Thoughts on Level Squish

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21

Yeah, I agree that in theory, the level squish should not have been a problem.

Nevertheless, it has been. I don’t have much hope that this problem will be ever be resolved. There is more money in fixing SL.

Returning after 3 years, I suspect I’m in that “sour” (as opposed to “sweet”) spot, where my Legion artifact weapon was nerfed, there was at least one item level squish by well over an order magnitude compared to when I last played, classes were revamped, and then character levels were squished shortly after I resubbed.

The cumulative result is a major loss of power that is very noticeable to me, but apparently not obvious to people who’ve been playing, i.e., each of the squishes resulted in nerfs that based on your testimony, were not noticeable for existing toons.

When telling another former WoW player about this, he said it was classic “boiling frog”, and I immediately recognized he was right. From the wiki:

“The boiling frog is a fable describing a frog being slowly boiled alive. The premise is that if a frog is put suddenly into boiling water, it will jump out, but if the frog is put in tepid water which is then brought to a boil slowly, it will not perceive the danger and will be cooked to death. The story is often used as a metaphor for the inability or unwillingness of people to react to or be aware of sinister threats that arise gradually rather than suddenly.”

The WoW devs have been steadily, but slowly nerfing us.

Whether or not that is a good thing for the game, only time will tell. For me, who resubbed to test the waters before buying SL and finding them boiling hot plus the fact that I am so sick and tired of killing zombies, which I’ve been doing since the original Diablo (released in 1996), has made me decide not to buy SL.

I will continue to play as long as I’m having fun, which so far, the most fun has been leveling new toons.

Which of course, is working as intended from Blizzard’s perspective.

But what they’ve done since I was gone has made me change my mind about buying SL for now.

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22

On a positive note, the ever changing meta means that the ability to have a FOTM toon is easier now.

23

I don’t know if slowly nurfing us is the right way to put it, they have been slowly simplifying classes and casualising gameplay in an alert to have a broader appeal to players.
Overall classes seem to be relatively as strong each tier in relation to the end game content. You have to remember the devs put the effort into the balance of the current expansion so if you’re only playing the base sub game then you’re going to have a bunch of holes in the classes likely be weaker than you should be.

24

Why is that? The base sub gives me BfA and SL isn’t available.

25

Because the pre patch has introduced the class changes for SL and those changes were made with Covenants, Soul binds, Conduits and legos in mind. The classes as they are now are somewhat incomplete.
Once SL comes out everyone who has bought it will be able to ‘finish’ their class so to speak and those that choose to not buy SL will be lumped with the unfinished classes as they are now.

26

And so that means I should buy SL now, why?

Considering that there are other games I like.

27

Where did I say you should but SL?

28

Whatever…

29

I’m just explaining why you could be struggling when in the past you weren’t, weather you buy SL or not doesn’t bother me at all.

30

Thanks for clearing that up.

But I do hope you understand that from my returning player’s perspective, having to buy something just to get back to where I was, is a reason to leave and never come back.

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31

I can see how you may feel that but I don’t understand why you would return and not buy the latest expac. Again that’s your decision to make.

32

As I said before, I returned just to test the waters.

I’m not liking what I’m seeing, so far.

Edited Note: and the “latest expac” is not yet available to play.

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33

i don’t like it. mainly because it makes gear drops from questing seem mostly pointless since at best they give like +1 or +2 to stats every level.

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34

New expansion nullifies the old level, but old levels are always relevant in its own expansion, so your explanation has a flaw. As a Level 70, my character was still relevant in the Burning Crusade, even after the release of Wotlk.

If the Ministry of Education comes out tomorrow and says, due to the intimidation of getting a doctorate degree, we have decided to get rid of all post baccalaureate programs, from now on the highest level of education is a Bachelor’s degree. I am sure all those people with Masters and Doctorate Degrees are sitting in their living rooms think, well we are still max, so no biggie.

35

I feel a better analogy would be to re-name all levels of education so everyone is still in their respective “band”. Your analogy would work if everyone under level 50 kept their current level and anyone over it was lowered but in reality every single player had their level dropped by roughly the same percentage so everyone is equally as close to max level as they were pre squish.

36

While I do agree generally with you, I do have to point out my retribution paladin was substantially weaker in my own expansion (Legion) upon my return, which I attributed to “boiling frog” as I said above.

Look at my profile. Do the item levels seem a bit inconsistent compared to my Legion artifact weapon? That’s because of doing BfA quests, which were now upgrades compared to the rest of my gear upon my return, but yet when I was playing Legion, they were on par with my artifact weapon.

So then I made a new toon, a rogue, and obtained it’s Legion artifact, around toon level 40-ish, and the artifact weapon I received is ilevel 20.

No doubt that both weapons scaled wrongly. Or something is way off.

37

I noticed that with legion artifacts as well. At 40, they are Ilvl 20. Been dumping them for heirloom weapons. On this guy, it was a difference between a 2-3 dps artifact bow or a 10 dps heirloom. Was thinking about talking to chromie and time walking a different expansion to see if I could pick up a better weapon but that’s low on the priority list.

38

Un-upgraded artifact weapons are ilvl 20. But if you install the relics, they can get up to ilvl 80 with the max.

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39

Yeah, I thought about that. But I don’t recall having a problem with equipping artifact weapons and using them in Legion content. I didn’t even try it with my new toon.

40

gonna add on to my post with the addenduem being that unless your character is seemingly wod/legion questing level geared the stats almost don’t matter. unlike my priest who received a mild upgrade in stats +5/+6 to each stat and a general upgrade in secondary stats because she was so poorly geared when she started questing due to gaining 5.5 levels from candy buckets (which means she only got exp no gold or gear that she would otherwise get.) and a half level from exploration.