When I came back to WoW last month (been away since Legion’s launch) I’ve found out that there was a “level crunch”, which I really appreciated as an idea, but was quickly disappointed by the fact that yes, indeed the level cap was set back to 60 with Shadowlands (I think), but then raised again to 70 with Dragonflight, and will rise again to 80 with TWW. Why is the reasoning behind this choice? Most recent MMOs have a set level cap that doesn’t rise throughout new expansions, but have other methods to make the new expansions worth playing (like the introduction of new items that unlock more powerful mechanics, or new abilities to unlock different mechanics - like what you’re doing with Classic seasons). I know that many players enjoy the fact that they can solo old contwnt just by being ten levels higher than the old cap, but wouldn’t it be more rewarding for many players to have old endgame content be still relevant with new expansions? I’m not talking of things like “you still need to raid Naxx to get the right gear to tackle the latest dungeon”, but maybe letting stuff like Naxx still be end game just so people can brag because they managed to obtain a full set to use for transmog would avoid old contwnt to die out eventually. This is my opinion and I’m no game designer, but I think that a game where every content is always interesting and enjoyable to play would benefit any game that life is based on expansions, otherwise making series (WoW, WoW2, WoW3, etc.) would make more sense.
This was what Ion said about it in a Q&A way back when:
And in the end Blizzard basically framed the level squish as a means of making levels feel more meaningful and a way to speed the leveling up.
And then they tag new levels on each expansion still, so who knows, another level squish may come eventually again.
Thank you for this reply. Maybe I’m part of the minority here, but squishing levels just to rise them again and maybe squish them later again feels a bit weird.
I’ve played other MMOs during the years (GW1&2, ESO, Neverwinter, probably others I don’t even remember now), and most of them had (either from the start or at some time during further development) a set level cap that didn’t change throughout expansions.
That managed to let most of the old content still valid after the release of a new expansions (not everything of course, since to avoid making the game feel stale they had to introduce new stuff), something WoW has completely failed: I can do almost any raid (if not all) released before SL solo, which is kind of boring. True, I don’t need to do that, but some armor sets are nice, and some drops are still pretty valuable, bit storming through a raid once a week for some drops is pretty lame. I think some people would be happy to group fro Black Temple and have an actual challenge to drop those knives Illidan uses to cut his steaks.
In ESO only the first three trials (aka the raids) are somewhat “trivial”, and many groups use them to introduce new groups to raiding, but there are also challenges in them that are still hard to do. Same with dungeons: the oldest ones are the easiest, but the moment you get in those added by DLCs or Chapters you get real challenges even if you’ve managed to finish the latest ones. I think this adds very much to replayability and avoids having dead content lingering here and there.
EDIT: I’m writing on my phone, so paragraphs doesn’t come natural to me as when I’m writing on a keyboard. Sorry for the confusion, hope this helps.
Can you please use paragraphs as i can not read what you are saying sorry.
edit ty for change
I think Blizzard’s design struggle is that on the one hand, then WoW has always had vertical progression, i.e. level progression and gear progression. And on the other hand WoW has always wanted easy accessibility and low barriers to entry.
And those two design aspects sort of conflict a bit with each other.
The other MMORPGs you mention have very much settled on easy accessibility and low barriers to entry. You don’t have to worry about levels or gear – just hop in and play whenever it suits you!
It’s difficult for WoW to steer its design entirely in that direction, because so much of its content focus and gameplay loop is structured around level and gear progression. Erasing that would result in a bit of an existential crisis for WoW, because it’s so intrinsic to WoW that you get levels and gear and talents and abilities and unlock content and so on. I don’t think Blizzard are keen on unraveling that too much.
So thus far they’ve sort of settled on this half-and-half solution where they let the level and gear progression grow until it gets too bloated and messy, and then they squish it down to more moderate levels and allow it to grow again. It’s not an elegant solution, but it keeps the power creep in check, to a degree.
I didn’t like the level squish. It felt like losing progression. That said I hope that they stop at 100 and figure out a different way to get the feeling of progression after that. Because I don’t really want them to go to 120 and just squish it again.
Its going to be a squish at wow:midnight i think Ion said so
He was talking about stat squish. I don’t really mind that much. As for levels, TWW will get us to 80, Midnight to 90 and TLT to 100. It lines up pretty well with the end of the Worldsoul Saga.
Wait, Midnight and TLT are expansions? I thought they were part of TWW, just some new content programmed for later during the expansion cycle.
Problem is wow is a seasonal game now. Even Aberrus is irrelevant now until they make it a fated raid. The only way old stuff is semi relevant nowadays is through timewalking and even then most people do it for the weekly quests.
Yeah they are seperate expansions, this is why blizzcon was so hype because we’ve never seen so much future info at once, also they planned to make the expansions not last as long, to what extent I’m not exactly sure but their intent was to shorten them so we don’t have dragged out seasons and patches.
But yes Midnight and TLT are seperate expansions and we were told this so that we aren’t suprised when the story isn’t resolved in a single expansion, so that they have time to create and flesh our characters and give them each a fair amount of story time, because there was a negative backlash when people kept expecting sylvanas to finally be over only to realize that she would be a maor factor in the net expansion so we were let down, simply because we missunderstood the scale of story they wanted to tell
I appreciated the level squish because 120 levels for every alt was a bit much, however I dislike that we are essentially working our way back up to that. I would have also preferred a different system akin to how GW2 and ESO have an account wide tree separate from levels.
I’d rather they locked the level for good and invented something like ESO CP - we need something that stays through every expansion.
the reason is simple - blizzard belives that people are scared of high numbers.
thats why withough a doubt we will see yet another itlv and dmg squish before release ofnext expansion.
The level squish had already happened when I started WoW, and I heard they did it so newcomers like myself would feel more welcoming and get to the endgame faster, but personally it felt less motivating.
I like leveling and I like a high level being an achievement that takes a long time to achieve. I have never really got into the endgame grinding in mmo’s with level caps, much more prefer when there’s no level cap, although those mmo’s aren’t many. Even if level was only a number and perhaps a small HP/Mana increase after 70, it would still feel like progress I guess.
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