It might be a quite controversial topic, but from my perspective retail can do much better job in providing reasonable leveling experience which is not catered only to one category of gamers.
Disclaimer: I am not telling that blizzard should completely change leveling and any stuff to fit to certain groups of players, but just give more options for different types of players.
Here is my vision how the leveling could be improved in current retail wow.
First and the very first: remove level squish (I know it can sound harsh at first but I will explain how it could work out in the next sections of my post).
And then there could be 3 different options for leveling:
Starting from level 10 you get on the some sort of MSQ thing which will lead you through the whole world and tell somewhat cohesive story about the all major events in the past of the wow history. This campaign should get you to end level at the similar speed as current chromie time does, but it will be really nice option for new players who only learns about wow at pretty much first time or for returning players who missed big chunks of expansion story. Only downside of this option would be that it is quite hard to implement and takes pretty much of devs time. Especially that you will need to update it with newer stories every time the new expansion starts and the current expansion goes into past.
Chromie time for everyone who just wants to reach endgame fast, we already have this option, it can be adjusted for level cap without level squish (blizzard would need only to change some numbers here and there pretty much to make it work). In the end effect this “new” chromie time should get you to the max level at similar speed as current chromie time leveling option existing in the game does.
Old school leveling option where you go through all of the expansions in order like you would go for example in MoP. Ideally it could be done the way that they use the old fashioned model of leveling for all content before Legion expansion content without level scaling for the zones and quests, and then after level 100 where you go to Legion and beyond you can use level scaling (otherwise it will need much dev time for reworking all the past legion zones and quests to have proper level requirements).
This is how I see the better leveling experience in retail wow. It can be done without level squish, they even could just add chromie time much earlier as an option for all endgame enjoyers who want to see the expansion and raids very fast.
I would be even fine with them not implementing first option but at least if they could remove level squish, use the already existing leveling models for levels from 1-100 and then from 100 to current use the current leveling model with level scaling, and add chromie time for endgame enjoyers which will get you up at the same speed as it does today, then it would be awesome change.
One important note here: all of these 3 options should be available at the get go, without any gating, like we had till recently in retail, where brand new players were forced to go level in bfa.
Overall this is my thoughts, I just don’t understand this go go go perspective of the community and would be glad if they also add an option for people who enjoys the journey more than the destination. Feel free to share your thoughts regarding this in the discussion
The thing is I am not demanding they change the game to be more hardcore, for example everquest is even now huge step up in overall difficulty compared to any version of wow. I mainly want that they add an option for more “hardcore” players who actually wants to enjoy journey more. There are few things which blizz have already added as an options to different types of players, for example the most recent is they adding AI supported dungeons for people who love doing dungeons in solo, or they even will make another pillar in endgame for solo players. They actually giving options, this is not like they taking away from raiders or M+ tryhards by e.g. replacing M+ pillar with something else. The same could be applied to leveling, just Add the option, so everyone will be quite happy. Regarding my proposal, the go go go people still can use Chromie time for example to get to the level cap fast.
But yeah, the sad thing is that blizzard currently listening to those people only who just want to get to endgame as fast as possible and sit in capital city between the raid or M+ invites. WoW is not that shiny MMO it was back in 2004, we need to accept this fact, but also we need to understand what different types of players want from an MMO and provide with suitable options for most of these groups
I don’t see them doing it, because leveling to a lot of (most?) people is just this sloggy hurdle you gotta take before you end up where you want to be: max level.
Personally I’d like an alternative route. I’d love a revamp of Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor, new, more timeless questlines, stories, a system where you can choose to go to an orange area, or yellow, or green, like in the old days. New quest sets. And indeed, something to make sense of all the history in WoW for new players.
It’d be a lot of work to please a not so big crowd tho I think.
The biggest problem with leveling in WoW is obviously that the game has become too big to be contained within the leveling phase, and i think your idea sounds great, a boiled down campaign that tells the full story, contained to the importent parts, without all the filler content. Blizzards current solution with throwing new players into BFA or DF as it soon will be, is not ideal, as they miss all and any prior history. Chromie time is great for alts, but not for new players. But for this to work, it has to be designed in a way, that it can be expanded upon each expansion, adding a summary of current and future expansions aswell, when they become “previous expansions”. Even as a veteran i wouldn’t mind playing through a campaign that sums up the whole story.
It’s certainly an interesting idea. Not sure it’s something they could inplement. The problem is that there are so many expansions to cover. It’s hard to imagine they could fit all those expansions into a reasonable levelling experience without it being made very long winded.
With TWW everyone will need to get their dragon riding first as well. Another complication.
I do agree a large proportion just want to get to end game. Often to join friends or to take part in what they consider to be the actual game.
That’s not to say there arent those who would appreciate a full lore experience.
The MSQ thing is probably the better idea for new players or returning but I don’t know how they would implement it. I would sometimes enjoy levelling slower through all the expansions because it is a nice change of pace from end game sometimes. I don’t always want to do that though, so yes your idea is nice.
There is no leveling journey anymore because everyone knows what it is like to play on max level and everyone just wants to get to there fast so every time a new expansion launches people just feel it like a chore to do.
If you want a new leveling experience that is like a journey you need a new game that takes days or weeks to level through.
its something i would do for sure, i am not interested in end game raids m+ what ever but i do like the lvling but now its just to fast all those zones and cool quest are now left alone seems a waste of resources just give ppl the choice.
Sure, make the slow leveling opt-in, private server turtle wow even gives you some cool stuff like a title, it’s an innocuous incentive to slow leveling that I like.
I just want to be able to enjoy chromie time and level at the same time at a slow pace.
With new expacs leveling will become slower and slower with new level caps.
Much better course of solving problems is to figure out how to teach new players DPS rotations while leveling, honestly mobs not being a threat almost at all to most classes is not a good thing. The only exception is rogue who IMO is very balanced and can’t be an immortal killing machine like paladins on leveling, I even used those forgotten things like heals options to kill WoD rares while leveling my orc rogue lmao
The leveling really isn’t the journey. It’s just a barrier for the gearing journey to get started. That’s the real game that occupies dozens of hours. The leveling is a chore you have to do to get started. Represents a really tiny portion of the experience.
I know some like it, but i would be ok with levels going away. Not the questing mind you. It should still be there as optional evergreen content. But, it shouldn’t be a barrier to the real game.
Speaking as someone who has gone through both, as journeys. They aren’t comparable, and I kinda wish there was an option to skip leveling entirely for those who don’t like it. At this point it’s like forcing PvE’ers into PvP.
I want a proper leveling journey back on retail, and I don’t think we can have that as long as endgamers are forced to level.
Because of such mindset WoW became what it has become, the watered down dumbed down experience throughout most of levels and the real “fun” begins only at 70 or whatever level cap per expac would be. Most of people have forgotten that the game should not start only at endgame, endgame is one of important things for sure, but I really liked how the vanilla was designed in the way that you actually could enjoy the game at any point of your leveling journey, not only on lvl 60. The raids and other “endgame” was more like nice addition to the game for the most worthy players to overcome like the final step in their progression, not the main focus as it is now, where the only thing you need to get started is to do some lfr, get used to particular raid mechanics, your class rotation and that’s it. Back in classic there was a sense of community, wow was much more social game, you could handout with people while doing some low lvl dungeon or quest but now everyone just rushes through the game to see that shiny piece of gear which drops in the Final raid tier (!), we don’t even do the previous raids of the same expansion, we just focus on one raid which is most current, which also ruins the progression path quite a lot. Overall this how I see the game and how it become from actually good pacing game with giving you sense of progression throughout the entire world during leveling and then the raiding on max level, where you go from tier to tier advancing through each raid to quite just a lobby game where the only things you usually do are current raid, m+ grind (the only piece of content which gives a bit of sense of gearing progression) and rated pvp. This is what makes wow in current iteration not that fun and interesting experience to me, because you don’t have much of a journey, even the gearing journey is pretty much just doing some random catch up stuff to get to current gear so you can jump in the current raid straight away. And it just tastes quite poor when you don’t have natural progression “barriers” in order to get to certain tier of content. Probably this is because of that “instant gratification” phenomen currently. People don’t wish to slowly and steadily make the advancements in the game to get a rewards the bigger each time they advance, they just want everything and at once straight away.
But this is my point of view, you can think differently maybe I am just too old for modern style of games but yeah these are my main concerns
It’s unlikely that the leveling experience will become more than just a step towards the endgame brother.
People who share your mindset probably went to Classic/will go to SoD, since they (Classic Vanilla at least) focus much more on the journey, while endgame players are on Retail.