I do. I never thought going as high as 120 even made sense. Our player power is ludicrous. Would be nice to have some event happen that knocks us down a few pegs and takes our character level down to 60. Up to Blizzard but I would be fine if they do away with leveling beyond that or have us progress to level 70 and stop there.
I am very interested to see what the plan for 9.0 really is. The good news is we all got less then a month till we find out.
There might as well not be any levels with scaling anyway… you will feel like you are hitting with wet noodles from level 1-120 no matter what gear you have, no matter what level you are until you reach 350 ilvl 120
Levels are already meaningless.
It’s about value per level. If i have 120 dollars and you take away 60, I’m gonna be mad. On the other hand if I have 120 pairs of socks, and you take away 60, I might ask you to take a few more. Levels in WoW are like socks.
I like the way ESO does it, max level 50 but you can put points into skills to boost their power.
Why aren’t you head of design and development at a AAA shop?
Me personally I would quit I play to advance not go back and a lvl squish would do that EVEN if they did it right. Maybe been in this game to long I was not happy about item squish but this one would be what broke the camel back. I agree that they should fix the skill tree first before thinking of lvl . It be like putting a new road on a bridge when the foundation is bad.
Not sure why anyone would want to work in a AAA gaming organization right now. +100 work weeks? No thank you.
it’s just a number man…why hold on to it so strongly?
Ok, so let’s pretend for a moment that a new expansion is released and for comparison sake the new cap is level 130. And let’s make it even more conditional – It WOULD HAVE BEEN level 130, but instead Blizzard decided to do a level crunch.
Your old transmog pieces are still there. Perhaps something would be done, or not done, about old world raids from lvl 60-120… but level 60 Naxx was taken away from players once upon a time, and even though they brought back a lvl 80 Naxx, there was still some differences in gear/items that you could no longer get.
But if lvl 60 = 130, what are you losing? Hypothetically you start at lvl 50, something happens causing you to have to relearn a handful of abilities for your class (work through a new talent tree), and “refind yourself/class” after a large event causes everything you know to fall apart. If blizzard can retune old instances for Timewarp events, it shouldn’t really be an issue for a level crunch in the future. It could open up new possibilities. Chromie allows for movement between different time eras (Mechagon for example), so who is to say that there wouldn’t be a Chromie that would let you return to the “old world” for transmog runs, etc.
I don’t see how it could be that upsetting. Your levels aren’t getting removed… they’re getting squished and “retuned”. Think of it like an international currency exchange. It has the same “value” just in a different currency.
I would argue that a new talent system wouldn’t fix the issue on its own. There are too many levels to fill the gaps with meaningful talents. Even if you count “+1% crit damage to arcane spells” as meaningful.
It would help things, absolutely, but a new talent system that actually cares about how leveling feels COMBINED with a level squish would be the best way to make each level or two feel rewarding.
Ability Ranks would help a ton too, but I know we’re not going to backpedal on that particular thing.
The less they meddle with at once, the better. And it’d be better if they focused more on leveling itself than slapping a new coat of paint on it, because that would just detract from fixing leveling.
Does it make more sense to have 130 levels in the next expansion? Any new player looking at that amount of leveling to reach max level would probably just leave for another game that doesn’t have such an intimidating grind ahead of them.
What about the expansion after that - is 140 levels to cap reasonable? 150? Something has to be done at some point.
it’s going to upset a lot of people
Honestly, who cares? The vocal minority should never be allowed to dictate the direction of the game. As long as the devs handle it tastefully - like you’ve died, gone to the Shadowlands, and are reborn as a 60 - it’ll be fine, and probably vastly improve the leveling experience.
I don’t know a single soul who picks up an MMO with the intention of wanting to skip to the end right away unless they’re dragged into it by friends who are already playing endgame. (Or maybe in the case of WoW, outright told by literally everyone that leveling is bad and that the game starts at max level)
More levels is more content to an average sane player.
Intimidation isn’t the reason I’m in support of the level squish.
Where did I say that was my only issue or where I drew the line? 
I said it solves nothing. Because it doesn’t solve anything.
You were given valid reasons: the number of levels isn’t the issue. The craptastic talent system is the problem. Fix the talent system, fix the real problem. Changing the number doesn’t make leveling more interesting or engaging. Fixing the talent system does.
And that won’t change just by taking away levels. A new talent system fixes that, not changing a number.
Exactly. And it doesn’t fix the problem. Leveling will still take just as long and we’ll still get the same boring crap at a slow pace in our talent system.
I know many people who started play because there are so many levels. Eight expansions with that many levels means lots of content to some people.
Because it doesn’t fix the problem. Not sure how many times I have to say that.
If they add a system to our current system that’s like Old Republic’s, there’s plenty to add. Keep our talents as they are currently. Take all of our Azerite traits and essences, turn it into a secondary system of things we earn in between, like TOR’s utility points. There’s a lot they can do, actually.
Add to that a graphical representation of our path to show us what we’re gaining when, instead of having to search through the spellbook. It can show us when we can pick a talent, when we can pick a trait, what abilities we unlock when, etc. Being able to see that in a path form goes a long way, as well.
Or just get rid of character levels completely. That also fixes the problem.
And do a hard numerical reset every 3-4 expansions for gear. So it’s done with a plot device and makes some kind of sense.
Yeah, you said that the first time around. I heard it. Still don’t agree with you so agree-to-disagree.
Most likely this sentiment has been mentioned; apologies where I missed it:
a level appears to be nothing more than a means to separate players from certain content. Whether this is for safety (60 v 80) or “meaningful” content (80 v 60), it’s a means to compartmentalize content.
Even at “end-game,” there are mechanisms in place that form a hierarchy of content.
With things like sync, timewalking, squish, this reinforces (to me) that the paradigm is to be a more inclusive game and not separate content (as much) from players - at least whilst leveling.
The additional tiers in end-game, instance content appears to be implemented to provide a smoother gradient of content: so that steps between content “levels” aren’t as pronounced. This would be easier to implement than a straight level-squish.
I don’t assume that my “insight” (quotes added to self-depreciate) are correct or complete, but it does seem that a level squish is a bit avant-garde for the genre and as such Blizzard is testing the waters with this design philosophy in other things: scaling, sync, timewalking, etc. They’re probably gathering metrics on participation, etc to validate a squish, etc.
In an RPG game?
This stopped being an RPG a long time ago.
What makes this game non-RP?
What makes this game non-RP?
What decisions are we getting to make?