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World of Warcraft - Leveling the New Old-Fashioned Way - Pros & Woes - MMORPG.com
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
World of Warcraft - Leveling the New Old-Fashioned Way - Pros & Woes - MMORPG.com
In v7.3.5, World of Warcraft's leveling path was altered dramatically to open up how and where players might like to go in their journey to 110. It's all good and fine but...is it as great as it seems on first blush? Let's take a look.
Comments
IMO wow already had plenty of low lvl zones to level in, and I could slow down and or turn off exp if I so chose, to avoid outleveling any zone i was particularly interested in. Run the other zones next character.
I would never come back to WOW and create a new character now.
Also wtf who is in charge of fixing this editor. I have to use HTML to get it to show paragraphs again now? Seems like this is broken every other week. Maybe it is just the feature comments editor that is separate from the forums post editor.
Leveling should take time to do and be meaningful. I am glad they did the changes they did but they didn't go far enough. Most people like myself may have done this and have alts of every class ect, but for someone who is just starting out like the author mentioned miss out on entire zones and lore because unless you lock xp gain you will still not be able to follow the story lines. There are many people like myself that play games for lore an story.
Overall though a person shouldn't have to turn off xp gains to keep from outleveling content or make another character just to see all the zones at level. The content should keep the same pace it had when it launched. Hell when WoW launched it took the average player (most likely faster than average back then) about 3 to 4 months to hit level 60, which still had a few zones at that level to do. Can't imagine if it was still like this as the content locust would be up in arms about it. If you don't enjoy leveling then don't, pay up the money and skip it, but for those that actually enjoy leveling like myself let us take our time enjoy the zones and quests. No need to rush to that mythical endgame which for me is the worst part of the game.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
You can only get so excited when leveling up amounts to a new name for a skill that functions exactly the same (or simply upgraded versions to match your new level).
Being a completely PC platform release, Blizzard could inject more depth by stopping the pruning for pruning's sake and trying to find better roles for all the abilities presented to the player instead. Don't eliminate or combine skills; flesh them out into more interesting and unique skills.
I left World of Warcraft shortly after The Burning Crusade was released. I came back to it with the release of Legion. I can tell you, with absolute certainty, the new leveling system didn't destroy the lore and history. It was gone long before that. It may make sense if you've played WoW when all these expansions were released but, as someone that wasn't there for each expansion, it was a complete mess long before the new system was in play.
It would take me 1-2 zones in Northrend to cap out the levels and I then needed to move on to MoP zones. Same with WoD. I still have NO CLUE what happened for all of those story-wise. At the end of each I would need to pull up a Wiki to get the gist so that I would have some kind of clue going into the next chapter. At least the way it is now I feel like I can continue on with the story and not feel like I am hitting pause on all the loot and experience I would be missing otherwise.
WoW has a major problem with throwing its lore all over the place. I have to actually leave the game in order to get a vast majority of it. Also, too many of the major plot developments are behind raids and content that no one touches anymore. They really need to streamline all the major plot quests to be solo friendly and make it feel like one cohesive story. I remember Everquest 2 having a 'golden path' and WoW really needs to implement something similar.
I'll return for vanilla, but not for this crap. My initial reaction was that should have been optional. As there were many reasons why people wanted to solo old content at the level it was released.
So much sacrifice for the race to End Game
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
As for Allied Races being "gated", Blizzard said all along they were tied to Legion reputations only for Light Forged Draenei, Highmountain Tauren, Nightborne and Void Elves. I would imagine that both Dark Iron (by virtue of their presence already on the Kul'Tiras) and the Zandalari will require a certain status level with those factions in BfA -- and that can easily be earned through normal progression question. Any subsequent Allied Races will probably be tied to other reputations, or to none at all.
I'm good with Allied Races as they are. SWTOR "gates" their races behind a pay wall. These you can unlock in game and if you're not willing, well... *shrug*
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Sure, for somebody who played legion it is no biggie. Lets imagine than a returning/new player see those heavy promoted allied races and wants to buy expansion - he now need to GRIND reputation from previous expansion to get feature from a current expansion. This is fucked up.