In a couple of interviews about Dragonflight, Blizzard has explained how Chromie Time will work starting in Dragonflight. Presumably with the pre-patch, players will be able to level from level 10-60 in any expansion up to Shadowlands, instead of only from 10-50.
With this change, Shadowlands enters to the set of expansions available to level with Chromie Time, creating new Chromie Time phases in all Shadowlands leveling zones.
With Shadowlands joining Chromie Time, there will be changes in the amount of experience required from 10-60, likely heavily from 50-60, but no details on it right now.
New Players
While there are changes for veteran players, the New Player Experience will remain untouched with the arrival of Dragonflight. New players will start in Exile’s Reach, then head to Battle for Azeroth until level 60, from which point they can head to the Dragon Isles and Dragonflight content.
Once reaching max level once, new players unlock the ability to use Chromie Time as well, gaining access to all its liberties for other charaters.
Oh, so we’re keeping it. For the new player experience, new players specifically will be sent from Exile’s Reach to BFA, then onto Dragon Isles. More veteran players, people who have already leveled a character to max can choose like Chromie Time to go level in Draenor or Pandaria or Shadowlands. But for new players, it’s going to go: Exile’s Reach, BFA, Dragon Isles.
How will Dragonflight handle Chromie Time?
Our current plan is to rescale all of the existing expansions including Shadowlands from 10 to 60 so that its come out of Exile’s Reach or play the starting experience of your choice and then pick any of the single expansions that you want to play through and that will get you through to Dragonflight.
Are there any plans for when there are inevitably too many levels once again?
It’s something we’re discussing, we know that in the year 2030 or something we’ll be back to be well into three digits and what does that means and how do we avoid having the same problems. I don’t think 70 is too big a number and I think the changes that we’re making to Chromie Time in Dragonflight to make sure that at the end of the day, you can pick up a character, you could be a brand new character to World of Warcraft and play through a single expansion, get caught up to speed and jump into the new thing. That’s already a vast improvements over the disjointed world that we lived in in the past, where the increasing level cap meant you were just jumping between more and more disperate settings in the roughly the same amount of time.
I think eventually, I’d love to find the perfect solution there. We’ve definitely tossed around the idea of what would it look like if we stopped adding levels or if we did level-less expansions but levels do a lot for us and for every RPG, there’s a reason that they’re a tried and true method and it’s a straightforward increase in power, new stuff to look forward to, now new talent points and so saying we’re just going to stop doing that would raise a lot of questions that we would need to find satisfying answers to but we keep talking about it. In the meantime, we also want to focus on making sure that the experience you get tomorrow is as good as it can be, and not necessarily hamstring that for the sake of solving the 6 years from now problem. 6 years from now doesn’t matter if this year isn’t fun.
Ion Hazzikostas
I thought they might release new players and returning veterans from BfA but it seems not.
It should not be locked into BfA at all. I get the notion but it is not a great expansion, in all honesty.
It should be a choice for all and should be 1-60 for first time players and then 1-70 for those who have completed Dragonflight.
I will say one thing, Chromie time is actually quite fun, its one of the aspects that my non-WoW associates see as a good feature and in reality the only flaws are that it is doesn’t go to level cap for existing players/alts and it does kick you out at the end rather than letting you finish the expansion, but as a system and a concept, it works really nice and it is actually fun to level 1-50 in WoW currently, the issues arise at hitting 50.
Tbf you can go anywhere as a new player that is in your level range, just not with chromie time. It’s just simpler directing them to BfA.
Ita more that it encourages you without really telling the options to go to bfa.
Yes because it would be far too confusing to a new player. It already -is- far too confusing for a new player. It will still be confusing going from BfA to Dragonflight but they’re still on Azeroth at least. I don’t know, I would not want to be a new player basically.
Being directed into BFA isn’t ideal but it beats being forced into Shadowlands I suppose.
I could see the logic when it tied in the story straight into SL but now I don’t see the point. So many levellers get lost even when direct straight to BfA. Some of them go elsewhere on purpose even though it’s not optimal. I don’t get why you’d force this on players.
At this point I don’t see why they can’t just have Chromie time explained to them and let them do what they want.
I hope they also remove the restrictions on flying for BFA then.
That way you at least wouldn’t have a bunch of heartbroken new players that use all their gold to buy flying only to realize they can’t use it in BFA.
It is hard to explain to new players that they were just directed to a trainer to learn flying that they can’t use and is now blocked behind a long winded grindy achievement that they should just ignore for now.
flying got more streamlined with the end of BFA.
So I would say it will be the same for the SL Pathfinder.
you’ll still need to do something for it. but not as extensive as before
We’re talking about BfA, where they send new players and returning veterans. They get flying but then because it’s BfA they couldn’t actually use it because it was gated behind an achievement. Every other expansion up to and including Legion, they can just fly.
nah, Don’t get me wrong I respect people’s right to choose. But if you’re a fresh player you probably want to start off in a place where they can know what’s current and what’s recently happening. They don’t need to do the warchief shuffle. Start you off with enemies that do mechanics that aren’t just. Hit till it dies etc etc.
You don’t want them starting off with BC leveling, and because the new playerbase has been split into 5-6 different directions, they see nobody. Get the wrong impression of the current game. Not to mention Pre Cata/mop the questing system is, not very friendly. Forcing the new players into the zone, gives them the highest chance to meet other new players and make friends outside of speed runners.
Get people into the story that goes from past to current. Since even blizz don’t wana acknowledge SL.
Although I think flying should just be a universally bought thing by the end of the expansion. Buy a lesson that gives you path finder for those areas. Say 1-5k a pop.
Side note, given the choice I like to level up in Legion or MOP Free sword and chill story.
You say that but the newcomer chat says different. Many are frustrated that they can’t choose where to start.
Sure, but I still think it’s for their benefit. If I was playing with a fresh friend I’d say keep it as BFA. If it was a friend coming back from a LONG break, Legion.
If they want, I’d put a Thread of fate thing with a warning explaining about how dead the zones will be.
But then again, With the first 3 zones, now having a classic server. You’re experiencing a sort of neutered version of it on live.
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