Blizzard: Offer level restricted servers

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
1

I’ve been thinking about this issue with of level 60s being able to gear up alts very easily on hardcore servers.

I’ve recently started a solo run and I find the levelling process far more enjoyable, because money, gear and developing my professions actually matter, instead of just picking up a bunch of hand downs from my bank alts.

But WoW is an MMO. And a lot of content is basically designed around interaction and trade.

I think it’s just a bigger issue when there’s huge level disparities. Direct boosting is one aspect, but also being able to transform resources from higher to lower level characters I think is another.

So then I thought, why don’t we have level capped servers:

My proposal is these caps, based off the PvP brackets

  1. Levels 1-19
  2. Levels 20-29
  3. Levels 30-39
  4. Levels 40-49
  5. Levels 50-59
  6. Level 60

I think this has some nice benefits. For example, whilst technically level 1s could level their first aid to 225, to do that a bunch of level 19s are going to have to get out their and farm mageweave cloth from level 40 mobs.

And sure, one could twink out a character in a level bracket and boost others, but the boost at least won’t be as crazy as a level 60 running people through dungeons or the open world.

Also, it just breathes some new life into WoW, because then effectively each server has it’s own different unique endgame economy, as people could choose not to move to the next level bracket server. Like “Gnomeregan” will become the Naxx of the level 19 bracket. I note that in classic dungeons can be entered with up to 10 players, so yeah, I wonder how 10 level 19 players will go in gnomer?

The mechanism will be that once you reach a full XP bar at level 19/29/etc you can log out and server transfer to the next level server. You’d probably want a nice in game UI to do this. Perhaps any excess XP, up to one level, carries over, so once you enter the new server, you’ll be a level 20/30/etc.

I know Blizzard likes charging for things, so maybe have a thing where you can “clone” your character, so you keep your level 19 character forever whilst a level 20 clone continues on.

I think this approach fixes a lot of issues regarding the economy, and also gives five new ways to play the classic wow endgame.

2

I don’t know about a server with level caps but SoM2 should definitely have chunked leveling like the classic beta did.

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3

That would be kinda cool.

It’ll allow people who are ahead to stay ahead and let people who are behind catch up.

4

I think level restricted leveling servers is a great idea, and actually have the last server for 51 to 60 be the end game raiding server. This would remove gold buying, keep the world active, prevent most twinking (you could try, but you are not getting seal of wrynn probably on your level 19 if the server is restricted 1 to 19.)

5

I think this would satisfy the itch, and give people a chance to catch up and take things at their own pace on a casual schedule as well, while those who want to go faster than others would gear up in BiS across multiple toons.

OK :eyes:

6

For sure, it would let some people level at a more comfortable pace, it would give time for some unique pvp metas, people might not feel the need to ignore crafting while they level. I think there’s a lot of benefits to some degree of bracketed leveling and not many downsides

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7

I agree with the OP.

FYI, I’m aware of a WotLK server that is somewhat analogous, Chromiecraft. It tracked progression not by end-user content but by level. For the first few months level was capped at 19 and when a sufficient number of players reached 19, the cap was increased to 30 (I think). I believe the server is currently capped at 65. This “progression” strategy is, by all accounts, well appreciated by the players.

Of course, this is far different than what the OP proposed, but I think illustrates how level capping might be used to “equalize” progression between casual and serious players.

Cheers,