Blizz, Why is Chromie Time so busted? - Locked out below level 70

Community General Discussion
1

Well then, I’ve inadvertently RUINED two characters because of a bug with Chromie Time.

And this is a new and very specific issue.

I don’t want to do TWW or anything current on these characters, so I locked their level at 69 after hitting it. Nothing terribly fancy, a known work-around for want to actually complete leveling quests… but now, I’ve hit the metaphorical wall. The intent was do the entirety of the Legion Order Hall campaigns at level 69; a small stroke of genius, I could even argue, so I could get the strongest artifact relics possible.

But here’s the problem - The War Within Intro Questline

This is a phase-overlap bug, and it turns into a hard block with a simple solution. To explain the problem, if you complete (hell, accept?) the first quest from the latest expansion after it’s forced upon you at level 68 - Dalaran will be locked the TWW intro phase. I did so for two purposes:

  • (1) Get the teleport item out of my bags.
  • (2) Get the quest out of my logs because it’ll keep reappearing otherwise.

So if you complete the Broken Shore Scenario, you bypass the whole teleportation from over Karazhan and go straight to the Broken Isles. No big deal.

… but the NPC for the Order Hall campaign would never spawn. Ever.

The solution to this is simple… but comes with MASSIVE caveat. Doing the TWW intro questline, or just skipping straight to Dornogal, will fix the problem and the quest NPC will spawn. Doing so will also kick you out of Chromie Time.

PERMANENTLY

So here am I, level locked at 69, and unable to activate Chromie Time so that I can do any old expansion I want at level. If not for the TWW intro questline being a hard block for an entire expansion that also disables Chromie Time, I’d be able to do so. It’s not ideal, but it’s the closest you can get right now.

Hell, I’m wondering if any other later expansions are caught up in this BS.

Blizz, GET THE BLOODY MESSAGE.
Not everyone wants to play your crappy current content!

Classic WoW EXISTS, but it doesn’t extend to all expansions.
Just allow Chromie Time to be accessible to anyone, of any level, at any time!
Who cares if it stops scaling upwards past level 70!

Ugh… and here I was hoping to spend my last week or so before my sub runs out going through a nostalgia trip of a Legion Order Hall campaign or two. I had it all lined up, only for this minor detail to just ruin my efforts.

And there’s only one way to solve this - level another character from scratch, and make sure I’m past the pain points before the TWW intro questline rears its ugly head again. I probably don’t have time for that, honestly.

Thanks Blizz.

Your careless disregard for the leveling experience has ruined it for me, who’s just looking to have a good time going through old content without insane damage multipliers nullifying the gameplay by making everything get literally one-shot.

Again.

3 Likes
2

Lock your guy at 67 instead then

3 Likes
3

A simple solution with two problems:

  • Too late, you can’t de-level characters. One’s already deleted, about to do the other.
  • Do you realize how completely and utterly STUPID it is to even have to do that?!!

Sure, I might be inordinately pissed off right now for having discovered it only just before posting this rant, but these are problems that should never exist.

4

If you want to stay in Chromie Time and move around between expansions, you need to level lock at 67.

Edit: I see this was covered.

Yes. But it’s all we have.

2 Likes
5

Eh make a bug report instead of crying in general discussion.

6

So you’re trying to do something incredibly specific that intentionally goes against the way the game is supposed to be played, and you’re raging on the forums that you have to do incredibly specific workarounds to make that happen?

K.

7

Yeah I saw this coming a year ago. For me I hated Dragonflight and figured TWW would be more of the same, I made the decision not to buy it and just continue the game as is. My max level is 70, I have 15 characters permanently in chromie time characters at level 70. As long as they don’t enter SW/Org, they can do all old content at level 70 and I get around with Engineer Wormholes.

8

I’m pretty sure it’s oddly intentional. It was this way in DF, too.

If you wanted to stay in old content, you had to level lock at 57, because the DF quest was pushed to you at 58. You could stay in that expansion you were in, but you couldn’t swap expansions.

9

Alternatively you can use one of your sub-accounts, since you can have 8 active WoW accounts per battlenet account, but each one is separate in licenses. If you’re willing to pay or use wow tokens for a second subscription, you can use WoW2 to play base game only up to level 70 while retaining all your account’s collections.

TWW intro quest won’t activate on accounts that don’t have that license unlocked.

10

I’m sorry bud.

I got hugs and mana buns, all I got.

Better luck next time! :heart:

11

Funny how I’ve never seen it mentioned, and if not for this specific issue with the TWW intro quest, it actually does work up to level 69. Another solution is to make sure you’re past the the point you need the Order Hall NPC to spawn before hitting level 68, that way you can go up to level 69.

Either way, these work-arounds absurd.

And I think the simplest solution is to not have cut-off for Chromie Time.
Just let everyone turn it on and off at will through the NPC.
Even if they’re level 80, let them do it; scaling just stops at level 70.

… I see, so completing the DF intro quest would cause the same problem at level 58?

I only tried DF during the prepatch (and my last “extended leave” from the game started before Chromie Time was even a thing), so I never quite experienced this.

This really isn’t a bug.

It’s intentionally pushing me towards content I don’t want to do.

“The way the game is supposed to be played” can hop into a active volcano.
Provide I don’t throw it in there first for daring to suggest otherwise.

My subscription is running out in a week and a half.
A second subscription completely out of the question.

I only got TWW two and a half months ago on a whim.
It has now gone from disappointment to active hinderance.

I am NEVER buying a WoW expansion again at this point.

If I ever come back, it’ll be subscription only and sticking to old content.
Because, sincerely, good riddance to all that endgame crap.

12

lock at 67 then. cant blame blizzard for your own stupidity.

13

Someone seems a bit cross. Might be time for some fresh air. Maybe take in a movie or go for a drive.

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Considering Chromie Time doesn’t officially kick you out until 71, there shouldn’t be a reason it stops you from swapping expansions. Nor should there be a reason people would automatically know 67, unless we’ve seen it talked about here where people were locked out, because of this same issue.

This isn’t a stupidity thing on the player’s end. It’s on Blizzard’s end.

2 Likes
15

I don’t understand this at all. You can still finish the rest of the quests while unlocked or not?? Obviously it won’t reward as much xp but nobody is stopping you from finishing it. What’s the point in locking it, just stay in legion… You’re overcomplicating things for no reason.

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… Why do you need to be lvl 69 for content that gets capped at lvl 35?

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A mild understatement.

… could be an option here.

Thanks for phrasing that well enough, not sure I’d have the patience to put up with any degree of the victim-blaming that’s so prevalent around here.

It’s about the experience, what the player feels while playing through it.

I’ve done the campaigns affected by this before, I wanted to do them again before my subscription ran out, but not without the weirdness of leveling through it nor being kneecapped by having no toolkit.

That and enemies exploding when you look at them a bit funny is not fun, essentially mandating Chromie Time to be active for the entire thing to not be a complete gong show.

For Legion, it’s 45. But that’s not the issue here, it’s Chromie Time.

The problem is weird things like hitting 70 or doing any part of the TWW intro questline PERMANENTLY blocking you off from activating Chromie Time. Leveling is so fast that you have to go to the “Experience Eliminator” NPC to turn off XP gains before you’re done the questline.

As such, the solution for many expansions is locking XP at level 69. This isn’t ideal, but it works… until details with the TWW intro questline block off the Order Hall campaign for Legion, effectively blocking off the main feature of that expansion’s quests. Doing the intro questline will remove the quest block, but it will also disable Chromie Time.

So now the solution appears to be one of two things:

  • Lock XP at level 67, before the TWW intro questline triggers and screws everything up.
  • Make a time machine and warn my past self to never purchase TWW because of the above problems, and also because TWW ended up being entirely not worth it even at a discounted price.

Long story short, Blizz’ constant push to funnel players into current content has butchered their own game.

1 Like
18

I did this very thing only to level 68 and found out the hard way that wasn’t a good idea.

Level 67 after I deleted and remade my character. I would like it to just work on any level, but I think the reason for the restriction is to move players into current content which is where the developers want players to be in.

1 Like
19

It’s stupid that we need to lock our level at all to play the content.

I don’t mind if they want you to finish the current campaign once before unlocking Chromie Time for 70-80, but I really want that unlock.