I know “no changes” is kind of a meme but one thing that I think should be changed is leveling in classic. 95% of leveling has been reduced to boosting. Everyone pays hundreds or thousands of gold to mages to aoe grind mobs in different instances. You just sit all at the entrance of the instance all the way to 60. It’s basically a waste of time to level normally.
Some of the changes made to gaining experience that were done in retail should be considered for classic. It would be much healthier for the game if the majority of your experience came from turning in quests like it is in retail and to even offer alternative methods of gaining experience like battling grounds and gathering professions.
Blizzard just recently handed out 8 day bans to accounts that were participating in “losemade” battlegrounds where you just sit afk at the entrance to let the enemy win and gain 1 mark of honor - but sitting afk at the entrance of an instance to go from 1-60 is encouraged. Leveling in classic is basically one massive exploit.
I level the ‘old-fashion’ way. It’s my perception that those folks who use boosts have no vested interest in either their toons or this classic game and will leave within a few months out of boredom. I don’t think the xp earned from ‘normal’ leveling should be changed. Even if xp was more like retail, I don’t believe it would make any difference to folks who boost since it still wouldn’t be as preferable as sitting afk and letting someone else do all the work. For me, personally, if Blizz came in and made classic xp same as retail, I’d find another game to play.
I’d rather just see a severe cut in XP gained based off how high the highest level is. But at the same time, I enjoy less people in the open world at times for questing
They did adjust leveling: you need less xp per level and gain more xp for questing. Plus, with said changes, you now have enough quests to last you from 1 to 60 via questing alone.
I’ve been leveling the old fashion way, as have a whole lot of other people judging by the massively overcrowded zones since pre-patch, and I’m on track to be 60 by Tuesday.
There are simple solutions to eliminate boosting if blizzard cared to. You could nerf the experience gains when a high level is in the group. You could fix mob pathing. No, don’t make leveling easier like in retail. If you want easy leveling, play retail. The lack of fun leveling is one of the primary reasons I never play retail.
I’m mixed on this. My Paladin here I leveled through a mix of questing and doing the occasional dungeon to level for the sake of quests or for a piece of gear I really wanted/needed. However I also have a priest I level solely in dungeons as holy, and a bear I tank on and will occasionally go out on to gather herbs and resources. Nerfing dungeon exp would dramatically slow down my leveling speed, thus my desire to level them at all.
I dont know what server you are on, but It is not 95% of leveling being boosted. I actually think it is really small on our server and Most people I know are just leveling as a group or solo. Occasionally they do a 5 man with the 5th being a 60. But this was going on 15 years ago.
It’s a concept of nature vs nurture. In the spirit of Classic this wasn’t something that was rampant. Sure a few mages ran buddies, maybe a few carries but nothing on this scale. So Blizzard has to ask themselves, for the spirit of Classic and the health of the game, should it be allowed? Would they have allowed this back in the day? Should they allow this now?
Well good news, in Wrath of the Lich King they addressed the problem of leveling with introducing an auto - cross realm dungeon finder.
Look, people are re-experiencing the same annoyances we did in 2004-2009 that lead to quality of life stuff like reducing xp required to level, building on existing group finder tools, making quests more engaging and dynamic, and eventually a level squish, phasing and scaling with more options to how you can level, questing, pvp, dungeon grinding, resources gathering.
Blizzard did not do these things out of thin air but out of a growing sentiment that it wasn’t fun to grind through 80 - 120 levels to access the content they wanted to actually play.
Can you explain any negative effects. You say not in the spirit of the game? But what sounds more like multiplayers in a massive online world than players helping other players level?
Yes, explain your point, because right now, it sounds like you have no reasoning. you just see boosts, decided you dont like it, and are claiming “spirit of the game” like that means anything.
Do you have a point or are you just mindlessly complaining about something.
Riiiiigggghhhhttt. Because the people who pushed for years for Classic servers want the leveling experience to be like Retail. That totally makes sense!
Experience is reduced significantly when a high level character is in the group. The fact that they did not reduce it to a point where it would not be worthwhile to boost indicates to me that the original devs left it there on purpose. There are other blizzard games of this era where they chose that option, so I know this is unlikely to be an oversight.
I know boosts were not this common in classic, but by TBC and especially wotlk, blizzard was certainly aware of the issue and they chose to ignore it.
Having the option to level quickly via boost is a good thing imo. It increases the number of players at higher levels and the number of alts at higher levels. I don’t buy the arguments against it, frankly- these people would not be joining your groups if boosting was removed, for the most part.
To me it really boils down to- it’s not against the rules, but some people would like to control how others spend their time, and they can (and will) whine endlessly.
