Played very briefly a few years back and went back to play the game with one newcomer and one veteran who stopped playing a little bit after Legion launched back in 2016. While we’ve come to the understanding that BfA kinda screwed everything up with the scaling level content me and the new buddy accidentally started Warlords of Draenor and wound up levelling up five times during the opening sequence. Our veteran friend told us we were basically on episode 4 of the story without even knowing what Burning Crusade was but now after about a week of play and just doing sidequests we’re all almost at level 30. Is it still possible to play through and enjoy the story of all the expansions without winding up over levelling anymore?
Not really. But you can dedicate one character to an expansion, then pick another class to level for the next expansion.
1 Like
With the current expansion the intention is for you to be able to do 1-50 in a single expansion, and then 50-60 in the Shadowlands. Short of locking your exp gains, it is literally impossible to completely more than a single expansion while leveling.
2 Likes
Both of these responses are some of the saddest things I’ve ever heard from an MMO. Unironically the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen. Why the hell would they do that?
You can lock your level at like 35 if you want to quest through old content. The Level Squish took the existing 120 levels and basically divided everything by 2.4, making mac level players and npcs level 50. People were already outleveling content before this at such a rapid pace that they overlapped previous expansions to cater to the same level bracket. WoW has been around for about fifteen years, and each expansion takes place at a specific margin of Azeroth’s history of fifteen game years.
You will miss out on a tiny bit of character lore. You will mostly miss out on “Kill this many X,” “Gather this many Y.” You can do about 70% of the quests in the game without an active subscription. It’s designed to give you a choice; level up in the present, or in the past.
Because with the level squish it would make absolutely zero sense to try to squeeze every single old expansion into 50 levels? Nobody wants to do every quest in Northrend for 3 levels
4 Likes
Because some of us aren’t new and got tired of leveling new characters through the same sh!t over and over and over and over and over and over.
At least this way there’s some variety.
2 Likes
I mean, I guess if you wanna stay there past 50 but you’re not gonna finish any expansion before 50. BfA alone now is like… 2 zones and change (assuming you’re just straight questing).
Not even remotely possible. My route is typically
1-10: Starting zone
10: Legion unlock for Dal Hearthstone
10-12/13?: WoD unlock for Garrison Hearth
13ish-40ish: Pick literally any zone you want in the game
40ish-50: Pick any other zone you want in the game
You will not under any circumstances be able to level from 1-60 and see 100% of the story from all the xpacs unless you level lock but then using that reasoning you’ve always been able to level through 100% of the xpacs.
A clamoring for faster leveling, “more coherent story for new people”.
Oh and my personal favorite so the levels feel meaningful 
people REALLY wanted Blizz to squish levels then rip apart abilities and drip feed them back parts of those abilities over various levels so each level “has meaning” 