Level "Crunch": No!

[Mechadin-dalaran]

@Rastlin-eldrethalas

Blizzard, what are you thinking?

I don’t see it being a horrible thing. I am interested to see how it plays out.

@Rastlin-eldrethalas

First off, it is taking something away that we earned. I am furious that you are even thinking about this and I will tell you right now that the players will not stand for this slap in the face!

Yeah we did earn those levels, you’re right. I don’t see it as a huge slap in the face though. Just more of a question of what they’re up to.

@Rastlin-eldrethalas

Second, this is of no value. The level reduction does not give you anything-other than breaking the game through countless bugs triggered by crunching our hard earned levels!

“No value” is to be determined. We know nothing much of it other than it will happen in the future.

@Rastlin-eldrethalas

Third, you should spend your efforts on something useful. Fix classes, Fix tuning, Fix something.

Amen.

@Rastlin-eldrethalas

Blizzard, you must back off right now on this ill thought out level “crunch”. We the players will not stand for it and demand as your paying customers that you not reduce our levels!!

You’re speaking for a whole lot of people lol…

[Verdre-silvermoon (Verdre)]

@Longwriter-stormrage

So what if Blizzard has a new plan for class design, but that new plan hinges on having fewer experience levels overall?

If they had such a plan, why couldn’t they come out and say that? That’s the problem here. They dropped two lines, without anything else, and have been radio silent on the topic since that point.

The two lines were “did you know there was a level squish planned, how do you feel about it?” and “would this make you more or less likely to buy a level boost?”

Which doesn’t exactly inspire confidence or trust that this is part of a foundation for something better.

[Rankin-shandris (Rankin)]

@Tridiak-barthilas

Don’t assume if they chop out half the levels exp per level will double.

Maybe not double, but it’s pretty obvious from the survey that they’re still going to be selling level boosts. So they’re not going to reduce the time to level to the cap by some significant amount.

[Captsjw-thrall]

Just wanted to point out the OP was unable to finish a motherlode plus 7 at all. He spent many many wipes on the final boss…the easiest boss in that dungeon.

No real reason just havent had the OP tell me his playing is private in a while and missed it.

[Jops-zuljin]

@Zaria-moon-guard

because most of the spells you gain around level 80 today, absolutely weren’t the same spells you were actually getting in Wrath.

True, and we have FEWER spells today than back then too.

Pruning / simplifying hasn’t helped make levelling any more pleasant because there’s even less to look forward to than ever.

And then +/- halfway through all content, progress stops.

Now imagine levelling up to MoP and instead of having all your talents and abilities… you only have HALF of them so far.

How great is that gonna feel?

Blizzard painted themselves into a corner and, basically, just started painting the same parts over and over (artifact weapon, then necklace, next whatever).

If they weren’t so obsessed with the revenue from “Level Boosts” they’d do the right thing and revamp the levelling process to serve TWO different player desires … people who enjoy levelling and want to see the history of the world … and people who want to jump into the end-game content with their friends without investing weeks of hours here and there.

Can’t please both with the same carrot, you end up with mush that neither like.

[Toddorbert-thrall]

perhaps the answer is not level squish but no more expansions to wow 1 but release wow 2 and we all start over in a relatively new game; however after said that, I’m not impressed with re-adding “classic” as wow 2 in case anyone has that idea - although to be honest I wouldn’t put that past the devs since they seem to enjoy re-tinting everything

[Rastlin-eldrethalas (Rastlin)]

@Captsjw-thrall

Just wanted to point out the OP was unable to finish a motherlode plus 7 at all. He spent many many wipes on the final boss…the easiest boss in that dungeon.

No real reason just havent had the OP tell me his playing is private in a while and missed it.

My mythic plus progression is private.

Your attempt to progress shame me has failed.

To the point of the post-62_hearts_ does prove I am correct.

No Level Crunch Blizzard!!!

The players have spoken.

[Longwriter-stormrage]

@Verdre-silvermoon

If they had such a plan, why couldn’t they come out and say that? That’s the problem here. They dropped two lines, without anything else, and have been radio silent on the topic since that point.

The two lines were “did you know there was a level squish planned, how do you feel about it?” and “would this make you more or less likely to buy a level boost?”

Which doesn’t exactly inspire confidence or trust that this is part of a foundation for something better.

Blizzard is silent on too many things, IMO. I wish they’d tell us more about why the level squish is happening; my guess about it being part of a bigger revamp could be way off, spot-on, or anything in between, and there’s no way to know until it happens.

[Fenshire-feathermoon (Fenshire)]

@Rastlin-eldrethalas

slap in the face!

I came here for this. I did not leave disappointed.

[Darknessbull-amanthul]

@Kozzae-doomhammer

@Rastlin-eldrethalas

First off, it is taking something away that we earned.

Technically, if they lower the cap on a character, you would not have anything “taken away”. Lets say they cut the cap in half, then add 5 levels in the next expansion, you would start a level 120 character at say level 60, then work towards end cap, so you would not have anything taken away, while

@Rastlin-eldrethalas

Fix classes, Fix tuning, Fix something.

Then being able to focus on gear, stats, talents and abilities. Everything right now is out of wack because of two stat squishes, and one item level squish and an ability squish, but not lowering the level caps.

So if they lower the power progression to a more manageable level, then they can focus on all the other stuff you would see as important.

@Rastlin-eldrethalas

We the players

But you really don’t speak for the entire player group, I’ve seen feedback going back to level 100 where players were not looking forward to going beyond that. Perhaps if there were no concept of levels from the start, and only focus on gear and gaining abilities, this would have been better from the get go, but here we are no pondering on where to go in the future, when everyone insists that going back in time is the only way to save the game.

I legitimately hope they just condense it to 60 and keep it there, because if this game is around fir another 10 years we’re just going to have to climb back up all over again .

Do what Runescape classic did, keep the level cap at 60 and expansion new content.

[Kozzae-4668 (Kozzae)]

@Longwriter-stormrage

I wish they’d tell us more about why the level squish is happening;

So far they haven’t said anything is, or is not, happening. All that has happened is that Ion talked about a level squash at some point in a q&a, then much later a survey asking players opinions on that.

It probably will be a big topic at Blizzcon, if they also announce details on the next expansion.

[Karmarkar-zangarmarsh]

@Brahmina-khadgar

In the end though, all I personally care about is the fact that I leveled up my character, and that number means something to me. Changing it to a lower number does, indeed, take something from me. Levels is what I care about, and earning more of them is why I play this game.

Well put and I agree. It’s similar to when they remove achievement points or anything else that I’ve earned. Once you start removing things I earn, it completely destroys any motivation to earn anything ever again. It’s to the point now where I don’t care about achievement points, or gear, or toys or anything else that has been removed or nerfed into oblivion. Now add levels to the list.

At this point, I’m only interested in classic. Hopefully they won’t screw that up. If they do I’ll just switch full time to FFXIV. The current dev team seems to be doing everything in their power to push me away from the game.

[Brahmina-khadgar (Brahmina)]

@Kahless-blackhand

You say that you lose something if an arbitrary set of numbers is multiplied by 0.5; would you gain (or also lose?) something if they were instead multiplied by 5?

The numbers are not arbitrary. They are a clear progression that has been the same since the game’s inception. If the level numbers are changed at all from what they’ve been for the eleven years I’ve been playing, I will be losing something. It doesn’t matter how they change them. You really do seem to not understand, no matter how sarcastically you try to say otherwise.

The “rules” of the game were that I do certain things that earn experience which in turn grants me levels. I enjoy this process and am proud of the levels I have gained on my characters. Taking away the levels I have earned changes the rules. It would be the same if the rules from the start had used a different system to show progression that they now want to change.

@Kahless-blackhand

What of my second example of levels being dropped altogether in favor of just tracking experience?

This example is a false equivalency because Blizzard isn’t talking about removing experience, only removing levels. I’ve little doubt that they’ll make it take just as long to get to end game no matter what numbers they use. In any case, I would not be happy with just tracking experience because it always rolls over and does not give any feeling of progression.

@Kahless-blackhand

Do you even know exactly how much experience you have?

No one can know this because Blizzard is always changing the amount of experience awarded as well as the amount of experience needed throughout each expansion.

@Kahless-blackhand

Would it be better to change a number to which you don’t have the same sort of emotional attachment?

That is precisely what the level squish is: a change in the numbers. Of course I don’t think it would be better. I left level 60 in the dust long ago. I’ve no interest in going back there. I want to go forward. I want to be level 200 some day.

The fact is, a level “squish” will not solve the problems most people have with leveling, and I agree with those who doubt Blizzard could successfully implement such a change without causing numerous balance and tuning issues throughout the game. It its overall no more than a band-aid to fix an issue that requires surgery.

[Brahmina-khadgar (Brahmina)]

@Fenrirulv-sargeras

Instead of gutting our levels, bring back what made leveling fun.

I wish I could give you 1000 likes. Your entire post is perfect.

[Wreckinball-wyrmrest-accord]

HEY BLIZZARD IF YOU REMOVE MY LEVELS AND FORCE ME REGRIND THEM TO PLAY THIS GAME I’M QUITTING THIS GAME! CAP CHARACTER LEVELING OF THE GAME AT 120… ╭ ╮

[Jops-zuljin]

I’m so disillusioned with ActiBuzzard right now that I can easily see them announcing that patch 9.0 is on ‘indefinite hold while we figure out how supporting Classic affects our development resources’ or some other awesome sounding hand-wavey excuse for “We’ll still happily take your money but retail is a dead man walking from now on.”

The art team really delivered at least, so if nothing else, stylistically it ends on a high note.

Sure they’ll throw in a few more allied races going forward, just milk some more boosts and race change money. And the squish in order to justify dropping the boost price to a more friendly $40 price… but I think come Autumn next year, the whole game will count as ‘legacy content’.

[Slamrageleek-thaurissan]

honestly, having no level squish was good cuz i can finally know what number comes after 120 and im STOKED.

[Warder-dunemaul]

Firstly LOVE your name. From top 5 best book series EVER!

Secondly, I COMPLETELY agree. Doing this would feel like mass punishment because Bliiz didn’t plan correctly for the game lasting this long. DO just about ANYTHING but take levels away from us. I honestly don’t see myself playing WoW anymore if they implement this lazy and horrendous change. Which saddens me to no small degree as I’ve been a avid player since early Vanilla and this is one of my favorite games of all time.

[Valarien-area-52 (Valarien)]

@Arlec-thrall

The current leveling process is a slog and everyone knows it.

How is squishing the levels going to make it less of a slog?

Its not like they are going to reduce the experience required to hit max. Each level will just take 10x longer. That, to me, would seem more like a slog.

[Warder-dunemaul]

One of the ways they could make the levels matter is bring back the old talent system and or keep giving you abilties every few levels instead of having draughts with no new abilties/talents for some times 15-30 levels…the abiltiy pruning was one of their worst ideas ever…