1. The level squish invalidates all the effort we've put into our characters over the last 16 years. We've seen them grow from 1-60, to 70, 80 and eventually all the way to level 120. Now we'll all be set back to level 50 and then go to level 60 again. We've already done that. Why should we level from 50 to 60 again? I know that characters will be deleveled proportionally to what their level is right now, but at the end of the day, it still doesn't change that we are back to a certain level. One thing here invalidates all the effort we've put into leveling even further and that is
2. The leveling process from 1-50 after the prepatch is incredibly fast. Way too fast. I remember level 60-70 taking very long back in TBC, and 70-80 also taking very long back in Wrath, but some time after the expansions had been out, that leveling process was shortened immensely. I welcomed it at the time as I'm sure many other players have, but looking back I can only say that it is a mistake to keep making leveling faster and faster. We are now at a point where leveling from 1-50, which is 1-120 right now, will take like 6 hours. Is it a good idea to have an MMO where you can reach max level on multiple characters in a day? All this does is further invalidate the time we all have put into each of our characters. It is no different than when they introduce catch up gear in a patch that is as good as heroic raid gear from the previous patch. It makes people go, wait I put in all this effort and these people get it just like that, just because they joined the game at a later date? This is what you are doing when you are shortening the leveling process. You are telling everyone, who played the game before and invested tons of time into developing these characters that they are basically idiots for having wasted all this time. They could've just waited til you shortened the leveling time for characters. It diminishes our accomplishments.
3. Changing level ranges for zones is a mistake. And so is level scaling. I was never quite happy with it when they made Outland and Northrend both scale from 60-80. It destroys the identity these zones have. Outland wasn't for level 80, neither was Northrend for level 60. It feels wrong. In the beginning it was nice cause it was different, but it destroys the natural progression of the expansions. You first go to Outland, then you go to Northrend. That is just the way it is, and changing that changes the world and how we experience it. Now we're at a point where level ranges are completely different with Vanilla going to level 25 only (even less time to do Vanilla zones) and then TBC going to 27...? What kind of nonsense is that. The way they destroyed the natural progression of expansions we're now at a point where you need to do Chromie Time to level, because who is gonna go to Outland for 2 levels, to Northrend for 3 levels, etc.
This is utter nonsense. Level scaling is bad, because of many reasons. It completely destroys progression, when a mob levels up together with me and sometimes, because of scaling, I actually end up having a harder time defeating it than before, because of the way things scaled. This happens all the time. Mobs should have a certain fixed level. You go to Ashenvale, and things are level 20-30, and you peek into Felwood and see a level 50 bear ready to maul you. You level up to close the gap between you and that mob, and eventually, even outlevel him. Sure some of this still exists in some form. Not everything scales from 1-50, but it might as well. Because the identity of everything has already been destroyed.
Some people will say, well, level scaling is good because we outlevel things so fast. But why is that? Let's go back and look at number 2. This is a problem Blizzard has created, because they made leveling so fast. You wouldn't outlevel a zone if the pacing wasn't completely off. And the level squish will only make it worse. Because you'll still reach the next level superfast, there's just gonna be even less levels.
I just can not help but feel like we are about to experience a second Cataclysm. The world forever changed with the Cataclysm prepatch, and I think people will look back and only then realize that maybe they didn't understand what they were in for.