What's the point of leveling in WoW?

This has always been buggering me. Every expansion we get new levels to level up but we don’t feel ourselves stronger after getting to that max level. Our stats don’t matter at all until the max level so there is no any character customization during leveling which is one of the main parts if not the most important part of the MMORPG genre. Absence of character customization during leveling is one of the biggest reasons why leveling in WoW is boring and pointless. Leveling in WoW is only a some kind of time gating. Every expansion our progress is completely reset (actually now our progress is reset every patch). This goes against the principles of MMORPGs. We can say that it has always been so, since TBC but in TBC it wasn’t so obvious yet.

What’s the point of adding new levels every expansion and thus making all the previous content obsolete if you could just add new content like raids, dungeons, BGs, really engaging quest chains for getting some gear, gold, good storytelling, professions. So older raids and dungeons would still be relevant for gearing up. There has to be more ways of making your character stronger instead of resetting your progress completely and making us to level up new completely pointless levels and start from the beginning.

For those who are still leveling up you could add new ways for leveling like new zones, dungeons, quests. It would also make alts leveling more interesting and engaging since you would have a lot of zones and dungeons to chose from.

All your work regarding the previous content is almost literally pointless. No point in all those zones and raids. Dungeons have uses for leveling but that’s all. Gear from dungeons is also almost pointless. What I suggested could help fixing this problem which is the main problem of WoW. Also since you are squishing maximum level cap it might be a good time to do this. In Shadowlands or never (or WoW 2).

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Blizzard very typically completely bails on old content and relies on new stuff to keep people engaged. I would be surprised to see them change that. You know why they give you level boosts when you pre-purchase the expansion? Because they don’t believe that leveling is fulfilling content and that it’s merely a chore meant for those who make alts. So they’d rather have you skip it so they can keep ignoring the problem.

In Blizzard’s defense though, it can be very challenging to make old content interesting since most people have done it already, usually multiple times. I only really felt the magic of leveling for maybe my first three characters that I got to max level when I started out, after that it became a chore. I would still like to see them try to do something (and with party sync, I guess they kind of have, but it’s not enough).

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Offers a soft reset, a clean state where players can catch up with the playerbase and start on an equal footing.

As for irrelevant content… Ever crossed your mind that 1/ a patch is enough to make content irrelevant and 2/ people maybe want it to be irrelevant at some point ?

For instance your “let’s keep all raid and dungeons relevants !” part is imo a terrible idea, and for quite a few reasons. Let’s start with what you mean by relevant, because by all account a 1 patch old raid is already irrelevant for most players. So a relevant raid would reward the same quality of gear than the last one right ?

That’s where we have huge issues. First balance. Some raids are drastically easier than others, and this just incentify you to skip all raids but this specific one for every patch of the game. Same raid for months or years just because that’s the most optimised way to gear.

Second, challenge. The new raid will always be harder and often much more enjoyable than a raid you cleared dozens of times. Yet by keeping all raids (even only for the current expansion) relevant you incentify players to skip the progress on the last raid, fully gear on the older ones and then blast through the new content with OP gear and ignoring mechanics.

Lastly, the peer pressure/ social aspect. More raids just means more sources of gear and thus if you want to be competitive you gotta grab as much as possible to not fall behind those who don’t. Make old raids relevant and you push these players toward clearing all these raids on as many characters as possible.

There’s more issues like how some old items may be completely broken but overall you get the idea : 1 relevant tier per patch is good enough, more would just be unhealthy for the game.

I think, if you are leveling an alt just to get yourself character for whatever is fotm meta now, ect. As in, you have some specific end game purpose. The leveling is meaningless to you and as such feels like waste of time.

What if that waste of time was the purpose? For me, who wants to just pass time, its “very good waste of time”. There is no other purpose to it. Blizz has been eroding this way for quite a while now. Each time making it worse for this point of view. Its faster than ever before and its still being made faster.

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Some people enjoy levelling others have done it too many times or simply don’t enjoy it. I love getting new content but inevitably it gets boring on alts doing it over and over.

Some of the earlier levelling will be improved in Shadowlands, allowing the bulk of it will be done in one expansion.

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I wish they would implement the 70% faster leveling now instead of SL. I’m tired of killing wolf pups.

Sadly it is. Blizzard don’t seems to care at all since the most of their subscribers are more interested on the endgame.

First of all, if something is buggering you without your consent then that would be seen as sexual harassment at the very least and I would seriously advise reporting it to the authorities.

Character progression is one of the basic pillars of an RPG, in WoW this progression is done by levelling up. Despite the mobs scaling to your level and seemingly staying as strong as you are they actually don’t, although it’s a small amount per level you are getting stronger relative to the NPC’s. Any statements to the contrary are wrong.

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WoW is loosely based on the D&D E3.5 rule set, leveling is a staple of it… as are the vast majority of RPGs

If you don’t like leveling, then why are you playing an RPG?

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I respectfully don’t agree with you. I love leveling, it’s a great passtime when I’m bored of my main.

Exploring old content without having super powers is great, be able to revive old quests or old stories is always a thing that I really enjoy, for exemple I love leveling in WOD that’s probably the best zones and stories in the game (my personal point of view).

Like Sholah said, keeping all raids/dungeons relevant is not a good thing because people always want to be better with minimal efforts.

Why doing harder things when you can get the same gear on easier content ?

Also making all that content relevant means splitting the community which is already pretty splitted meaning to find a group to do specific quests/dungeons/raids would be harder while pugging for exemple.

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READS TITLE

For me its the feeling of progression on the lower levels.

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What progression? Everything scales to your level.

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Low levels, its not much but its something.

Eventually it gets repetitive.

Pretty much. It’s a mandatory chore for most players imo, myself included.

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The only point is to sell the newest expansion that’t it if they would not increase the cap lots of people would not buy the expansions.

Got to love that autocorrect :rofl:

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That’s a lot to bugger from 1-120 :sweat_smile:

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Me too. Leveling is my favorite part of the game. In fact, I usually quit a couple weeks after hitting the level cap (BfA having been the exception, shockingly enough).

There’s just something satisfying and addicting about leveling. There’s always new zones and dungeons to wait for (as opposed to repeating the same content for 6 months straight), that XP bar filling feels like you’re working for something, new spells and talents every now and then to spice things up. I like it.

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95% of my time spent in WoW is not leveling as I’m already max level, so why do you act like this is a big part of an RPG?

A vestigial remnant from when the game was a rpg, like professions.

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