The new leveling

Community General Discussion
21

I chose BC, and i’ve done wrath dungeons in my group just fine. We switched between BC and Wrath dungeons…

Also, if you’re doing 1 expansion, why would you need to do dungeons for other expansions? it doesn’t fit the story of the expansion, and quests don’t tie in etc…

22

It’s alright but I don’t think BFA needs to be the first dungeon newbies go into lmao.

3 Likes
23

The new system itself is alright…

I like that I can go to a single expansion and get to level 50. I can avoid the vanilla, TBC, Wrath and Cataclysm zones that I have already ventured through close to 100 times. I can also skip the racial starting areas which don’t even make sense with today’s stories.

My problem with leveling is two fold…

  1. The only thing worth leveling for me at this point in time are Horde characters. Unfortunately, the many of the horde zones are these large barren pieces of land that simply aren’t interesting. This lowers my drive to level.

  2. I have leveling burn out after leveling over a dozen characters to top levels over the years. The experience doesn’t offer anything new to that. It just squishes it into a single expansion.

24

Haven’t done a whole lot of the questing experiencing if I’m being honest, as me and the bf have been doing dungeons since we made a tank/healer.

That being said … it felt good for like … launch day but the cracks have shown themselves. There’s a lot of clunkiness to it all, from lvl14’s being way overtuned for some dungeons and then being facerolled in others, getting talents for abilities you haven’t even unlocked yet, not being able to use group finder so if you’re currently questing in a dead-ish zone, or during your realms off hours then rip, not being able to do chromie-time as a lvl50 even when you party sync when a lowbie to do stuff with them (that one feels particularly awful)

I hope they go back and polish everything up, because oof, it’s been fun but when it gets wonky it shows big time.

1 Like
25

To do Wrath dungeons though you have to go back to Chromie and change the timeline.

But, if you just wanted to quest in Northrend you don’t have to change your timeline you can just go to Northrend. It already scales 10-50 even if you picked TBC.

26

I was excited but non of it seems right to me. Something is just off and unenjoyable. It also doesnt help that the game is laggy bugged out mess.

27

My feeling is that they originally implemented level scaling for a number of reasons, none of which had anything to do with what new players want or need to keep them in the game, despite Ion’s claim that new players weren’t starting the game because of a lack of level scaling, and that new players wanted really hard leveling. So where are those hundreds of thousands of such new players? There weren’t any. Wow is lucky to attract and keep any new players at this point, given that the devs refuse to recognize how overwhelming the game is to a player who is starting from zero. It takes way more than a few hours of leveling in a zone with a tutorial aspect to get someone to the point where they’re fully functional at max, during which times they will have many, many questions go unanswered because they didn’t know how to ask them right or didn’t know which website to go to look them up on.

They told us we got level scaling because:

  1. New players were demanding level scaling
  2. New players were demanding really hard leveling
  3. Leveling had nerfed itself into the ground at the beginning of Legion and the only possible solution was level scaling.
  4. Players were unable to complete zones because blizzard had set the xp gain to zero out after reaching the zone end level, and the only possible solution was level scaling.

Of course player could complete zones if they really wanted to, and devs could have just readjusted xp gains to taper off less dramatically. But they really wanted to implement level scaling because:

  1. It was a step in the plan to put big changes into the game and convert it longterm into a low maintenance game that could churn out an unrelated game by template and have the previous one converted on the fly into a leveling zone.

  2. They wanted to remove player options, because devs don’t believe in player options. Player options allow players to choose to play the game wrong, and choosing the wrong option is inherently degenerate gameplay.

http://www.memorableplaces.com/mudwimping.html

  1. With allied races upcoming at that point, and players about to level up multiple allied race characters to unlock the heritage armor, they wanted to vastly bloat the amount of time it took to level. This is something that a blue actually admitted in the forum.

And so we got

  1. All feeling of progression removed from leveling, which made it thoroughly boring.

  2. Mob health greatly increased, so leveling went from 30 hours or less to 120 hours of slowly whittling down hundreds of thousands of trash packs while reading the forums, watching netflix, or surfing the web to stay awake.

  3. Dungeons made much harder by, again, turning mobs into damage sponges. BC dungeons went from 10-15 minutes to an hour. Since then the mob health has been decreased again, while quietly adding mechanics to dungeons over a period of time. They’ve even added cata heroic dungeon mechanics to a few vanilla dungeons.

  4. Removal of popular leveling options like powerleveling and soloing dungeons at level.

  5. Hard nerfing of heirloom stats and normalization to change them all to the same stats by converting versatility items to crit, haste, or crit-haste. Long-term I’m sure their intention was to eliminate the option of using heirlooms entirely, as we have been told a fair amount of times that somehow being forced to rely on the same boring, normalized leveling gear while leveling would add excitement to leveling. Like, “Oh, boy, I’m level 40 and I finally replaced that piece of starter gear, I feel like I won the lottery!” Yeah, no.

But we were also told many times that leveling would feel more rewarding if we had to work harder and longer to do it. This “classic leveling was better because it was hard and long” talking point was soundly rejected by the playerbase, and so we ended up with leveling being nothing but a rush to end game.

TL;DR: Leveling changes since Legion have been part of the long-term plan to turn wow into a game that was cheap to develop new template-driven content for and low maintenance.

2 Likes
28

I mostly like it. Definitely agree it has some issues, though. Mostly just the ones already mentioned in this thread. Still think it was a positive change and hope they continue to iron it out.

I will admit that it wasn’t as good as the changes that SWTOR made to their leveling experience. SWTOR had a lot less “story” to worry about than WoW due to age. But, you can quest right through on SWTOR and see the entire story. All the cutscenes and such. Even the dungeons were made solo. It’s a much more catered experience.

1 Like
29

I kinda like it, but it’s a huge change to the underlying systems the games run on so I’m not surprised that it’s a bit wonky. I’m starting to think that the resources it’s taking to get it working properly are part of the reason the expansion got pushed back. You don’t want a huge influx of returning players encountering a wobbly system.

30

I think it was an excellent change. You can play a different expansion every new toon so that keeps it fresh. Not just sitting in que for dungeons for 110 levels. exiles reach is awesome for new players, showing them how to move, pick spells, what to cast, etc. I’m having more fun leveling then i have in a decade. I just went back to nagrand in bc and it was epic seeing it again. Not to say the new system forces you into questing, it’s just way funner then it was before. I do wish they would make the world a little harder, everything dies in a couple hits. Other then that the revamped leveling is refreshing and making leveling fun again.

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31

Wrong every quest that took you into a dungeon now is broken. They force you into BFA only if you don’t use Timewalking. Remember a new player to the game wont see WC until they have reached max level and created a alt.

32

I’m enjoying it. The biggest plus for me is that I don’t need to quest in BFA to reach level cap, because I’m a little burnt out from all the WQs. Scaling could work a little weird, but not that really bothers me.

33

I haven’t run into this.

Incorrect. I’ve been questing normally as I always do. Just don’t pick up the BfA intro quest.

I never discussed new players. We all know new players must.use Exile’s Reach and then quest to 50 in BfA once.

Also: WC? Wailing Caverns? What?

1 Like
34

I actually don’t enjoy it lol. There’s too many pre-requisites just to start leveling. It made things a lot more annoying. Also it sounds good in theory but doing a lot of the high level zones without flying even though you’ve unlocked it feels absolutely terrible. I prefer the OLD SYSTEM.

It’s as if they didn’t even think any of it through, like…whatsoever.

35

At level 10 I was getting 23gold from each quest.

Things do seem off. I went to another expansion and was getting like 13gold

36

Wailing Caverns. You are 100% forced to BFA only dungeons if you don’t pick Chromie Time. The average leveling experience now includes less content and less player interaction then ever before. WoW is basically a single player experience now that they ruined dungeon leveling.

1 Like
37

I’m not. :woman_shrugging:

I was able to queue for lowbie dungeons without Chromie Time the other night. Not sure if that was a big, since people kept telling me that you couldn’t.

How? You can choose a bunch of different ways.to level as an older player. And when I ran the opening Broken Shore scenario, I was in there with 21 other people. I haven’t seen that scenario of more than just me since Legion launch. I’ve seen a ton of people questing everywhere, too.

So your statement isn’t factual for everyone.

Oh. So you don’t care about questing and just want to spam dungeons. Right then. I’ll leave you to your rage.

Also: not sure why you chose to come at me on this. All I said was that we have lots of options, which is nice. :woman_shrugging:

2 Likes
38

I like to play a multiplayer game with you know other people…if I want to play a single player RPG WoW is not even in the top 20. I call bull on being able to Q for none BFA dungeons out of Chromie Time. All my alts under level 40 show only BFA dungeons.

39

Cause the content is bare bones and not fun/themed/or really any story/plot going on hasnt since mop. Wrath/mop have by far the most replay value if you are the quest reader type. If you’re the speed lvler BFA/wod one zone and capped.

40

I’m sorry you had a bad experience. You are not forced into bfa only if you dont pick chromie. Just don’t do the bfa starting quest… I have seen more people out in the world leveling then i have in a long time. Almost every quest i did in bc and legion i had someone killing with me, sometimes more. Seriously you enjoyed spamming dungeons for 110 levels? 120 levels? really? You are entitled to your opinion but i just can’t agree with anything you are saying.

1 Like