Does anyone enjoy leveling?

Community General Discussion
61

agreed, but that doesn’t make it any more relevant

62

I do. I still have a couple zones left where I haven’t finished the zone main story yet. Since the “can’t outlevel the zone” change they made to leveling I’ve been enjoying the process even more.

63

Meh the gear treadmill is overrated. The race to the “real game” that leveling has become kind’ve ruined MMORPGs.

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64

No. It’s not. This is an RPG. It’s based off of tabletop gaming. Do you know what tabletop gaming is? An RPG on paper. Where you learn new stories, the background of everything. And where you create a narrative for characters where leveling and gaining new abilities is important.

The only reason MMORRGs have end game content is because no one would keep playing otherwise. But the bulk of the story and the act of leveling is a huge part of what this genre is about.

Nowhere has Blizz ever said “leveling is unnecessary.” The boosts were created as a way to help people catch up with friends. That isn’t a statement of “the other 110 levels are worthless so don’t do them.”

That means “get caught up with friends.” That doesn’t mean “skip everything because it’s worthless.” :roll_eyes:

Have you ever played another MMORPG? Because it doesn’t sound like it.

It’s an experience, genius. It’s the storylines, the lore, the old armor sets, the achievements as you level, learning how to play the game and your class, how the systems work, the professions, etc. It’s how we all learned the backbone of what makes this game great-- what makes RPGs great.

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65

Very much agree here.

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66

Yes. It is a result of playing and I enjoy playing.

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67

I used to love levelling. But after about my 12th character it’s just a quest grind now. I do not enjoy doing dungeons and battlegrounds are usually too frustrating cause you get Warsong Gulch or Arathi Basin alot as alliance and that’s almost an 85% guaranteed loss with no healers.

I also used to love levelling my friends through dungeons and farming cash while I did so, but then Blizz nerfed that absolutely into the dirt so now I can’t even help my friends.

Bottom line, I do not enjoy the quest grind anymore, I wish they’d add some triggered world events to help break up the monotony. Also maybe add some 3 player scenarios, MoP style.

68

because they are all doing so good right now and are loved by the fans…

69

In other words, no. So you’re arguing about a genre you don’t even understand. Which means this is a worthless argument. Have a nice day!

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70

I don’t enjoy it but you need to factor in my alt count. 26 110+. I think it’s understandable that I dislike it.

I don’t mind 1-60 though. I have a lot of choice to pick either Kalimdor or EK. I wish it extended 1-90.

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71

I’d say I generally enjoy 1-110 (although I do hate Northrend zones, I circumvent those as much as possible). But 110-120 is trash despite having some of the best looking zones in the game.

72

destroy my argument by saying i don’t know anything about the history of failed mmorpg’s because wildstar terra and rift are all such blockbusters and ffxiv totally ended wow…
don’t forget the legacy of pirates of the Caribbean online, such a riveting game, and GW2 is sooo loved

saying it came from a card game does not make leveling any less boring and unfulfilling… i guess you just like “collect 6 wood and kill 3 scout” type quests.

at least i can admit i only like it with proper gear and scaling that only max level allows for.

73

I enjoy every bit of leveling, except for 60-70. This feels like the biggest drag. After 70, it’s smooth sailing. “Alting” is my favorite part of WoW, and I have 45 toons in different stages. This expac has been one of the best for alt leveling in my opinion, and even more so in 8.1.

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74

I enjoy leveling a lot and trying the new specs. The only thing I would change is the option to skip Outland/Northrend and go straight to Cataclysm or Pandaria. Outland/Northrend are my least favorite zones and they always seem to feel like they take the longest to slog through. I tend to feel the burnout around that stage until I hit Pandaria and then it’s very fast from there.

I’m hoping Blizzard changes that about the 60-80 leveling.

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75

I have 4 characters. Two were leveled from 1 before boosts were available. The other two used free boosts. One of them is sidelined at 110, and I still have a 110 boost left over. No, I don’t like leveling from 1 because I’ve done it too many times already (twice).

76

Leveling used to be all I did in this game. The burnout was real because now I have little motivation for it. Even if I want an Allied Race armor set, I cannot bring myself to focus and enjoy quests, dungeons, and exploration like I used to.

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77

It’s a love hate kind of thing lol. With heirlooms and warmode, it’s a lot better (minus the ganking). The game has great lore that a lot of people skip, leveling gives one the chance to experience it.

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78

First time it’s fun and after that it’s just boredom followed by even more boredom with more alts. Sure there’s some quests we love to do but it’s not the same thing when doing every quest over and over again.

Those that do like it well good for them but those that don’t shouldn’t be left to the grind.

79

Man this was painful to read. I’m going to go completely off-topic here and just hope against hope that you’re interested in indulging the ramblings of an old fogey to learn a little bit about the history of MMOs.

All modern roleplaying games are descendants of tabletop RPGs, with Dungeons and Dragons being the most famous. This game is played with a small group of friends, in person, and uses rulebooks, dice and imagination to tell a story. It is not a card game. If you’ve seen Stranger Things, it’s the game the kids are playing at the beginning of the series.

As computers got cheaper and more accessible, people started making text adventures that used some of the D&D mechanics to make an interactive story. There was no graphics; you’d read a description of the area you were in and then were presented with a command prompt, where you’d enter actions like “go west”, “get lamp” or “attack dragon”. You’d then receive a textual description of the consequences of your actions. Some famous text adventures included Zork and Colossal Cave Adventure. These games are still being played but lacked the social aspect of D&D.

As computers got even more accessible and started being interconnected through bulletin board systems (BBSs), people started making multiplayer versions of these text adventures called MUDs (Multi User Dungeons). The only one of these I played regularly was called TradeWars 2002, but there were scads of them. Once the internet started becoming a thing, these games went online and their player counts started to really take off. Many MUDs are still running.

Eventually, MUDs took the next logical step and added graphics. Meridian 59 is the earliest example I’m aware of, followed by Lineage, Ultima Online and EverQuest. All of these games were massive successes in their day, far from “failed MMOs”.

Eventually Blizzard got into the game and, as they’ve done with all their big hits, they saw something they liked and decided to make it better. It’s well-documented that many of the original WOW devs were EverQuest players who wanted to iterate on that (massively successful) formula.

World of Warcraft only succeeded because it stood on the shoulders of giants. From a macro view, WoW is little more than a reskinned version of EQ. EQ was just UO with true 3D character models, and UO was just Meridian 59 with a budget. Meridian 59 was just a MUD with graphics, and MUDs were just multiplayer text adventures, which were just computer versions of tabletop RPGs like D&D.

I believe the point Rhielle was trying to make is, broadly, that those earlier games valued the journey more than the destination. When a group of friends sit down for a D&D session, they’re not trying to power their way to max level or find the best gear in the game. They’re having fun telling a story together. This storytelling element is what the leveling experience in WoW attempts to approximate, and keeps a lot of people interested even when the nuts-and-bolts gameplay (like fetch quests) gets tedious.

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80

Not since the awful 7.3.5 changes.

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