Sooo… I basically just ruined the potentiality of having a nice full WoD playthrough with my character where I’d go through each zone and complete all the quests for story while not making mobs too easy to kill.
Long story short, I spammed dungeons until I reached level 48, paused my XP gains, completed the Maw intro, and then selected my covenant, and now I can’t select an expansion to level in anymore despite killing my XP gains prior to the cutoff point, which I believe is level 49.
(Edit: It’s 47, therefore I messed up big time.)
And before anyone says it, no, I don’t want to make a new character and just play the whole WoD story on that character. The reason being because I made this character with the intention of playing through WoD. I won’t go into detail on why, you just need to know that’s it’s for RP reasons and it’s important to me.
The reason why I chose to do the Shadowlands intro was because I was under the impression that we can still talk to Chromie to level through any expansion as long as we were at the appropriate level, which I’m positive I was, because I double checked before starting the Shadowlands questline; Chromie still offered the option to choose an expansion; I was still in the Burning Crusade timeline. I shouldn’t have been locked out. I just wanted to get my covenant abilities - that’s it. But no, it seems the quests define the point of no return, which is silly.
This is so bothersome to me. I don’t understand Blizzard’s reasoning in locking us out of Chromie Time. Every thread I see on this topic; many people wondering the same thing; tons of support for the idea of leaving Chromie Time open at any level. It would essentially function the same as party sync, except without the part about no saved progress. I thought I had found a workaround to playing expansions with any max level character by party syncing with a dummy account on a separate window, but no, the quests basically function the same as dailies whereas they reset per day, so I’d basically lose all of my story quests progression overnight.
So I will once again pitch my support for the idea of letting us do Chromie Time at any level. I think it’s rich that Blizzard “addressed” the issue of players not getting enough story out of each expansion at BlizzCon, while also going out of their way to prevent players from going back a few expansions with their favorite characters and do some questing. Rant over.
Don’t take this the wrong way, but did you read my post?
The point of playing the expansion at its level is so that everything isn’t trivialized, i.e. killing mobs too fast. Sometimes they have dialogue, and killing them too fast means I miss out on that dialogue.
And I did halt my XP… right at the cutoff point, I just didn’t think the Shadowlands quests would lock me out completely.
Chromie time probably validates whether you have moved on to current content. Once you start SL, she stops talking to you? Makes sense to me.
(As in, you ticked the box of getting on the SL railroad or threads of fate, not just the level req- agree it could be clearer, but I gather your situation is very niche)
While it would be nice if Chromie time worked at any point even level 60, that is probably not going to happen.
your problem was starting shadowlands as that locks you out, because they didn’t want people doing what you were planning and using the very powerful covenant abilities in it.
sorry that your questing is going to be slightly easier then if Chromie time worked though.
It was never made clear to anyone that quest progression would define a cutoff point. Blizzard only gave us a level range (1-49). I thought the solution would be as simple as pausing my XP.
This is what I’m thinking that happened, I just think it’s absurd and I wish it had been made clear by Blizzard.
If the covenant abilities would be a problem, they wouldn’t let us use them in party sync, same as other powers like the Heart of Azeroth. It’s a matter of scaling.
Perhaps players at your level should be able to use chromie time. But if so they should be phased out of lower levelers. People who want to do what you were thinking you were doing stop their xp at 47 now.
Find a low level person and use party sync. That should open everything up and put you at that level. Or am I missing something besides the fact that what you really want is to have permanent access to Chrome Time?
I think they changed their mind from the original plan. It wouldn’t be the first time they quietly changed something to “encourage” people into playing unpopular end game content.
Before doing something that involves the current expansion, it might have been wise to check and see if it interfered with what you wanted to do. Chromie Time is obviously designed to level through the previous expansions the way you choose to do so - did it not occur to you that going into into the current expansion at the earliest possible level (which is not included in the Chromie options for expansions) might affect your play of those expansions? Doing the Maw intro and then choosing a Covenant is basically saying to the game “I’m ready to play Shadowlands”. You chose to do that at level 48, so the game moved you along into that expansion.
You say :
which means that you didn’t level up only by questing, you did dungeons which will naturally leapfrog you past a lot of world content. And you also say:
And that’s precisely why Blizzard designed it that way. They don’t want you using Covenant abilities while levelling up in earlier expansions. And sure, people want to be able to continue levelling beyond 50 in earlier expansions, and that’s fine - as long as they don’t also try to gain the benefits of the Covenants but simply keep levelling. I’ve got a number of characters under 60 who have not done the Maw and then gone to the Shadowlands; they have levels above 50 just through doing the things I have them doing for farming and so on. I can’t do that through Chromie Time, it just happens as a result of doing stuff out in the world.
You wanted the best of both worlds, literally. Sadly, that can’t happen.
It was well known that if you went into SL you would lose access to chromie time…the natural flow was chromie->SL. Hitting lvl 50 pushed you into Shadowlands was all and kicked you out. But initiating SL quests also did the same thing.
I’m not sure about how well-known that was. I only found out a few days ago that people are now locking their xp at 47 to continue to play chromie time. My feeling is that it is a relatively recent change.
My issue was that there was no clear cutoff point defined by Blizzard. I did want to get the best of both worlds, but not for character power. I just wanted to initiate my character into the covenant I had chosen for their backstory. I thought that character level was what defined the cutoff point. I thought maybe the covenant abilities would scale down just as other class abilities do when we party sync.
I had created this character a long time ago with the intention of playing through WoD. It had been sitting around level 20 for so long since I was spending most of my time playing Shadowlands content on my alts. I had already played a little through the story, I was just saving it for later. When I dungeon spammed with this character, I was essentially prepping them for the WoD expansion for a smooth gameplay. I still had the sole intent on doing world content.
Which is basically my point. I don’t like the current system we have, and I wish they would change it.
I don’t think it was “known.” I think people would probably assume that it would kick you out, but as I’ve stated many times, it’s unclear.
I never hit level 50. I hit level 48 and killed XP gains ASAP.
“Chromie Time will also turn itself off automatically when you reach level 50, teleporting you back to Stormwind/Orgrimmar.”
In this video, released back in November for the launch,
At 50s in you can hear them say “level 48 or higher will receive a summons”…so it was indicated way back at launch that this was a starting point for players.
I feel they should still allow Chromie Time all the time, regardless of if you’re in Shadowlands or not, but simply just make it so that any non-Shadowlands content no longer gives XP once you’re level 50+. That way people can still go back (or stay back) and do content at a reasonable difficulty, like the OP wants.
If gear is also an issue, they could cap quest rewards and drops from non-Shadowlands content at 50, too. Might cause some problems with difficulty, but if you’re not actually leveling, shouldn’t be too much of an issue.
