At first i was vehemently against a level squish. I have worked for my 120 levels over the many years of playing world of warcraft. Having my levels “taken” dose not feel good. I feel there are other ways they can fix leveling before a squish ( see here but like the title says its just an idea) and/ or a revamp of talens and spells (imo it dose not feel good to get a talent every 15 levels)
But after thinking about it i sort of understand why blizz wants to do a level squish. For us max level characters its only 10 levels for a new expansion, but for a new player its 1xx levels. This can be daunting to some new players, but this also can incentivize others. There are levels where you dont get anything and a squish can theoretically fix that…but it opens a huge can of logistical nightmare worms.
In closing i think there are better alternatives than a squish. But if blizz truely feels like this is the fix then so be it…and i probably wont be around for it until i see what it looks like after implementation.
Keep in mind that a year ago, Blizzard slowed down leveling so that it would take people longer.
They also nerfed heirlooms around the same time.
The problem isn’t that 120 is too high. The problem is that Blizzard deliberately made leveling take too long. Probably so that people would be sympathetic to this idiotic idea of a level squish.
I very much so dislike it. People worked for their levels. I can see why blizzard wants to do it, but IMO there is a better way to fix the situation. Go back to the Vanilla and BC style spell book.
Fire Bolt level I,II,III,IV, V, etc etc. And for new content Master level I,II, III, etc etc.
This is how it use to be, so every level you got something. This is the way Classic will work since it is how it use to be. I find it somewhat humerus that the decisions Blizzard made 10 years ago which were not popular at the time has come back to bite them and now they want to do a level squish to fix things. When they could have just left it alone.
I think you make some good points, but I also think a better solution would be to make the leveling more fun. Leveling is pretty insanely fast compared to what it once was.
Nothing will change, except instead of dinging 5 times taking X minutes for each level to gain one skill, we will ding once taking 5X minutes to gain one skill.
It will work for tricking new players into thinking there isn’t a truck load of things they must do before getting to the fun.
It will work for tricking us into thinking we are getting more rewards through leveling.
But ultimately nothing will change but our perception.
And to be honest, WoW needs some perception improvements right now, so bring the squish!
My thoughts are it’d be a completely unnecessary retarded change. Whatever the level cap is it’s going to seem like a lot to new players. Leveling would become pointless since you’d be seeing numbers you’d already seen before. A level boost would be a complete waste of money until the level cap reached 130.
Still, simply reversing the nerfs they did to leveling would make a lot more sense than going in and screwing up with the game at a fundamental level (which is what a level squish would be).
I worked for abilities and an overall growth of power relative to the world I exist in. The “level” is just a number that serves to quantify that in shorthand.
The people that Blizzard has working on WoW now are just clueless. As an example, they actually thought that the reason people weren’t enjoying WoW was because of flying. Now flying is gone, and people are having less fun than ever.
Blizzard keeps coming up with these boogey-men to blame everything on, rather than look in a mirror and fess up that it’s their own bone-headed mistakes that have been driving people away.
Leveling sucks for a lot more reasons than speed. Fact is, this is more a target to encourage new players to try the game. Someone starting out that has zero knowledge of WoW and sees 120 levels, might be immediately turned away. A lot of the detractors of this seem to only be looking at the issue from within.
There are a lot of other things that need to change as well but they should only loosely be part of the argument. Leveling speed, open world changes, and talent revamps should be discussed but when it comes to a straight level squish, it’s really only a number change to encourage more growth.
Leveling will take the same amount of time to get to max level even with a level squish. If anyone thinks otherwise, I have a bridge to sell you. As someone above said, they’ve already slowed down the leveling process, in order to sell boosts. They’re not turning away from that strategy.
I would love if they brought back the old talent trees, but lets not forget that there were alot of fluff talents like 5% passive crit for 5 points.
But if they can find a way to make those talents meaningful i would be so happy. An example would be all warlocks can cast corruption but affliction can instant cast.
I totally agree with this sentiment.
Click the link to my other post and tell me what you think!