Shadowlands Leveling Speed Changes and Chromie Time Disabled XP Option

[Onikaroshi]

The last time I remember anyone doing levelling testing on the beta was when they were forced to..

Template characters are a thing

Have you been on oribos or the maw? There's a bunch of people leveling.

If you've only been on torghast, of course no one is leveling over there, there's 60 templates on that server.

[Orange Joe]

This will be much more than that tho. It might mean the death of free wow addons. If overwolf bans all other clients from using curse, limit download speed and say 1 addon per hour download unless you pay a hefty premium sum. Then what ? we start using wowinterface ? what if overwolf buys them aswell ?

I hope blizzard will intervene here and stop overwolf from being allowed to monetize addons

As long as they allow you to download the add-on manually and install them, blizzard can't do anything. It's not Blizzards choice if another company monetizes their programs.

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Overwolf tries this and Blizzard sues them in to oblivion.

again as long as you can download from site without the app there is nothing blizz can do.

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sounds like we would be back at the initial curse client. fuck that bullshit lmaoooooooo

While it wasn't as bad as he is saying. I'm glad someone else remembers that this was done before and Blizz was unable to do anything.

[Th3Scourge]

Have you been on oribos or the maw? There's a bunch of people leveling.

If you've only been on torghast, of course no one is leveling over there, there's 60 templates on that server.

Yes, you can create template characters on all realms. The overwhelming majority of players will jump on beta to test out the classes they want to play, run a dungeon or two and play around with covenants. The pool of players actively engaging in levelling is quite small, to the point where I'm not sure if there is enough of a sample to have any material information on the levelling experience

[Onikaroshi]

Yes, you can create template characters on all realms. The overwhelming majority of players will jump on beta to test out the classes they want to play, run a dungeon or two and play around with covenants. The pool of players actively engaging in levelling is quite small, to the point where I'm not sure if there is enough of a sample to have any material information on the levelling experience

There was more people between 50 and 59 on Oribos then at 60 when I looked earlier.

[Corseth]

Its difficult to demand large scale file hosting and distribution be free and without ads. I don't use the curse client, but I don't use third party scraper based clients or bypasses either because I understand the point: you can't bypass every possible way Curse has to support file servers, distribution bandwidth, and web design and expect them to host content forever.

The big advantage (in terms of not having to include any sort of monetization) things like cursebreaker, and mod managers that pull from curse, is they rely on curse paying for all of the above.

I think it will be interesting to see what happens to internet services in general in the next ten years. Ads have gotten just so obnoxious, intrusive, and often even malware dangerous that consumers (justifiably) turn to ad blocking and removal options. But it's very difficult to get most people to pony up a cent to support services they regularly use as well, pushing those services towards other monetization options, because, well, hosting and development aren't free. Something probably has to change in how we monetize internet content and I'm curious and perhaps a bit apprehensive to see what.

[Feral Druid ist Op]

A couple months back the leveling was perfect in terms of how you gained Xp. Then Blizzard did what they always do and tried to dramatically stretch it out and totally screwed it up. Thus making even more work for themselves when they didn't have too.

this is how those "wufwufs" spend thier dev time, see conduits invent a problem > spend 3 months to fix it, from destructible relics to 7 day cd to a 10 energie system for lietrally no reason. Same for lvling worked perfect i did test it myself on the first raidtest weave > broke it and now spend time to fix it again.
Same goes for covanats they sepnd the last 2 weeks to nerf them all to oblivion so it dont matter what youre picking,
again a problem they fucking created in the first place, and the legos they nefed 2 days ago just to retune them all over again in the next weeks build, like real "wufwufs"

[Galathir]

Thank god, that leveling fix was necessary.
Did the entire main quest: lvl 57
Did the entire main quest plus every single side quest available (except for 2 of the three dungeon quests): lvl 59+25 %

I actually had to grind a few dungeons to get to max.

[natham]

Thank god, that leveling fix was necessary.
Did the entire main quest: lvl 57
Did the entire main quest plus every single side quest available (except for 2 of the three dungeon quests): lvl 59+25 %

I actually had to grind a few dungeons to get to max.

The horror...

[Paula Deen]

I think it will be interesting to see what happens to internet services in general in the next ten years. Ads have gotten just so obnoxious, intrusive, and often even malware dangerous that consumers (justifiably) turn to ad blocking and removal options. But it's very difficult to get most people to pony up a cent to support services they regularly use as well, pushing those services towards other monetization options, because, well, hosting and development aren't free. Something probably has to change in how we monetize internet content and I'm curious and perhaps a bit apprehensive to see what.

Its more of an off topic discussion, as I am sure mods will love to point out, but really. Sites like MMOC have no business running giant obnoxious ads on all corners. They will come out and say it shouldn't happen and to report, like they always do, but it never goes away. Its obnoxious, plain and simple. Advertising doesn't need to be obstruction. It doesn't need to be loud.

I support several YouTube creators because that is what they do, create. I support several Dungeons & Dragons Homebrew Creators, because again, that is what they do.

What does Curse do? Gobbles up failing properties and uses their good will and ideas to run (Somewhat) successful businesses. I would be more much more inclined to pay for a Curse/Twitch Client if it didn't constantly damn near brick my system with how unoptimized it is. I would love to provide money to MMOC if they actually posted articles more than once or twice a week. (No offense intended to the several of you, who I am sure will read this, I know you work very hard and I am sure if you are paid it is not enough.)

Point being, Streaming took off because of one thing, UX, the same thing will happen with websites in time. Sites like FiveThirtyEight or PBS/NPR are leagues better than say CNN or FOX just due to presentation alone.

A common thing I see, especially among web development, is UX Developers wanting to know specifically what users want, but like, we shouldn't have to say things like, obnoxious ads we can't close that redirect to Wish.com shouldn't be on your platform. Your little itty bitty app that I should be using to update addons alone shouldn't be merged with Twitch Streaming and 15 other Game Addon Development Kits. Like, if that isn't common sense development, I don't feel those people should have jobs. In all honesty.

/endrant

[Magical Mudcrab]

This will be much more than that tho. It might mean the death of free wow addons. If overwolf bans all other clients from using curse, limit download speed and say 1 addon per hour download unless you pay a hefty premium sum. Then what ? we start using wowinterface ? what if overwolf buys them aswell ?

I hope blizzard will intervene here and stop overwolf from being allowed to monetize addons

From what I gather, what they're doing is trying to make it so that scrapers - people who are essentially running bots to steal their website's content - can no longer operate. This is the main reason why Curse has been passed around so much: it's hard to actually do anything with the content when someone else can come around and take it from the website. While it might not seem great, they're totally within their rights to take legal action as Website scraping without permission is illegal, at least in the US and Canada.

If other clients want to host addon content, then it's on them to attract mod authors or to do the footwork and find addons to add to their own libraries. Whether or not Overwolf will throttle downloads and the like is irrelevant to this issue, as the fact is that they are in the right to want to stop others from stealing what is now their content.

Regardless, this strange distraction of Overwolf might monetize content by throttling downloads or may add subscriptions is, without evidence of them planning on doing this, incredibly silly. User information is more valuable than some pittance from a subscription that they know would be unpopular, and they know over-throttling downloads would incentivize other services too much when the main draw of download managers is convenience.

[Lei]

Just got beta a week ago. It's too late for me to try anything out tbh, let alone drag a char through the admittedly fucked up leveling process.

[kamuimac]

Lol overwolf just relalised they fucked up by buying curse as nobody sane will downlaod addons via them when there are already more simplistic and more player friendly alternatives which dont bombard them with milion agresive adds


have a nice day overwolf PR team

[Grimalkin of Old]

Don't support the scumbags at Overwolf. It's bad for everyone.

[Bigbazz]

It's going to suck going back to manual installs but I think I'm passing on this one.

[Nnyco]

They better release a top notch addon manager if they already start that scummy.

[Zka]

XP gains in chromietime should be automatically disabled when hitting 50. It's a super easy nobrainer fix, I haven't got the slightest idea why it's not implemented like that. Anything else is a wrong solution. Offering us to disable xp manually is better than nothing but not good. Did they lose all developers who had any idea about usability?

[Ishayu]

No, since 2013 your focus has not been on providing the best experience for addon authors and distribution.

Rather, your focus has been on harvesting user data for resale to make money by having everyone using your site by exploiting stupid add-on authors who, for whatever reason, give you the exclusive rights to distribute what is effectively FOSS software - open source and monetarily free. The only thing restricted is distribution, which makes no sense. Nobody but the greatest of idiots would ever do that willingly.

And now you want to start tracking our mouse movement and preferences in the middle of video game sessions, and you want to do that in the guise of in-game overlay #287528532, while knowing perfectly that you can't update addons while playing the game!
An in-game overlay is quite possibly the single worst solution to addon management in existence.

Sometimes I genuinely get the impression that some of these companies think we were born yesterday.

I hope some Chinese or Russian dude scrapes the entire sites and uploads the whole lot of it on another site and gives Overwolf the finger. In the meantime, WoWInterface seems to do the job reasonably well when combined with some of the new addon managers and, weirdly, they don't seem to be having massive financial woes because people are using addon managers!

And now you wanna mess with that. Have fun when everyone switches off your site and resources. This won't save your dying business, Overwolf.

[Chakah]

While it might not seem great, they're totally within their rights to take legal action as Website scraping without permission is illegal, at least in the US and Canada.

Actually, no. Unless the US Supreme Court gets involved, and that won't happen anytime soon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HiQ_La...n#Implications

https://sites.suffolk.edu/jhtl/2020/...and-abuse-act/

Overwolf won't be able to stop the scraping with legal actions, just as Curse and Twitch couldn't.
Their technological options are pretty limited as they can't charge users for access and modern scrapers are quite sophisticated.

What they can do is harass and shame users, authors, and developers, and hope that no one calls their bluff, but it seems like that ship has sailed.
https://ogri-la.github.io/wow-addon-managers/

What you can do is encourage your friends to not infect their systems with Overwolf's garbage, and encourage authors of mods you use to host on non-curse sites like github.

Is is 'stealing' their bandwidth? maybe - but their business model doesn't have a right to exist, so if they disappear, good! something better will replace it.

[Hyrican]

what would be sensible:

- disabling xp on turning 50 if you are in chromie time but let you stay in there if you want to?....
- give the option to teleport and if not taken provide a quest item to teleport you in front of chromie.
- as soon as you get out of chromie time enable xp again.

Problems:
- decked out lvl50 bfa characters turning on chromie time in warmode to have fun messing with the levelers
- chromie time is enabled by default for new players requiring them to be in the same phase as those grievers specifically joining bfa chromie time to mess with them?
- other scaling problems with chromie time that can give big advantages to "long existing" characters not at max level but with decked out gear with proc effects and other borrowed power from previous expansions.
(most of the bandwagon grievers won't join if they have to have a lvl 49 to do so instead of having the option to join chromie time with level 50-60)

Additional comments
- missed opportunity to enable leveling from 10 to 50 on alts with the normal quest chain in shadowlands if you have completed them on your main with 50-60 experience.

[pkusa]

These Overwolf guys sound so scummy and not to mention completely out of their element. I miss the old Curse. I was mad about Twitch but even that seems leagues better than what's coming.

The new WoWUp one seems pretty nice, been using it for a couple of weeks now. Really lightweight, minimalistic.