What do you guys think about the leveling in retail, where most players will take 10-15 hours to level from 50-60, meaning that those who pull a long nighter or take a day of work can do all the leveling experience in 1 day, and that is the only leveling expereience they will have for 2 years until next expansion - at least on their main?
10-15 hour leveling experience, on a 2 year expansion ?
Compare this to classic wow for example where the quests sometimes is not enough and you have to grind 200 extra mobs just to complete your level for example, and pulling extra mobs while going back and forth from quest is important for your progress etc.
Does the level up process dont apeal to retail players? I play mostly retail myself but the leveling experience is very short and we only do it once every 2 years.
I would personally want the leveling process to take around 50-100 hours, questing, mob farm,bg etc and that one source of content was not enough to get you all the way. After that it might be faster with alts.
But I guess not many retail players would agree 
7 Likes
I’m fine with it, most content/story we do in an expansion these days is max level anyway.
It’s enough to be introductory to the story of the place/situation we find ourselves in.
12 Likes
Considering the issues they are having each build as they adjust the XP needed, SL is no different.
3 Likes
10-15 is still pretty damn long tbh.
22 Likes
I don’t think taking vanilla leveling time inti account is a good idea, especially given how terrible the last 10 levels were (quests dried up, had to mindlessly grind mobs to even dream about getting there ect)
I think 15h is more appropriate than 10, at least if it means you won’t reach lvl60 in two or three zones and waste your time doing the campaign for no real reward beside finally getting your covenant at the end of the road.
In fact scrap that, I couldn’t care less about how long it take on my main if it means I reach max level about at the same time I finish the storyline.
9 Likes
In what recent expansion was the leveling experience really that relevant though? It’s all about raids and m+. And pvp i guess for those hand full of people still doing it. (Do something about the pvp vendors!)
2 Likes
10-15 hours is a stretch, I’m pretty sure someone will do it in 5 hours.
3 Likes
Levelling beyond what is currently 110 is only a small part of character progression in Retail. Gear progression and Covenant progression will be what matters in SL.
10-15 is too long should be 3-4 hours for alts. 10 max for the first time.
Levelling is meaningless in modern (retail) WoW, the game is at max level.
18 Likes
Quests are there to tell a story, not to provide exp, anymore. Everything relevant happens at max level and the experience of leveling is only enjoyable the first time around anyway.
Leveling in classic or earlier expansions was a chore, it was again, fun the first time around, not the umpteenth.
We’ve all leveled multiple chars to max level, probably during several expansions. If the quests are fun and enjoyable, I don’t care the first time around how long it takes, but the third or fourth time? I just wanna get over with it.
So no, 10-15 hours is not too short. It’s a decent amount of playtime for the first character to reach max level and even a bit too much for alts.
5 Likes
it meant jack ever since TBC got released.
The first wow expansion marked a drastic change in relevancy of content. Now the whole game containing 1-60 was pushed into obsolete realm. Everybody was rushing toward the new content which was the only thing that had relevancy.
I leveled alliance shaman and it felt horrible having to do the entire vanilla leveling (which was far worse than retail leveling) just to catch up to ppl that were already 60 and pushing into the new content. By the time i caught up to lv. 60 most of my friends were already 70 and pushing new reps to unlock HC dungeons. I was weeks behind, as it took me 3 weeks to get to 60. They nerfed the vanilla leveling later but that didn’t come until months after TBC launch.
By WOTLK people were -really- fed up with this and heirlooms were put there as a bandaid fix. And then in MOP instant character boost got introduced.
Let’s face it - leveling in WoW always sucked and it was a real part of the game only in Vanilla. Any other expansion - 10+ hours of mind numbing questing. Spending that much time doing the same fetch quest and killing the same auto attack mobs is extremely boring.
Which begs the question, if leveling in Shadowlands is going to be the same, then how the heck are we supposed to pick our covenants? Leveling by questing is just not relevant content, most of this content is single-player. How are you supposed to play around with those abilities, especially on healing specs?!
There should be dungeons, mini-raids and pvp for levelers and these should be viable leveling paths. Scaling is there, why not make a timewalking BT or Ulduar give you few levels worth of exp, instead of forcing you to quest?
5 Likes
I think its fine I wouldnt complain if it took longer either, I like the start of an expansion new zones to explore new storylines and fresh content. But 10-15 is just the start of the experience hitting max level in WoW is like finishing the tutorial of a normal game. Its at max it really starts.
Think the time it takes to level is fine what I would like to see is a lock on max level content for like a week after release giving people more time to enjoy the levling process before the farm and preperation for raiding/pvp starts.
1 Like
10 to 15 hours? So for me, and other less intensive players, about a week in real terms? That seems about right.
3 Likes
15 hours should be 1-60 imo, times where “its about jurney not the destination” are over
5 Likes
It will take WHO 10 to 15 hours? Some people will blitz it. Some will have a nice casual stroll.
Anyway, both BfA and Legion took me about that, AFAIR.
2 Likes
BfA was like an hour per level more or less (for me anyway) so it sounds about right.
I wrote it will take most players 10-15 hours, didnt you read?
Think 20 hours should be the bare minimum.
3 Likes
Yep, same. On alts it was dungeon spamming so a lot faster, but main was ~10 hours doing quests.