So, we all know that the cap is going to be 60 forever, right?

Community General Discussion
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I don’t think I’ve seen this discussion hashed out since the leveling revamp was announced, and that surprises me.

So… I don’t know where I got the impression, but it’s in my head from somewhere that Ion Hazzikostas was put where he is partially to future proof WoW for the perpetuity that, really, they never expected for this game, once and for all. Whether that’s his doing or not is debatable, but it’s absolutely a thing that’s happening.

As much as he claims not to want things to get too formulaic, you can see these efforts here and there: Flight/Pathfinder is an expected formula now, the patch cycle is relatively standardized with some wiggle room, legacy loot is a hard coded and necessary promise for those playing the transmog long game, and our expectations between main patches and “point five” patches have formed a straight line that has us anticipating timewalking right on time each expansion.

So let’s look at the leveling overhaul in this vein.

You have your starting area bracket, your “legacy content” bracket, your “immediately prior expansion” designation for a smooth transition for new players being told a flowing story, and then your 10 levels for the current expansion. Pathfinder becomes something you do at the X.2 mark if you wanna fly in current content while it’s current, and that achievement becomes of lesser import by the time that content goes legacy if not in the immediately following expansion. That’s all very neat, tidy and as soon as we live through it once, going from 60 to 50 to climb it again, it’s precedent.

…And it potentially happens again, every two years, as everything slots into its new place on the climb from 1-60. On schedule. Forever. Or as long as the game keeps going anyway.

It’s so elegant it seems a sure bet at this point. How the hell does a “level 60-70” 10.0 even fit into this? It doesn’t. We’ll be 50 again for 10.0, Shadowlands will be the non-optional 10-50 game for new people, and BFA goes fully into the legacy pool of leveling options for veterans.

That’s gotta be how this is going, right?

Right?

To be clear, I’m not complaining, but I haven’t seen this accepted communally, this… nigh inevitability I’m seeing unfolding here.

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Either that or what they could do is cap level at 60 then have expac specific “resistance” levels to represent some proficiency at being resilient and becoming stronger against certain area’s enemies and that could be the 1 to 10 leveling exp where 10 is the max.

Edit
They did it with professions so something like this where you get a new expac leveling experience without having to raise/squish actual character levels.

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I honestly hope not. Getting higher levels is part of this game’s fun. Though I also do see that if we just keep stacking 10 levels we’ll have another squish in no time. Of course, we also only needed one squish after about 14 years so. Guess we’ll see.

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Nope, we’re still going up additional 10 levels per expansion. We need that secondary stat reset or else it just climbs up ridiculously high each new expac.

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But aren’t we getting that with shadowlands? Why can’t they do that every expansion? Why can’t 2020’s 9.X level 60 numbers look like 2030’s 14.x level 60 numbers? What if the DPS numbers we know now are always “a decent level 60 at this point in the expansion?”

Climbing the level cap again also returns us to the reasons we’re doing it now. Why can’t we just… do it every expansion?

If you don’t like it, that’s totally valid, but I don’t see why it’s counted out by “the numbers need to reset?” Yes, they do. Every two years maybe?

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We don’t know that. Because if they went with the 1 to 50, then 51 to 60 … you’d have to do a power squish Every Single Expansion.

They’re squishing 120 levels into 50.
Then they’ll have to squish that 120, plus another 10, into 50. Again.
Then they’ll have to … you get the picture.

If they keep squishing, eventually we’d end up with level 1 Kobolds that start with 5k health.

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Because you can’t force the reset on everyone, those who intentionally stay in the previous expansion who don’t upgrade to the next shouldn’t have to get their secondary stats reset. They could make it only 2 levels growth, but that creates a jarring effect when you suddenly go from 40% critical strike to 20% after one level, then 10% with 2. They also have to stretch those levels to have enough filler content or you be max too soon feeling empty.

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I argue that it’d be vastly easier once they know what “level 46 in the 60 cap” looks like. That alt that sits there for three expansions will not change. The value of level 46 (in chromie time) stays where it is. 50 stays where it is.

See this expansion less as a thing they’ll need to do again, and more as “this is how your level looks now,” and you just earn 60 again every expansion.

In the example of the 55 that is there when the hypothetical 10.0 squish hits: Maybe now they’re 45. The standardized 45 that gets established at 9.0 and forevermore. The 45 that will still be 45 if that alt doesn’t get used for two years. Or maybe they’re 50. Maybe every X.3 comes with the warning “you have until pre-patch to get to 60, but everyone in the current expansion’s levels will be reset to 50!” And that becomes a thing every X.3. WoW’s been going “FOMO-MMO” for some time now.

I get what you’re saying, but if you look at the squish as “establishing permanent systems,” and the first time as a precedent they’ll have codified for the future… it’s not that crazy, really.

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I thought they already said, when parading this out, that then it would be a 70/whatever cap for the next expansion.

The point being, they probably assume it would never get as high as “120/130” again before the game ended?

Next one 70, one after that 80, one after that 90. That right there would be at least… a span of nine years? Though they don’t say it, Blizzard probably has some idea now how much longer this game will last. I also don’t see them as the type to sell off their intellectual property game, so I doubt that some third party (like the people who now run Everquest) will ever keep it going.

So Blizzard probably knows for a fact, that even though it may still be 10 levels per expansion that it will never hit the triple digits again.

I mean, we/they never thought it would reach 15 years; But will it REALLY ever reach 25? Would even Blizzard want it to, on an old game that just keeps getting new junk pilled on top of a 15 year old engine? At this point, it is starting to seem like a Microsoft operating system :wink: They never seem to want to rebuild it from scratch, optimizing it more, so it may kind of have an “end date.”

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I certainly haven’t heard that!

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If they reset it to 60 and then we level up again and reset to 60 again… no. Just keep it at 60. The fact that after 14 years I’m going back to 60 is already a hard pill to swallow, but I certainly don’t want it over and over again. It’st embarrassing and it makes it look like they don’t know how to balance a game (i’m looking at you CONSTANT STAT SQUISH)

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At this point I wouldnt be shocked if we go further sub 60 in whatever is after shadowlands. Level 30 at this rate. They really need some changes and I dont mean level.

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If they do that it’s fine by me, the exact level that “cap” represents stopped mattering over a decade ago when leveling stopped being a significant/important part of the game – you’re either at “cap” or you’re not, that’s the only real distinction the game makes.

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We don’t know enough about what will happen after Shadowlands to really know the direction the game is going to go.

That being said, a hard cap on levels isn’t a bad thing. Progression is ultimately what matters, and for that, there are two types. Vertical and Horizontal.

Vertical: Progression that directly increases player power. Levels and ilvls for example.

Horizontal: Progression that doesn’t directly increase player power, but grants access to perks and other rewards. Reputation grinds are a good example there.

Now as I said, having a hard cap on levels isn’t bad. You just have to make sure that there’s something to replace it. There are already games out there which do this, most notably, Guild Wars 2 where the game launched with a level cap of 80 and that cap has not increased by even one level despite the launch of 2 expansion packs and a ton of post-expansion content. For that game, the vast majority of the progression is horizontal.

Now that approach may not work for WoW. We may ultimately get stuck in a loop where we get 10 levels every expansion and then after a few Blizzard squishes everyone down and we start again at a lower cap. Part of me hopes they will think about a hard cap though.

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TBH I wouldn’t be mad if this was the actual decision. It would essentially avoid the need of a second level squish a few years from now.

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Bingo. This designation is more ingrained in the game than “constant power progression,” IMO. Climbing from 50-60 every two years is just a token representation of leveling that runs alongside the usual progression of story questing to introduce the setting of the expansion.

Tastes will fall on either side of whether or not freezing 1-50 in a standardized power level forever is a good idea, but honestly, they aren’t level cap states, so who really cares? Even at the level cap, power soft resets every X.Y patch for the same reason a level cap freeze is wise: As an on-ramp for new or returning players. The ability to pick up WoW, or pick WoW back up is crucial in the modern gaming market that is too saturated to ask any player to “play every day and never leave.”

Finally, it’s in the game’s best interest to always strive to attract players back and to have the game accessible for people to return. It can’t ask people to not leave, but everyone benefits when every X.Y patch is a sales pitch for people to return. That requires accessibility. That’s why this perma-squish works.

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Except it wouldn’t really work.

SHADOWLANDS
50 (power value 2000)
60 (power value 3200)

POST-SHADOWLANDS
Squish everyone back down to 50!

so … the new power value for 50 is … 3200. Wait, what about the guy who didn’t play? He’s still at 2000 power value. But 2000 is no longer the “value” for 50. So his level gets reduced. And he’s now … 42.

The numbers will keep escalating because you can’t ignore the power gains of an expansion.

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I’d rather they just scrap levels. Item levels are the real upgrade anyway.

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Except that idea doesn’t work. Secondary Ratings are based on your character level. 500 Critical Strike Rating at 50 gives you more Critical Strike than 500 Critical Strike Rating at 51.

If you don’t have a conversion system, the value of Critical Strike will Just Keep Climbing. You need some way to keep it under control. Diminishing returns can only go so far.

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Ah, but for it to work the power value also would be set back to what it was at level 50.

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