The main supporting arguments I’ve heard for a level squish are as follows:
“120 is too many levels. It might drive away new players.”
“We don’t get something with every level like we used to.”
Ok… well, here’s my perspective. First I’ll address the issue of lack of reward.
I feel like the “lack of reward” argument comes from how we used to get and spend skill points every level. Honestly, I never liked getting skill points and having to carefully consider where to spend them. I’m generally not a fan of skill point systems in video games because it’s much more difficult for me as a player to know what those points actually do than it is in table-top RPG.
To me, leveling up in a video game is its own reward that comes with predetermined stat increases. I don’t want or need points to spend. I don’t want to manually tune my character with the risk of making costly mistakes. In Classic I sat on skill points for multiple levels until I was sure I knew how to spend them. They weren’t a reward to me, they were a burden.
So, that being said I’ll move on to “120 levels is too many.”
No, really it isn’t. The number of levels isn’t the problem people have with leveling anyway, it’s the time it takes to reach max level on a new alt. Even giving us a 20 level head start on allied races only cuts roughly 1 hour or less off the time to level to max.
I’ve leveled several alts in pursuit of finding the class that’s right for me in current endgame content. If my goal is to play endgame content I just want to get my alt there as quickly as possible and I don’t want to have to pay the equivalent of 4 months subscription to do that.
On the other hand, if my goal is to experience past content while leveling… well, it’s very hard to do that either. Even after world scaling, which did improve this situation somewhat, we still outlevel content and feel pressured to move on instead of completing and enjoying the entire story of any expansion.
No… the number of levels isn’t the problem. The problem is paid level boosts and the disjointed nature of the current optimum leveling path.
The fix for these problems isn’t a level squish, all a level squish does is arbitrarily reduce a number and make long-time players feel like their characters have been nerfed, which is exactly what the stat squishes have done. Nobody wants to feel like their progress in a game has been nerfed for totally arbitrary reasons. It doesn’t matter if 60 is the new “Max”, it still feels bad.
The fix for alt leveling times is to allow players with at least 1 max level character on a server to start new alts at the starting level of current content for free. Seriously, 2 days /played is not worth the equivalent of 4 months subscription.
I’m sure this is a totally automated process these days anyway, it should be included with our subscription.
The fix for the disjointed leveling experience is to change the bounds of world scaling for all zones. Once a character hits level 20 let them go anywhere (maybe even including current content) and level up through whatever content they choose.
I know the idea of putting a minimum level on zones was supposed to make us feel like certain parts of the world were too dangerous until we reached high enough level, but in practice it’s simply an arbitrary limitation that prevents me from experiencing content I haven’t gotten to before because by the time I’m leveled enough to go to those places it’s time for me to move on to the next leveling bracket.
120 is a number. Cutting that number in half doesn’t address the underlying problems. It’s just a cosmetic nerf and it feels horrible, as though half the levels I’ve earned on 7 alts are arbitrarily being taken away. Yes, I understand that functionally no actual progress would be taken away but that doesn’t change how it feels to me.
One more thing, scaling all content would fix a major problem with WoW; the near total abandonment of past expansions. With the existence of time manipulation and the Bronze Dragonflight time travel is basically part of the fabric of the game. Heck, as it is allied races get sent back in time to level 20 content, way before they were recruited.
My headcanon for this is basically that all player characters are unbound in time. We don’t get to see Azeroth as it currently is everywhere. When we travel we move through both space and time. Where we arrive is when we were needed most. That’s how I’ve made sense of it anyway.