Leveling vs endgame, why can't we all win?

Community General Discussion
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Well, to start off I’ll leave a fact here and that is that the game has changed a lot, from its beginnings until now, and that’s fine, it’s not a criticism, times change and all that, but it’s true that I see a lot of discussions on the forums where there are like two sides, one that enjoys leveling, and another that enjoys the endgame content, both are equally respectable, well, that being said.

Why can’t we all win? I mean, it seems like we can only make one decision… either the game is made for leveling, or the game is made for running to the final dungeons to get the last world-destroying item, why not make something enjoyable for both players?

The new leveling system encourages leveling up quickly, and getting to the end in a very short time, and dedicating yourself to the endgame content, but what about those who want to enjoy the journey? I understand that now the only options are classic, or classic, but you miss out on many expansions.

For example, up to bfa you could level up the map and enjoy the expansions, you could do Azeroth, then bc, wotlk, etc etc, and your character was always evolving, you got new weapons, you got new and better armor, you could level up professions that were useful to you at your level and on your map, level up cooking etc etc… all that is ridiculous now…

In this new system leveling has died, plain and simple, leveling up in other expansions is trivial, and if you want to experience the story, and play these expansions, prepare to have a character that as soon as you kill 3 wolves and do 3 quests will be at the maximum level, and your progress as a character will have stopped for a looooong time if you want to enjoy the other expansions, it doesn’t matter which expansion you go to, if it’s not the last one, the objects, professions etc, will be useless, apart from cosmetics…

Well said that, I don’t mean that this will change, I mean, why can’t we both win? I just think that sometimes we are too closed, both sides throw stones at each other.

—If you like to level slowly? … Go to classic!! this game is not for you!! games have changed!! I don’t want to go at that speed, it’s horrible!! etc etc

—If you like to go to the final content as fast as possible… It’s just that the game is not the same anymore!! people want things without effort!! just doing dungon + is boring etc etc

There are only two options? what is this, politics? really the community is not able to agree that the two ways of playing are valid and they don’t have to bother the others? we are so closed that only our way of seeing the game is the correct one… it’s a bit sad what you see in the forums really.

From my point of view, I think that both are perfectly compatible, that you can level up at your own pace in each expansion, but in a “classic” way with consecutive expansions without your character stopping when you make 3 maps and you can’t get anything more than aesthetics… that you can make professions from your expansion, that you can level up food and it’s useful to you etc etc… not this kind of obligation that pushes you to the end of the game, making the level trivial that’s useless, breaking that RPG feeling that you can only experience at the end… since all the content is irrelevant, but, also not forcing people to level slowly, that’s the point, if people want to keep leveling quickly and go to the end of the game, let them do it, there are a thousand ways to do it, but it seems that it’s better to defend that leveling or the end-game content is better than the other, it seems that we are not able to understand that there are people who play one way or another, and that if it’s not yours, well He’s a jerk, and he should go play another game, nobody will miss him etc etc, I don’t know… I’d love a more united community where he understood that there are more things than just his own tastes…

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The game structure is not conjusive with slow levelling sadly. The reason Classic still works is cus the designers thought very hard about the RPGPVE/PVP aspect of the game. This basically used all the critical aspects of environement v the player to make undertaking quests and exploration an actual adventure. Todays game is not designed around complex notions of zonal progression where mob strengths restrict rights of passage. Nobody really thinks one jot about the mob physical attributes before launching into battle.

I will give one example of a fantastic chain quest that most mages confronted at some point and that was the search for Tabatha in Dustwallow. To this day I would rate it as the most memorable thing I have ever done in any game. It literally took me all over the map and into zones that were above my character level. But as a challenge it lives on to this day as a reminder of how magical the game of World of Warcraft was.

Game designers in those days toiled with the challenge of creating content for all classes. This was so a class that took on a quest toe to toe would have the same level of enjoyment as a caster. Never once did I feel that I was being penalised for being a long range caster. The game paid great respect to the envirnoment and mob actual strengths, and not scaled strengths.

The consequence of this is that to make the game enjoyable for true levelling fans you would need to revert to zonal progression by removing scaling and design an environment that restricted shortcuts and made PvE a major aspect of decision making. Going down a hole, or finding your way into a mob infested zone should be challenging.

On the RPG kick the player no longer creates a truly unique character build. Time was you could specialise and work at what made your character unique. This mean character only attributes, character only gear, character only weapons and enchants, character only rep and achievements. And character only titles. To be truly unique there needs to ba a backward take on account wide nonsense. ie get rid of it.

This game has become like a trading card game where the main goal is to collect and acquire as much as you can. The quests and dungeons are all focussed on the reward of stuff to add you your account wide collections. That end goal gathering and farming obscures any real meaningful game content. The rush to start collecting is what the current games designers depend on. They want the player base to have as many high level chars so they will spend all their time in game hoarding stuff. I seriously doubt that many even know why they do it.

I spend my days in this game picking around the dregs of a once rich tapestry and avoid the end game. I have levelled one character in TWW just to see what it was like, and once was just enough. Instead I venture everywhere on foot, never using a mount of any sorts and dig around the landscape feeding my own story that I created. I use Warcraft as my own personal backwater to play out my own game. I gave up with these guys after Wrath when they collapsed the original game with Cata. I have only ever really worked with one other expansion and that was WoD cus I love the Garrison.

So a big yay to an expansion that gives me slow levelling. I would welcome that, but it needs to be a levelling process that is NOT based on scaling as an artificial mechanism to challenge players. Scaling is just lazy game design. I would also like player housing so I can build a farm, workstations and the like so I can retire in the game. What I would give to hang up the weapons and sit under my own trees and relax in my very own bit of Warcraft heaven. Personally I have no interest at all in current end game Warcraft, I just like the vast expanse of the game to play out my own PVE fantasy RPG. There are so few games around anymore that arn’t hell bent on killing stuff all the time. Man is that boring.

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Swap “could do azeroth map” with “go whenever your adventure log told you and then abandon location because it stopped netting you xp”, swap “your character was always evolving” with “you gain one ability in 8 levels and every 15 or so levels pick 1 talent” also i very much remember how many people cried about for example mages having very rough experience at late levels (80-100 i think) because mobs had too much hp.

Combine all of this and just THINK a little: how many new players dropped leveling around tbc? Many. Many players dropped leveling around tbc, but you don’t want to actually discuss pros and cons of old leveling and new leveling, you just want to lament about good ol’ past.

Bullcrap, leveling professions became useless in WotLK

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It was very much worthwhile, because professions came with a power boost to the player, like better gems for jewelcrafters, better enchants for enchanters, and so on. There was some min/maxing there, where you could squeeze out a bit more performance or utility with your chosen professions.

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I totally agree, it’s true that what made WoW great in the beginning is practically gone, and I’m not complaining about the change, but I am complaining that they at least leave us the option to enjoy that type of experience… although I imagine that people will come saying that you should go to classic, but I don’t want to lose the new expansions, and then they will say, well play another game, or that’s what it is, that’s what I try to explain in the post, that there are people who play differently in the game.

Dralkharn

This is the kind of person I’m talking about who floods the WoW forums, he’s not able to understand that there are people who are looking for another kind of experience, and I’m not talking about learning a skill every 15 levels, I’m talking about the RPG experience, the world, feeling the world alive, that it’s a challenge to go to a part of the map that you couldn’t before and now after overcoming challenges you can get there, I’m talking about the excitement of the world, you may like the skill system more or less, that’s fine, but the world… the world is dead, and as for the professions, well, more of the same, if they seem useless to you, there’s nothing more to talk about, it doesn’t matter if another person likes them or wants to do them to get some improvement, even if it’s small, in statistics, “they’re useless, and therefore it’s nonsense, and therefore everything you say is nonsense”

Anyway, this is what I’m talking about, if it’s not what I like, it doesn’t make sense nothing you say…

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I think they could give us both, it will require a bit of work on Blizzard but i think it would be worth it, especially with the current levelling system in mind.

Make all old world content a slow progression form, and create a scenario like experience for those who wish to level fast, in which the players group, or solo? Through a scenario with increased experience, in which they progress through important story parts of every expansion.

Then new players that wants end game get the gist of what once was happening, while reaching their goal quickly, and the rest of us can enjoy levelling slowly in a vast world, that developers put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into, only to be forgotten and irrelevant.

Another reason to create the system is to keep new players engaged, just imagine logging in the first time, going to chromie, signing up for wotlk, and go on a solo adventure with no one around. That would feel disheartening if you ask me.

Anyway just my thoughts on the matter. The current system makes me hate levelling, it’s way too fast and disconnected from the world.

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Let’s be real. it’s not levelling that people miss, it’s meaningful experience, which early levelling happened to be. Facing and overcoming hardship is meaningful. Experiencing this with other people amplifies that effect. Zerging down ten random dungeons with strangers you don’t have to speak to, who you’ll never see again, and then hitting max level is not meaningful.

Over the years the game has become a sterile environment where the vast majority of social interaction and social opportunity has been stripped out. And by doing so, most meaningful experience was lost.

You used to continuously meet people in the world, on the same path as you, and you would see them over and over again. Combine that with a slow game pace and a lot of world content that could not be soloed by most classes, friendships were easily formed.

Reputation used to matter (as in, how people perceive you). Remember when servers had a handful of crafters that were absolute gods. Having all the rare drop recipes, being trustworthy enough not to run away with your mats. And remember ninjalooting? There was so much more opportunity for griefing in the game and it caused so much server wide drama… and it was great because it was meaningful.

Item progression was slow and some items from a first raid would still be bis at the fourth. Getting a new weapon could suddenly catapult you from being a chump into being an absolute beast. Modern continuous micro upgrades make progression feel meaningless.

Classes were truly unique and with that came a lot of drama and imbalance, and a feeling of meaning to identity. There are no classes anymore, just roles.

I can go on and on, but I think you’ll find the people that complain about modern levelling are really complaining about the lack of meaningful experience in the game. As has been said before, it’s simply a different game now.

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