Thoughts on Level Squish

I was never a fan of level squish or zone scaling, and it actually surprised me when I heard a lot of players were in support of it. Now I am starting to doubt if that is the case, because all my comments on level squish were mysteriously removed despite being mild in content.

I personally there are many ways the Leveling issue could have been handled better

  1. Make every new character start at Level 60. This would have solved the issue of people who found 120 levels intimidating.
  2. Remove zone scaling. Back in the days, it felt good going back to old zones and beating up on mobs that once gave you a hard time, but now due to zone scaling, those mobs now level up with you, meaning you got less powerful as you level. Example, as a level one I one-shot kobloids, as a level 60, those kobloids now take longer to kill.
    3.Blizz said they wanted to make each level feel special, going back to number 1, have everyone start at level 60 with a few abilities then add more abilites as the level up.

I understand that failing to cater to new players means the game will eventually die as old players move on, but they didn’t have to totally disregard their current base either. How many people played 10 or more characters from level 1- 120, or paid for character boost, now all of that means nothing.

This is just my opinion. I would like to see what real players think about this. Hopefully, this post is not removed.

Blizzard doesn’t monitor the player to player help forums for feedback.

I would suggest posting this in either he Quest or the General Discussion forums Where feedback is read by the Devs.

While I have some issues with how the level squish has been implemented, it’s infinitely preferable to what you’re suggesting. If anything, they didn’t go far enough; as I’ve said elsewhere, I think they should have made Chromie Time permanent with no option to turn it off. Then they could have revised the level requirements for dungeons & raids and revamped crafted items to avoid all the level requirement issues they’re currently having.

Been playing since 2005, leveled plenty of alts to the level cap in every expansion, none of it “means nothing” now.

Been excited for the squish ever since the first rumors of it. And don’t most zones only scale up to 30-45 now so at 50 you can still faceroll all the old zones no problem? I don’t see the issue with scaling the way it’s done right now.

The fact is, all else aside, that 120 is just a ridiculous number of levels to gain.

Why make everyone start at 60, to then level 120? What’s the point of having those previous 59 levels? Does that actually make it seem any less daunting or silly?

You’ll still 1-shot Kobolds in Elwynn. When not in Chromie Time, most of the old-world zones will only scale to the 30s or 40s; even Legion content goes up to 45 at most.

Yes. Chromie Time has its own scaling, but outside of those timelines all zones have “traditional” brackets. Lots of 10-35, with the highest outside of BfA being 45, AFAIK.

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I am going by Blizzard’s own words that some players found 120 levels intimidating. So starting from 60 was a possible solution. Also, Demon Hunters started at 98, so why can’t new players start at 60. All they had to do was change the story so that rather than starting as a recruit adventurer, you start off as a Lieutenant or something. They could have a tutorial scenario for new players to help them get up and running.

I don’t get your logic, are you just annoyed that 60 is a smaller number than 120? Because starting at 60 and levelling to 120 is exactly the same as starting at 1 and levelling to 60 in every functional way.

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My point exactly, level squish does not make sense. It does not fix anything. They may as well have raised the starting level. What will happen 5 expansions from now, if it ever gets that far, when 100 is the new cap will they squish the level again.

People play MMO because it gives them a sense of achievement. It makes no sense removing something that people worked hard to achieve. Imagine getting your Doctorate degree and then the Ministry of Education says we have too many doctors so we are just going to get rid of any post - baccalaureate program, so now the highest level of Education is a Bachelors. Yes WoW is a game, but once upon a time, people gave up a lot for this game.

They gave several reasons why they felt it was needed.
Just because you don’t like them doesn’t mean they aren’t valid.

I’ve recently returned after a couple of years (Legions was the last expansion I played), a week or so prior to the level squish.

Of course, I had issues just trying to remember how to play at first. Apparently, since I last played, my item levels dropped about an order of magnitude, i.e., there must have been another “squish” of sorts related to Legions item levels before the latest level squish.

I finally got a handle on it a few days prior to the level squish.

After the level squish patch, I was back to struggling again, which didn’t ease up until I started doing the BFA content, which thanks to advice from people on these forums, I didn’t buy upon my return, since the level squish also included BFA for free.

I understand Blizzard’s concern how daunting a high max level can be. I’ve been playing Anarchy Online since it’s release, and last time I played it, max level was 210, and they are certainly struggling to survive, not the least of which is because it is exponentially harder to level as you approach max level, and achieving max level was originally predicated upon grouping, which you can’t find anymore in a dying game, despite Funcom’s attempt to make a new server.

But my opinion is that Blizzard is throwing us old players under the bus in favor of attracting new players. It’s not just the recent level squish, but rather their policy of each new expansion making previous expansions obsolete, including crafting, other than stuff like hexweave bags from Draenor.

Just for giggles, I made a new toon and got the Legion’s artifact for it, after the level squish. It was item level 20, for a mid-40’s toon. Is there a reason to play Legion with this toon?

My lessons learned from this: never, ever grind WoW again. There are a lot of other games I could be having more fun playing instead. It does make good business sense for Blizzard to attract new players, but I have no interest in playing with MMO newbs (and yes, I know, that’s my bad, and am a literally dying breed, and WoW is financially better off without the likes of me.)

And never buy the latest expansion. Wait until it’s free (although I love to pay for games that delight me). This especially applies to SL for me, because I am so sick and tired of killing zombies.

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There are craftable items that can adjust the Ilevel of any gear made by crafting in a particular expansion to make it usable by upper or lower level players. Classic crafted gear is usable by characters in BfA and vice versa.

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/thoughts-on-level-squish/694736/10?u=broblade-aegwynn
I never said it was invalid, it’s Blizz’s game and they can do whatever they want. Yes they gave their reason and it didn’t make much sense, and I gave the example what would happen 5 expansions from now, another level squish? Level squish is like putting bandage on a flesh wound. It was sloppy in its implementation. While I am not saying having players start at level 60 is a great solution, it is better than the level squish. The reason being, you are rewarding new players without punnishing the older players, as opposed to level squish which punishes veteran players at the expense of new players

This is the second level squish. I really don’t see how it punishes veteran players. I don’t think anyone believes the first level squish did.

Second level squish? When was the first? I can’t remember anything that I would call a level squish.

I misspoke. The first one was a stat squish.

Which is your opinion, I don’t see any punishment for existing players. The only difference is the meaningless number becide your name is smaller.

I believe we’re up to the 3rd stat squish. First was in cata (I believe), then the one after legion and the third with SL

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You may be right, if by “existing” players you mean those who have BfA gear. Since this is the returning players discussion forum, I thought our opinions counted too.

For me, a player who was still wearing Legion gear when I returned a few days before the level squish, there was a definite loss in my toon’s performance until I could obtain BfA gear (which I could do only after the level squish).

I agree that the intent was to achieve a neutral result, but that isn’t what actually happened, for me, at least.

Really! I thought it was obvious. Wow is a game that players invest in emotionally and financially. People spent 100s of hours grinding levels and you don’t think a level squish punishes the effort those players put into the game

I agree there, they have some issues they need to fix but the fundamental idea of halving levels isn’t the problem. The problem is the balancing around the associated stat squish that is making people feel weaker.

They’re still max, or relevantly far through, the level cap. The number is just smaller.
You complain about people’s time spent being nullified but gear being irrelevant every content patch happens and no one complains. A new expansion comes out and the entire progression system of the old expansion is nullified.
You haven’t lost the experience of levelling those toons, the fun you had along the way or even the toons themselves. It’s literally a number becide their name.