I don’t need to enlighten you if you don’t understand.
Of course it could work. Chromie Time is currently working and it divided up the player base.
You havent explained why a diablo 3 like difficulty slider would work.
That works in that kind of game because it’s purely based around power creep and scaling. You are talking about a fundamentally different type of game here. What would be the difference of killing a quest boss on level 1 difficulty vs doing it on level 6 difficulty? At which point does it require 3 or 5 or 10 players? What would be the reward structure? More experience? Better gear? How much better? Better enough to justify the amount of time it would require to complete said quest at max difficulty slider?
Explain this to me.
Classic WoW also divided it up some, as did Warmode.
Imo the scaling is just totally frigged up currently, andd the artifact weapon thing is just one of the examples on how wonky it is right now. Worst thing that ever came out of the Legion expansion is when they snuck in item level scaling into this game. Guess they thought, oh they will never notice it, because of the mobs scaling to level, but yeah they were eventually called out on it, and finally fessed up eventually.
I think the reward is the enjoyment.
Not everything more challenging needs to be more rewarding. some people just want the challenge.
And yes this is a thing this is why level 1 hogger runs was a thing.
Arbitrarily injecting a difficulty curve by imposing an artificial boost to mob DPS/health pools simply to make leveling take longer (which is what almost everyone who says “leveling should be harder” actually means) is also an absolute failure in game design.
Ok so let’s set aside in game incentive for a second.
No reward other than the challenge of doing it, ok. So at that point where does the scaling challenge tier off? We are talking multiple levels of difficulty here, not just 1 or 2 beyond the default current experience.
At max slider level do you need a raid group to kill a quest boss at the end of a long chain like durn in negrand? What possible reason would people have to assemble that when it’s not end game in an mmorpg that is purely focused on end game progression. No one would even bother I promise you. And logistically you would still be unable to balance the statistical difference across 6 different levels of difficulty without entering absolute redundancy territory.
That is not a reason, it’s just an example, and it fails to acknowledge that Chromie Time is still a very unbalanced experience. It’s a lot better than what we had, but it’s a far cry from what it could be. Many expansion timelines are dead due to some being much more superior in leveling over others (I.E. Most players leveling are doing Warlords of Draenor multiple times over), and queues for dungeons are very long because it’s not pulling from the entire player pool. These problems would be exacerbated if a difficulty slider were to be added, mainly because, much like WoD, many people would probably choose the easiest leveling experience because it’d be faster, leaving the other difficulties dead shards that nobody wants to opt into.
So no, it couldn’t work.
People used to do it all the time.
Look up 40 man hogger raid. People do this stuff for fun. It’s not end game it’s just done because it’s fun.
Problem is the game is focused on high level content. People will always take the path of least resistance to level up quickly.
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That is so incredibly niche that it would not warrant developer time. That is my point.
Wow is not a sandbox for better or worse. The majority would not bother, especially when you consider the absolute variety of areas one can quest in today compared to back then.
But again, that is only half the issue. Even if the player base magically cared about raiding quest bosses just because, there is no way to technically scale the zones accross mutliple difficulty tiers.
A reality proven time and time again over the course of 20+ years with this genre.
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If you want mythic leveling you might try Everquest. At higher levels you don’t dare step foot into a zone without a group or invisibility.
Point is you are wrong that nobody would do it. Goal post got changed from nobody would do it. To it’s niche.
But I agree it’s a bad idea, It’s just the reasons you give can be proven inaccurate.
Ironman Challenge, anybody?
But the kind of game and community WoW was twelve years ago isn’t the same one as it is today. Game design changes, and with it comes different demands and expectations of the game being played.
People want to be rewarded in some way. If there’s no reason to do it other than the satisfaction of just doing it, then people aren’t going to do it. Maybe that’s the more cynical way of looking at it, but you can even see this happening in Classic. As I pointed out, people aren’t interested in just leveling in Classic anymore. They want the endgame because that’s where the reward lies for them. Anything between them and that is just bloat.
Do they?
Then why do people do stuff like level without choosing a spec. (current fad) Or do the iron man challenge, Or level a panda without ever choosing a faction.
I’m not moving the goal posts, you are being pedantic. It goes without saying that people have done silly things just because since the dawn of this games existence.
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LFR, max level boost.
Normal, as is.
Heroic, Warmode.
Mythic, Warmode alone with no gear better than green quality.
7 expansions to choose from X 2 warmode settings X 3 difficulties = 42 separate populations from Chromie time alone. I think OP is way overestimating how many people are going to still be leveling alts after the new expansion is going.