Returning with Dragonflight and deciding to use an old Shadowlands token I had to get a new character, I went through the 50-60 version of BfA. While the changes to Chromie time are more than welcome (choose your own leveling as long as it’s an alt !), a number of things make it fairly disagreeable at the start (or longer depending on your luck with equipment drops).
The armor ilevel given on level 50 tokens become irrelevant so fast because of the level scaling that it’s almost sad. It also make mobs way harder at level 50 (when you just came back) than later on. A bit of a headstart would be welcome?
Key items don’t scale: that is to say, the most rewarding items for the questlines, the ones that synergize with the Heart, are irrelevant to the 50-60 progression. A shame, since they should be the reward to a string of quests / efforts. Perhaps they could be swapped out if above 50, or have their powers not apply below 50 but give the stats / ilevel?
Some dungeons feel way out of tune, and these are just “Normal” difficulty (Heroic not being an option - that’s a design decision which I understand given the focus on leveling rather than optimizing). I went from a level 18 hunter in my group quite literally solo-ing everything in the Motherlode (including bosses), to absolute hell on Vol’kaal in Atal’Dazar (I get the feeling Rapid Decay didn’t scale well, but may be wrong). In both cases playing as a scaled down level 70 to group with a friend, so in theory the best possible ilevel allowed.
I have done BfA dungeons back in SL as a level 60 while being scaled down to level 50 via LFG to play with friends, and the experience felt rather different. The Dragonflight normal dungeons are also so much nicer to do as LFG that again, that starting / returning player experience is really not as pleasant until at last hitting 60.
Finally, when checking the experience as a Balance Druid that also returned from BfA at level 50 (an older account), I had an absolutely horrible time passing the war campaign in Nazmir, and some mobs in the intro to expeditions quest. In the first case, it’s because the enemies come in packs with a considerable (too high?) amount of life and the ilevel scaling issue mentioned before. In the second it’s because of the scaled up special enemies (that crab in expeditions could literally one shot me with one ability - I switched to Guardian to take care of it more safely). A frustrating experience, and definitely not what I went through on my first round through BfA content.
All in all, it feels like that logical change to accompany leveling up into Dragonflight of changing all other zones to be 10-60 comes with values that scale too aggressively, and can make it a pretty frustrating experience overall. In particular in that moment of returning at level 50, which should make you want to dive in again and stick around.
I do hope this is something that can be addressed for future patches to smooth out the experience.
Blizz devs are awefull bad at many things, this is properly their most awefull one of them. Its just like someone in blizz cant see how bad they are im glad Microsoft taking over and hopefully start review their poor performance than this current blind management .
Just spam TBC and Wrath dungeons, you can basically pull the whole dungeon and aoe down.
Classic and BFA dungeons scaling is like playing a M+15. Taking melee swings for 50% of my HP as a tank. Yeah blizz gg.
I walked away from the harbor in BfA after the starter area as it just didn’t feel right to be doing that so early. I levelled with WoD which was a very enjoyable experience. I had the portal to BfA and when I ported in there was nothing, nobody. Just a dwarf with a quest to go to Silithus for Legion. I zonked over there but I decided to do BfA and find out how to get there. Having done so I actually did the scenario. I was decked out in purples and had been fighting elites no problem.
Sadly even doing the scenario I felt truly undergeared. I have done this scenario a dozen times at various levels and never had a problem. It hit me like a brick wall. So when I got to my first proper quest I checked the health levels of the first mobs and they were way over my level. I just knew this was going to be a heavy grind and just for ten levels it wasn’t worth it.
I went to Shadowlands which was just how I would have expected it and things were fine. BfA being before Shadlowlands and yet offered just after the starter and the punching like a speeding train just seems bonkers.
Thing is I was really enjoying myself levelling tonight in Dragonflight. I was pulling multiple mobs and the fire power on the mage felt like it should be and seriously fun. It won’t last. I am just a smidge away from my next level and I can guarantee I’ll be back to pea shooting again tomorrow. Good while it lasted.
PS I was in Ghostlands doing one or two things and was around level 55 and simply hitting stuff with thousands and thousands of fire power. Insta death just walking around, as you would expect. Until I came across a pack of Lynx cats. The damage was just 512. I did it again and yup 512. There are so many of those little pockets in the game.
In DF it’s good for now, with a higher ilevel you’ll go to heroics. Option just doesn’t exist in the progression so you get these wild inconsistencies.
Yeah mate you can blast through them all in 10 mins. Classic dungeons however are like a m+15 in comparison. Bfa and shadowlands dungeons are hard too compared to wrath, tbc and mop.
Devs are so focused now on releasing and testing new content, and fixing issues in the current expansion, they have no time to address issues in the older content.
I feel it is a bit of a mistake on their part:
Neglect of new players. Unpleasant experience…
Bad image of the game for the new players. Disordered and inconsistent levelling and itemisation.
Perhaps, the number of newcomers is rather small in comparison to the existing player base, so they focus their resources on retaining the current players than trying to woo the new ones.
Feels like a big part of a next update could be a new “legendary quest” that takes you from level 10 to the latest expansion at 60 or 70. Kind of a bite sized version of all the expansions, so that you can understand the lore and get a real experience across all the great content WoW has.
Currently you get this vastly inconsistent experience, from a well guided 1 - 10 tutorial to an unbalanced experience depending on the expansion you choose., until you reach the “nice stuff” in DF. A real shame when you wanna grow that MMO sub base.
That would be cool. Condensed and stream-lined version of any expansion with a resolution. You can still opt for other fluff quests but players should have the real feeling of RPG and lore - not just random quest fetch or dungeon crawl (which is not very easy lately).
Newcomers aren’t catered for. It’s been that way for years. Subscribers number will never cease to go down because as older players stop playing, there’s no new ones.
The result is, in part, this very inbred and toxic community that we have. Which in turn repels any potential newcomer that could overlook the core design issue of their experience.
