doing this would allow people to skip Draenor, which I think Blizzard wants at this point as poorly as those zones have been maintained, and would make it so that they don't have to tweak the leveling speed of the current-most expansion.

And anyone who thinks that these new levels will take as long as old levels x2 are out of their minds. This will be set up with the intent of players being able to rocket out of old content and get to the newer content as fast as possible.

[Krille]

Longer. The engine is based on the one they created for Warcraft 3. They announced that 20 years ago and I assume a prototype engine existed even earlier. The thing is ANCIENT.

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And something I never understood. Why 60? Always seemed a really weird number instead of, say 50.

The engine has obviously been updated over time, they have replaced and rewritten a lot of the code. It's not the same as it was 20 years ago.

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The current expansion will still be a +10 level range, I'd think. So something like

Classic Zones	1-25
Outland/Northrend	25-35
Cataclysm Zones/Pandaria	35-40
Draenor	40-50
Broken Isles	40-50
BfA Zones	50-60

Doing this would allow people to skip Draenor, which I think Blizzard wants at this point as poorly as those zones have been maintained, and would make it so that they don't have to tweak the leveling speed of the current-most expansion.

And anyone who thinks that these new levels will take as long as old levels x2 are out of their minds. This will be set up with the intent of players being able to rocket out of old content and get to the newer content as fast as possible.

Why can't they just use EK and Kalimdor as 1-40 and then 40-50 is any later expansion, you can choose to do Outland 40-50, WoD 40-50, Northrend 40-50, Legion 40-50, BFA 40-50 and then 50-60 (if thats the top lvl) is the new expansion. I don't see why they have to cling onto older expansions being gradually more difficult or scale in level. It's just a story at this point, no reason to differentiate between the different expansions.

[justandulas]

NO MORE LEVELS!!!!

Why does WOW even need levels anymore?
What did we really gain from Level 110 to Level 120... we raced to 120 so we can play the end-game.
We completed the zones, not to level, but cause they were there or it gated content.
Even most of the zones scale to the players level... so since Legion the player level was less meaningful.

The only levels that really counts in the game is Item Level and the Expansions Artifact Power.

Why not just abandon character levels altogether. NO MORE LEVELS

Have achievements, reputations and story unlocks (account-wide) determine the gates for content and new abilities... not some arbitrary exp count that is quiet honestly an ancient mechanism that really means nothing.

No rpg mechanics at all right? Just complete the path to making wow into d3 the mmo

[Halyon]

Why can't they just use EK and Kalimdor as 1-40 and then 40-50 is any later expansion, you can choose to do Outland 40-50, WoD 40-50, Northrend 40-50, Legion 40-50, BFA 40-50 and then 50-60 (if thats the top lvl) is the new expansion. I don't see why they have to cling onto older expansions being gradually more difficult or scale in level. It's just a story at this point, no reason to differentiate between the different expansions.

How do you want to do ilvl scaling for farming old content then, which for many players is a draw to get transmog items etc?

[Krille]

How do you want to do ilvl scaling for farming old content then, which for many players is a draw to get transmog items etc?

They can easily bump up ilvl by entering older raids, they already do this. It's a non-issue, they will never make it too difficult to farm old raids.

[Sesethi]

That is a terrible idea imo because it barely solves how underwhelming leveling is. The classes need to feel powerful and unique when leveling, which is why people liked the old talent system, with the level squish it means we will never get something similar and it will just short their work even more. Imo I wouldnt mind the squish if class and spec identity was returned in a passive form

[Adamas102]

massive time? when have you leveled a toon last? 15 years ago?

Any amount of time spent leveling through the past 6 expansions is an utter waste. Too much of it is tied to story beats that never get any payoff for the typical person leveling through them. You just blaze your way through a bunch of forgettable zones, getting only a fraction of a story that is then abandoned every 10 levels. Not that bad for those of us who enjoyed the content when it was current and can get through it as efficiently as possible, but I'd hate to be a new player trying to navigate my way through so many pointless zones and levels.

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That is a terrible idea imo because it barely solves how underwhelming leveling is. The classes need to feel powerful and unique when leveling, which is why people liked the old talent system, with the level squish it means we will never get something similar and it will just short their work even more. Imo I wouldnt mind the squish if class and spec identity was returned in a passive form

Squishing the levels is exactly what would allow them to return to something like the old talent system where each level gave you something new. That simply can't be done if you keep stacking levels at the current rate, which is why you get such large gaps between talent acquisition.

[Psygon]

Max Level: 30!

That would be awesome. Power up to max in 30 could be fun.