New level requirements for Legacy raids

[ShmooDude]

Yes - under such a system - but I can't find a single quote which suggests such a system exists. Maybe that's because Blizzard is thinking "Well duh obviously you don't HAVE to use Chromie Time!". Maybe it's because journalists haven't asked the questions they probably should. But literally all the actual quotes and actual messaging I've been able to find from actual Blizzard people suggests basically two scenarios:

1) Old player levels 10-50 with Chromie Time, can pick expansion, can change expansion, whatever, hits 50, Chromie Time stops, can go back and do scaled content (specific example being MoP which was 35).

2) New player levels 10-50 with Chromie Time, has to be in BfA, hits 50, Chromie Time stops, can go back and do scaled content.

What's missing is "Just ignore Chromie Time and jump into whatever content you want which will be scaled via the 50+ scheme". It's quite possible it exists. But it hasn't been mentioned outright that I am aware of. It would also create an unfortunately complicated mess with the start of various expansions which I think Blizzard is seeking to avoid.

But try to think of the system as a whole, using the known constraints you've pointed out. The most notable constraint in my eyes is the new player one, where you MUST level in BFA. How does this work? Obviously there's any number of ways this could be done. Even if you keep players from entering expansion areas, you still have to deal with vanilla zones. They need access to the capital cities. How do you reconcile the fact that they're not allowed to level in vanilla, but still need access to it?

A quote from the link you posted says the following:

Actually, to be clear, it'll be scaled from 10 to 50 while you're levelling. However, that's where Chromie comes in - Chromie Time. As you're doing it from 10 to 50, it's Chromie time, it's scaled. Once you hit 50, Chromie will show up again and say, 'Hey, it looks like you're done, cool - let's bring you back to the main timeline,' and then you'll be 50 and Pandaria will have been scaled down to around, I'm going to guess, 35-ish in the new scheme.

Instead of assuming that "Chromie time" applies to all leveling areas all the time, let's assume that you choose an expansion. That expansion then exists as "Chromie time" and everywhere else is the main timeline. If you're an experienced player, you can switch your choice, but it's still a choice and you can only have one active at a time. If you're a new player, your choice is made for you (BFA).

Could I be wrong about this? Yeah, absolutely. But doing it this way solves a lot of problems. It prevents new players from leveling to 50 in vanilla without restricting access to the areas themselves. It also allows sub-level max level players to still farm old content (current 110 Demon Hunters are popular due to legion legendaries).

On top of all this, the schemes people have been mentioning for how they think it should be scaled DO NOT match up with CURRENT scaling. Which makes them even more unlikely. Right now, both TBC and Wrath are the SAME level bracket. Every scheme I've seen in this thread and others tries to make them into different level brackets. That's fine if you have to hit 50 before the scaling kicks in, and have to pick a Chromie Time before that. It's not fine if you let people not do scaling, because you could easily have a situation where someone was, right now, doing Wrath content, but was a level that was a TBC level under schemes you guys have suggested.

So if you can skip Chromie Time, we can guarantee the brackets will remain:

Vanilla bracket
TBC and Wrath bracket
Cataclysm and MoP bracket
WoD bracket
Legion bracket
BfA bracket

The could get more simple - you could combine WoD and Legion, but they can't get more complicated, and every single scheme I've seen listed here makes them more complicated (correct me if I'm wrong).

Your point re: useless levels is interesting. If they made the Vanilla bracket very low, as you suggest, then you could have a situation where nobody was the wrong level for Wrath, but the right level for TBC (for example), because they'd both be in Wrath or Cata brackets or the like, so that might save this.

I suspect that you're right that Blizzard will use the current brackets, although it's by no means required. Just because you could level in non-chromie time doesn't mean you should. I don't think anyone would voluntarily put themselves through that except maybe to prove it was possible. Thus the new system doesn't actually have to line up with the old one. No one is going to complain that their character who was 66 leveling in Wrath is now underleveled for for the main timeline Wrath content, because they're immediately going to activate Chromie time since it's significantly faster/more efficient.

When 9.0 hits, what's going to happen to our characters that are currently leveling? Presumably we're all going to have Chromie standing in front of us to explain what's going on (I suspect the same thing that would happen when a character dings 10). Remember many players don't visit news sites at all, so Blizzard shouldn't just dump them into the new system without explanation. Thus, it doesn't actually matter where you are now since the first thing you're going to do is activate the new system (or have it already activated for you when you log in).

[Eurhetemec]

A quote from the link you posted says the following:Instead of assuming that "Chromie time" applies to all leveling areas all the time, let's assume that you choose an expansion. That expansion then exists as "Chromie time" and everywhere else is the main timeline. If you're an experienced player, you can switch your choice, but it's still a choice and you can only have one active at a time. If you're a new player, your choice is made for you (BFA).

Could I be wrong about this? Yeah, absolutely. But doing it this way solves a lot of problems. It prevents new players from leveling to 50 in vanilla without restricting access to the areas themselves. It also allows sub-level max level players to still farm old content (current 110 Demon Hunters are popular due to legion legendaries).

I think this creates more problems than it solves, and the whole "Oh just let them go to old areas and they just won't get XP except in the ones which happen to be the right level" thing would entirely negate the whole "they have to level in BfA" deal, because it would just cause a big mess of confusion. Like you say, you could be right, but that's going to be a big mess, frankly.

This is all guesswork that will be superseded soon but I think what we may actually be looking at is:

1) Vanilla is always scaling 10-50 until you hit 50. Like always, you don't require Chromie Time or anything. This is kind of supported by the language in the Eurogamer article where they appear to say something along those line.

So this would mean a new player, or a player leveling in a specific expansion, would never have a problem going to get "Old World" stuff (i.e. tabards for dungeons, visiting Orgrimmar for quests, etc.).

2) They'll restrict new players to BfA via some more aggressive mechanism than merely making it inefficient/ineffective to try and level elsewhere.

I suspect that you're right that Blizzard will use the current brackets, although it's by no means required. Just because you could level in non-chromie time doesn't mean you should. I don't think anyone would voluntarily put themselves through that except maybe to prove it was possible. Thus the new system doesn't actually have to line up with the old one. No one is going to complain that their character who was 66 leveling in Wrath is now underleveled for for the main timeline Wrath content, because they're immediately going to activate Chromie time since it's significantly faster/more efficient.

When 9.0 hits, what's going to happen to our characters that are currently leveling? Presumably we're all going to have Chromie standing in front of us to explain what's going on (I suspect the same thing that would happen when a character dings 10). Remember many players don't visit news sites at all, so Blizzard shouldn't just dump them into the new system without explanation. Thus, it doesn't actually matter where you are now since the first thing you're going to do is activate the new system (or have it already activated for you when you log in).

Yeah, and this is why I don't think there will be this choice so many people are certain there will be. Because if you give people a choice, especially give noobs and players who aren't, y'know, up on the mechanics and so on, they will very often make the WRONG choice. Which in this case will be opting out, because it may well put them in a worse situation than they are right now. I think it's more likely Chromie will be like "Choose a Chrome Time!!!" not "Would you like 2 Chromie Timez?!", because I swear to god 50% of the noobiest noobs who aren't actually new will just press "NO!" and then be writing angry letters to Blizzard. Or worse just quit because their experience goes to shit and they don't quite get it.

If it's not just an explanation, if Chromie forcibly teleports us to a short scenario where she forcibly explains it, then I guess it's possible that might inform even determinedly noobier people enough to make a choice.

Either that or Chromie will be like "I've put you into Chromie Time, huzzah!" and you can go digging for the option that turns it off.

Again I think Vanilla will be scaled 10-50 regardless so I guess there's that.

- - - Updated - - -

Why not? Given that's how Blizzard described Chromie Time.

It isn't, and unless you're more magical than other people who I've discussed this with, you can't find a quote saying it is. Blizzard have described Chromie Time at length and totally failed to say "Oh you can turn it off before 50!", whilst being very clear it turns off AT 50.

[ShmooDude]

If it's not just an explanation, if Chromie forcibly teleports us to a short scenario where she forcibly explains it, then I guess it's possible that might inform even determinedly noobier people enough to make a choice.

Either that or Chromie will be like "I've put you into Chromie Time, huzzah!" and you can go digging for the option that turns it off.

Those are pretty much what I was thinking. Either way I was expecting that you would have to enable "Chromie Time" before being able to do anything else.

Another thought. What happens when you use dungeon finder? If it all scales all the time does that mean that it will choose dungeons from any expansion? Any dungeon from any expansion might be a bit excessive. Though I suppose there's nothing that says that the dungeon scaling ranges have to match the outdoor scaling ranges.

Pretty sure raids don't scale anyhow so at least for those it doesn't really matter to what range the outside world scales since the raids themselves don't.

[Drusin]

If this holds true, how would you feel about this?

As long as I can solo what I can solo now at the same speed or faster and Legion becomes legacy loot mode in SL I don't care. But I'm reserving final judgments until Beta.

[Kyriani]

Assuming Blizzard wasn't lying when they said we'd be able to solo everything we can solo right now, and going by the basic math of 1 Shadowlands level equalling 2.4 of our current levels, my guess is something like:

Vanilla (old level cap 60) - Level 25 to enter, 30+ to solo
TBC (old level cap 70) - Level 29 to enter, 34+ to solo
WOTLK (old level cap 80) - Level 33 to enter, 38+ to solo
Cata (old level cap 85) - Level 36 to enter, 40+ to solo
MoP (old level cap 90) - Level 38 to enter, 42+ to solo
WoD (old level cap 100) - Level 42 to enter, 46+ to solo
Legion (old level cap 110) - Level 46 to enter, 51+ to solo
BfA (old level cap 120) - Level 50 to enter, 54+ to solo

The levels might be rounded for more consistency between expansions and/or they may choose to "bundle" some xpacs together in the same level bracket since they did so for leveling purposes (wotlk and tbc are the same level range for leveling since scaling came, as are cata and mop). What it could look like with rounding and bundling:

Vanilla (old level cap 60) - Level 25 to enter, 30+ to solo
TBC (old level cap 70) - Level 30 to enter, 35+ to solo
WOTLK (old level cap 80) - Level 30 to enter, 35+ to solo
Cata (old level cap 85) - Level 35 to enter, 40+ to solo
MoP (old level cap 90) - Level 35 to enter, 40+ to solo
WoD (old level cap 100) - Level 40 to enter, 45+ to solo
Legion (old level cap 110) - Level 45 to enter, 50+ to solo
BfA (old level cap 120) - Level 50 to enter, 55+ to solo

I came up with the 2.4 number because, simple math tells us that being squished from 120 to 50 is our current level divided by 2.4. Obviously this is an assumption on my part and could very well be completely wrong. I do believe that the current numbers we are seeing on the raids & dungeons tab in the armory aren't the finalized levels and are currently in a state of flux. I find it difficult to believe that Legion raids will only require level 35, but we won't know for certain until we start seeing some alpha/beta data.

Blizzard can choose to do things any number of ways, however, I don't believe they will require us to be 50+ to enter old raids, or to be 60 to solo them. That would go contrary to them telling us once pre-patch hits, we'll still be able to solo everything we do now. Only time will tell us for certain though.

[Eurhetemec]

Another thought. What happens when you use dungeon finder? If it all scales all the time does that mean that it will choose dungeons from any expansion? Any dungeon from any expansion might be a bit excessive. Though I suppose there's nothing that says that the dungeon scaling ranges have to match the outdoor scaling ranges.

Yeah I'm pretty interested/terrified to know this myself. I love leveling by dungeons. I hate leveling by quests. If they force back to quest-leveling, or only give me the dungeons from chosen expansion, I'm going to be either kind of mad, or constantly talking to Chromie to get her to switch my expansion. Or I'll just stick with Vanilla.

One big problem will be abilities - a lot of dungeons right now kind of assume you have most/all of your abilities, but if "every level counts", we can expect to not have ALL our abilities until 50. Whereas before it was 80, which is to say, 30-35 in the new levels. Going into a lot of dungeons with fewer abilities, especially cooldowns, could be pretty painful. Another big problem with dungeons is that there are some wild, utterly bananas differences in effective difficulty between dungeons in different expansions. I mean, let's take a look - purely from a leveling perspective (I know some non-reader will try to start a fight re: what they were like at max level if I don't put that):

1) Vanilla - it's all pretty straightforward and newbie-friendly with the possible exception of BRD, which more an organisational problem Blizzard created than anything else.

2) TBC - Pretty straightforward, with a couple of nasty tricks that can wipe the unwary, and Sethekk Halls which I loved but is really mean to people who don't know how it works. Also Blood Furnace with really dumb melee DPS/tank or a healer who can't/won't heal can be a mess (stop standing on the mines you cretins!), but it's brief.

3) Wrath - Largely straightforward and non-murderous, dungeons are linear and well-designed.

So that's three expansions of pretty straightforward dungeons right there. But then we have Cataclysm.

4) Cataclysm - Most of these dungeons are FULL of shit which will wipe anyone who doesn't know them. Some still need the bosses explaining! Blackrock Caverns will totally and repeatedly wipe a lot of groups, and it's not even hard, it just has a lot of insta-death mechanics or mechanics that are as or more complicated than raid mechanics from Vanilla/TBC/Wrath. Made sense in context in 2010. Makes no sense as leveling dungeons in 2020. Throne of the Tides is easy at least. But still, imagine getting a scaled version of some of these at level 23 or something (on the new 1-50 scale), when you're missing tons of cooldowns (likely) many classes probably don't have interrupts, or their strongest heals, or the like. It would be a shit-show. Some of the bosses are just reliant on access to this stuff.

5) Mist of Pandaria - Back to fine - all pretty straightforward.

6) Warlords of Draenor - Some annoying mechanics which require knowledge most groups won't have, but it's not a mess of one-shots and needing specific abilities or tactics like Cata.

7) Legion - The leveling dungeons for Legion are overtuned for the gear/skill people actually have in them (and this was true at launch). At 110, as soon as you'd been getting gear for even a week or so, they became a joke, not just on normal, but also on Heroic, and Mythic (and M+ soon became doable). But leveling? UGH.

8) BfA - Very similar to Legion. Overtuned for leveling groups, has some very specific mechanics you need to deal with, becomes a joke as soon as your gear gets okay (I'm not talking raid gear either, just max level gear at all).

You basically separate dungeons into two groups, the straightforward ones - Vanilla, TBC, Wrath, MoP, and the ones which rely much more on knowing the specific (and often counter-intuitive) mechanics, and potentially overtuned damage, to a varying degree - Cata, WoD, Legion and BfA.

So what are they going to do? I guess what I'd like to see is them let you level in any of them, but then everyone will stick with Vanilla. Maybe that's fine? They could also significant down-tune the damage from the bosses (and a few other mobs) in the four more complex ones so people could "learn on the job" as it were (rather than just dying on the job lol).

Blizzard can choose to do things any number of ways, however, I don't believe they will require us to be 50+ to enter old raids, or to be 60 to solo them. That would go contrary to them telling us once pre-patch hits, we'll still be able to solo everything we do now. Only time will tell us for certain though.

I think what's quite likely, based on what Blizzard have said re: Chromie Time and scaling and so on, is that we will have to be 50 to solo old raids (not 60). We'll see.

[ShmooDude]

Yeah I'm pretty interested/terrified to know this myself. I love leveling by dungeons. I hate leveling by quests. If they force back to quest-leveling, or only give me the dungeons from chosen expansion, I'm going to be either kind of mad, or constantly talking to Chromie to get her to switch my expansion. Or I'll just stick with Vanilla.

I bet that they leave it exactly how it is now. They're already broken down by expansion (which I'd forgotten about; shows how long since I've leveled a character, lol). So short of a new "Chromie Time" bracket that encompasses all leveling dungeons I'd expect them to be broken down by expansion.

The main question is do they have the "Chromie Time" scaling placed upon them, or will it be "main timeline" scaling. I would bet the former because having any leveling tank/healer qualify for any leveling dungeon will reduce wait times.

Or maybe they do something cool with it, like sort them into groups by difficulty since as you pointed out there's a huge difference in difficulty between the various dungeons/expansions. Higher difficulty dungeons are more rewarding (more gold, loot and/or experience). Though I doubt it.

Assuming Blizzard wasn't lying when they said we'd be able to solo everything we can solo right now, and going by the basic math of 1 Shadowlands level equalling 2.4 of our current levels, my guess is something like:

The levels might be rounded for more consistency between expansions and/or they may choose to "bundle" some xpacs together in the same level bracket since they did so for leveling purposes (wotlk and tbc are the same level range for leveling since scaling came, as are cata and mop). What it could look like with rounding and bundling:

I came up with the 2.4 number because, simple math tells us that being squished from 120 to 50 is our current level divided by 2.4. Obviously this is an assumption on my part and could very well be completely wrong. I do believe that the current numbers we are seeing on the raids & dungeons tab in the armory aren't the finalized levels and are currently in a state of flux. I find it difficult to believe that Legion raids will only require level 35, but we won't know for certain until we start seeing some alpha/beta data.

Blizzard can choose to do things any number of ways, however, I don't believe they will require us to be 50+ to enter old raids, or to be 60 to solo them. That would go contrary to them telling us once pre-patch hits, we'll still be able to solo everything we do now. Only time will tell us for certain though.

On a more general note. When people are talking about the "squish" being the equivalent (mathematically) of dividing by 2.4. This is only true if all levels are considered equal. But maybe they aren't (and shouldn't be imo).

The introductory experience is 10 levels both pre and post squish. So that means functionally, it hasn't been squished at all. That kind of implies that not all levels are created equal. This is kind of like how the "item" squishes only got rid of the large item level jumps between expansions. Hence getting rid of the "useless" item levels. So the level squish is targeted at getting rid of useless player levels.

Based on what IS there right now, the only pattern that really makes sense is (bold being on the website right now):

Classic = 15
TBC/Wrath = 20/20
Cata/MoP = 25/25
WoD = 30
Legion = 35
BFA = 40?

It's almost like they forgot the new prepatch cap was 50 and not 40. The numbers could maybe ALL be 10 short which is exactly what you posted with your "bundled" setup. If the latter is the case then it's like they forgot to add the intro experience into their numbers (since as I said, they're basically treating it as separate).

I expect that whatever method they pick, they will be thinking to the future. I would bet that they plan to alternate between player level squishies and item level squish. The whole reason Cata/MoP had 5 levels back in the day was so the total level wouldn't push so high. But 5 levels felt worse than 10 (despite there not really being even 5 levels worth of "stuff" to give you in the most recent expansions). So now they can have the best of both worlds. You have 10 levels while it's relevant and it gets squished to 5 when it no longer is (or less with "bundling" expansions).

[Eurhetemec]

@ShmooDude - Difficulty groups would be amazing, God as someone who has leveled literally dozens of characters via dungeons (severe altitis, its a terrible, lifelong condition) I'd love sorting the dungeons based on how much you needed to know and how overtuned they were,and I think Blizzard would do a good job.

I don't think they can leave them as is, because I think they're aware of how jarring it is and how a lot of dungeons assume you have all your abilities and have mastered them, but I don't know exactly what they'll do. I think just detuning them a bit, turning one shots to 80% hits and 80% hits to 50% ones and so on would do the trick. Some stuff, like Blackrock Caverns is currently more deadly than it was at the time (example the boss you stand in molten metal you can only stand him in there for about half as many ticks as real Cata).

[Ephera]

I just checked, and the numbers are now reverted back to the original level.