The Level Squish will NOT work...here's why

Community General Discussion
21

If you’ve played wow for so long I would’ve thought you’d see a pattern with blizzard having no idea what direction they want levels to go in.

After wotlk, blizzard became the most inconsistent devs we’ve ever seen.
Vanilla, level 60 Healthpools 4-9k.

TBC? Level 70 healthpools 10-20k, new talents, new spells. ok, +10.

Wotlk, Level 80 healthpools 20-40k new talents, new spells. +10. pattern established.

Cataclysm. Level 85 healthpools 120k and up, no new talents, but trees rewritten a little, and restricted. New spells. +5, confusing, pattern broken.

Mists of Pandaria, Level 90, Healthpools breaking 500k, exceeding 1m in some cases. Talents removed and redesigned. New spells +5 levels again. Confusing.

Warlords of Draenor. Level 100. Stats Squished. Healthpools reflect the previous expansion, similar numbers. Abilities Pruned. New talents. Classes dramatically redesigned. + 10 levels. New design.

Legion. Level 110. Weapons Removed. Stats bloated. Millions upon millions of health. New Talents/Talents redone. PvP talents. Artifact Weapons. Classis all completely redesigned, and abilities pruned again. +10 Levels. New design.

BFA. Level 120. Wepons Returned. Stats Squished. Health lower than its been in more than 30 levels. Talents reworked again. & Less PvP talents now. New necklace. Set bonuses Removed. Magical Gear scaling. Hidden math that isn’t explained. Lots of broken, stacking traits. + 10 levels. New design.

Why exactly are you worried about a stat squish? Nothing has been the same for any length of time for a good long while now.

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22

Reminds me of a great movie : Idiocracy
So much to look forward to…sigh

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23

If they get rid of my ability to make twink characters I’m done and never looking back. It’s the only reason I’m still playing.

24

I go to work because I need money to do things, not because I need to earn things to feel fulfilled.

Sounds like you need a hobby.

25

There are plenty of things to reply to, but the most obvious one for me is the idea that you think this is being done because of something BFA specific.

Its like, the complete opposite isn’t it?
What was your thought process leading up to this post?

You are the first person I have seen say something like this.

I think its fairly obvious that its not going to address “BFA” issues, which we can probably agree to call “max level” issues.

Its looking to address “early game” issues, that have been compounded upon by every single expansion and that stand almost entirely alone from BFA, as even if you didn’t own the expansion you would still be impacted by all this.

I can tell your main point was to influence others on Classic here, and that’s just a layup if you ask me.
Obviously Classic’s early game is better than modern wow’s.

That’s probably one of the main reasons they are considering doing this in the first place.

Seems like you wanted to make a thread on why you enjoy Classic more than BFA than about the level squish idea, because all of this is either super obvious or tangentially connected.

I don’t think anyone on the planet, including the development, connects these two topics in this way as you have done here:

There are plenty of issues with both Classic AND modern wow, and this is not trying to solve them all in one fell swoop.

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26

I read about half of your post and I think I get what you are saying but you sound clueless as to why they might do a level squish. I’ll give you a hint…it has absolutely nothing to do with BfA being good or bad. It has nothing to do with Wrath being one of the best expansions. It has nothing to do with Thrall being the horde leader or the lack of PvP vendors. I don’t even understand how you would come to that conclusion as they are two completely different things.

It’s funny though that you have such a long post and typed so much for such a silly theory. That’s like saying we are getting an item squish because MoP was so good. Makes no sense, right? We get item squishes because numbers and damage are getting a little out of control.

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The Devs were all about needlessly raising the level cap up 10 more for BFA, along with a plethora of other bad decisions. Now…they want to do a level squish they know they are not skilled or knowledgeable enough to do properly. Blizz logic at its finest.

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Play maplestory that’s how you do levels and rewarding. You get skill points in that game up to a certain point then it goes to hyper points that does more than help with skills,etc. There is also uping your stats via leveling besides new skills,etc too. You can have a high level max game and do well. Wow fails at that. Which is my point earlier. The number of levels is not the issue. Anyone whining its too big a number know nothing of what is higher,etc. Shows they never played games like maplestory,etc where levels are higher than games like wow. Maplestory have 250 levels and it’s upping real soon and it’s doing great and even 1 or so year older than wow. It’s one of many other games that show you can have something (in this cases high level cap) and the game will go well if done right. WoW lacks the rewarding feel when leveling up that is why levels feel meh…well part of that reason. The number again isn’t the problem nor lowering it will solve the issues we have today. All it will do is lower a big number nothing more. Talents will remain the same,etc. That’s what many folks seem to fail to even understand.

29

This seems to be a problem that the journey is not fun to get to the destination.
Whether you need to kill 4000 quillboars to level from 1 - 60 or 1 - 30 the journey is still not fun.
the journey from 1 -90 seems to be the long journey.
Wod has bonus objects to speed leveling, legion and BFA have invasions.
Perhaps somewhere between 1 - 90 Blizzard could give us a Murloc invasion on an 18 hour timer which can give 3 - 5 levels to make the journey more enjoyable.

30

The concept that endgame IS the destination vs level IS the destination is the problem.

Endgame should be something to do after you finish the game and not the game itself.

Ever notice all of the hype for Classic is over leveling content and NOT endgame content (since there is none yet)

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31

The only thing bad about BFA is the hearth of azeroth, the times its taking to unlock flying, and Mech King blocking most heroic groups in BoD. Everything else is fine.

32

Honestly I wouldn’t mind the perma level cap being 100. High enough that all the content can be played through without feeling like a painful slog and also feeling like a rewarding level that 60, 70, 80, 120 just don’t match. 100 is the only one that feels like a milestone and would be easy to change the leveling so that it feels more rewarding.

100 was the last time we got a talent tier, as well.

I was honestly hoping they would stop after 100, and that the artefact weapon would be a way to have us level up artificially. Maybe with branching talents like in Wrath.

Slicing the levels in half, I don’t think would feel good, and the last time wow made it “take longer” to get to max, everyone cried. Imagine 60 where the leveling is technically doubled, if not more?

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33

My theory is it relates to the number of people starting new characters and leveling them up. I suspect even with all the allied races, the numbers are down or not as high as blizzard wants them to be. And blizzard being blizzard is grasping at straws as to what to blame.

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34

I may not agree with every thing the OP has to say, but that’s just you being nitpicky and lazy. They voiced their disdain in clear, concisde wording, easy to read and engaging enough.

This is a you issue.

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TL;DR Just another "I’ve played since 2004, took breaks, re-subbed for “classic”, and “classic” is better than “retail” thread of the day.

Just the first of many.

36

I never looked at it that way before. These developers are totally confused.

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37

This describes 90% of what is wrong with WoW. Nothing means anything because the next instant gratification quest/dungeon/emissary is just a click away. It just takes all meaning/progression completely out of the game. the other 10% is scaling, getting up to the instant gratification stage is just a meaningless .

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38

They think modifying the leveling system without changing class design, professions or the reward structure will fix leveling.

They are wrong.

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39

The problem is multifaceted. As you say, the disconnection between effort and reward is hugely detrimental, both from the perspective of getting high ilvl gear dumped in your lap everywhere and RNG turning what would’ve been an upgrade into vendor trash. Neither of those is fun. The first feels like getting a gold medal as a participation prize and the second can be soul sapping when your main’s 5th mythic chest in a row is going straight to the scrapper right after you get a 415 titanforged ring on your downtime alt from doing the turtle emissary.

But that’s just max level. As much as many would deny it, leveling is still a part of the game, and this is one place where the squish makes a lot of sense, but only if it comes with class revamps. Let me explain –

We’re in an era of hyper-streamlined class design. Our spell books are thin and talent panes sparse, which makes for lackluster gameplay at cap and individual levels so worthless you wonder why they even exist.

Of course, one way to fix this is to backtrack and revert to a more MoP-like class design where we have lots of abilities and talents. The problem with this avenue is that it’s difficult to sustain across xpacs and player action bars get overloaded. Perhaps most problematic is that it mandates a level of investment that Blizzard is unwilling to commit to for an old “maintenance mode” game such as WoW.

Which leads us to the level squish. A squish would make room for a sort of middle ground – with half as many levels to worry about, something resembling a hybrid of TBC/WotLK and BfA class design becomes pretty feasible. At 60 levels, it’d be relatively easy to fill out talent trees and spellbooks enough to make leveling feel more engaging and max level play fun, but we wouldn’t be facing the problems that MoP brought where abilities were so numerous that people are running out of action bar slots.

Combining this with a reduction in RNG (returning to vendors, making rewards proportional, etc), you’d end up with an expansion that makes every class more fun to level as well as play at max level.

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40

I agree OP! Levels are not the issue! The issue is the game is no longer the RPG we all fell in love with. I’m not really sure how you would describe this game to a new player, because clearly it ain’t an immersive RPG MMO anymore.

The endless streamlining over the years has pretty much left this game in a state that is only palatable to a very small audience imo.

1 Like