I think I did this during BfA, when I knew I’d be leveling some Allied Races. There was a guide that showed me a circle to run in with 4-5 rares that spawned every 6 min. The rest I bought the tokens for on the AH.
That said, yes, I think one pathfinder should unlock all of them. I am curious how this will work in 9.0.
The game is monetized via subscriptions, so longer-term grindy goals serve to retain users.
I’m not a developer but couldn’t that goal also be served by races/classes? Or dungeons/raids? Why must it be rep grinds, the worst of them all?
If we say, okay, they are KEY to keep players, then EVERY MMO will employ that in spades, which seems counterproductive to what players actually like to do. As an example, my buddy and I rolled a guild to place all these alts in. Within a day of just doing NORMAL leveling, all of them get friendly. With the additional tabbards it’s really nothing to get ranks. I’m okay with that method. I’m not changing anything, we can go anywhere and do it, there aren’t any godforsaken slot-taking tokens or turn-ins, and it’s easy. It’s relatively quick. If an MMO does rep grinds, it should be like that.
It seems like every expansion is a rep grind though so I think you nailed it, @stusser, it’s not a rep-grind, it’s a user retention method.
EDIT: I will toss Blizzard a bone here, it’s been mighty fun running my buddy through old instances. I can’t wait until he’s high enough to run through an old raid. This awesomeness, is something I LEAST expected from Blizzard.
I can’t wait until the next expansion when the new level cap goes from 60 to 70 again!
This seems counterintuitive to me. I went through the grind when it was available (again, the Netherwing mount sticks in my mind), but when I realized I was just logging in to do my daily grind, that’s when the game lost its appeal to me and I let my subscription lapse.
At this point, I would much rather have a game that makes me feel like I can jump in and do something fun, rather than having to fulfill my daily duties each time.
Okay, I have a confession to make: This expansion looks so cool, that I am considering re-upping just to play through it. But I haven’t played a single expansion since Mists of Pandaria…and the last expansion I played to max level was Cataclysm.
So with that in mind, I have a few questions:
What has changed in the game? I know, it’s a complicated question, but will I be completely lost coming back into the game at this point? Will I have 500 messages saying, “Hey, come make your Garrison in Zone X!” or “Don’t forget to start your Legendary weapon!”? Does that come through the normal questing system? Or have I missed out on that content entirely??
Have there been any major quality-of-life improvements in the past few expansions? Have they improved questing/gathering/mob tagging/grouping? Or are the systems in place generally the same as they’ve always been (i.e. look for yellow “!”, do quests, return for rewards)?
Do you still sometimes level out of zones before you’ve completed them, or have they implemented the upleveling/downleveling so that zones and quests continue to remain relevant when you come back to them?
I feel like I’ve been spoiled by a lot of conveniences of Guild Wars 2 (and I really don’t want to hijack this into a “which MMO is better” thread), but I really want to know how WoW has improved in that regard.
Thanks!
This is a lot to parse
If you are coming back, wait for the 9.0 patch next year. This does the new leveling thing. The only thing I can think of you will be missing is the xmogs for your class. Since all the expansions are optional, I am not sure how they will handle those. It’s not a big deal.
You can now “tag” any mob hit by a member of your faction, but elites for quests can be tagged by both. So if I am doing “kill x elites” anyone can tag, but “kill 10 mooks” you can tag anything your faction has shot at. The questing system as a whole is a lot better.
You don’t really outlevel zones. All of “classic” is 1-60. You might run out of old-world continent to do, but you won’t outlevel, say, Wetlands.
Oh wait, followup question:
Unless they stick to the plan and just push the previous expansion back to the stack. So you’ll just level 50-60 every time an expansion launches.
And he’ll outlevel expansion content easily since it scales just 10-20 levels depending on the expansion. Right now.
Current level scaling -
Andy, I’ve just returned to WoW from an absence ending with Litch King so as a guess, just short of 10 YEARS since I’ve played. I can speak a little about your questions but I’m certainly not up to date on everything, yet.
No, you won’t be lost. I’ve had questions that I’ve certainly had to look up these last two weeks. I’ve never felt behind, but then it’s still the same at its base. Rules -around- the base are different. Tagging mobs as @Mark_Crump mentioned, is just flipping awesome. Need that kill that someone is already at? One hit. You still both loot, you’re both completely solo, doesn’t matter. In fact if you’re both killing for the same quest, you can both follow each other around in general and simply get a tag on each mob and still get credit for everything. It’s like grouping without grouping. In fact, since you both get loot from EVERYTHING, it’s nearly better than grouping, IMHO. If you play through levels, you can stay in the range of the expansion in nearly any zone of the expansion. Wanna do quests in the Barrens at 60? Go for it. It allows staying in a place you like for a lot longer and I love that. One caveat, you’ll outlevel the expansions quickly. Unless you’re in the latest one, each expansion is level capped so you hit the cap, two to three zones in. They boosted exp gains outside of the current expansion so it is what it is. They want to push you into the new content. To continue the caveat, you’ll out level gear REALLY quickly. Heirlooms help quite a bit but I’m literally flying through new gear per zone, sometimes more than once. Transmogs help you keep the look and at least, effort, from special gear, but if not in the latest expansion, it’s mostly a wash. That’s been the same since WoW started.
Ones I’ve noticed have been the absorption of mods like quest sharing within guild and bag organization, phased grouping in that each member has things at or closer to their level so they can all participate, easier access to a ton of older dungeon and raid content, the ability to just start a profession within the last expansion you were at without going back to the beginning, lowered levels for nearly all mounts, and no need for the majority of class trainers and going back to them all the time. There are plenty more but those stuck out. Strangely, quests for dungeons/raids do NOT scale and are locked at the level of the dungeon. Loot drops and quest drops are attuned and closer to the quest runner, within the limited max range of the zone/dungeon. So a level 60 can join a level 40 in an old world dungeon. For the level 40, their mobs will be closer to their level and they will be able to hit and do damage to them. Loot will drop that is close to level 40. For the level 60, the mobs will be closer to 60+ depending on the max of that old world content. Loot will drop for them that might even be the same as the level 40, but is closer in level to the mob level that is seen to the higher level player. If a level 100 joins them, mobs would again be at the max level for them but they would have damage scaling that is pretty insane. They too would have damage absorption that is pretty insane. Loot for them would drop at the highest level of the zone/dungeon.
Yes and no. You can stay in a zone and the quests levels and mobs will scale in level with you. If you outlevel an expansion, everything stops at the highest level for that expansion. The same with downleveling, within an expansion. You cannot run a level 40 through Hellfire Citadel. Some caveats exist, as an example, Northrend is now 60-80 in level range.
Since you’ve played recently, can you give your own estimation of total time 1-120 at a normal kind of pace? In the other thread people were estimating higher than 100 hours, I estimate it closer to 50 hours instead.
What’s your take?
I think you are wrong. I was at about 60 hours getting to 110 alone on my Void Elf for the armor. This was with looms and war mode bonus. I casually leveled. BfA is about another 15 hours. It could be little less with flying, but it took me about 50 min a level in Bfa.
If we take 75h as the average, and considering they are cutting it by 60-70%, then it will take 25-30 hours with Shadowlands.
I think this is a bit shallow.
Based on my friends time, he’s made 70 in about 20 to 25 hours play with some screwing around during that. I’m leveling multiples so estimating a full 1-120 is hard. It’s really only the 110-120 that’s standard rate, so it’s slow. There are a ton of quests though so assuming quests plus an instance or two you’d be looking at maybe 20 or less, possibly 15 or less. The rest of the levels seem reasonable at the rate Mark mentioned.
Remember you have no flying from 110-120 initially and no exp bonus unless you’re wearing heirlooms or similar.
RIGHT NOW they also have the WoW celebration going on which I believe is another 15% + for exp gain.
I’d wager with the bonuses you’re pretty close on your estimate.
With Shadowlands coming up I figured I’d better go ahead and get my Rogue to 120 to join my motley crew of other 120 alts. I created the toon way back during Burning Crusade, so it’s been a long time coming for him. I finally got him there over Christmas week and got his ilevel up to 402 pretty quick.
Rogues are actually pretty fun to play and I had a good time leveling him. I’m also very happy with the transmog outfit I put together for him. I’m in the process of going back to finish up his Legion order hall campaign now to get his class mount. Almost done with all that now, thank god.
I’ve gone the very-slow route so far but didn’t do so on my very old and dusty, “mains,” I ran up until I quit back right before the launch of Cataclysm. Those toons were decked out in the latest raided loot tiers, etc. But I played them so long and raided with them so much it was a chore to revisit them with newer content albeit with the new way of talents, gear and specialization. Of those (priest, warrior, rogue,) I’ve taken the rogue up to just over level 90. I might go back and try again. Rogues are indeed quite fun to play. I loved the ability to plan out engagements with something akin to simple strategies for adds, when to burn cooldowns, etc. Raiding with one was fun as heck, though the DPS race was a bit of a chore at times.
Instead I’ve leveled from scratch with three new classes and I’m enjoying the hell out of it. My hunter is just now getting into BfA content, but only due to me spending time with the other two classes (shaman and paladin.) I also actually turned off exp gain and enjoyed rolling through quite a bit of Panaria and Draenor too. Legion content drug out some and I’m ready to get into BfA stuff pretty badly.
I commend you on getting your ilevel up there. I doubt I’ll have the want to do so, I’m much more enjoying being an alt-oholic of late.
One thing bothering me is that due to upgrades to renew my accounts and upgrades again for the pre-order, I have lingering character boosts that I don’t really know what to do with. I’m not really sure I WANT to use them, especially since I missed these expansions and really long for experiencing the content for now. I guess I’ll keep them as an option-to-use, should I ever want to.
I leveled 8 characters to 120 via Korrak, which is insanely fast past level 60 or so, and especially past level 100. I just about have every class at 120 on both horde and alliance at this point.
I came late to BFA, and boy is it ever a pain to try and PvP, most of my characters are sitting at 390ish due to Nazjatar stuff, and I just get roflstomped by everyone. The one thing I continue to hate about WoW, is how much disparity there is in gear levels in PvP. It’s not bad if you level up with the bulk of the base when the expansion is new, but coming into it late is almost completely worthless.
I’ve consided going in but again, I haven’t seen or explored the old content fully. Slow and steady is fine with me. It does sound like fun though.
Mike is actually starting to talk me into FF XIV… I dunno. I jump back into retail wow and Ill have wow guild obligations. I started to hate that.
This was me for a long time and part of why it took me years to consider going back. Server transfer or start up on another server. If a Battlenet friend messages you, say something obscure like you are a child and Mom/Dad gave you the account to use but only on another server. If logging in is a chore, free yourself from it or make it not so.
That being said, I’m in a 2-man guild and we’re both enjoying the hell out of doing whatever we want. I don’t get automatic invites when logging in or have a raid schedule multiple days a week … and I’m quite okay with that.
