While cool that they finally have implemented such a great thing, and I'm really enjoying leveling my Paladin right now. I feel as though MMORPG's in general are really missing the mark on the whole leveling, exp and progression system as a whole. Creating zones that are level and quest locked where a mistake in inception. Anyone who has played older MMO's (ones that were out just a few years before WoW) should remember the grind of level caps taking forever, but you were not locked into a zone or area. You always felt you accomplished something when you logged in and communities were much closer.
Take Asheron's Call, originally it was 126 level cap, it took years or a XP chain to get to that point, but you could go back to starter towns and kill Drudges or Shreth for the same amount of EXP no matter what level you were at. Now, getting 150-250 exp per kill when you needed 100's of millions would not be the best choice, so you would fight tougher mobs to get 50-250k per kill, typically with a group of friends.
So, where am I going with this? Leveling to get to cap, just to do end game content seems to be the pain point (in my opinion) of many MMO's. It is good to see WoW is moving to keep people playing together, and allowing you to make your choice of where you want to go, to level and experience the LARGE game that is WoW. So, in the end this is a welcome change, and hopefully this will help curb some of nostalgia we all have for Vanilla.
ESO and GW2 you could pretty much take your character anywhere, even if it meant getting one shotted by mobs. It was a nice challenge and change of pace to get those special pets for rangers in GW2, or do that supernatural quests in ESO. One thing I don't like about GW2 is HoT and PoF zones being locked behind quest lines. Plus the extra exploration xp. Lastly, there wasn't just one zone to level. Several zones of the same levels are available.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
now if they removed the 100 boost I would actually believe they wanted to improve the game experience, with the boost as an option this is just a way for blizz to squeeze some more money out of the players.
I don't mind the boost myself, because some people like me have played thru the entire game 8 or 9 times already. So what if I want to make a new character for a xpac and don't want to go back through all that again. That is primarily who the boost is for, someone that doesn't want to do the old content again or never wanted to play it at all.
My only problem with that is that Blizzard shouldn't charging you $60 for that convenience. Your $15 a month that you have been loyally paying over the years should cover it.
Yeah I tend to agree with that like give away a free one after having an account so long etc. Even lowering it to say $10-15 would be a good thing.
they gave a free boost to me by mail once. u also get one when u purchase legion. used to be a standard i think. and im sure the boost in my email wasnt the only moment they gave one away.
its also funny because ive only been subscribed for like a month before i got the boost. actually, i got the boosy because i wasnt subscribed anymore and they wanted mr back lol
I always had full set of all alts, all classes. Once for me there was only Wow and the rest. Before WOD I even leveled them all classes on both sides, Horde and Alliance. For last half year I'm completely sucked in by FF14, Gw2 still waiting to be played with last expansion and there I will again I guess spend at least 4-6 months, .... But for sure will return to Wow just not sure if before new expansion hits. Love this idea of being able to play nearly everywhere and getting satisfaction from combat.
Leveling in Legion was so great. And its nice to see that they are applying this to the rest of the game.
Unfortunately, this follows a trend from blizzard...take what other games do and (improve upon) apply it to their game. They are usually a few years behind the curve with a great unoriginal idea, let alone an original one. GW2 has had this in their game, to an extent scaling backward, for years since launch. Blizzard took the idea, and pushed scaling the other way too (scaling up).
They do a good job at innovating someone elses idea. But a lot of times I find they are hardpressed to come up with a revolutionizing idea themselves.
is it possible to skip/evade warlords of draenor? ive always hated that part of leveling.
Not yet. It's still 90-100. I expect in the future, it'll be flexible with Legion. Right now the few that are flexible are TBC and Lich King for 60-80 and Pandaria and Cata for 80-90.
So Wardlords is still 90-100 and Legion is still 100-110.
Perfect. . I hated TBC (I know. . I know). . and Pandaria. This makes me a happy Panda. . . .
They are still running like mad through dungeons but I was unable to heal lost my way since they just ran ahead and the tank died. The tank yelled then he slowed down
It's a good change for NEW players. BUT, you'll level even faster now and skip tons of content.
It hardly matters for levelling alts though. The majority, note I'm not saying everyone, will just skip through quests and story anyway so it really doesn't matter where or how you level.. just that you level.
Whole game needs to be fully scalable with world quests covering all locations so anyone can just play wherever they want. Anything less than that just isn't good enough and is a massive waste of development resources.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
I cannot share the authors enthusiasm at all. While it sure is nice to have a more free approach in the end it devalues getting level as any + in power gain means everything around you just got the same and whatever you do means zilch.
I cannot share the authors enthusiasm at all. While it sure is nice to have a more free approach in the end it devalues getting level as any + in power gain means everything around you just got the same and whatever you do means zilch.
That's not true. Content only scales to character level, not iLvL. Gear progression still exists in it's usual form and, especially at max level, that is the standard at which character power is determined.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
It's a good change for NEW players. BUT, you'll level even faster now and skip tons of content.
It hardly matters for levelling alts though. The majority, note I'm not saying everyone, will just skip through quests and story anyway so it really doesn't matter where or how you level.. just that you level.
Whole game needs to be fully scalable with world quests covering all locations so anyone can just play wherever they want. Anything less than that just isn't good enough and is a massive waste of development resources.
no that kills people that want to just go back and get transmogs. You are killing the game just for the leveling experience.
This all implies the leveling in WoW is actually fun enough to want to go back to those old zones. WoW has never been that game the masses play for the leveling content.
It's what I played it for. I was never an end-game treadmill guy. I always loved leveling.
It's the only reason I play, to level and collect stuff.
Me too. I do enjoy dungeon runs and also the 'ding!' but the leveling is where my fun is had. I love the journey. Never liked end game very much in nearly all games.
I wish a developer had the balls to focus on the journey almost exclusively. Keep the leveling experience fresh by updating that content regularly instead of pretty much neglecting it in favor of tacking on more treadmill links on the end. EVE focuses on it, in a way, but also forces one to endure the PvP to enjoy any of its PvE content.
One of the things I loved about DAoC was, despite the endgame focus on RvR, there were a lot of great, atmospheric (for its time) PvE content areas that one could enjoy adventuring in. I didn't feel herded through the levelling zones.
The issue isn't leveling, the issue is the fact that it's a quest hub game and people get tired of that. You aren't really learning your class, you're just going from quest hub to quest hub and killing whatever they tell you to kill. There is very little cooperative gaming while leveling. That's the big issue. No matter how different the landscape feels, the quests simply aren't diversified enough and 100+ levels is a lot of this to endure. It becomes monotonous - so making it take longer is actually a negative as you really stop paying attention to the quest text, anyways, in order to speed through it.
It's also like playing a single player game that suddenly becomes multi-player because you got to max level.
This was not the case in EQ. That game was designed for cooperative gameplay from the ground up. People started grouping in that game around level 10, and you had to do more than whack-a-mole to get anything done in it. The learning curve was built into the leveling process - it wasn't offloaded to Wikis and websites like Icy Veins. The quests are too good, and require too little help in WoW to really foster grouping at lower levels. This was done in earlier expansions when the game was less of a loot piñata, but this is no longer worth it - IMO.
I think this is why a lot of "veterans" aren't impressed by this. It doesn't really change anything - it just makes the same boring content take [much] longer to do.
Up until TBC, and to a lesser extent Wrath, WoW was fun to level in because there were still influxes of actually new players and you could quest and group with those players as you leveled up. That has largely dried up - the game is full of veterans and they aren't really bringing in much new blood. The heirloom gear is popular for that reason, and if Blizzard wanted leveling to not become a shitfest, they shouldn't have put that in game, anyways (and definitely not the upgrade mechanic for them). Couple this with the fact that the game has too many servers (IMO - some with fairly large faction imbalances), and it exacerbates the issue.
Leveling in WoW as a new player during TBC was a completely different experience to today - even with these 7.3.5 changes. I don't think there is anything - at all - that they can do to recreate this. This is similar to people wanting Classic because they think it will recreate the classic atmosphere (it won't), or a game like EQ because they think it will recreate that experience (it won't). I don't think it's possible barring another completely new game coming around and using the same formula - but with different lore backing different content and an influx of players with quite specific mix of mindsets and personalities similar to what those older games had at those points in time.
Most people don't want to take even longer leveling alts, because they've already leveled enough of them - in both factions. This is nothing but a time sink for them. That's kind of the reason why certain Hero Classes were made to start at a higher level (Demon Hunter, Death Knight, etc.).
Personally, I don't think they can do anything to fix the gameplay longevity issues of this game (for me). I can play it after an expansion for a few months, but I get bored quickly as it's like visiting family back home. The first few days are super exciting, and then you start counting the days until you leave. That's what subscribing to WoW is like these days.
Nothing you do in game feels worth it, due to the constant gear resets at practically every major content patch. These games are now to the point where they blatantly waste your time and ask you to pay for that privilege. That's not fun. It's a Role Playing game. I like building a character and having it last a bit longer. If I'm going to farm an uber item that takes months to drop, then I'd like it to not become utterly worthless in a few months simply because a new content patch or expansion was released. This makes these games incredibly unfun for me. I don't see the point in them, anymore.
There are no AAs. They input grind mechanics like the Artifact weapon which requires hundreds of hours of grinding, only to disappear when the expansion is released (pretty much into thin air, yay!). The PvE is all about speed running and loot whoring. GearScore is worse than it was in WoTLK, and built into the game, now... There are blatant, almost intentional, class imbalances - and spec imbalances within classes which basically force you to play something you don't want to simply due to your preferred class or spec being numerically not worth it to play.
This is 8+ years of "let's get ore of to play the game... we need more new subscribers" at work here. They had a vision when they started, but they seemed to sort of lose sight of it. Since Cataclysm the game seems to have been designed and balanced by bean-counters.
While cool that they finally have implemented such a great thing, and I'm really enjoying leveling my Paladin right now. I feel as though MMORPG's in general are really missing the mark on the whole leveling, exp and progression system as a whole. Creating zones that are level and quest locked where a mistake in inception. Anyone who has played older MMO's (ones that were out just a few years before WoW) should remember the grind of level caps taking forever, but you were not locked into a zone or area. You always felt you accomplished something when you logged in and communities were much closer.
Take Asheron's Call, originally it was 126 level cap, it took years or a XP chain to get to that point, but you could go back to starter towns and kill Drudges or Shreth for the same amount of EXP no matter what level you were at. Now, getting 150-250 exp per kill when you needed 100's of millions would not be the best choice, so you would fight tougher mobs to get 50-250k per kill, typically with a group of friends.
So, where am I going with this? Leveling to get to cap, just to do end game content seems to be the pain point (in my opinion) of many MMO's. It is good to see WoW is moving to keep people playing together, and allowing you to make your choice of where you want to go, to level and experience the LARGE game that is WoW. So, in the end this is a welcome change, and hopefully this will help curb some of nostalgia we all have for Vanilla.
ESO and GW2 you could pretty much take your character anywhere, even if it meant getting one shotted by mobs. It was a nice challenge and change of pace to get those special pets for rangers in GW2, or do that supernatural quests in ESO. One thing I don't like about GW2 is HoT and PoF zones being locked behind quest lines. Plus the extra exploration xp. Lastly, there wasn't just one zone to level. Several zones of the same levels are available.
GW2 has level scaling built into it.
ESO is bringing level scaling to the game, if they haven't already (in that case, it's definitely coming).
Level scaling is fine. The issue is that open world content in all of these games is too much of a solo fest. I want something more group-oriented without having to suffer with 1999 EQ gameplay, like in Pantheon.
I want, for example, something like the contested zones in EQ2, where the MOBs were legitimately difficult and the rares dropped legitimately useful items - not just bandwagon gear on your way to LFR (though WoW has Mythic+ now).
I just don't feel like most games these days are bringing it with the kind of content I'd want to play long-term.
I played both GW2 and ESO. Both of them were nice during the leveling content. They were worth paying for if only for the leveling process/story content, because the base stories were actually kind of interesting. After finishing that, however, I saw no reason to continue.
With ESO, they wanted you to level through the other factions - which I found to be a pretty awful way to fake content when you don't have much else to offer players. In GW2, the PvE experience was awful as was the group gameplay and the PvE community's obsession with content skipping and speed running.
Also, the combat and balance the GW2 is pretty terrible so it's not hard to get to get 1-2 shotted by trash in a level 80 outdoor zone on a level 80 character in Exotic gear... That's not really anything of merit in that game. That's one of the things people complain most about re: it.
To be honest the players in pugs are running through the dungeons like before and have hardly slowed down at all and they seem angry also. They really make people who play new characters almost want to give up but this time I am hoping the higher level dungeons are going slower. I really hate how they speed run these dungeons...I truly hate it.
It has not worked at all the dungeons are still awful.
It's a good change for NEW players. BUT, you'll level even faster now and skip tons of content.
It hardly matters for levelling alts though. The majority, note I'm not saying everyone, will just skip through quests and story anyway so it really doesn't matter where or how you level.. just that you level.
Whole game needs to be fully scalable with world quests covering all locations so anyone can just play wherever they want. Anything less than that just isn't good enough and is a massive waste of development resources.
no that kills people that want to just go back and get transmogs. You are killing the game just for the leveling experience.
No, you could just get those transmogs the usual way.. instead of just facerolling an old dungeon or raid. Meaningless and easy to obtain transmogs don't add any value to the game, or to the value of the transmogs themselves.
How on earth would opening up the whole game to endgame kill the game? And how is that favouring the levelling experience? It's favouring the endgame experience.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
The only thing I thought about with this world scaling was, "that level boost is tempting," which, lets be honest, is really all they wanted to accomplish. This wasn't some "service" to the community, otherwise they wouldn't have gradually increased how much exp is required to level now compared to before. At the end of the day, they aren't simply known as Blizzard, but Activision-Blizzard.
To be honest the players in pugs are running through the dungeons like before and have hardly slowed down at all and they seem angry also. They really make people who play new characters almost want to give up but this time I am hoping the higher level dungeons are going slower. I really hate how they speed run these dungeons...I truly hate it.
It has not worked at all the dungeons are still awful.
This was the most disappointing thing about the patch. Queue, speed run, repeat is still clearly the most effective way to level. The scaling's benefits are blunted by that fact.
This all implies the leveling in WoW is actually fun enough to want to go back to those old zones. WoW has never been that game the masses play for the leveling content.
I feel the complete opposite of you. The masses did play for the leveling and a smaller percent would race to end level to do the same thing over and over again. I never played end game as once I reached 60 with a couple of toons and maybe played the next two expansions here and there, I never played end game and moved on to Lord of the Rings Online....again....for the story and leveling.
While cool that they finally have implemented such a great thing, and I'm really enjoying leveling my Paladin right now. I feel as though MMORPG's in general are really missing the mark on the whole leveling, exp and progression system as a whole. Creating zones that are level and quest locked where a mistake in inception. Anyone who has played older MMO's (ones that were out just a few years before WoW) should remember the grind of level caps taking forever, but you were not locked into a zone or area. You always felt you accomplished something when you logged in and communities were much closer.
Take Asheron's Call, originally it was 126 level cap, it took years or a XP chain to get to that point, but you could go back to starter towns and kill Drudges or Shreth for the same amount of EXP no matter what level you were at. Now, getting 150-250 exp per kill when you needed 100's of millions would not be the best choice, so you would fight tougher mobs to get 50-250k per kill, typically with a group of friends.
So, where am I going with this? Leveling to get to cap, just to do end game content seems to be the pain point (in my opinion) of many MMO's. It is good to see WoW is moving to keep people playing together, and allowing you to make your choice of where you want to go, to level and experience the LARGE game that is WoW. So, in the end this is a welcome change, and hopefully this will help curb some of nostalgia we all have for Vanilla.
ESO and GW2 you could pretty much take your character anywhere, even if it meant getting one shotted by mobs. It was a nice challenge and change of pace to get those special pets for rangers in GW2, or do that supernatural quests in ESO. One thing I don't like about GW2 is HoT and PoF zones being locked behind quest lines. Plus the extra exploration xp. Lastly, there wasn't just one zone to level. Several zones of the same levels are available.
GW2 has level scaling built into it.
ESO is bringing level scaling to the game, if they haven't already (in that case, it's definitely coming).
I am pretty torn on these changes. On one hand leveling has been neglected for far too long and many of these changes are good. On the other hand making the leveling process take longer for veterans who are playing for the "end game" is a little tough to swallow. I definitely appreciate the challenge, but when you're on alt number "X" you've spent a bunch of gold on heirlooms and exp potions because you want to level quickly it's a little backhanded to take out the exp potions and nerf heirlooms and make leveling even longer. I wonder how the BfA stat squish will effect some of it. Overall it's about time they worked on the leveling, but it's such a complete 180 from what their stance has been on leveling, when my tin foil hat is on, it seems like their giving veteran players a ultimatum of pay for the boost, or you'll be subbed just a bit longer because leveling takes so long.
Comments
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
they gave a free boost to me by mail once. u also get one when u purchase legion. used to be a standard i think. and im sure the boost in my email wasnt the only moment they gave one away.
its also funny because ive only been subscribed for like a month before i got the boost. actually, i got the boosy because i wasnt subscribed anymore and they wanted mr back lol
Unfortunately, this follows a trend from blizzard...take what other games do and (improve upon) apply it to their game. They are usually a few years behind the curve with a great unoriginal idea, let alone an original one. GW2 has had this in their game, to an extent scaling backward, for years since launch. Blizzard took the idea, and pushed scaling the other way too (scaling up).
They do a good job at innovating someone elses idea. But a lot of times I find they are hardpressed to come up with a revolutionizing idea themselves.
Odd, I found that expansion one of the better ones for leveling. To each his own.
Far too many alts for most of us, I don't think many of us want to level another one.
Wa min God! Se æx on min heafod is!
It hardly matters for levelling alts though. The majority, note I'm not saying everyone, will just skip through quests and story anyway so it really doesn't matter where or how you level.. just that you level.
Whole game needs to be fully scalable with world quests covering all locations so anyone can just play wherever they want. Anything less than that just isn't good enough and is a massive waste of development resources.
거북이는 목을 내밀 때 안 움직입니다
One of the things I loved about DAoC was, despite the endgame focus on RvR, there were a lot of great, atmospheric (for its time) PvE content areas that one could enjoy adventuring in. I didn't feel herded through the levelling zones.
It's also like playing a single player game that suddenly becomes multi-player because you got to max level.
This was not the case in EQ. That game was designed for cooperative gameplay from the ground up. People started grouping in that game around level 10, and you had to do more than whack-a-mole to get anything done in it. The learning curve was built into the leveling process - it wasn't offloaded to Wikis and websites like Icy Veins. The quests are too good, and require too little help in WoW to really foster grouping at lower levels. This was done in earlier expansions when the game was less of a loot piñata, but this is no longer worth it - IMO.
I think this is why a lot of "veterans" aren't impressed by this. It doesn't really change anything - it just makes the same boring content take [much] longer to do.
Up until TBC, and to a lesser extent Wrath, WoW was fun to level in because there were still influxes of actually new players and you could quest and group with those players as you leveled up. That has largely dried up - the game is full of veterans and they aren't really bringing in much new blood. The heirloom gear is popular for that reason, and if Blizzard wanted leveling to not become a shitfest, they shouldn't have put that in game, anyways (and definitely not the upgrade mechanic for them). Couple this with the fact that the game has too many servers (IMO - some with fairly large faction imbalances), and it exacerbates the issue.
Leveling in WoW as a new player during TBC was a completely different experience to today - even with these 7.3.5 changes. I don't think there is anything - at all - that they can do to recreate this. This is similar to people wanting Classic because they think it will recreate the classic atmosphere (it won't), or a game like EQ because they think it will recreate that experience (it won't). I don't think it's possible barring another completely new game coming around and using the same formula - but with different lore backing different content and an influx of players with quite specific mix of mindsets and personalities similar to what those older games had at those points in time.
Most people don't want to take even longer leveling alts, because they've already leveled enough of them - in both factions. This is nothing but a time sink for them. That's kind of the reason why certain Hero Classes were made to start at a higher level (Demon Hunter, Death Knight, etc.).
Personally, I don't think they can do anything to fix the gameplay longevity issues of this game (for me). I can play it after an expansion for a few months, but I get bored quickly as it's like visiting family back home. The first few days are super exciting, and then you start counting the days until you leave. That's what subscribing to WoW is like these days.
Nothing you do in game feels worth it, due to the constant gear resets at practically every major content patch. These games are now to the point where they blatantly waste your time and ask you to pay for that privilege. That's not fun. It's a Role Playing game. I like building a character and having it last a bit longer. If I'm going to farm an uber item that takes months to drop, then I'd like it to not become utterly worthless in a few months simply because a new content patch or expansion was released. This makes these games incredibly unfun for me. I don't see the point in them, anymore.
There are no AAs. They input grind mechanics like the Artifact weapon which requires hundreds of hours of grinding, only to disappear when the expansion is released (pretty much into thin air, yay!). The PvE is all about speed running and loot whoring. GearScore is worse than it was in WoTLK, and built into the game, now... There are blatant, almost intentional, class imbalances - and spec imbalances within classes which basically force you to play something you don't want to simply due to your preferred class or spec being numerically not worth it to play.
This is 8+ years of "let's get ore of to play the game... we need more new subscribers" at work here. They had a vision when they started, but they seemed to sort of lose sight of it. Since Cataclysm the game seems to have been designed and balanced by bean-counters.
GW2 has level scaling built into it.
ESO is bringing level scaling to the game, if they haven't already (in that case, it's definitely coming).
Level scaling is fine. The issue is that open world content in all of these games is too much of a solo fest. I want something more group-oriented without having to suffer with 1999 EQ gameplay, like in Pantheon.
I want, for example, something like the contested zones in EQ2, where the MOBs were legitimately difficult and the rares dropped legitimately useful items - not just bandwagon gear on your way to LFR (though WoW has Mythic+ now).
I just don't feel like most games these days are bringing it with the kind of content I'd want to play long-term.
I played both GW2 and ESO. Both of them were nice during the leveling content. They were worth paying for if only for the leveling process/story content, because the base stories were actually kind of interesting. After finishing that, however, I saw no reason to continue.
With ESO, they wanted you to level through the other factions - which I found to be a pretty awful way to fake content when you don't have much else to offer players. In GW2, the PvE experience was awful as was the group gameplay and the PvE community's obsession with content skipping and speed running.
Also, the combat and balance the GW2 is pretty terrible so it's not hard to get to get 1-2 shotted by trash in a level 80 outdoor zone on a level 80 character in Exotic gear... That's not really anything of merit in that game. That's one of the things people complain most about re: it.
It has not worked at all the dungeons are still awful.
How on earth would opening up the whole game to endgame kill the game? And how is that favouring the levelling experience? It's favouring the endgame experience.
I feel the complete opposite of you. The masses did play for the leveling and a smaller percent would race to end level to do the same thing over and over again. I never played end game as once I reached 60 with a couple of toons and maybe played the next two expansions here and there, I never played end game and moved on to Lord of the Rings Online....again....for the story and leveling.
There Is Always Hope!
There Is Always Hope!