How should leveling be handled in 10.0?

[cparle87]

We have to become weaker as we level otherwise gear from the new expansion is pointless.

Beat me to it. The only other way I could think of to gear and secondary stat reset us each expansion would be to turn whatever gear we have into baseline greens and make us gear up in the new expansions content again. But that might be too radical.

[MrLachyG]

I'd just squish every expansion. Every old expansion gets added to the 10-50 bracket and newest expansion is 50-60.

In the end, leveling isn't progression anymore - it's just a way to tell the new story to players and introduce them to the new system an expansion brings. The real game starts at level cap.

So it's just more consistent to have all scaled back to current system. In the end level cap is just a number, and having it higher only means you have to fill up those level with meaningful stuff otherwise they'd feel just empty.

this is the only way forward really. adding more levels will just result in the same thing that made them do the level squish in the first place. My only concern is that Blizz don't change the abilities learned between 50-60 currently and just keep them the same; that would suck. but if they have new spells/passives, new talents in at 60 then it will be much better. maybe they can take all the current talents, see which ones never get chosen and bake them in as spells/passives everyone gets then come up with some new talents - draw from past legendaries, tier sets, conduits, covenant abilities

[khazmodan]

What 10.0 are you talking about? I have yet to see even a hint of an expansion and since the announcement usually precedes release by a year, we are probably looking at 2023 before an expansion. At the rate that Blizzard is losing talent and dealing with distractions, I would say the chances of 10.0 being anything but a mess is about the same as me paying 1 dollar a gallon for gas again.

[Coldkil]

this is the only way forward really. adding more levels will just result in the same thing that made them do the level squish in the first place. My only concern is that Blizz don't change the abilities learned between 50-60 currently and just keep them the same; that would suck. but if they have new spells/passives, new talents in at 60 then it will be much better. maybe they can take all the current talents, see which ones never get chosen and bake them in as spells/passives everyone gets then come up with some new talents - draw from past legendaries, tier sets, conduits, covenant abilities

As other said, it's not an issue to bring back the 60-70 bracket - scaling will just happen. The "issue" is to have these 10 levels filled with something meaningful which was happening back in time with talent trees that got expanded for example. Right now we have a nice flow in leveling being actually fast and not a chore and you unlock stuff pretty regularly.

I think we have reached a nice balance and i don't feel the need to change it. Adding more levels is fine now, but if they do it like before, they're gonna end squishing the game regularly and at this point better to have everything like we have now forever.

- - - Updated - - -

What 10.0 are you talking about? I have yet to see even a hint of an expansion and since the announcement usually precedes release by a year, we are probably looking at 2023 before an expansion. At the rate that Blizzard is losing talent and dealing with distractions, I would say the chances of 10.0 being anything but a mess is about the same as me paying 1 dollar a gallon for gas again.

Nah, we're likely getting some kind of announcement at the beginning of 2022 and it's gonna come by the end of the year. They didn't cut a patch from SL just to make it last more than a year. This said, i wouldn't really mind them taking more time to actually make a good 10.0 instead of focusing on bi-yearly releases - SL got pushed out cause they were already late (and was also delayed), and we all have seen how it needed much more work on it.

From Legion onwards, they filled up expansios with "new stuff" that shipped with a lot of issues/oversight and tooke them one or two patches to make it really work. People is just tired of this, Legion was "excused" because a) it was actually a new thing and b) there was WoD before so it was pretty easy to do better than that.

[crusadernero]

Shadowlands as a concept actually allows them to remove all skills we got there since they are connected to covenants and soulbinds. And because we were on another plane of existence, our characters could be said to return to Azeroth as we were when entering. We didn't get stronger in SL, so we can go back to "new lvl 50"- stage of strength we had in the end of BFA.
But, our experiences in SL allowed our characters to look deep inside their souls, finding new skills and abilities to be used in the new expansion. And since these skills are our own, they can't be taken away.( i hope).
Could they cook something like this?

I like that idea.

On the funny side: The new ability we get going forward from SL is decided upon what covenant our characters choose in the end... lol

[LordKharon]

For new players no expansion is a good place to start really, the more modern the worse it gets. Too much old lore, too complicated to really understand. Blizz should change "leveling from 1" to start with the intro island (1-10) and then go right to the newest expansion (and autolevel with gear to 50). Give the standard rotational abilities at 50 and add the more situational abilites every new level (with explanations). At 60 you then have everything. With how easy WoW leveling content is today that would be easily doable. Even normal dungeons would be ok. Leave oldschool leveling 1-50 in older content as an option.

[VinceVega]

SL should be the new 50-60 experience. BfA should be in Chromie TIme only.

I don't like the never ending growth. And honestly after 1 week you are used to ne squished numbers

[Accendor]

Didn't you like... hate Classic WoW or something when it was first announced? This concept sounds like a very "Classic WoW" concept to me.

? I think you mistake me for someone else. I was not pkaying classic 24/7, but I always liked the project, altho I would have preferred putting more work into fixing the issues of retail.

[Hctaz]

? I think you mistake me for someone else. I was not pkaying classic 24/7, but I always liked the project, altho I would have preferred putting more work into fixing the issues of retail.

It's been a long time LOL so I don't remember. I just remember your PfP which usually means something negative LOL

[Tikishock]

Is there any point to leveling anymore? Do we get new skills or talents? If not, I say scrap it. What's it matter anyways unless it somehow changes our gameplay or how we interact with the world. Lately, it just seems to act as a gatekeeper to content or story the developers aren't ready for you to do yet.

[shise]

Pretty sure we might have 5 levels only.

I do hope for the old format of leveling. Specifically WotLK style. Also, I hope that they enable character transfers between classic and retail.

Classic and BC, even WotLK... leveling is far superior to retail.
So leveling there, then experiencing current end game, would be awesome.

[Gaidax]

It didn't have problems during BC-era. But it DID lead to problems down the line which Blizzard still hasn't managed to solve. Gaining levels today doesn't mean getting new skills, it's meant to time your story progression. If Blizzard will use the same type of story-telling in 10.0 as in SL, there needs to be some changes because players hated the game telling them to slow down.

Gaining levels is a mechanism to both award additional class perks AND to deprecate the last expansion gear.

There is 0 reason to change it.

Eventually they will do another level squish, but for next 3-4 expansions they can just do the usual 10 level bumps just fine.

[Torgent]

I would prefer that the cap stayed at 60 but I’m not sure how exactly it would work with our initial transition, going back to 50 would suck, so would we just stay at 60 and be forced to do the campaign at cap instead?

I think increasing it past 60 is a mistake and defeats the point of a squish. The current ‘pick an expansion then do the current one’ is nice.

- - - Updated - - -



Yeah I guess you could scale the experience up but then you have the old issue of going many levels without learning new abilities again.

The entire point of the squish is to keep building on it later, it's not meant to be a permanent level. It's a reset back to a more reasonable number for continuation.

[Ealyssa]

Just add 10 levels and don't make us weaker again the more we level up.

That's just mathematically impossible. The whole point of leveling is to soften the reduction of power that need to happen.

You start an expansion with 10% crit and end with 50+%. There has to be a way to returning to 10% or you'll obviously hit a wall where all stats are capped.

[DechCJC]

The entire point of the squish is to keep building on it later, it's not meant to be a permanent level. It's a reset back to a more reasonable number for continuation.

Says who exactly?

[Torgent]

Says who exactly?

Literally Blizzard. When they first announced the first squish they said it was required to bring the numbers down so that they didn't get too out of hand as more expansions came and that more squishes in the future were likely as it progressed.

[Greyvax]

Leveling is an outdated concept. Leveling is so completely twisted in WoW these days that you actually become more gimped as you level up (in the past few xpacs) until you get to max level and get some pieces of gear.

Should just do away with it altogether and let people jump into the endgame loop.

[Thraenduil]

Leveling is an outdated concept. Leveling is so completely twisted in WoW these days that you actually become more gimped as you level up (in the past few xpacs) until you get to max level and get some pieces of gear.

Should just do away with it altogether and let people jump into the endgame loop.

Who said that endgame loop must always start at max level? PoE is a good example of that. There is no way BLizzard can't come up with something similar. The way they decide to handle leveling in the next expansion may define what kind of game WoW will be in the future.

[Temp name]

Last expansion content for gear is actually a cool concept, I am all up for it.

So what about the next expansion? Stuck farming 3 expansions worth of raids?
And then 4?

And then you'd probably only do raids that gave BiS loot, so you'd be stuck doing the same 4-5 raids literally for the rest of the game. I mean, why do the new raid if it doesn't give better loot? Why do the new expansion content if it doesn't give any worthwhile progression?

It's an RPG after all, it's about making your character stronger.. There's no point if you don't do that.


And unless the new content is worth doing, no one will do it, which means they won't make new content, because why make new content if there's no return on investment?


Or, do you mean you'd only have to do 2 expansions worth of raids? Then you're picking the last option, with stats inflating infinitely, and again, being completely pointless because you'll easily reach any sort of cap you want, and again, no point to doing new content because you're already gearcapped, so why bother.

Either way, no new content will be developed after a while, which means dead game

[Relapses]

Who said that endgame loop must always start at max level? PoE is a good example of that. There is no way BLizzard can't come up with something similar. The way they decide to handle leveling in the next expansion may define what kind of game WoW will be in the future.

Yeah, I wonder why Blizzard doesn't make WoW into a totally different game...