World of Warcraft: Current Year

Grim1 said:

It's so bad that unless it is changed in a meaningful way I will probably never play WoW again. That's no great loss for Blizzard, since I was always just a casual who dropped in every couple of years for a month or two during a new expansion. But I at least enjoyed those couple of months before moving on, leveling my toons in old content and just putzing around. But 7.3.5 took the fun factor out of leveling.

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You say that, but you're not the minority. Most of the people on my friends list are not playing WoW right now and we all essentially do the same thing as you. Legion kept me subbed for over 6 months and I only stopped because of my own poor choices. BFA couldnt even keep me subbed for an entire month.

McCheese said:

I like the scaling for level up for the aforementioned reasons, but I really have grown to dislike it at max level. I hate the lack of a feeling of power at max level. Going to some of the expansion leveling zones for mining, pet battles, world quests, etc. just becomes a slog when you feel only slightly more powerful than you did in the initial questing through. Granted, raiders who increase their ilvl quickly probably don't have this issue. However, for casuals like me who generally just increase ilvl along with LFR, you don't start feeling more powerful for quite a while after hitting max level.

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To me, the adjustment needs to come from when you're in the zone. Each zone typically has a Story Line related to that particular zone and when its finished - I think that the scaling should stop at that point for your character personally. For example: You finish the story line in a zone at level 30, the content stays at 30. You finish that same zone at level 60 instead, and it stays at 60. I think it just makes sense.

Grim1 said:

I've heard a lot of veteran players say they like scaling, and that may work for WoW since new players are not their target audience anymore.

But for many players scaling just plain sucks. Scaling turned WoW into the most tediously boring experience I've ever had in any MMO. That is no exaggeration. It's just an endless trudge through mindless fetchit quests where the mobs never hurt you, and you push the same 2 buttons over and over and over ad nauseam. I couldn't do it this time around, took a break from 7.3.5 and hoped BFA would fix things, that didn't happen.

It's so bad that unless it is changed in a meaningful way I will probably never play WoW again. That's no great loss for Blizzard, since I was always just a casual who dropped in every couple of years for a month or two during a new expansion. But I at least enjoyed those couple of months before moving on, leveling my toons in old content and just putzing around. But 7.3.5 took the fun factor out of leveling.

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That was not the fault of scaling, that was the fault of them increasing the amount of exp you needed to level by 60% while simultaneously nerfing heirloom items and player power. Then you put that together with stat squish and ability pruning and you find yourself not even able to counter mechanics in low level dungeons and monotonously pressing one or two buttons for 60 levels while questing. Some classes/specs do not even get an interrupt until level 80. Level fucking 80. There is no counterplay at lower levels because you get one new ability every 20 levels and one new talent every 25ish.

This has nothing to do with scaling. Scaling is not the problem. Scaling is one of the few things they've gotten right in recent years. But all the other leveling changes they made in 7.3.5 were idiotic and completely sucked all the fun out of leveling alts. But yea, you are not alone in feeling that the leveling process sucked after 7.3.5. Everyone agrees about that.

re scaling, i agree that is is good in alot of aspects, but disagree in one important aspect most ignore.

good as in there is more content- at all levels- to consume, but that scaling is bad in a totally different way..

bad because there is absolutely zero sense of danger anymore when leveling a character. there is no"thril/suspense" leveling.

you can go pretty much anywhere now in azeroth and all the -normal- mobs are...extremely easy to kill, there is no sense of danger, no thrill of attempting a fight that the mob has a good chance of killing you if you make a mistake. no thrill = no sense of accomplishment, because it is all care bear hard.

i have a level 60 mage that i have leveled so far and i have died 4 times. each time was due to me doing something stupid ...like trying to kill 10 mobs at the same time (due to respawn) or doing an oops off a cliff and falling to my death (featherfall is not on an easy "press" hotkey) other than those few instances, there is no danger, there is no suspense, i just get a quest, walk/ride to where i need to go, kill all the mobs needed with ease, off to next quest.

one of the best things about no scaling is...the sense of danger/suspense/accomplishment that it can have.

There hasn't been any danger in the leveling process in WoW since like TBC. Scaling didn't change any of that. Silly argument is silly. Besides, there are still areas of the world they could leave unscaled if they wanted to like they do with Suramar in Legion and the islands in MoP.

And you can't go anywhere in Azeroth you want to. The Cata specific zones only scale from 80-90. Wrath specific zones from 60-80. Etc.

which is why i said pretty much anywhere.

i have not leveled a character from the beginning-via running around azeroth(i did level a panda monk-but that was a rush job and i didn't do much questing, just grind grind grind). SINCE TBC- so this is all new to me.

The scaling continuing with gear progression is fucking asinine.

In a relatively new game world or through new content I can agree scaling isn't a great idea. In 14 year old content that nobody actually gives a shit about? Scaling is perfect for that.

Khane said:

There hasn't been any danger in the leveling process in WoW since like TBC. Scaling didn't change any of that. Silly argument is silly. Besides, there are still areas of the world they could leave unscaled if they wanted to like they do with Suramar in Legion and the islands in MoP.

And you can't go anywhere in Azeroth you want to. The Cata specific zones only scale from 80-90. Wrath specific zones from 60-80. Etc.

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And even in the old world things are scaled in different level bands. If you try to go to eastern plague lands as a level 1 alliance character youa re going to get your brain eaten with a quickness. The scaling in general just gives you more options to do at a specific level range and at the top end means all your max level character are not stuck derping in one tiny corner of the world. The biggest issues with scaling are more to do with leveling in general. With the ability purge you go a lot of levels between gaining anything and level 110-120 there is nothing you gain character wise other than gear. It feels weird and like leveling for the sake of leveling. I think they are pretty close to the point where they may be forced to do some kind of level squish although I am not exactly sure how that would work because adding in more levels where you don't actually gain anything feels weird as fuck.

Alkorin said:

"SWEET! WQs will take longer now that I've been doing them for half a year while I geared up in Uldir", said no one ever. Except maybe for Ion.

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This generally is not an issue though. Ilevel tends to increase a lot faster than the scaling does once you are past the big hump gearing wise at 120. I can blow through WQ elite mobs/silver elites way faster than I did at 120. It keeps mobs from being totally trivial but not much more than that.

Lenardo said:

one of the best things about no scaling is...the sense of danger/suspense/accomplishment that it can have.

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Mobs having more HP and taking 15 seconds longer to kill means nothing in terms of danger. Taking longer to kill something but you win 100% of the time means nothing. The only time danger would be meaningful is when everything you encounter has a 50% chance of ending you. Want to make encounters even more dangerous? How about an XP loss after every death coupled with slow XP gain on successful encounters? It's almost as if someone thought of this before.

Yea they thought of it before and players hated it.

I am curious if wow eventually does leveling like they have professions setup now. Where each expansion has its own progression but you can start at whichever one you want. I am not sure how well that would work but would be an easier way to get new players to play with their friends.

a c i d.f l y said:

That sounds interesting, though not being able to do vanilla content because I hadn't leveled that, while being overpowered on modern content presents a very confusing situation.

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That would be the main issue. Although every expansion we get some flavor of this where we start at the bottom and work our way up again so I am not sure that would be an insurmountable problem. There are issues with any kind of level squish but they are quickly getting to the place something in the next expansion or two will have to happen I think. Just too many levels that if they are not going to add more stuff to unlock just feel pointless.

I feel like it needs a cataclysm 2.0. Someone here said their friends who are new to the game appreciated the leveling system. What if you have a 120 you could start all new characters at level 100 or something if you wanted to?

On a side note, up to 63 on my alt. Still enjoying leveling.