Level squish and the future of WoW: thoughts and feedback

Community General Discussion
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This is the first time that Blizzard is going to squish levels in the history of WoW, and at least to me it shows boldness, desire and determination to provide a substantial overhaul that could bring back the glory days of the game we all love (and hate nowadays…). I know this post may be long, but please bear with me, as this is a post that I wrote with great love for this game. Like many of us here, I grew up with WoW and it is a part of my life. It was my best friend, through times where I had no one to talk to. I have had the same human Paladin since 2004, and although he changed names a couple of times, he still remains a reflection of my life, and I hate that fact that I do not enjoy playing him anymore, because the game has changed so much. I never post on the forums, but I really feel this time the developers are listening to us, and I want to at least try and help this game become as awesome as it was in vanilla.

Following the news about level squish which seems to be coming in the next expansion I want to touch on some important aspects that I believe need to be assessed alongside and provide some feedback.

Level squish and why it is a good thing:

First of all, I want to clarify that I am hugely in favor of level squish and here are some reasons.

• Over the years the numbers have become increasingly higher, to points where they mean nothing to the players. When the numbers are too big, they become too hard to track. Who here can remember how much approximately was a Templar’s Verdict hitting during the Emerald Nightmare? Or how much HP was considered normal for a protection warrior during Throne of Thunder? Nobody really. I want to believe that alongside the level squish we are going to see a substantial stat squish.

• Besides making numbers more meaningful, reducing the level cap to 60 for example make it so that players will now be able to receive more rewards per level, while leveling which should at least on paper improve the overall experience. More on that topic will follow shortly. Overall, a level squish gives more possibilities to Blizzard to make each level more meaningful and valuable. Realistically they cannot provide 120 rewards during leveling and still have those be meaningful.

• Although most of us that have been playing this game for so many years know that it doesn’t take long to reach max level, I know as a fact that many people outside of this community do feel intimidated by the 120 levels to beat in order to access the most important part of the game.

• I understand some people saying that we have achieved those levels, how can you take all this hard work back? They aren’t. A max level character will still be max level, nothing is taken away. Instead of hitting for 80k, perhaps you will be hitting for 5k, but the percentage of health that you deal will still be the same.

Suggestions and opinions about the “squished future”:

One of the major problems with the current game in my opinion is how the whole of Azeroth becomes obsolete with every new expansion. We have dozens of zones, dungeons, raids and resources such as ores and herbs that serve no purpose. Here are some suggestions:

• Make all the creatures in the world more dangerous and player’s resources more valuable (mana, rage, energy), so we need to plan a bit more and think about how to complete X quest. As many people have confessed with the return of Classic, this makes the overall experience a lot more engaging and satisfying (and eventually even addicting…).

• Reduce the gap between levels and expansions. It doesn’t feel right that form 1-110 you get 100k hp, and that after that in just 10 more levels (110-120) you double or triple your hp and damage.

• Make professions and materials from the whole of Azeroth regain some value. This could be achieved by making craftable items relevant for leveling, or even end game. Imagine if you could craft some of your best items at max level using materials from the whole world. For example if I wanted to craft a really nice shield, that would require me to have some gems from Outland (TBC), some ores from Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria content, and one crystal from a raid in Legion. And all that to make a level 60 shield that can serve you as a BiS pre-raid item. Of course, all this would just be tedious and grindy if the content you are going back to is just irrelevant, which leads to my next point.

• Adjust all dungeons to be challenging once again as they used to be when they were released. For example, even if I am a max level 60 player (assuming this is the max cap in the next expansion), I shouldn’t be able to go in a Legion dungeon which could be level 55 and solo it. In Vanilla you couldn’t solo (or at least not easily at all) Zul’Farak, even though mobs were 44-50 in there. It is important to keep the world a dangerous place, because I think that increases immersion.

• All the raids from the previous expansions are just transmog and achievement places now, which considering the huge amount of content they represent, I believe it is very sad. Make all the raids from previous expansion be 10 man “mega-dungeons”, that could be run by people while leveling and would still rewards the same items which people can actually use again. Imagine running Blackwing Lair or Icecrown Citadel with a 10-man group and getting ¾ of a level while doing this. And imagine it being challenging and receiving epic items that actually make a difference during leveling. They don’t have to be as hard as they were in their original release, but not facerolls either. Have people to require to communicate in order to kill bosses or clear some thrash packs. This would promote player interaction.

I have many more ideas, but this post is already too long, and I may continue in another one. If you made it to this point, thank you for reading. I hope this topic can spark some serious and constructed discussion about improvements. If you have suggestions or feedback, please take 5 minutes to elaborate in a constructive manner your opinions. Blizzard cares, they showed this over the past months with Classic and also with Ion during the last dev update. Let me know what you think. Do you agree with me? Do you not? Why yes, and why not?

p.s: I am a huge Vanilla fan and going to no-life Classic, but I dream about a day where the modern game would be so good that I wouldn’t know which one to choose to play. If you love this game, it is your duty to help it make it better, even if you just hate the current version (like I do).

:slight_smile:

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sorry but the reason live has strayed further from what a beautiful RPG it used to be is exactly because of people like you - levels are an aspect of the game that shouldn’t be touched if you feel the need to be rewarded every single time you inhale then there is something wrong with you and not the game

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One thing, can you link to a blizzard post to say than a level squish IS going to happen?

Also a LEVEL squish will not affect how much a mob hits you for.

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Didn’t you see the Q&A? If that doesn’t qualify as official information to you, then I don’t know what will.

But whether we assume it is happening or not is actually fairly irrelevant to the point the OP is making.

The point he is making is that there are a litany of things that should come together with a level squish in order to make it worth it. If we just cut every zone’s level range in half and make exactly the same process to get through it, we haven’t achieved anything at all.

I somewhat disagree with how the OP wants to handle it, however. Yes there is a lot of old content. In fact, there’s way too much of it. It would be completely unmanageable, and people would be spread far too widely across its many acres.

What we need to do is to take some of content out from the core experience. It should still be there, but going there should be purely optional. This allows us to focus our efforts on a path through the questing content that makes sense and actually represents the world as it exists today. There is literally no point in going "1-10 starter zone, 10-30 Azeroth, 30-40 Outland/Northrend, 40-45 Cata/Pandaria, 45-50 Draenor, 50-55 Broken Isles, 55-60 Kul’tiras/Zandalar. It just won’t change anything.

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I enjoy making new alts and levelling them up…but… the current 1-120 is way to slow, I stopped levelling all my newer alts when they slowed down the levelling to a snails pace after the reworked zones. It is no longer fun, rewarding or interesting to me. 1-60 is not to bad, mainly because the vanilla zones give you decent choice of where to go and allow you to vary the experience each time. 60 onwards is just horrible and I just won’t invest my precious time doing content that feels like a chore and not a fun experience.

TBC/WOTLK suffer from outdated/old style quests which are no longer fun when your playing through content that is no longer relevant.
Cata/Panda , slightly more interesting, quests are more up to date, but again out dated story zones, worse for CATA as Deathwing is long gone and the whole expansion is around his destruction of the various zones.
WOD is again just set in a Bubble, no longer makes any sense.
Legion feels pointless now, with depleted artefact weapons it seems just senseless to be there.

The Level squish is needed, I would hope we go back to 60 as max level and that you can get from 1-60 using either just vanilla zones or if you want level in just one expansion area or just get to pick your favourite zones from everywhere. And I would hope speed wise it would be taking around the time it currently takes to do 1-60. At current speed to do 20-120 takes around 5 weeks if you spend around 2 hours a day levelling an alt, that’s just to slow.

Also I want characters to get a new ability every 1 or 2 levels and a talent every 5 or 6., not the current go tens of levels with nothing.

If they level squish I might once again start making new alts and continue ones I stopped playing and will never play again unless the levelling experience is made more enjoyable than currently.

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People who love the squish are delusional. It won’t be faster to reach the cap. I’m positive that it will take just as much time to reach 120 than (perhaps) 60 after the squish.
Also, making the world more dangerous may be fun for some, but not for me. I like to one-shot enemies. Not only makes that the game faster and less boring, it makes me feel powerful.
And making the dungeons requiring groups? So no more easy transmog hunting then I guess.

I don’t like to play in groups and with these changes, I would be forced to a playingstyle I hate.
With your changes, it may make the game more fun for some, but worse for an even greater group.

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the post squish leveling speed is planeed to be much slower. atm it take 20-30 hours to get to max level.

they are planing to stretch it to 120 hour but reduce the char boost price to 40 euro.

one of the questions in survey is whether people see it worth it to pay 40 euro as equivalent of 120 hours of gameplay

dont have to trust me you can see it in bellular video.

this change is not to make game better - its to make it slower so people buy much much more char boosts instead leveling.

thats their main goal.

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No, we’re not. You just don’t understand a lick of what we’re saying.

I want the level squished AND I want levelling to take longer.

It sounds like you’re completely against WoW’s core design principles and always have been. It sounds like you won’t be happy until they destroy all meaningful challenges that can engage you by challenging your ability to explore and intrude anywhere you want to. Instead of a dangerous and mysterious world full of adventure, you want a theme park.

You know what? I’m against level scaling just for people like you, so you can run around doing your green quests and smash it all without having to stop, think, or drink.

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See, this I have a problem with. I thought level boosting was a measure to make people who came back to the game a way to not have to level their characters past 110 levels of old content before they got to the stuff they cared about, not as a way to let Blizzard sell cheat codes.

With the level squish and an overhauled levelling experience, there is no reason to have boosts in the shop, and with that there is no need to discuss its price.

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