The fix for leveling revamp: Path of the Curator (Taliesin's wonderous idea)

Community General Discussion
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Recently Taliesin uploaded a YouTube video analyzing why the leveling revamp with the level squish could insanely backfire and how can it be solved. I’d urge everyone to watch it because this might been the best idea I’ve ever heard.

Basically the problem right now is that new players will still feel left behind because they can’t enjoy the full story of BfA and other expansions. Right now, once you finish Exile’s Reach you start in Kul Tiras / Zandalar and you might not even finish the questing zones before hitting lvl50.

And you miss the important story bits with that. For example, if you start questing now, Jaina is gone, the 4th war is about to blow up but then you might solve the witch problem in Drustvar, prepare to fight of Lord Stormsong and unveil Ashvane’s treachery but that’s it. Once you prepare for Shadowlands, Jaina is the Lord Admiral, Tyranda gone mad, Sylvanas went 0 to 100 without any clue, N’zoth is defeated and Rastakhan is replaced by his daughter. You miss out the full war campaign, the best part of BfA in my opinion and you don’t know what really led the story to the Shadowlands.

With Taliesin’s Path of the Curator all of the problems above could be solved. Basically every main story line quest would be highlighted just like in Shadowlands leading the players through a coherent storyline to understand what happened in BfA and past expansions easier.

For more explanation please do watch the video. He made examples based on Legion’s whole storyline. This might been the best idea the devs could implement and imo.

Also, for a reward if Path of the Curator gets implemented, Taliesin should get his NPC ingame. What I had in my mind is that after Chromie sends off the player for their journey, at the expansions main hub, the players would meet Tall E. Sinn , a Bronze Drake who choose a tuskarr form to explain the Path of the Curator system for the players (and give the starting quest to the expansion).

I doN’t know if links can be used here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EXTrcnTFS4

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I am not a huge fan of his, and was most likely going to hate this since he seemed to focus so much on the raids, but in the end, I have to agree with him 100%

Its a great idea. Letting players go through the raids solo to cap the leveling is an amazing idea.

Please implement this

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Like he says, I think that system would do a great job at providing a full expansion experience and serve as an incredible send off to players as they move into BfA.

I think it also does a good job at future-proofing the leveling process. After Shadowlands BfA would become another potential option in your choice of expansions and with a few tweaks could similarly provide the same well-rounded narrative to newer players.

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They actually said they were doing that a year or so ago. It isn’t taliesin’s wonderful idea.

I suggested they indicated the main storyline over 2 years ago by using a different color for the story quests.

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Doing work so not watching the video, but assuming this is something like FFXIV and Duty Finder? Help people experience the story for old content in the way it was meant to be experienced, but nerfed down for casual play?

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It goes far beyond just making the main quest markers unique

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yes but I am not watching that annoying person

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Then why even comment in a thread about his idea if youre not going to listen to his idea? :sob:

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Annoying? I enjoy the content he typically puts out.

Just not going to listen during working hours. I can $$$$post while I’m tabbed into another window but listening to a video during daytime hours is too much IMO.

I’m guessing the TL;DW is Duty Finder though.

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I honestly would love that single player or dual player experience for last patch raids as well - just keep the rewards either that low or not existent and use it instead of LFR. It would fit my play style better than LFR.

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Because this is a discussion forum, the information to be discussed should be given not just some advertisement for a streamer which this appears to be.

In any case, I am pretty darn sure it isn’t an original idea regardless.

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I don’t really care for his content anymore. And most of what he says for his idea really is not something the team will remotely consider.

They know the end game is where it’s at. It’s a simple time vs reward here and they have enough numbers to tell them that it’s not worth it so they, in no certain words, more or less stated that they just left each expansion in their own sliver of time and wanted to stream line the experience so that you can ‘potentially’ experience all the zones of the expansion.

So hate to be the downer here but doubt they’d even go through with this. Besides I think leveling will be fine. It’s a good enough ‘band aid’ for me.

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I watched the video; regardless of where the idea came from it is fantastic.

I started in wow late in WoD. The experience of leveling was a mess. The worst part was that I never got to see the end of any story; I was just bounced though time and space with nothing making sense. If I didn’t have the goal of playing with my max level friends, I wouldn’t have worked through it.

The Chromie time thing is an improvement, for sure, but if new players still get dumped into Shadow lands without finishing the previous story, that’s a problem. If vets play through old expacs but can’t finish their stories, that’s a waste.

The idea as Tali described it solves so much. I really hope Blizzard will implement suffering like it.

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I’ve always loved the idea of doing raids while leveling I’d say it’s a perfect idea but would prefer it being 5-10 man content instead of solo.

Some questions what would be the raid per expac? Some are obviious like the Lich King for the WOTLK.

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If that’s true, then they need to eliminate leveling for new players entirely. It’s terrible for the health of the game to have the first 15 hours or so be a terrible experience. If it’s going to be part of the game, it’s absolutely worth bringing it up to snuff.

Getting into wow is difficult in so many ways; the barriers to entry are numerous. At the least there ought to be a rewarding, coherent story experience to start with.

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That’s a silly point to make… heck everything is terrible to the health of the game. You either like what you do or don’t and go play something else.

They kind of know a bit better than regular forum goers or armchair devs.

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I hope they do something like this for all the leveling areas. I do hope their plan is to go through each area and update what needs updating. Otherwise, all the new subscribers they hope to get might have unsatisfying game play.

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I’ve had that dream for a LONG time. I can be proven wrong and all the better. For Shadowlands at least, we are getting most definitely what was shown. When you want one thing, another thing will suffer… I recall reading that they were forced to redesign a zone which forced them to cut down on content (in WoD I think).

I get people wanting this or that, wishing for whatever but that takes time and resources that takes away from other areas of the game so this FOR ME is fine with what they did.

WoW is an old game, has had complaints by plenty new comers that it’s dated, long etc… so they’ve restructured the starting experience to give players a taste of the game.

The rest of the expansions are in their own pockets of time… and honestly I am fine with that and fully understand why they did what they did.

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WoW is interesting case because it is a 16 year old game but they’ve been flying by the seat of their pants FOREVER. You can’t really say that they have a master plan because they’ve admitted they don’t have one. They’re almost always simply reacting to things.

I think Ion does have a grand vision on some level but his strategy is not really in the “Japanese” vein of design - they’re basically putting a piece here and a piece there and slowly moving it forward.

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I think you misunderstand what I wrote. I said from what you clearly quoted, they have numbers to give them a better understanding of what they CAN do.

And of course they react. They are human beings. They most definitely have a rough idea of what they want to do, they most definitely have chats in a meeting for brainstorming ideas etc…

It’s how any sort of development in entertainment works. Especially games. I don’t disagree that they ‘simply react’ to things but there is more nuance than people here make it out to be. In their company and in other game developer places too.