Level Squish! My thoughts

Community General Discussion
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So i saw Taliesin’s video about his thoughts and ideas of the level squish. After some thought i wanna take some of his ideas and throw my mine in. Let me know what you guys think.

Level 1-10
This would be your starting levels in the starting zones. This would help Blizzard gives players at the end a super basic rotation of all the classes. Btw all quests will give you the experience to reach level 10 at 0% (if you decide to kill more boars than intended, then i guess that all you but not neccessary.)

Level 10-60
As you reach level 10 you get to choose your adventure from the bulletin board. You can do the whole story of Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King, Mist of Pandaria, Cataclysm, Legion, or Battle for Azeroth. Completing all the required zone, dungeon, and side quests from their specific expansion will get you to level 60.

Endgame
I believe there shouldn’t be a leveling of 60 to 70. Having another level squish when we reach 120 again is dumb. There was a post on this forum that suggested a paragon system. Id like to expand on that idea.

I would like a 1-20 paragon level experience.

Paragon level 1-10 (9.0-9.1)
This is the story of the new expansion in the zones related to the 9.0 expansion. Once a player completes all of the zone quests, dungeon quests, and side quests they will reach Paragon 10 @ 0%. (quests will give the majority of the xp. Killing mobs should give minuscule amounts of exp. Remember South park and their boar genocide? yeah it should work that way but way longer Maybe it takes 3 months to get to paragon 10 by killing the same mob over and over again. Challenge accepted?.)

When completing a zone it unlocks the dungeon(s) and the dungeon(s) quests of that zone on normal. Unlocking normal mode dungeons won’t be tied to paragon leveling rather than the zone storyline progression. Also once you complete the dungeon quests, repeating the dungeon will no longer give experience. I believe normal dungeons need to serve the story from 1-10 and it should only be done once.

Now i know there is a con to this. And that is, "what if you’re that 1 player that waits until 1 month from 10.0 and no one is doing the dungeon quests (because they’re the only 1 in queue) during the 1-10 paragon level?’’ Well there is AI. Blizzard has been working on making AI players for PvP. Why can’t they create AI for dungeon runs to speed up queue times for players that have been late to the party? Maybe after 2 mins in queue if there are no players, it auto creates an AI group and fills in the role you need to get the run going. Mind blowned :exploding_head:.

Once you reach level 10 you get rewarded with a cool expansion themed cloth, leather, mail, or plate transmog. You unlock heroic dungeons, paragon lvl 10 PvP, and other 9.0 expansion related content.

In order to enter endgame PvP related events and BGs you need to be paragon level 10.

Also by level 10 your item level should be the base item level to begin heroic dungeons thanks to quest gear rewards. Also once you complete a specific heroic dungeon 10 times you unlock its Mythic 0.

9.1 Mythic Dungeon Season 1 (affix 1), PvP season 1, Raid 1 and 9.1 expansion related content unlocks.

Paragon 11-15 (9.1.5-9.2)
So obviously there will be story that leads to the next raid patch and the story should tied to paragon leveling. They could give give us 5 weeks of story leading up to release which would be about 1 level per week or they could release the story allowing us to obtain all 5 levels at once and releasing the raid next week.

Once you hit level 15 you gain a reward like a cool toy and an expansion themed pet.

Mythic Dungeon Season 2 (affix 2), PvP Season 2, New dungeon(s)(must be paragon level 15 to enter), Raid 2(must be paragon level 15 to enter) and 9.2 expansion related content unlocks

Paragon 15-20 (9.2.5-9.3)

Same as 11-15 they give us story leading us into Raid 3 and can go the same route of providing content 5 weeks of story before 9.3 release or allowing us to level all 5 levels at once and release patch next week (i like this better than the gated story. Although there could be upsides to being episodic.)

Mythic Dungeon Season 3 (affix 3), PvP Season 3, New Dungeon(s)(must be paragon level 20 to enter), Raid 3 (must be paragon level 20 to enter) and 9.3 expansion related content releases.

The lvl 20 reward would be the expansion themed flying mount. At this point flying should be unlocked for the zones. (Probably your Pathfinder will be done before this as in 8.2 we will get flying hopefully or is it 8.2.5? i don’t pay attention much.)

9.3.1 or 9.3.5 Aftermath
There would be no paragon levels earned but it will be a questline that will give us the conclusion of the story. Maybe an in-game cinematic is added or something that starts wrapping up 9.3 up in a bow and foreshadows 10.0.

The reward would be a Paragon expansion themed title.The title is something that will be earned and be unobtainable when 10.0 expansion releases. Also all rewards from the paragon system will be unobtainable after 10.0 expansion releases unless Blizzard wants the Black Market Auction House to be relevant. Give those rewards a chance to drop for a very high gold price. Expansion themed Loot boxes for gold in wow??? oh my :thinking:.

10.0 and beyond

Well now we reach to 10.0 expansion what happens to our paragon levels. Well they reset. We start from 0 again and work our way up to 10. Rinse and repeat.

Now that 9.0-9.3.5 at that point in time is old news, it will be unlocked to the level 10 players to go thru the whole story (when you buy the new expansion). And by doing all the zones, dungeons, and side quests in paragon levels 1-20 of 9.0-9.3.5 expansion you will reach lvl 60. Blizzard would have to make it so that it would allow the total experience in paragon levels 1-20 equate or fit the 10-60 total experience . Like if it takes 5,000,000 total exp to get to 10-60 then the 1-20 paragon levels must be equal to 5,000,000 total experience. Or if paragon 1-20 is 1,000,000 total experience and its 5,000,000 total from 10-60 then they would have to stretch it out. The problem with this method it could make a certain expansion the “faster” leveling expansion. I don’t think they would like this route. The con of the other method is more of a con for Blizzard then it is for the player. The player can feel if Blizzard has given them enough story and content based on this method. If 9.0 took 1 week to finish to get to lvl 10 and 10.0 took 4 days to finish to get to 10, at that point we as the player base must make a judgment call whether the story and content was satisfying and made sense or underwhelming and super lacking.

So what do you guys think? Would this work? All of this, i hope, helps fix leveling progression that won’t revisit level 120 again. Allow us the players to experience any expansion and its story from levels 10-60 besides the current content. Give players the leveling feeling and story with every new expansion. Earn cool rewards tied to the paragon system and a title that give some level of exclusivity. Now this doesn’t answer talents, class balancing and other mumbo jumbo. This post is just to give my ideas as to how to make sure the level squish works as intended and how to proceed with every new expansion.

Thanks for reading!

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I stopped reading when you suggested dungeons shouldn’t give exp after the first run. There are tons of people who are burnt out on WoW’s leveling, forcing them to exclusively quest to unlock things would be frustrating. Either allow a “skip” for alts or change this bit (as well as the “unlock dungeons via storylines” bit, its fine once, but not for alts).

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A topic I made about a permanent solution to the level squish problem, I don’t see why it wouldn’t work but no feedback so far.

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No, just NO! A level squish is a HORRIBLE idea and reeks of mass punishment. If they don’t like how high level we’re getting then lessen the amount for expansions or do some parallel leveling system ala a Paragon level system or something of the like. But taking like 1/2 our levels from us seems lazy and does nothing but make it seem as us players are being punished. I’ve been a active player since early vanilla and currently have like 10 120 toons but if they implemented a freaking level squish I’d probably straight up stop playing the game.

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My thoughts:

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So the 1-10 lvling paragon experience i can see where your saying there needs to be a skip for alts. Maybe a buff Blizzard can implement for alts. When 1 character on your account reaches paragon lvl 10 all characters on your account that are at lvl 60 receive the 300% experience buff. With this buff you are only required to do 1 zone which should reach get you to paragon lvl 10. The rest of the levels shouldn’t be hard to obtain but if your late to the game i can see the buff persist until you reach the max level of the patch the new expansion is in.

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I think all expansions should scale from one to max level for that real sandbox feel.

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Lol :joy:

#tenchar

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