This is an RPG. Not an FPS.
Player progression is a thing.
They have already squished item levels.
They have squished damage output numerous times.
And now, they want to squish the one thing that has stuck with us for the entire game, levels.
If the dev team actually thought this was a good idea they have no idea how to run an mmorpg and its no wonder there’s an exodus to FFXIV. If it goes through I’ll see you all on Eorzea.
I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again. I’m entirely against a level squish.
However, I will also admit that Blizzard has put themselves into a bad spot by not revamping the talent system and by the multiple prunes of which some classes lost more abilities than they have total now.
Of course the leveling experience is a shell of its former self when most classes lost almost everything that made them that “class”.
Levels are a fundamental progression aspect of MMO’s. If you want to go back to level 60, then well, Classic will be here soon. I fear if they squish retail that low it will cause far more harm than good. But since the main thing all the “BRING ON THE SQUISH!” people clamor about are the levels without gaining things, then…simply revamping the talent system to have more brackets and more engaging options, as well as undoing the prunes(at the very least the last prune which was 100% not needed) would solve a lot of the issues entirely.
I really don’t want to go to a level that I was a decade ago. I don’t want to go to a level I was five years ago. When the primary progression method is squished in a MMO, that’s bad. And also adding, considering all the countless bugs and things still wonky from the squishes. I honestly don’t trust Blizzard to do something as drastic as a level squish while also changing code for literally every single item in the game, every single quest, messing with dungeon/raid entry requirements, etc… They gonna bork the game up good if they do this.
Obviously, this is my opinion. But I stand by everything I said.
Haha yeah, let’s just reduce numbers for no reason and fail to add compelling content, that will fix the problem.
Gonna make no difference. You’re just scared of the number 120
You guys do know that the level squish will not make a difference. It will still take you the same time to hit max level. I am not even sure you will get anything new out of it. It is just reducing a number, that is all.
Fact of the matter is that any QoL that would actually benefit the early game could be done without a squish. The fact this is even a discussion is annoying.
I’m looking forward to the level squish. A lot of my friends who won’t give WoW a shot is primarily due to the absurd amount of levels there are. Let’s also be real… the leveling isn’t all that exciting. When they give it a shot and go through the first 30+ levels with barely any talent changes, super boring questing with a confusing muddled story, compared to other MMO’s today it’s hard to justify staying. Squish us, give us more options in the leveling etc. I think it’s for the best.
Even if they squish, you’re going to be doing the same things to level. Leveling is fast in WoW, a squish won’t add substance to the boring quests at all, nor will the talent system be any better until they adopt a tree/skill point system. “Absurd amount of levels” is meaningless, they fly by pretty quickly. In the time it’d take you to reach 70 in FFXIV, you’d be able to level three chars to cap.
You don’t want a leveling squish, you want faster leveling and a talent system overhaul.
Me too, it’s called Classic.
No I actually do want a leveling squish. We all have theories but no concrete evidence of how they’ll go about it until it’s announced. In the end, even just smaller numbers to me is better. Because in “my” personal experience my friends won’t give it a shot because 120 levels sounds ridiculous. I personally don’t blame them. If you think 120 levels sounds good to a new player then you’re free to believe that, opinions will be opinions. But in the end I’m just going off my own experience. So I hope they go through with it, and I’m just offering my opinion so they know some of us are cool with it.
PS. That was a leak that you should mostly take with a grain of salt and not treat is as fact with your whole 2 points a level comment.
The rest is, uninformed speculation on the affect of said change.
There is not 130, 140, 150, 160, 200 levels worth of content, most of what they put in is filler so having a lower number that has proper reward structure can help them aim at making it more rewarding if done correctly.
But unfortunately my issue is with the content itself, I can have 60 levels, or 360 levels but the old expansion and classic zones are just not all that engaging, fun, or meaningful for that matter to the current game. Not to mention the repetitiveness of the quests, the disjointed story, and just unrewarding nature of going zone to zone or expansion to expansion.
We need a level squish as much as we need a stat squish and that is so the numbers don’t go crazy.
I’m sure we’ll all survive and forget about it once things iron itself out.
If it’s purely cosmetic, then why are you so worked up over it? They’re talking about changing the level structure, not taking away your progress.
Your level is just a number. Not a measurement of how skilled you are or anything else. It’s next to meaningless.
Let 'em squish it. At least there won’t be so many dead levels where you get nothing for your work.
But they are taking away progress. As I said, levels are a fundamental progression aspect of MMO’s. Plus it makes sense to have a lot of levels considering how old this game is and how many expansions it’s had.
I mean, if I was a new player I would have two possible outlooks.
A) Oh wow, that game is 15 years old and has over a 100 levels Bet there is so much to do!
or.
B) Oh wow…that game is 15 years old, has so many expansions but only 60 levels? Final Fantasy has more levels, maybe I should check that out. I hear Maplestory has a lot of levels too, hmm…
What I’m trying to get across is, a lot of people are attracted to WoW BECAUSE of the levels, because of everything there is to do. Again, levels are a staple of MMO’s. It’s asinine to lower that all for the sake of an illusion of change.
The same could also be said for those that swear up and down a level squish will save leveling, will save WoW, will cure cancer, will mark the second coming of Christ, etc…
Quoting myself…
I still stand by this 100%. And most people in this thread who want the squish want it due to the leveling experience. So…
People afraid of big numbers? Give WoW the Diablo3 treatment, add a interface option to enable or disable the entire number. I want to see when I hit for 87,294,343. You don’t like big numbers so you disable it and it reads as 87M, That also solves the issue some people seem to have.
Which is also drastically easier than revamping the entire world, every item, every dungeon, every raid, every event, every quest, literally…everything.
The change is not cosmetic, it is psychological. It creates the impression of “I don’t have far to go until I reach level cap.” Total required experience to advance all the way to level cap would need to be unchanged. Result: people would complain endlessly about how it now takes them so much longer to move up only one level. However, if the total experience to get there changes, the system is trashed beyond recovery.
If the issue is when/what to do about talents, the keep adding tiers and give us the option to select past abilities that have been “squished” out of the game.
I for one support a level squish, I double support a level squish if it also means they go back to the old talent system. This one talent every 15 levels is complete balls.
I can easily handle a level squish simply because I understand there are other ways to progress.
This.
I don’t think it will change anything. Not really. * It might make it seem to take forever to level up to the next number. That might be the only change.
What needs to be done is reduce the max level to 60 and allow alternative progression paths post 60 but keep 60 as the max level to remove bloat from the game. Much like the legion artifacts and in BFA the necklace are examples of alternative progression paths.
Remove LFR and Mythic from the game while converting LFR to normal and heroic to mythic in terms of difficulty. Make gear rare and hard to get and if you’re going to give out welfare gear it should be green or blue and only raid gear being epic.
Condense the amount of servers and remove phasing and sharding from the game and bring server identity back. Fix world lag when doing pvp may have something to do with sharding/phasing
Bring attunement back into the game but it should be account bound so you have account progression. Any character progression in post max level should be account bound and quit trying to milk time from the dwindling playerbase and respect players time.
In BFA essences should be account bound because you’ve already done the content to get them. There’s no reason outside of RP reasons to not have them be account bound and we could make special rules for RP servers to have these be strictly character progression on RP servers.
Make professions worth having and able to craft gear that’s worth buying.
Quit trying to make WoW into an e-sport and return back to the games roots where if you no life the game you’re stronger than the guy that plays two hours a week. Everyone want’s to feel rewarded for the time they put into the game.
Stop resetting power every new patch making the past content irrelevant. All content of an expansion should be relevant the entire expansion. Also give reasons for players to run previous raids in an expansion so those returning to the game have a clear path to get geared and see the story of the expansion.
I see this come up a lot, but has there been any OFFICIAL word on this actually happening? It feels like a lot of fearmongering.
It’s just speculation done based on a survey blizzard sent out a few months back which included a question asking how we would feel about a Level squish, a similar survey happened prior to the first stat squish.