Yeah nah. I’m already tired as it is, of Blizz steadily making this game easier and catering to those who want everything just handed to them, with little to no effort.
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Guild Wars 2 does a pretty good job with its mastery mechanic. You level characters in the base game 1-80, then at 80 XP you gain is used for mastery levels which unlock map based abilities for each expansion.
If you got all the masteries, a full XP bar gives you spirit shards, a currency to use for end game crafting or collections (achievements). In lower level maps, you get level synced; in max level areas, your level gets turned into mastery levels.
Now, I’m not sure if Blizzard could adopt something similar without it being controversial. A lot of players do like leveling up, getting skills that way, so on and so forth.
Personally I think the more egregious expansion systems WoW had previously (Artifact weapons and Heart) could have benefitted from something like masteries. Instead of raw power, it should have been abilities (although we did keep some skills from Legion and SL).
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Meh NCSoft is a terrible company so it does not matter what they do.
why do people insist on going into other games that people have established is built a certain way and being all like “hey change the game for the way i like to play and who cares about everyone else?”
The reality is that everyone playing is expecting a constant reward. It can be a level up ding, achievement ding, new gear, transmogs, mount, etc. - doesn’t matter - we all want a thing that shows we’re making progress.
Character levels are a very common solution, and it works fine.
Removing them can work, and I’ve been in favor of it in the past (or at least in favor of not raising the level cap), but if you remove it you have to replace it with something else that keeps players satisfied…and then you have to wonder what you’re gaining if you remove a “level” just to replace it with some other arbitrary number that goes up.
The idea of doing quests to earn talents would work if everyone wanted to quest. But WoW’s playerbase is too diverse for that. There’s an uproar every time new content becomes “required” at all. Questing/the Campaign should be completely optional.
The game is moving toward being more open and letting everyone play the way they want. Removing levels might help that, but it introduced a multitude of other problems and isn’t worth the trade.
It wouldn’t some people only play the game to level characters.
Kind of cherry picked my post there. 
I agree with you. There has to be a form of progression or creating characters doesn’t make any sense.
Any benefit removing Levels might bring is completely negated by the new problems it introduced.
Oh, i did not intend to chery pick, i agreed with all but that one part is all.
i think Options are the character creation would solve the issue. “Do you want to level this alt” “Do you want to use this alt for quests” “Do you want to go right to the current expansion” "Do you want to start in “raid ready gear” Etc
I like questing though, there has to be some incentive to drive people to do them to at least get an understanding of the land.
You know, in guild wars they did hearts and it was a pretty bad idea imo, there was no dialogue, or if any it was benign.
But quests in wow are pretty cool because each one presents its own little story. Idk.
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I see the validity of your argument, but levels go back to D&D and I don’t know how the game would feel w/o that dragon to chase so to speak.
I do fully agree the squish nonsense needs to stop. I don’t like it, what is the point of squishing everyone down only to go right back to the same thing a few expansions later.
Big number hurt brain need smol number or can’t reach goal.
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Fallout 76 does this. I mean you still have levels, you just level indefinitely, so effectively they mean nothing.
You still quest, there’s still low level scaling, RPG progression.
People against this idea just have antiquated ways of thinking, stuck in the past!
i mean maybe people who are all for the “Anti level” are just a bit “Entitled” and want the reward “Now” and not when they do the work? It can be argued either way is my point. At this point, i don’t care if they do or don’t get rid of levels, but people should not claim one side is better than the other.
yeah but its kind of been like this since skyrim. is a big reason i stopped playing skyrim without mods.
I barely even see a difference. When I’m low level in 76 I feel low level. I’m using pipe crap and wooden pool cues and random garbage as weapons and armor and have to straight up run from quests and level/power up to even be able to touch the quest. The amount of quests I had to run from and come back later when I was more powerful was actually kind of jarring. You don’t expect it in that type of game.
Im not against your approach OP but i think you understate how big of a work, not only in a technical level, this venture would take.
There is also the issue levels help with the concept of progression which is the core of any mmorpg, the less content and less progression it offers the less is the amount of players playing it.
Not at all what I said. WoW has taken inspiration from other games its whole lifespan. Dragonriding was in part inspired by griffon flying from the same game.
Game pretty much started as an EverQuest clone for crying out loud.
Are you really going to try to say a company being bad is why none of their ideas were good? People play the game, they’re doing something right.
Moreover, it’s hard to take this comment with a straight face when Blizzard and WoW was full of scandal, yet people still played.
I have already stated, no matter what blizzard does, people would still play this game. Also NCSoft is a horrible company, That does not mean they don’t have “good ideas” just that it does not matter if their ideas are good or not. Same goes for blizzard.
Eventually, they will stop making WoW expansions
The War Within is the tenth expansion pack, with two more coming behind it. That’s twelve right there.
At some point WoW will be put on maintenance mode, and they’ll only release smaller update patches like with other, dead/stagnant MMOs.
It just still makes too much money and is still too relevant of a game for that, at least for the next few years.
WoW is still very much alive and kicking. MoP Remix is a testament to this.
Although, I think Classic is approaching that “end” already. What happens after Cata Classic? MoP Classic? Then WoD?
Imo, Classic WoW should already be capped/finished, maybe an Era/Vanilla version, with added patches beyond the original scope of the game. Or TBC or Wrath for those that want to stay in a specific new game+ for their expansion of choice.
Kinda like what they are doing with SoD, but SoD is an entirely new direction, somewhere between Retail and Era/Classic.
The issue is that MMOs never really end, lol. There’s only so much people are willing to repeat.
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