I’d argue that the launch of the expansion should be solely focused on the Story of the expansion to get a grounding of what’s to come. I’ve levelled 8 times on beta now, and I did this with the view of having an experience of what levelling on launch will be like, I cannot tell you what’s going on in the expansion. I even found out during the call that we met Razageth during the questing, to me those quests were just mashing 1 & 2 until its over.
The fact that Mythic0 is unlocked in the first week really puts the gas on the pedal for me. I am socially obligated to get that done, therefore something has to slip and that’s my immersion.
WoW is very much a game that is focused on getting to the end game, and that’s by design the only content to do whilst levelling is questing & story. Nothing you do whilst levelling has an impact on your end game other than the level number being the highest it can be.
In this instance I would prefer “time gating” as it achieves two things:
Puts everyone on the same level
Removes a rushing element
Whilst yes, if this were to be implemented in Dragonflight then the rush would be moved onto gathering & crafting as those have high importance now too, but as a general theme slowing the pace down (assuming raids are tuned with this in mind) at the start of an expansion is a good time to get it done.
On the other hand, it’s also the point where the audience is at its peak interest, and restricting content is just going to turn them away once they plateau. So there’s no clean one size fits all solution.
It was a good chat, thank you. I asked the question on more voice acted quests being added, I learnt and understood the possible issues with adding more of these. Whilst I fully understand not all quests can be voice acted would it be possible if the campaign quests are?
As for the posts question, as a ex mythic raider it is very true that getting to max and gearing is the priority. I don’t believe there is anything that can be done to change this. If the launch of the season is extended then it will just give more time to gear in pre raid BIS. If you implement time gates or barriers to leveling then you’ll just put off people from the game.
The one thing that would get me to do more quests is them having maybe really good quality of life rewards instead of pretty boring gear that will be sold once max. Rewards could be something like 25% reduced repair bills, an extra bag slot, reduced mats to craft and maybe recipes. There just suggestions off the top of my head but I think you get the idea.
Echoing what some others have said about being able to keep up with friends and guildies. If you have a minimum interest in pushing any end-game content (PvP, M+ and raids generally), it’s pretty much in your best interest to reach max level as fast as possible. Unless you take this game with a very casual approach, there’s basically no good reason to take it slow and enjoy the leveling experience.
Might I suggest that having more content already unlocked before max level would considerably help a portion of the playerbase. Things like dailies/weeklies or WQs that reward important rep could be done before level cap for instance.
Time-gated quests had made me lose a lot of interest in the game’s lore. In Shadowlands, I would do these new ‘‘weekly’’ quests to get that +1 Renown as soon as possible on Tuesday before raid, then I would forget about it until the new chapter on the following reset. It’s really hard to keep track of what’s going on in the story that way. It’s like reading a book and having someone take it away from you for a week.
I would certainly like to hear more about this because I enjoy voice-acted quests. Makes questing a lot more interesting, and I don’t need to slow down and read all the quests to know what’s going because the NPCs can talk while I kill those 30 mobs and loot 8 boxes.