Some players want to get to the cap with several different classes, because the classes play differently. I like DPS classes so my go to classes are hunter, rogue, and warlock. All three play differently so I enjoy getting them all to the new level cap.
I do find that repeating content with alts gets to be a bit tedious. I’d be happy to level one alt to the new cap and then insta-level the rest. But I don’t want to pay $$ to do so.
I’m not complaining. It was my choice to do this. The Alliance content is different enough, too, that it seems fresh. There’s also a lot of content I never exhausted. I’m doing Pandaria now with an Alliance hunter and most of the quests I’ve been doing are new to me.
They also keep adding new reasons to replay old content, apart from “just because.” Battle for Azeroth has the Allied Races, Legion had Demon Hunters (although I guess they started at a higher level) and unique class halls/artifacts, Pandaria had Pandas, Cataclysm had Worgen and Goblins, and so on.
Right, and they had new starter content for all three of these. I thought the goblin stuff was fun.
I don’t think this one is light. There is a path for alliance and horde, however once you hit max level you can do the other side’s quests or zones. I’m not sure how that works exactly, but I’m going to probably level one of each side so the see story. The first raid and LFR wing open up a month after launch.
They have also said they were happy with the pacing of content in Legion, and I tend to agree with them. I never felt like I was mindlessly grinding through dailies like I did in MoP. That said, I’m a complete casual player in WoW so I generally only played 5-6 hours a week.
Well, yes.
Let’s say you’re currently at the level cap, so (0 → x) of the current expansion, and that the most recent expansion is instead (x → y), where “y” is the new level cap.
What players complain about isn’t (x → y), because the most recent expansion is designed to be paced at that standard. There’s no way to “skip” that.
Players instead complain about (0 → x). But this doesn’t make sense, because if you have a pool of alts, then this pools already sits at the current level cap “x”, so, UNTIL THE END OF TIMES, you’re always only doing (x → y), and never (0 → x). So why should people complain about (0 → x) if they can completely ignore it?
If you only want to raid, and are a veteran player that has already a large pool of alts. You have plenty enough of those alts to do plenty of raiding and playing through the latest expansion. You don’t HAVE to go back and play old content.
If you have 10 alts, and you ONLY tolerate the last expansion, isn’t doing this last expansion TEN TIMES enough to satisfy you? Why should you complain about (0 → x) if you have no real reason to play that? Why should you make yet another alt if you despise (0 → x), aren’t the other 10 alts already plenty enough?
They also keep adding new reasons to replay old content, apart from “just because.” Battle for Azeroth has the Allied Races, Legion had Demon Hunters (although I guess they started at a higher level) and unique class halls/artifacts, Pandaria had Pandas, Cataclysm had Worgen and Goblins, and so on.
And that’s the real point.
Blizzard keeps adding things because they want the game to still feel active. It’s an important goal. So they NEED to give players reasons to go back and and make also the old world content alive.
If Mark Asher had a button available that instantly levels a character to the cap, he would have pressed it. Even if now that he’s “forced” to go through the content he’s actually enjoying it.
But you cannot PANDER to these players who want new toons for all the allied races BUT don’t also want to play the game. You cannot turn this in a skin collector game.
And the expansion comes with a level boost, so you always have your alt pool + 1.
This is why there’s a fracture and no way to fix it.
Why not?
If there were enough people demanding that the levelling process stay challenging and interesting, then Blizzard would do it, I’m sure. But there aren’t, so they don’t. Why can’t it just be a pro forma thing that most people have to blaze through to get to where they really want to be?
They did. It’s the reason why there’s a mounting protest ongoing on the forums.
The way to fix is about giving options. It’s easy. But they have good reasons not to do so, because they don’t want to devalue the experience.
That’s the whole point: they are trying to find a compromise between positions that are not reconcilable. This is what we were discussing.
Not necessarily. I could pay to level to cap. In this instance, after playing Horde since the game launched, I am playing Alliance and many of the quests are different. I am also ok with the slower (relatively) pace of leveling since I know once I do hit cap, I will soon stop playing.
I don’t think of WoW as a permanent game to play year after year, but as a game I can go back to now and then. There was a time when it felt like a lifestyle, but no longer, and that’s healthier.
If someone comes up with an MMO that isn’t driven by constant character development, and doesn’t require playing 20+ hours per week to feel involved in it, and it still hooks me, I might play that instead. So far I haven’t seen that game. It’s difficult to continue to invest time into an MMO where I feel like my character(s) aren’t getting more powerful. What is the reason for playing otherwise? That’s probably the key – what reason do you give me, the player, to continue to play week after week?
Like I said before, there is a solution to this, you just choose to keep ignoring it. You can shut your experience off at any time, and go through as many quests as you like with complete control of your level vs the content.
Yeah, OK, well…I guess I don’t fully grasp what you’re arguing for or against.
You seem to be arguing that the players are wrong (broken?) for preferring not to grind through content they’ve seen a dozen times as fast as possible to get to the endgame content that they really want to play? And that they have enough alts already or something?
And I still can’t quite figure out why any of this is a big issue. Of course players want to get their new alts through the levelling process quickly, and Blizzard want to gatekeep that experience to some extent in order to sell $25 levelling tokens. Gamers would prefer that Blizzard ease up on the harder levelling. Of course.
Everyone is just following their natural incentives: Blizzard for more money, gamers for less time spent re-doing boring old content that’s stopping them doing the new dungeons and raids they they really want to do.
This may be a solution but it is not necessarily a good solution. I know that when I play I want both (a) interesting stories and (b) to see character progression. Turning off progression is even worse than grinding to me because there is no character progression.
If you already have an army of characters because you’re a veteran that has seen old content a million of times, you don’t HAVE to see old content ever again.
When these guys have like 20+ alts in every possible combination there’s definitely NOTHING stopping them to do JUST new dungeons and raids.
The fact that you’ve seen the old content a million of times IMPLIES that you have a large pool of already capped characters. If you have a large pool of characters there’s no real necessity to do something other than playing new content. Either that or you’re a masochist.
But nope, they have to roll n+1 new characters and then complain they have to play them too.
That’s the thing. Once character progression is over there’s little reason to play until new content and new character progression is introduced. That’s why players roll alts. They get to do character progression with an alt, and if it’s a different class the experience is different.
Players don’t have 15 alts because they hate the game. They have 15 alts because they love it and want to reproduce the experience of character progression again with a new wrinkle.
For all the time I’ve put into the game, and I don’t even want to know how long I’ve played it in terms of hours because yeesh!, I do not have each character class level capped. Far from it, in fact. There is still a lot of content in the game I never experienced – quests I’ve never done, etc.
One thing I really think Blizzard could do better at is telling you what to do next, especially on pre-patch events. I finished Chapter 1 of the pre-patch, and didn’t realize it unlocked some World Quests in Darkshore until I read a guide.
It would be nice if there was a pop-up that said, “WQs in Darkshore unlocked.”
I can’t even find the pre-patch events. Do you have to be at level cap?
Yes, I am pretty sure.
I got an auto-quest on all my 110s.
I don’t remember with the last quest of week 1, but for the argus and legionfall stuff, world quests for regions have been specifically listed in the rewards section of quests.
…aaand they caved in (of course):
We’ve just applied a hotfix that reduces the damage dealt by creatures between level 1 and 100 by up to 16%, and their health by up to 24%. Until a subsequent fix (coming next week) to update clients with the new data, unit frames may not reflect the change in creature health, but combat should be faster and a bit less lethal across the board while leveling.
P.S.
I was playing a level 75 character, after leaving the game after Cataclysm, so under equipped and without an idea how to play. I still haven’t risked dying in PvE.
In fact monsters die so fast that I cannot even learn a “rotation” of skills, because whatever skill I use, in whatever order, the monster is already dead.
“Combat was too lethal”.
Players’ reactions:
Finally. Levelling needed that lil fix, mobs took forever to die and some hit you like a truck.
Well that will do but why there’s no buff for quests for exemple ?
It’s a start, but still waiting for them to speed up the experience gain.
Now reduce 60-80 xp and we’re good to go.
Might as well be an advertisement for a character boosts.
When you don’t have the time to devote days or weeks to level a new character does not make people “lazy” or “whiny”.
They’ve royally screwed the pooch this time. As someone said before: might as well be an advertisement for selling boosts!
They are pissed because it’s not enough.
It’s the difference between a new player, and those of us that have been around for 14 years. We’ve done the leveling grind, and want to play new classes at max level. Not run through Westfall for the bazillionth time.
And if you have been around that long, you really feel the difference in leveling speed from pre-7.3.5 and post. It is much more of a slog, especially if it is your 4th or 10th or 20th go round.
So yes, they fixed it back to intended 7.3.5 levels (well, sorta, mostly). Old timers want pre-7.3.5 levels. That’s why many still say it “isn’t enough”. Their mistake was letting it so far out of control originally, if fast leveling was never the intent. Once given, it is hard to take away.