Why does Blizz not care about Leveling & Questing Content in WoW?

Community General Discussion
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Alright, just a couple more days before the subscription runs out… but I feel I need to ask this particular question before I leave the game for an undetermined amount of time.

Why does Blizzard not care about the leveling & questing experience?

Or to be more specific, why does Blizz not care to anything more than a band-aid solution for the leveling and questing related content from their older expansions?

There’s several key issues which come to mind:

  • Leveling in general is too fast, making the whole experience feel like a blur. While Chromie Time does allow you to pick any particular expansion to go through, you rarely have to do more than a handful of zones to hit the “end of Chromie Time” mark… and which point you’re booted out of Chromie Time and never allowed to turn it back on unless you’re at least one level below the “Chromie Cap” (currently level 70, meaning you have to level 69 or less).
  • The scaling system is horrifically broken with enemies being either vastly undertuned with the odd enemy suddenly becoming impossible due to it becoming overtuned.
  • There’s no attempt to create any sort of narrative sequence, with multiple questlines from multiple timelines often becoming available and the player having no idea which one makes sense to do first.
  • Bugs galore in old content… and some sequences that I recall from earlier eras of the game (Vashj’ir comes to mind) suddenly being “skipped” rather than fixing them. Some are fixed by re-logging into the game, but they feel weirdly frequent. Subsequent quest text not loading correctly is VERY common, but is mercifully fixed by walking away from the NPC and talking to them again; but again, that’s something that shouldn’t be acceptable.

It generally feels like the leveling experience for WoW, or at least the parts of which are not a part of the current expansion, are treated as an expressway for leveling to get to the current expansion.

Even if you look at the various forms of Classic WoW, the same trend arguably holds true. The entire point of the leveling experience is to just… “get it over with”, so that you can focus on the endgame. Looking back at MoP Remix, the same holds true; after hitting a certain threshold, the cloak you got at the start had a +100% XP bonus by default for all your alts.

There seems to be no recourse for players who want to take their time and enjoy the leveling & questing content in the game. Because showing up 20+ levels higher than enemies and one-shotting everything is VERY boring after about five minutes.

It feels like the intent here is to get players to newest expansion (if not the latest content patch)… and have them just ignore everything from previous expansions, apart from farming transmog & mounts. It feels like there’s little to no consideration for those who just want to do the content.

Being frank, I don’t expect these issues to be fixed at this stage.
It doesn’t even seem to be on Blizz’ radar, it feels abandoned & forgotten.

But I would like to know why Blizz has taken this approach, why do they leave their 20 years of content as something to be blitzed through as quickly as possible rather than ensuring it’s still an enjoyable experience throughout?

Why don’t they care about it?

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Most of the players don’t care about leveling content, and Blizzard follows the interests and preferences of their players. WoW is, for the vast majority of players, all about end game.

I’m not all about end game, but most players are, so that’s where the resources go.

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Because the alternative would be a nightmare for a majority of players.

Its one of the reason FF14 has such a rough entry wall…most people dont want to spend forever leveling through irrelevant/outdated content. Especially not 20 years worth

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I’m working on my 8th level 80 and it needs to be faster. I did the journey decades ago, I just want to play the game now.

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that experience is on the other game, Classic Era WoW.
Different games for different folks

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And what would that alternative be?
I think I know what you mean, but some clarification would be useful.

The strange thing is… FFXIV players don’t call it “irrelevant”.
Dated, perhaps. But not irrelevant.

Not really. Classic is slower, but it’s still a push towards the level cap. Maybe there’s more time to do stuff and more to see along the way, but I’m not quite sure that’s it.

… and I have to admit, I still generally prefer the moment-to-moment gameplay of retail. In particular, I’ve developed a fondness for WW Monk gameplay. And that’s not in any version of Classic (yet).

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No, it isn’t.

Leveling is the earliest and easiest part of the game. It doesn’t need to be long nor does it require a large amount of focus.

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This comment explains it.
It’s a 20 year old game. I’ve gone through my teldrassils and mulgores enough times. Players wanting lleveling experience are better off in classic, where the game is specifically tailored for them.
Though ironically even there, people get tired of leveling.

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Why doesn’t Blizzard make it more difficult for players to hit max level? While I agree that leveling is fast – the solution is to streamline the zones for leveling so players get to see the big events and have a story mode recap like they did for Ansurak.

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I think WoW needs an “adventure” server of sorts where leveling is slow, flying is only available where needed, things hit hard, and gives you cosmetic type rewards upon reaching max level.

Something like a classic/retail crossover for people who want a classic experience without being forced out of retail.

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Because the players don’t.

Players whine “OMG IT TAKES TOO LONG TO LEVEL” and then try to find the fastest most optimized way to level.

So Blizzard caters to the players.

If players didn’t have this mentality, we could have a good and comprehensive leveling system.

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Its the impossible problem.

WoW moved away from a traditional gamer audience a decade ago favoring accessibility. The issue there is content is so trivial it has become tedious. Add in the fact that most players only play one character and they have monetized a solution to their terrible design.

Destroys a lot of incentive to fix it. Last I checked their attempt to modernize it with their new starting zone still teaches mages improper spell use.

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That “current content” would extend to Molten Core.
I’m oversimplifying it but the fact of the matter is that WoW’s primary focus is on characters, PvE, and themepark activities. Why did we see Ragnaros in Cataclysm? Because we were visiting the Firelands and he remained an unsolved threat. His character rather than his history was the focus.

I was trying to find a famous post about someone levelling a Mag’har Orc outlining exactly how weird their timeline was when levelling through old content. But that MMO-Champion thread already has some gems, including folks pointing out how your class (DKs) made absolutely no sense whatsoever in terms of levelling back during the days of Wrath of the Lich King.

Because FF14 is played as a RPG first, and a MMO if you care about players serving any other purpose than fancier, weirder, and immersion breaking NPCs.

To play WoW, you don’t have to care about the story or levelling.
To play FF14 and you ignore the story … why the hell are you even playing the game to begin with in that case?

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I will never understand this statement.

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People have played through the levelling experience time and time again. It doesn’t feel like it is part of playing the game anymore as a direct result. Because of how you are expected to make a new character if you want to play a different class, do other professions, try new races … people have been levelling characters A LOT!

So… levelling doesn’t feel like it is part of the game anymore to a lot of people.
Ain’t more complicated than that.

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It’s a video game why wouldn’t I want to play it? Leveling is a part of it but it was always meant to be a means to an end.

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Seriously for the people that want instant level 80’s just give it to them. $5 level 80 boost. Talk to Brahm and say you been through the story even if you haven’t. Easy fix for blizzard.

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I think a better solution is to give players incentives to quest beyond max level, and by that I mean, make it fun and rewarding, not punishing them for not doing it.

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I wouldn’t buy any more expansions and unsubscribe if they just became a lobby room to the new raid/dungeons/bgs etc.

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