New Leveling System - Problems

[Nebron]

Okay, so before I posted anything there, I wanted to wait for some more clarification, but it's all explained now.

So, the idea is that within the range of 1-10, you will be leveling in the starting areas of each race - just as it is now.

If you are a new to the game Blizzard offers an introductory tutorial in range of 1-10 in Stormheim that "will involve teaching players how to do navigate the game world, the basics of their class, and a mini-dungeon" (source: Wowhead).

Now, once you are 10, you are able to choose any expansion content to level in until you are 50. All you need to do is to speak with Chromie who will send you wherever you wish to go. You can jump between different expansions, yet the idea is to get you from 10 to 50 withing a single expansion.

And here come the problems...

It has been stated at the very panel of WoW by Ion himself that they want to bring back leveling experience in which every level is meaningful, because... "it's RPG right?". And it seems to be pretty contradictory.

First of all, they squish levels from 120-130, to 50-60 (as the max level for another expansion). As far as some people might be against that idea, it's not a bad move. I can imagine a new player coming to play WoW to realize that there are 130 levels ahead of him. It could be a pretty daunting experience. Nevertheless, squishing the levels seems to be a pretty good idea.

But the thing is, that what I understand by that is that the time required for leveling through 1-50 would stay the same as it was with 1-120. With the new information I have been waiting for, it looks like it won't be this way. The time required for these 50 levels will be cut to like... 10 hours, maybe 20 at best? I can't imagine how they want to execute that idea, but you can't extend the time required to level up if you want players to get all these levels within the same expansion.

And it has a lot of implications. First that comes to my mind is that you won't be able to progress through your professions in pair with leveling. It's impossible now, let alone in their new concept of leveling system.
It also seems like reading spells and talents descriptions will take the same amount of time as going from 1 to 50 with pure leveling. Of course, that's an exaggeration, but I hope you get my point.
What will happen with heirlooms? If you are about to level your character up in like 10 hours, what will happen if you are fully geared with heirlooms and with friend on the RaF system?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but instead of making levels more meaningful, they do actually quite the opposite. Each level will have much less meaning than it has right now. It will be rushing through the content just the get your hands on the new content. If we talk about the "RPG" I always thought that leveling is a crucial part of this game. What's the difference between leveling and buying a boost to level 50? And what will happen to boosts as they will become pointless really?

This is how I would imagine it:

• they squish the level just like now;
• you can choose ANY zone you want to level in (just what they want), but the amount of experience stays the same (at least if we count it in time);
• basically, I would make leveling more difficult and a little bit longer, so that every time you ding, you get something that enhances your character (new (old) talent trees/ getting new skills - maybe even ranks of spells that will be applied automatically - still better than nothing!)
• on top of that I would introduce class quests and campaigns every 10 levels (5 of them together) - so that they will offer rare armor sets, class-specific weapons, or maybe class-specific trinkets;
• there's an ongoing problem with class identity vs. class balance - and the problem is that people don't really get the idea that each spec and class having an access to CC's, ress, movement boosts etc. for the sake of balance, eventually kills the class identity - I'd get rid off that so that class identity is there.

What's your thoughts on that? Let me know, maybe I will change my mind, or maybe I simply don't understand something!

[Kathranis]

They said leveling 1-50 will be about 60-70% faster than leveling from 1-120.

It seems that they want to balance it so that getting from 10-50 will take you through the entire story of a chosen expansion. The goal is to clean up timeline issues, but also to let you experience a full storyline rather than leaving zones or continents partway through a story.

From 1-50 you will get either a new ability, talent, or feature every time you level up, or nearly every time.

[Skylander]

I sense healers will be super OP in Shadowlands. Getting abilities back so they'll DPS and heal themselves.

World of Healercraft.

[hulkgor]

What are you on about O_o.

- Sped up process (60-70% faster)
- Gains every level (talent, skills, other stuff like mount\wtv)
- Choice of expansion (and no jumping around continents unless you decide to)
- New experience for new players daunted of 'catching up' after 15 years.
- Most likely easier to find groups to dungeons whilst leveling.
- If boosts turn irrelevant since leveling is fast, BETTER FOR THE PLAYERS? you're concerned about what happens no boosts? SERIOUSLY? Feel free to keep purchasing them, i guess.

I sincerely do not understand what your issues are.

[tehealadin]

I won't lie, I just want to know if Pink Paw is coming back.

[DeadTed]

The idea is this; from level 10 to 50, you are playing through one expansion content without the speed up. So you either play through Cata without it sped up, play through WoD without it sped up, Legion, or Bfa, etc.. That's the concept anyway, so they are going back to not speeding up older content, and dungeons aren't just a cake walk, so the experience is actually meaningful. Currently it's easy to compare that when you do earlier content (which is sped up) and then you get to BFA content and suddenly things slow down and you're actually experiencing the game. With this new system you will only fully experience one expansion of your choice at it's entirety, then on to current content aka Shadowland.

Basically a good way to understand this, is that the time it would take you to level from 10 to 50 if you choose BFA should be approximately the same as the time it would take for you to get from 110 to 120 currently (BFA content without speed up). This goes retroactively with all the older expansions when it was brand new. ( which should also be approximately the same.)

Yes, it would be shorter then 1-110, but they want you to fully experience one expansion without skipping things, it's a quality over quantity kind of thing. And this makes leveling alt meaningful too because you can now experience other expansions at its entirety through a different character, instead of all alts skipping through all expansions but non can experience an expansion fully like it is currently. Once this goes live you will see how bad the old design was. This new system is almost like you get to pick your expansion and you play through a mini classic WoW, stuck in whichever expansion you chose, until you hit level 50 and on to Shadowland, it's going to be great.

As for professions, imo they want you to max the profession of the expansion of your choice. Think of the chosen expansion to be the freebie, you then have to work for the other expansions once you hit end game.

[gcsmith]

Why would professions be an issue? They're tied to the expansion now anyway.

[Highelf]

Are they revamping Azeroth again like in Cata?

[SinAscendant]

Okay, so before I posted anything there, I wanted to wait for some more clarification, but it's all explained now.

So, the idea is that within the range of 1-10, you will be leveling in the starting areas of each race - just as it is now.

If you are a new to the game Blizzard offers an introductory tutorial in range of 1-10 in Stormheim that "will involve teaching players how to do navigate the game world, the basics of their class, and a mini-dungeon" (source: Wowhead).

Now, once you are 10, you are able to choose any expansion content to level in until you are 50. All you need to do is to speak with Chromie who will send you wherever you wish to go. You can jump between different expansions, yet the idea is to get you from 10 to 50 withing a single expansion.

And here come the problems...

It has been stated at the very panel of WoW by Ion himself that they want to bring back leveling experience in which every level is meaningful, because... "it's RPG right?". And it seems to be pretty contradictory.

First of all, they squish levels from 120-130, to 50-60 (as the max level for another expansion). As far as some people might be against that idea, it's not a bad move. I can imagine a new player coming to play WoW to realize that there are 130 levels ahead of him. It could be a pretty daunting experience. Nevertheless, squishing the levels seems to be a pretty good idea.

But the thing is, that what I understand by that is that the time required for leveling through 1-50 would stay the same as it was with 1-120. With the new information I have been waiting for, it looks like it won't be this way. The time required for these 50 levels will be cut to like... 10 hours, maybe 20 at best? I can't imagine how they want to execute that idea, but you can't extend the time required to level up if you want players to get all these levels within the same expansion.

And it has a lot of implications. First that comes to my mind is that you won't be able to progress through your professions in pair with leveling. It's impossible now, let alone in their new concept of leveling system.
It also seems like reading spells and talents descriptions will take the same amount of time as going from 1 to 50 with pure leveling. Of course, that's an exaggeration, but I hope you get my point.
What will happen with heirlooms? If you are about to level your character up in like 10 hours, what will happen if you are fully geared with heirlooms and with friend on the RaF system?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but instead of making levels more meaningful, they do actually quite the opposite. Each level will have much less meaning than it has right now. It will be rushing through the content just the get your hands on the new content. If we talk about the "RPG" I always thought that leveling is a crucial part of this game. What's the difference between leveling and buying a boost to level 50? And what will happen to boosts as they will become pointless really?

This is how I would imagine it:

• they squish the level just like now;
• you can choose ANY zone you want to level in (just what they want), but the amount of experience stays the same (at least if we count it in time);
• basically, I would make leveling more difficult and a little bit longer, so that every time you ding, you get something that enhances your character (new (old) talent trees/ getting new skills - maybe even ranks of spells that will be applied automatically - still better than nothing!)
• on top of that I would introduce class quests and campaigns every 10 levels (5 of them together) - so that they will offer rare armor sets, class-specific weapons, or maybe class-specific trinkets;
• there's an ongoing problem with class identity vs. class balance - and the problem is that people don't really get the idea that each spec and class having an access to CC's, ress, movement boosts etc. for the sake of balance, eventually kills the class identity - I'd get rid off that so that class identity is there.

What's your thoughts on that? Let me know, maybe I will change my mind, or maybe I simply don't understand something!

Why do you guys keep asking for longer leveling? It already takes way too long as is

I have a job and a life, I do not want to waste an entire month of playtime, or alternately $60, on leveling one toon

In any case, wasn't one of the big things of Classic that leveling was supposedly meaningful there? And they only had 60 levels. Why, when this exact same situation is applied to Live, does it suddenly become too short/too easy?

They already increased the difficulty with scaling, what do you want them to do, add an extra 10 mobs/drops to every quest? That's not harder, just more tedious

As for your "class quests every ten levels" thing, dude, you realize you're asking for the equivalent of an entire new zone right? That's 300 quests total to write test and code.

In comparison, each patch adds about 700-800 quests, so you're asking us to give up half a content patch for content that most players will never see (historically, only 15-20% of players even have two toons).

[VinceVega]

I like the system htey intruduce.

BfA for new players to be on the same page. Faster leveling. The ability to do all of it in any expansion you want to... NO NEED FOR BOOSTS!!!

Retail wow is all about the current expansion. No need to really redo everything else.
Next expansion new players probably will play through shadowlands and so on.

I don't get your concern with heirlooms. Also 10 hours seems a bit short estimate. But if not. Why not? It is good. Twinks are completely useless running through old content no one is playing anymore except too rush to the current one. No need to spend hundreds of hours in it.

If you are one of the rare players who actually play wow for the old expansions... no one is hindering you. Actually it is probably even better for you as all expansions are scaled for every level. Go out and have fun.

[Thetruth1400]

I sense healers will be super OP in Shadowlands. Getting abilities back so they'll DPS and heal themselves.

World of Healercraft.

Unless they change the way mana works, not a chance. As it is now, a DPS spec can spurt out maybe 10 heals before they're OOM. Adding in one more heal option isn't going to fix that.

If you're talking Healers specifically, having access to 1 more DPS ability (of which we know very little at this point) it's not going to do much. For a priest, they gave the example of having PW:K, an ability that won't even come into play until a mob is already down to 20% health. It's not game changing in the least.

[pinelakias]

I like the new idea of leveling. Have 17 alts and plan on doing more (mostly for goblin reasons, since BfA has no reason to exist). If it were more like vanilla, I wouldnt do more than two alts (main DPS, alt tank, alt heal). Cutting the time you need to reach the max level is good for retail because leveling doesnt matter in retail. And thats what they just admitted. This system is only here because the 15 levels of gaining absolutely nothing were horrible.

[ercarp]

Yeah, this is a very big concern for me. I was extremely confused when they said leveling was too slow, when it's been anything but that. You'll also be shooting yourself in the foot if you choose any other location besides Kul Tiras or Zandalar as they have the fewest number of zones.

• Kul Tiras (3 zones): 13.3 levels per zone
• Broken Isles (4 zones): 10 levels per zone
• Cataclysm (5 zones): 8 levels per zone
• Draenor (5 zones): 8 levels per zone
• Pandaria (6 zones): 6.6 levels per zone
• Outland (6-7 zones): 5.7 to 6.6 levels per zone
• Northrend (7-8 zones): 5 to 5.7 levels per zone

[Marston]

Are they revamping Azeroth again like in Cata?

No. I just saw the panel, and this is their idea for new players and existing players/alts:

As a completely new player who never played the game, you will go from 1-10 in a new zone, Exiled Reaches. This is a new discovered island where an expedition team got lost. You, as a new recruit, get send there and uncover what happend there. You will actually fight an ogre necromancer and a revived dragon in a 2 boss mini dungeon that scales from 1-5 players as the finale. Because of that, your faction leaders will notice you and send you directly into Battle for Azeroth content. Mainly because this story ties into Shadowlands and is also the most recent expansion that everyone has experienced.

Now, once you have done all that and create an alt, you can either go to the new zone or choose any of the current starting zones for 1-10. After that you go into the capital city and find Chromie, who basically tells you "Haven't you done this before?". Then you can choose any expansion content - current 1-60 cata, TBC, WotLK, 80-90 cata, MoP, WoD, Legion or BFA - and level in that expansion from 10-50. The idea is to fully experience that expansion story in this level range. If you want to, you can still hop around to your hearts content. But you are supposed to be able to level through a single expansion and reach level 50. After that the story continues like normal in Shadowlands.

Allied Races will start at level 10 and go directly to the "Choose your expansion" thing. DKs and DHs seem to start at level 1 as well, but he didn't really say anything about that. He also didn't say a word about what will happen to heirlooms.

[KaPe]

If you're talking Healers specifically, having access to 1 more DPS ability (of which we know very little at this point) it's not going to do much. For a priest, they gave the example of having PW:K, an ability that won't even come into play until a mob is already down to 20% health. It's not game changing in the least.

It also ignores the fact that dps specs have inherent bonuses to their spells, mastery, talents and so on. Having Shadow Word:Pain in my spellbook won't really matter without any +shadow modifiers, insanity, voidform and other stuff. It will be a minor dps increase at best, or maybe it will just be there for flavour.

[Deggon]

I saw where if you are 120 you start out at 50 for Shadowlands, but what about your 110 charcters or 100/90's/80's do they start at 10 and have to relevel them sorry if it has been answered somewhere else or if I misread the deep dive and it was answered there.

[Sosuke Aizen]

What are you on about O_o.

- Sped up process (60-70% faster)
- Gains every level (talent, skills, other stuff like mount\wtv)
- Choice of expansion (and no jumping around continents unless you decide to)
- New experience for new players daunted of 'catching up' after 15 years.
- Most likely easier to find groups to dungeons whilst leveling.
- If boosts turn irrelevant since leveling is fast, BETTER FOR THE PLAYERS? you're concerned about what happens no boosts? SERIOUSLY? Feel free to keep purchasing them, i guess.

I sincerely do not understand what your issues are.

My concern is that they didn’t talk about what level we will get mounts at. Maybe they may just allow Alts to fly if your main has that ability. I am really interested to see what they do with the movement aspect of leveling.

Q&A is up soon so we will see.

[Nebron]

What are you on about O_o.

- Sped up process (60-70% faster)
- Gains every level (talent, skills, other stuff like mount\wtv)
- Choice of expansion (and no jumping around continents unless you decide to)
- New experience for new players daunted of 'catching up' after 15 years.
- Most likely easier to find groups to dungeons whilst leveling.
- If boosts turn irrelevant since leveling is fast, BETTER FOR THE PLAYERS? you're concerned about what happens no boosts? SERIOUSLY? Feel free to keep purchasing them, i guess.

I sincerely do not understand what your issues are.

What I'm trying to say, is that Ion saying that leveling is part of RPG seems like a joke considering te fact that leveling will take up to 10 hrs at best. How can you grow naturally as a character, feel the essence of getting stronger each time you level up, when you will ding very 15 minutes? That's what I am talking about. I was pretty sure they will try to go other way around. They will make the leveling experience much more clear, but also satisfying and with the sense of progression. Now, if you create character, after a month, leveling will be about 5% of the time played, which seems weird to me.

If you level up every 15 minutes, in what universe the sentence "we want to make each level meaningful" is rational? Is totally contradictory. You can't feel progress of your character as you mindless grind through the content in 10 hours; in such little time you won't be able to understand your class at all.

- - - Updated - - -

Yeah, this is a very big concern for me. I was extremely confused when they said leveling was too slow, when it's been anything but that. You'll also be shooting yourself in the foot if you choose any other location besides Kul Tiras or Zandalar as they have the fewest number of zones.

• Kul Tiras (3 zones): 13.3 levels per zone
• Broken Isles (4 zones): 10 levels per zone
• Cataclysm (5 zones): 8 levels per zone
• Draenor (5 zones): 8 levels per zone
• Pandaria (6 zones): 6.6 levels per zone
• Outland (6-7 zones): 5.7 to 6.6 levels per zone
• Northrend (7-8 zones): 5 to 5.7 levels per zone

This is a huge concern to me, as I have a strange feeling that people truly forgot what this game actually is about. I mean, maybe others do not like leveling, but honestly, it's part of the joy. People got used to mindlessly grind through the content with full set of heirlooms spamming dungeon finders etc. And somehow now, the same people use the argument of "enjoying the full storyline of the expansion" - well, that's hypocracy at least.

- - - Updated - - -

Why do you guys keep asking for longer leveling? It already takes way too long as is

I have a job and a life, I do not want to waste an entire month of playtime, or alternately $60, on leveling one toon

In any case, wasn't one of the big things of Classic that leveling was supposedly meaningful there? And they only had 60 levels. Why, when this exact same situation is applied to Live, does it suddenly become too short/too easy?

They already increased the difficulty with scaling, what do you want them to do, add an extra 10 mobs/drops to every quest? That's not harder, just more tedious

As for your "class quests every ten levels" thing, dude, you realize you're asking for the equivalent of an entire new zone right? That's 300 quests total to write test and code.

In comparison, each patch adds about 700-800 quests, so you're asking us to give up half a content patch for content that most players will never see (historically, only 15-20% of players even have two toons).

Nope, I'm certainly not trying to tell you how to play. Excuse me if you took it that way.
What I'm actually trying to say is in my opinion leveling nowadays is soulless.
I'm curious why people don't get joy from leveling. That was always part of my progression journey. To know the class better, to excercise it, to get a basic understanding of class mechanics. And then came Cataclysm, where people got to spam dungeon finders that had multiple quests inside them. No story is required anymore.

I think I took my position very clearly. What about the professions? If you would try to tell me that nobody cares about professions anymore, that would end the discussion immediately. It's funny that so many mechanics of the game became manifestly, let's say "exploted", omitted and absolutely useless. Same happened to profession. The worst decision was to actually make it possible to level up profession within one zone. What a ridiculous idea... I don't know. I have a good feeling about the next expansion, but so many core elements of the gameplay are being ignored. It's quite frustrating because people call for new features, while the ones who already exist could simply be brought ot life, which would shine a new light on the game.

[kamuimac]

Okay, so before I posted anything there, I wanted to wait for some more clarification, but it's all explained now.

So, the idea is that within the range of 1-10, you will be leveling in the starting areas of each race - just as it is now.

If you are a new to the game Blizzard offers an introductory tutorial in range of 1-10 in Stormheim that "will involve teaching players how to do navigate the game world, the basics of their class, and a mini-dungeon" (source: Wowhead).

Now, once you are 10, you are able to choose any expansion content to level in until you are 50. All you need to do is to speak with Chromie who will send you wherever you wish to go. You can jump between different expansions, yet the idea is to get you from 10 to 50 withing a single expansion.

And here come the problems...

It has been stated at the very panel of WoW by Ion himself that they want to bring back leveling experience in which every level is meaningful, because... "it's RPG right?". And it seems to be pretty contradictory.

First of all, they squish levels from 120-130, to 50-60 (as the max level for another expansion). As far as some people might be against that idea, it's not a bad move. I can imagine a new player coming to play WoW to realize that there are 130 levels ahead of him. It could be a pretty daunting experience. Nevertheless, squishing the levels seems to be a pretty good idea.

But the thing is, that what I understand by that is that the time required for leveling through 1-50 would stay the same as it was with 1-120. With the new information I have been waiting for, it looks like it won't be this way. The time required for these 50 levels will be cut to like... 10 hours, maybe 20 at best? I can't imagine how they want to execute that idea, but you can't extend the time required to level up if you want players to get all these levels within the same expansion.

And it has a lot of implications. First that comes to my mind is that you won't be able to progress through your professions in pair with leveling. It's impossible now, let alone in their new concept of leveling system.
It also seems like reading spells and talents descriptions will take the same amount of time as going from 1 to 50 with pure leveling. Of course, that's an exaggeration, but I hope you get my point.
What will happen with heirlooms? If you are about to level your character up in like 10 hours, what will happen if you are fully geared with heirlooms and with friend on the RaF system?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but instead of making levels more meaningful, they do actually quite the opposite. Each level will have much less meaning than it has right now. It will be rushing through the content just the get your hands on the new content. If we talk about the "RPG" I always thought that leveling is a crucial part of this game. What's the difference between leveling and buying a boost to level 50? And what will happen to boosts as they will become pointless really?

This is how I would imagine it:

• they squish the level just like now;
• you can choose ANY zone you want to level in (just what they want), but the amount of experience stays the same (at least if we count it in time);
• basically, I would make leveling more difficult and a little bit longer, so that every time you ding, you get something that enhances your character (new (old) talent trees/ getting new skills - maybe even ranks of spells that will be applied automatically - still better than nothing!)
• on top of that I would introduce class quests and campaigns every 10 levels (5 of them together) - so that they will offer rare armor sets, class-specific weapons, or maybe class-specific trinkets;
• there's an ongoing problem with class identity vs. class balance - and the problem is that people don't really get the idea that each spec and class having an access to CC's, ress, movement boosts etc. for the sake of balance, eventually kills the class identity - I'd get rid off that so that class identity is there.

What's your thoughts on that? Let me know, maybe I will change my mind, or maybe I simply don't understand something!

their plan most likely is to make leveling completly meaningless while simultanusly lowering the boosts prices (yes my tinfoil hat hteory ) to sell much more boosts.

basickly your toon is meaningless but nice and shiny avatar like in HoTS - used only for seasonal endgame instances farm.

basickly nothing in game besides transmog and mounts matters anymore at this point.

and those 2 bring blizzard $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

[Daedius]

I am curious... how do dropped BoEs work? Does it scale to the person that looted it, or will it be static still in regards to the expansion they were from?