Unpopular opinion: Turn heirlooms into leveling buff enchants

[Fred Skinner]

You know, i belileve, one of blizzards most devastating decisions ever was to devalue old content, by making old crafting useless, by making old gear useless, by making leveling rewards as like gear useless. By making the whole old world obsolete.

One idea to make old content mattering more would be to make leveling and leveling rewards actually useful again. Which includes character progression with gear upgrades.

That would mean, heirlooms, as they are now, should be replaced or removed. As blizzard surely would not like to give up their heirloom tab, and the hundred thousands of gold they sell them for (tokens!), i would suggest to transform heirlooms into leveling enchants to items, which give additional experience, and some minor stats upgrades. Instead of a chestpiece which levels with you, you get an enchant for your chestpiece which raises int or str or agi by 2%, and your experience by 5%.

Same goes to the other heirlooms. This would mean, that leveling would return to character progression. The heirloom tab still would be there, but once you got a new item, you had to reattach the heirloom enchant to the new item.

Just one of a possible hundred ideas to make low level content more compelling. Another idea would be to add difficulty levels for questing. You had easy, normal and heroic questing. Easy would be what we had prior to legion, Normal would be after legion leveling difficulty, and Heroic would be a difficult level of questing best played in a group. The higher difficulty would reward more gold and vanity items.

What would be your ideas to make old content more compelling?

[Zentail]

2 points.

1. This is the Classic WoW forum, not General Discussion. This doesn't belong here.

2. Currently, non-heirloom gear is typically better than heirloom gear except the heirloom gear has the exp bonus. While I would be all for this kind of change, I think it's better the way it is now. You use gear that could be replaced with something better, but you don't for an exp bonus tradeoff. If this was replaced with enchants, there would definitely need to be NO stat bonus and, if anything, a negative stat effect.

[Chrotesque]

I definitely agree, I wish that heirlooms would just go away while keeping the XP boost portion active somehow. I do enjoy leveling to a degree even after all these years and it's just a shit feeling to throw away (/disenchant/sell) all those items that are covered by heirlooms. Makes it simple to level but also somewhat unrewarding.
I like the enchant idea and would fully support losing out on heirlooms even for the first few levels, where you'll run around without helmet and shoulders for a while as well.

[Carolus Rex]

Why would this be an unpopular opinion?

[MasterHamster]

Think you hit the wrong 'General Discussion', but yes, heirlooms as actual gear pieces detracts from gameplay and actual progression in favor of (as always when it comes to slippery slope design) convenience and efficiency. Not having a gear progression when leveling in retail detracts from the little satisfaction there is left there. I mean you are essentially just godmode'ing though dozens of levels and maybe get a significant choice every 15 levels. Removing the care for gear upgrades along the way is a fatal flaw.

The Exp bonus from heirlooms should have been something else than a bonus on particular items, an enchant would've been miles better, because it is so horrendously boring to have 2/3 of your item slots locked to a bunch of overpowered items.

But a change such as that would require other changes as well. Leveling is all but abandoned in retail, it is all about getting you through it as quickly as possible. There's no real gameplay in twoshotting mobs for 100+ levels until you start hitting zones where things start to scale a bit more sensible.
If leveling were to be reinvigorated, along with changing heirlooms away from being actual equippable items, you'd need to rebalance leveling, remove mob scaling (good god that change detracted even further from the little sense of progress there was), and overall make world mobs tougher. You can't just remove heirlooms as items and still leave the overall leveling experience as soulless as it's become.

[kamuimac]

when classic is so boring that people who begged for it are going back to desperately trying to cchange retail

stay in your museum nobody wants this garabge in retail

if anything blizzard should put in more heirlooms to speed up leveling further and to fill up missing slots so people dont have to use any gear from game besides looms.

[Splenda]

Moved to the right section.

[sirmalta]

This or something like this.

Heirlooms essentially ruin leveling. 90% of the gear you get is useless for you, despite sometimes having better stats, because 10% xp is better than 2 seconds off your ttk.

Its really shitty. Half the excitement is finding that new weapon or item to help you do a little better. Waiting for that level up to grab the next quest becasue it has a good weapon reward and you want it to be devent ilvl. Dungeons and the completion satchel being exciting.

Honestly, the way heirlooms work sucks. What I would much rather see is an account wide buff that for every character you get to max level, or to a level specific level.

Or keep heirlooms, but give them unique effects or use effects, and have them essentially act as a zero stat item that sits in a slot under the equipped item. Like, you equip it and it empowers your weapon slot with with an effect and xp boost. I only suggest this because it would be incredibly annoying having to create a new gear buff item every time you got a new piece of gear.

Anyway, heirlooms suck, ruin a huge part of the leveling experience, and are a half baked and archaic system.

[Fred Skinner]

Moved to the right section.

Woops, sorry. Thanks for moving.

[Irian]

This isn't an unpopular opinion. A ton of people want heirlooms to be redesigned into something that doesn't replace gear. I've been seeing suggestions like this since WotLK.

[TwoMana]

What would be your ideas to make old content more compelling?

Nothing. If Classic taught me anything, it was "old content is fucking boring".
Make new content instead.

[f4ncybear]

Just don't use heirlooms. It's that simple.

[Obelisk Kai]

Just don't use heirlooms. It's that simple.

That is not a good argument. Their very existence means that to not use them is a conscious choice, yet they are so strong you are effectively gimping your own character by attempting to play the game the way it should be made. That is not how the game should be set up.

Heirlooms are one of the worst decisions Blizzard has made in hindsight, a system that sounded great in practice (allow people who have levelled an expedited means of getting their alt character maxxed out), whose implementation has hollowed out all old content by rendering the entire gameplay loop (getting items as a questing reward that improve your character) obsolete. Even if you came across an item that was superior in terms of stats to the gear you are currently wearing, scaling would ensure the heirloom piece would rapidly surpass it...and you would surpass it even faster if you never bothered to switch it out, thus retaining the experience buff.

I am hopeful that with the upcoming level squish, Blizzard finally seizes this particular nettle and does what needs to be done, the removal of scaling heirloom gear from the game and it's replacement with a system of buffs that can be applied to the armor you earn as part of the levelling process. It's well past time this particular mistake was undone.

[strongyp]

That is not a good argument. Their very existence means that to not use them is a conscious choice, yet they are so strong you are effectively gimping your own character by attempting to play the game the way it should be made. That is not how the game should be set up.

Heirlooms are one of the worst decisions Blizzard has made in hindsight, a system that sounded great in practice (allow people who have levelled an expedited means of getting their alt character maxxed out), whose implementation has hollowed out all old content by rendering the entire gameplay loop (getting items as a questing reward that improve your character) obsolete. Even if you came across an item that was superior in terms of stats to the gear you are currently wearing, scaling would ensure the heirloom piece would rapidly surpass it...and you would surpass it even faster if you never bothered to switch it out, thus retaining the experience buff.

I am hopeful that with the upcoming level squish, Blizzard finally seizes this particular nettle and does what needs to be done, the removal of scaling heirloom gear from the game and it's replacement with a system of buffs that can be applied to the armor you earn as part of the levelling process. It's well past time this particular mistake was undone.

basically you want blizzard to remove something because you cant resist using them.

[Merryck]

I agree. Leveling would feel better if we were progressing through gear.

[strongyp]

I agree. Leveling would feel better if we were progressing through gear.

no it wouldnt it would just make it even more annoying espcially if you've levelled a lot of characters already.

[Dezminion]

Yeah, I mean Heirlooms are the only problem in leveling at the moment, you get no new abilities (no character progression), the world scales with your level and gear (gear and plus levels offer no character progression) and all we have to blame is the heirlooms, right...

[Merryck]

no it wouldnt it would just make it even more annoying espcially if you've levelled a lot of characters already.

How? You're still leveling as fast, only now you are getting gear. Wouldn't that make it less tedious? Didn't you read his post?

Otherwise, that mentality is what has brought retail to the state it is in now.

[Chrotesque]

basically you want blizzard to remove something because you cant resist using them.

Imho it's not about can or cannot, it's a simple matter of not gimping yourself on purpose by not using them, while improving the levelling process by making gear you acquire naturally worth looking at. It's there, may just as well use it. But it makes levelling less fun. Yet doing it without will become slower and thus also unfun, especially since I've done it many many times. So I choose the smaller of two evils.

Alternatively offering enchanting rolls as suggested by the OP as an alternative.
Knowing Blizzard any change in that regard won't be as simple and will take ages, in order for them to offer a "whole new way" unfortunately.

[vitor210]

2 points.

1. This is the Classic WoW forum, not General Discussion. This doesn't belong here.

2. Currently, non-heirloom gear is typically better than heirloom gear except the heirloom gear has the exp bonus. While I would be all for this kind of change, I think it's better the way it is now. You use gear that could be replaced with something better, but you don't for an exp bonus tradeoff. If this was replaced with enchants, there would definitely need to be NO stat bonus and, if anything, a negative stat effect.

this is literally posted on General Discussion, why you assume this is classic forum?