How to fix leveling and old content - comprehensive guide

[Shedu-earthen-ring]

Since nobody has apparently figured out how to fix leveling in WoW as someone who is pushing for the full 50 max characters at max level I thought I would give my idea on what would be best to fix leveling in WoW.

Just to preface it I don’t boost any of my characters every single character I level gets every level from doing good old fashioned quests and questing alone, so every single quest ever put in the game for better or worse I know all too well.

My TLDR idea is simply this: A medal system for zones and a system where every new expac you start at level 1 and work your way up to a divinity power lets call it and not a “max” level.

In ESO as many people are aware you can start playing with your friends from the newest expac without the need to even boost your character. This is a magnificent idea blizzard needs to steal. So each new expansion you’re losing your talents but keeping the bulk of your spells and abilities. But we can’t expect players to level to a new high level cap again so lets give them a simple good level cap of just 10 levels for the expansion and instead of just being a sad looking level 10 they instead get something like Divinity Ascension. This would be where a player gets a shiny a new helpful passive thats plays into class fantasy and a new skill as well. There could of be 4-5 of these to choose from and it could be if you’re a hunter you could choose the Dark Ranger Ascension which could give a regen passive and strong aimed shot like ability that does damage over time.

This would clearly show which players were max level without the need to show a clear high number.

But where does this lead old content? If leveling through old content is now not needed what does blizzard do with them? How we make it so people can still go back to these zones for rep grinds and transmog runs? We implement a medal system. A medal is rewarded for completing the loremaster all or just a couple of the zones of that expansion and it gives wild bonuses to your health and damage of lets say 1000% damage increase and 500% health increase in these zones/raids/dungeons.

So you can make your level one character and maybe old players making alts can go immediately to anywhere in the Warcraft universe after the starting zone while new accounts need to finish the medal of azeroth which would unlock everywhere else. Again leveling through these zones is unnecessary but would be quicker and more of an adventure then a grind.

Then the story of the these zones need to be fixed. Each expac needs to a story of itself and new players need to shown very clearly the intention of every expac release to know how they should be played. But after completing these zones they can’t just left with nice I earned the medal now im done. Nope it needs an ending and a introduction into their next adventure. Which why Blizzard needs to introduce old content “wrap ups”. For example if a new player wants to earn the Medal of Northrend for the buffs and power increases they need to kill the Lich King. Instead of them waiting for a kind soul already with the buff to one shot him for them, instead make it an instanced quest which they can do alone or with friends with sees them fighting every boss with various heros of the horde and alliance by their side tanking/healing/dps telling the story of each end game boss.

Right now if I was starting WoW new I would have no idea why half the bosses were there and why they were so epic back in the day. This would solve it entirely.

I hope this post doesn’t just get lost in the noise of anger of people not wanting their hard work and effort taken away because hopefully this doesn’t do that. Every max level current player would get all old content medals for each character current at least 110.

I hope someone at Blizzard take this genuinely seriously as I have tried to make it work so it would appease everyone and playing this game over a decade I would like to think I have some idea how it should work.

Thanks

[Jadzía-cthun (Jadzía)]

Yes, absolutely, a leveling revamp requires something like this, it requires to fix the story of old expansions. Previous expansions like Pandaria and WOD are a huge mess full of plot holes because most of the content that progress the story was removed, especially the legendary quest lines. Those questlines must return without any rewards just to allow players to see again the story of that expansions.

Also another mess in old expansions is all the content at max level of the given expansion, when some new player got to that level, for example, 90, all the max content from Pandaria from every major patch (that is still again) it is available at the same time without any way to find the appropriated chronological order. There must be some kind of expanded Adventure Guide that guides a player to do it in order if he wants it.

About the separated levels per expansions are something that I have suggested many times too. Mostly what you said, but I think at least the levels 1-60 should be done before going into any other expansion levels, maybe 30 levels for the current 1-60 content, then level for example 2 or 3 previous expansions that the player chooses and lastly the levels of the last expansion. After all is very unlikely any solution that does not allow Blizzard to keep selling character boost, so that means some content must be mandatory before reaching the new expansion, the improvement could be to make it a fixed amount of content that wont change no matter how many expansions are released in the future.

And about to have versions of some old raids for new players in form of scenario is probably what will require more work, but they have made some scenarios in Legion and BFA with the sole purpose of telling important parts of the story, so I don’t see hard to make 3 or 4 scenarios like this per expansion just to tell the story. Even in those expansions with LFR already present maybe it won’t be difficult to make those scenarios based on the old LFR modes.

Also, this could be a great way to organize and condense WOW story in a way that makes sense so anyone could understand it without using outside sources and even allow the player to replay the content. You know, being able to play and understand the story of the game by only playing the game, sometimes so obvious in any other game but mysteriously does not exists in this game, ironically after WOTLK, the moment in which the plots of the game became more complex and expand across multiple patches and even expansions.