As we continue work on Wrath of the Lich King Classic, we want to celebrate the defeat of Kil’Jaeden and the Burning Legion (again!) with a bit of a special event to help get players ready for their adventures in Northrend.
In the coming weeks, we will implement a global buff that we’re calling “Joyous Journeys”. During the time this buff is active, all sources of experience points will award 50% additional XP.
We haven’t locked down the specific timeframe for when this buff will activate, but we expect it to last for at least 6-8 weeks; beginning a few weeks before the 3.4.0 Pre-Patch and persisting right up until the day that Wrath of the Lich King Classic launches. This buff should provide a great opportunity for everyone who may have fallen behind the leveling curve, or anyone with alts they want to prep for the next adventure to jump in and get caught up to level 70 ahead of the release of Wrath of the Lich King Classic.
This will also be active on Wrath of the Lich King Classic fresh start realms as well, so it should be a great jumpstart for any players who want try to level up quickly during pre-patch and participate in the various Wrath pre-patch events such as the Zombie Plague or special time-limited bosses such as Balzaphon in Stratholme or Tenris Murkblood in Karazhan.
While we aren’t quite ready to announce specific dates around Wrath Classic, we felt it might be helpful to let you know ahead of time that this buff event was coming. We’ll have more to share around Wrath of the Lich King Classic launch plans in the coming weeks.
I like this a lot, a nice way to help people catch up before WotLK comes out. This combined with the XP requirements nerf in Outland at pre patch should help levelling there really speed up.
With the amount of boosting in mid/late vanilla with no organic leveling, with the popularity of 58 boost… majority doesn’t want slow leveling. Not to mention WoTLK preppers will be happy for easier alts leveling as well
Levelling IS the game for me and probably many others-- we don’t want it to be over sooner.
You know people will get used to this and ask for it to be left it permenantly. If people think it’s only because people like it, then they clearely don’t understand history and how convenience works-- the path of least resistance and convenience cannot simply be put down to ‘more fun’.
Baah! No thanks to XP boosts - the MAIN reason I never played SoM in teh first place.
Just when I think I’m going to play Burning Crusade Classic again … back to Era.
At least make that buff removable!
I write my own posts, thank you very much - and without seeing what Cergrath wrote!
No freedom of choice is what I mean.
I see and acknowledge that quite a lot want this, just as any other buffs - for instance WB, Darkmoon Faire and Brewfest ones … all removable XP / Stats buffs.
I would like them to get what they want, but at the same time I would like for me, and those agreeing with me, to be able to not have these buffs.
It is really just a question of making them removable.
EDIT: I find absolute fun in doing the quests giving me the buffs at DMF; Brewfest, bonfires and so on. It hurts no-one that I click them off the moment I’m done. Same with Heirlooms, I can just not buy them. But this one seems to be like the one from SoM - an irremovable buff.
I think any kind of XP buff will cause harm to the Classic experience, the only problem being it is hard to directly explain why this is bad, because the changes are many and subtle. It’s things like fewer players in the overworld; a push further torwards the grind ‘do things fast and efficient’ mentality; reducing the importance of levelling.
However, I would fully expect a majority - or perhaps vocal majority - will welcome this change-- so I simply ask for it to be optional. Just because I believe a change harmful for the general experience, if I’m in a minority, I have to accept that.
I will say people ultimately will realise how this is another slash at the heart of Classic, and I can say that with confidence because it is obviously repeating a similar pattern to how we got to Retail WoW. It’s as simple as “Uuuh make things faster.” because of the appeal of convenience.
Again I will repeat the old ‘path of least resistance’ thing. It’s extremely well documented and clearly shows how humans will often if not compulsively take the easier route to everything-- regardless if that’s what they enjoy, or even want in respect to fulfilment. It’s just the appeal of extremely short-term ‘now’ kicks that we come to regret.
I’d say this is all patently obvious when looking at the WoW community, or MMO communities in general in recent years-- they ARE like addicts and the nature of the toxicity completely fits in line with that. The games are now designed to feed on that weakness. Despite that, I still have to accept that if more people welcome the XP buff then I can’t try and stand in its way.
