I’ve been thinking about the introduction of level scaling in World of Warcraft, where mobs in every zone scale to match your character’s level. This change, aimed at making all old content relevant, seems more like a workaround to avoid creating new content, benefiting the leveling of alts and replayability. However, I can’t help but feel that it detracted from some core aspects of the game. Here’s what comes to mind:
Loss of Progression and Accomplishment: Previously, leveling up and growing stronger was a tangible experience. Out-leveling a zone and returning to it later allowed you to tangibly feel your character’s growth, as you could easily defeat enemies that once posed a challenge. This feeling of progression and accomplishment has been diminished with level scaling, as you no longer experience this sense of becoming more powerful compared to the world around you. There’s something inherently satisfying about revisiting old zones and one-shotting low-level enemies. The power fantasy of being a high-level hero in a world with weaker zones is a classic RPG element that’s been lost.
Mystery and Narrative Progression: Part of WoW’s charm was the mystery and allure of high-level zones. Venturing into them as a low-level character meant certain doom, but it also built up an anticipation and narrative around these areas. You knew you had to level up before you could explore these dangerous lands. This created a natural, progressive storyline, encouraging players to grow stronger.
While level scaling was implemented with good intentions, it seems to have overlooked the fundamental elements that made World of Warcraft an engaging and rewarding experience. The thrill of progression, the joy of nostalgia, and the excitement of a progressive narrative have all been affected, leaving many veterans and newcomers alike longing for the old sense of adventure and achievement.
It did solve a problem that existed; leveling felt clunky as the speed of leveling outpaced zones and entire expansion story arcs. You realistically couldn’t complete a zone because halfway through it the experience went to junk, especially if you threw in a dungeon run or two.
But the trade off was the scaling it delivers does remove any sense of progression you feel and the leveling experience is extraordinarily flat because of it. I would like to think both are able to be accomplished, but I don’t know how invested Blizzard is on creating a more interesting leveling experience.
Every statement here is a great point. I’d like to touch on the third statement as it resonated with me especially. The continuous power growth was really fun. It was enjoyable for me to go into a zone and barely be able to kill some new stinker, and get stronger to become an equal match, and finally overpower them. This experience I had with the pirates outside of Booty Bay, I was level 26 and I got one-shot. Then I was 31 and I killed my first one and was happy, but it was hard. Then I was level 34, came back, it was less hard (which made leveling feel rewarding), then level 37, equal match, then level 38, 39, 40 easier and easier. I think it feels so much more natural and pleasant than the flat power level (or even power decrease in the case of most specs, especially arcane mage) and then sudden drop to extremely easy when you’re kicked out of chromie time.
Another point I would like to add is that level diversity is interesting. Thinking of Stranglethorn as a place where there are some 25 levels and 38 levels competing for resources and at battle is interesting. But now I am level 27 there and every mob is level 27.
There is also no more choice of difficulty in leveling where it used to be I could stay in duskwood at level 27 and level slowly but easily, or go to south stranglethorn and barely survive but get lots of XP. Now leveling is too easy and boring because if everyone is at the same difficulty, they have to make that difficulty reasonable for everyone. Whereas the players who would want an easy difficulty could simply quest in green enemy level areas before and make leveling a relevant difficulty in yellow and especially red level areas.
Personally I like being able to level a new character 1-60 in one expansion, while avoiding the stuff I’ve done to death and can’t look at another time (looking at you, Hellfire Peninsula).
I didn’t mind it so much, you can still out level many zones, go back and one shot everything in site. My only issue is that they did the level squish. I’d rather just have kept levels increasing by 10 vs the squish in Shadowlands. Sure we’d be leveling to 140 in Dragonflight but leveling was already fast plus if they either kept the XP boost in Heirlooms or made them better such as a 100% increase to XP with adding all items together vs the previous 55% would have been amazing.
Plus a lot of the issues with going back to do older content wouldn’t be a problem with the higher levels.
I’d say this is one of the best ideas they have had, it was just implemented badly where they missed so many things. I assume checklists are not a thing at Blizzard.
They need to be more creative so we dont end up fighting level 140 rats with 2.7m health. That isnt fantasy, its dumb.
Level scaling I was fine with. Then they added ilvl scaling in Legion and leveling just felt like you never gain power. You don’t get stronger until you get to max and gain ilvl over the mobs.
I dont think people are scared of big numbers. I think its ridiculous that a rat can have millions of health. Its lazy development.
The ones with number issues are the ones who hated the squish because they didnt get big numbers in Details! anymore. I’d say they massively outnumbered anyone else with any other opinion on the squish.
Even though it still took the same time to kill mobs, they desperately needed those big numbers for validation.
I wonder if mobs say “ding” in their guildchat when they level and say stuff like: “grats bro!, now you get your Circle of Fire spell and can watch idiot players stand in it and die”
My thoughts are you are wrong. The level scaling is great and it makes levelling new characters so much better when I can pick an expansion and level 1-60.
All the quests turning grey halfway through a zone was no fun at all.
WoW’s storyline is also a mess now and levelling through all the zones/expacs in the order they are released is just nonsensical to any new player interested in the lore. Much better to pick one story and go with it like level scaling allows you to do.
Don’t care about numbers big or small, maybe you are projecting. Doesn’t really have anything to do with the level scaling. Are you confusing the level scaling with the level squish?
I’d be a lot happier with incremental increases in gear rather than the giant jumps which happen. Im not sure how many want the big jumps, but given people celebrate even small upgrades in gear I imagine most would be okay with incremental.
Would also make scaling the buffs/nerfs far easier because you wouldnt have gear causing huge variance in output meaning buffs/nerfs significantly impact people depending on how many tier pieces they have or whether they have the legendary/item-of-the-patch.
If 2 piece gave 5% and 4 piece gave 10%, people would still want them. I suspect it really just comes down to the masses needing to hit an ilvl to be able to clear certain content, rather than relying on skill, learning and lots of practice. The top guilds clear Mythic with gear than many guilds have to struggle through Normal.
It used to be that the very hardest content was for the very best players. Now we expect gear to be able to make it available to everyone. FOMO driven design.