Hyperbole. Turning in a full hubs worth of quests can add a third or a half of a bar. We’re talking about half that, which would be a sixth or a quarter of a bar. There’s no “barely” about that. If leveling 110 to 120 isn’t demoralizing, then the squish wouldn’t be either. (I consider 110-120 demoralizing for my own reasons, but that’s mostly about how banal the content is, not the speed of it)
It’s what matters to you. Remember that you’re only one perspective in a sea of slightly nuanced perspectives. I don’t care if it takes an extra 30 minutes to get a new ability if the levels actually feel meaningful. If, overall, every level grants a new ability, it will feel more compelling to me because I won’t have significant dead levels.
Remember the upset about how you might go 3-4 Heart of Azeroth levels with no new traits on your gear? It’s exactly the same concept to me. If HoA levels took longer, but every one of them gave new gear traits, I’d prefer that because it’s a deterministic reward system.
This isn’t a discussion about the smoothness of leveling speed, but about the smoothness of ability to level ratio. If you get a new one every level, it’s a perfect blend of level to ability. That’s the point and goal. It’s about smoothness of leveling reward, not speed.
I would love nothing more than to see another 7 expansion over the next 15 years. But there’s absolutely no way WoW can sustain that with the current system. It flat out doesn’t have the foundation to handle it. We barely have anything that could be considered “linear progression” and our only two choices is to keep limping along pretending we do or to accept reality and just get the change over with already.
My idea is predictable, recyclable, and offers players more freedom than we’ve ever had when leveling our characters and exploring the lore. All while allowing Blizzard the opportunity to increase interactions in zones that have been dead for years.
It’d still be pretty demoralizing if you’re used to the old way. Especially once you get into Legion and BfA and the big quest hubs disappear.
But you’ll have the same amount of dead space in-between levels. You’re basically asking for a placebo to make you feel better.
You can’t just ignore the smoothness of leveling speed. If it takes X amount of time to get a new ability now and it takes the same amount of time to get a new ability post-squish, then you haven’t really improved anything.
And your solution wouldn’t really solve any of that. The only way that would ever truly be solved is if they pulled a Cataclysm-style revamp of the whole world with every expansion.
If it stops Blizzard from making another game mechanic concerning leveling up an item, like some ruby slippers wizard of oz style, on the next expansion, then I am all for a level squish.
It could do a better job than the current system.
All Blizzard needs to do is once you’re done with the starting area is give a quest that tells you to talk to an NPC in SW/Org. You run up “discover” it’s a Bronze Dragon (kinda like Zidormi) they give you some yada yada dialogue about going to the past to understand the current conflicts and there you decide what expansion you want to run before poof you’re teleported to it’s start.
You cannot have actually read my thread or comments because the entire point of it is to give us a recyclable way to utilize Legacy content that would be a vast improvement over what we have now which is a jagged, disjointed, mess.
In other words, “kill the game for those of us who like to solo old content.” By the way, when I say, “solo old content” I am including open world rares and bosses.
Why wouldn’t you be able to do that? The strength difference between 55-60 would be essentially the same as 110-120 is now.
Nothing I’m suggesting should break how transmog, mount, or any form of Legacy content is run. The most it might do is bring everything to the same level so Garrosh takes a few less hits while Ragnaros takes a few more, but it should be more than easy to solo.
You are assuming that I would be soloing old content on max level characters. I already miss being able to solo level 15 dungeons on level 40 alts.
Here’s a clue: despite the fact that Blizzard regards max level as the only level that matters, not everyone else feels that way. This loss of progression within a bracket is, itself, something that makes me hate level scaling.
With level scaling, Blizzard has already effectively reduced wow to a handful of levels.
1 - 5 = one level
5 - 60 = the second level
60 - 80 = the third level
80 - 90 = the forth level
90 - 100 = the fifth level
100 - 110 = the sixth level
110 - 120 = the seventh level
Because time is what matters to some of us. Personally, I think it would be extremely cool if there were 200 (or more) levels to gain as we leveled through the game. The only thing that matters to me is the speed at which I gain those levels.
Just because an arbitrary number by our character portrait and the dispersion of skills throughout the levels we have is what you think matters, does not mean that others feel the same way.
I understand that people don’t want to lose their sense of progression. I do.
The issue though, is that it doesn’t really exist.
Cataclysm broke any illusions of forward story progression by shattering the timeline and the repeated prunes and re-organizing of abilities have made the idea of linear character strength meaningless. When the next expansion starts I won’t be a commander in charge of my own Garrison, I won’t be the chosen hero with a personal artifact, and I likely won’t be the chosen of Azeroth with shiny bling.
I’m just going to be whatever next “big hero” title Blizz throws on while getting my butt handed to me by boars outside the first major quest zone.
My suggestion is a mechanical one. It will shatter the remaining illusion of personal character progress, but it needs to be done because the game cannot sustain it’s current system. The old zones are becoming increasingly more barren, the numbers are getting arbitrarily larger with no real reward, and level of interaction within each expansion as we level is dropping. It’s not healthy for the game to tell players that they should do the first zone of every expansion but never see the rest of the game in the race to max level.
At the bare minimum my suggestion would encourage players to level alts in expansions and zones they haven’t touched in years and that is a very good thing for this game.
It won’t encourage me to do any such thing. Level scaling already makes me feel less and less like even logging in. All your idea would do for me is to make me drop the game completely.
I dropped SWG over the NGE, as far as I am concerned, your idea would just be an NGE for wow.
I just don’t see an alternative that wouldn’t see the game break under the bulk of it’s own content.
Retail WoW is increasingly less about character progress and focuses far more on player progress and (for me) the rise of M+ and Raiderio was the final nail in that coffin.
I still love the game and play the crap out of it, but I also have had to come to terms that it’s just not the character focused RPG I picked up in Vanilla.
With Classic right around the corner and Ion saying they’re looking at a squish, now is the perfect time to make this change.
I already see the only reason to play wow as my collections. Collections are the only thing in wow that can be said to be permanent. If a level squish makes it so fewer of my alts can participate in mog farming, then that is a major detriment to my play style. I have already given up on ever buying the newest expansion. Technically, the last expansion I actually bought was Mists. The only reason I ever had Warlords or Legion while they were current was because friends gave me copies. Since my collections are the only things I get to keep (and thus, the only things that really matter to me), I have no problem leaving my characters several levels short of the newest expansion. I can still solo most old content. My alts that have reached 110 can even solo heroic dungeons in Warlords.
If Blizzard went with your idea, it would completely destroy the game for me and anyone else who plays the way I do… and I seriously doubt that I am the only one who plays this way.