So, with the discussion of the level squish still ongoing, and with Ion discussing it in the Q&A like he did, it seems like a level squish will happen.
But I don’t like the idea of a level squish. I worked for those levels and I dont want to lose them. So I propose expansion levels.
Essentially, everyone would do 1-70 (hear me out) then they would hop to ANY expansion and level 1-10 expansion levels (separate exp bar). No need to slog through BC for the millionth time, no need to set foot on draenor if you don’t want to. I feel like 1-70 is a good number because we currently have 7 tiers of talents. That’s one talent every 10 levels.
I feel like this would streamline leveling, and allow the devs to focus on creating awesome current content that flows well, and not have to worry about going back and making the leveling experience “better.” Leave the experience alone, and allow people to experience it if and when they’d like. This would also help with the legacy server ideas. Each expansion could be kept as current content for people to go back and play as though it were current content. Each raids armor bonus/ abilities would have to be locked to that specific expansion (ie only works in certain zones), but that is very doable.
But what about xmog runs and farming old content? Im glad you asked. With the addition of the portal rooms taking you to one point in each expansion, it would be simple to add a legacy NPC at each expansions portal exit (a bronze dragon, of course). Once an expansion becomes old content, toons would get a legacy buff increasing dmg done by 1000% (or whatever) and reducing dmg taken by 90% (or whatever). The legacy NPC would allow you to turn this debuff off at will to experience old content. [I personally like the idea of the buff only being available once you hit level 10 for the expansion, but I realize that would probably be an unpopular opinion.]
I think this would solve almost every issue most players have right now regarding both leveling and nostalgia. You would be able to level from 1-70 and then play the game wherever you’d like. You can have BC guilds that run only BC conent. Need a warlock to round out your raid comp? You can jump right to the current expansion after hitting level 70.
There are obviously some things I haven’t considered, but i feel like, overall, this system allows for much more accessibility for new players, and removes the hassle of legacy servers in the future, as well as preserving classic as a separate thing all together.