Do you find leveling too quick and easy? Do you struggle to get immersed into the story? This challenge is for you. Experience the World of Warcraft as a linear RPG. Progress through expansions by yourself or with others undertaking this challenge.
CORE GUIDELINES
Choose your starting expansion.
[I recommend TBC, especially if playing a Draenei or Blood Elf, which you can start at level 1. Otherwise, you must be level to 10 to begin Chromie Time. Do what is most immersive. If playing a worgen, start in Cataclysm, etc.]
Speak to Slahtz or Behsten in your faction capital to stop gaining XP at your expansion’s respective level cap. This will cost 10 gold each time.
[TBC - 27 | WotLK - 30 | Cata/MoP - 35 | WoD - 40 | Legion - 45 | BfA - 50 | SL - 60 | DF - 70]
GEARING
You cannot wear any quest reward above common (white) quality. Any common item can be worn, but cannot be repaired.
Uncommon (green) items cannot be worn at all.
Rare (blue) items can be equipped, but cannot be repaired.
Epic (purple) items can be equipped, but can only be repaired during the expansion from which you looted the item.
Legendary (orange) items may be worn forever.
Artifact weapons may be worn throughout Legion.
Items may be crafted, but rules above apply.
You may use the Auction House with the gold acquired from your playthrough. However, you cannot buy gear above common quality. Instead, use it to buy crafting materials.
Professions are encouraged. Rules above apply.
This challenge is two years in the making. I’m glad I can finally share it with others.
This is really weird and not at all heroic. Basically just dungeon spam to get blues which you can use since for whatever weird reason greens are excluded. You realistically will never get a purple let alone a legendary without deliberately keeping yourself there.
The thing about leveling with self imposed rules is that you’re doing it for your own enjoyment. Undermining the limits you set on yourself defeats the purpose.
On the contrary it seems to be the exact spirit. Problem is though that there isn’t a way to realistically progress in a way through expansions past the leveling experience because there just wouldn’t be enough bodies level locked (let alone the fact all old content is squished as a baseline).
Like this just seems like doing classic-lite but in retail. The best bet is maybe scrounging up 10 people interested in something like this and starting with Wrath or Cata and “progressing” through there since all those raids have 10 man options.
It’s on a public forum and if something can’t stand even the least levels of questioning, how good is it really?
I don’t care if people want to do it. I do think that anyone even remotely interested in any kind of challenge like this would actually be served better by playing Classic where you actually have a population of people and a game state much more in tune with the actual spirit of this challenge (well Wrath at least and presumably Cata soon down the line).
You make a good point. There isn’t really progression through expansions outside of questing unless you can do the expansion’s endgame content. That’s why I created the in-game community and discord to help those interested coordinate.
Using LFG, you’ll just be paired with players with much better gear who can steamroll through dungeons that won’t be happy to be carrying.
I’ve been playing this myself for the past two years. Playing through the expansions on Classic is fun, but this offers the gameplay of Dragonflight. The new talent trees create interesting choices as you level.
Look if you have fun and can somehow find bodies for it then all the more power to you.
Mechanically, much of this challenge just doesn’t work even despite the weird limitations. Quests don’t give gray/white common gear except MAYBE the old Draenei and BE start areas…and even those may have been updated by now. Banning greens is a weird move but people have leveled naked punching boars and deathless so it’s doable.
If LFG is out of the picture, whose to say asking for help/carries is too? With quest gold, could I bribe a level 70 to take 10 mins out of their day to plow through most any given raid and let me have the drops equippable to me? Even way back in the day, asking friends for help or even straight up paying people to help with things was a strategy to getting problems solved and things done. Social status and wealth are resources every bit as much as gear is.
Speaking of those drops, the old stuff has been squished. Pretty sure even leveling locking yourself to the cap of the respective expansion + chromie time doesn’t change that at all. Progressing in the raids isn’t going to yield distinctly more powerful gear and, presumably, bosses that aren’t any more or less difficult numerically (mechanically though sure)…not to mention that a lot of the old raids straight up have been borked and don’t even have functional mechanics anymore.
Like it just seems you wanna play classic but in retail and I’m afraid the overall experience is akin to playing TWing dungeons and thinking they are in any way reminiscent to the actual dungeon play/experience X number of years ago.
Gear progression is the most important aspect of the challenge. Greens are in abundance and drop off mobs fairly quickly. I’ve tested this with multiple classes. Rogue in particular is a lot of fun. It can become MUCH harder than vanilla WoW depending on your class. I had to think carefully about my pulls and cooldowns.
Classic is a very different experience. The content may be the same, but the gameplay is different. I have REALLY enjoyed the difficulty of combat through this challenge. It doesn’t feel like Dragonflight or Classic. It’s like it’s own WarCraft RPG.
More power to anyone playing the game the way they enjoy most. Thanks for bumping.
Two years sitting around being too lazy to publish it.
In all seriousness, I don’t play that often. I tested it with multiple classes and roles. It’s hardest as a melee DPS and easiest as a tank/healer.
Thanks. I hope you enjoy. No pressure to join the discord, but if you’re interested in finding groups, I also created an in-game community, linked above.
