Digo

I'm wondering what rate of advancement the devs will decide upon for the Burning Crusade. Will we see a repetition of "The Kunark Problem" where people find the most efficient instance or questing hub, suck it up, and plow through the levels within a week?

I remember Gurgthock once posting on the FoH boards that he felt a flaw in WoW's design was that the leveling curve was too quick. That people blazed through content at a rate such that no one visited a mid-level instance more than once or twice. Since Blizzard has been furiously touting the content as having lots of "casual content," I have to wonder how this will affect the leveling curve.

I expect the leveling curve will be slower for these levels, though not quite as horrendous as the Kunark days, lest they drive away the casual fanbase. Trouble is, I really enjoyed leveling up in WoW. I like scraping together equipment upgrades and the sense of exploration. What worries me is that the leveling curve will be so quick my accustomed play style will devour the content, leaving me a broken shell of a man. Keep in mind, it took most of today's hardcore raiders about 6 weeks or so reach 60.

Still, this makes me wonder how much content they can actually ship with the expansion, both casual and raiding. Figured this would be a decent topic for discussion. What are your expectations or wishes?

 

Groglox

The have been quoted on saying that they want to the 60-70 leveling process to take longer, but not feel like a grind. One key thing that was mentioned is that to get from 60-70 will be about as long as it takes you to complete the new level-up content.

 

Copernic

I just don't see why the Devs would change up the leveling time they've already established.. with perhaps a slight slowdown similar to how 50-60 was more challenging then 40-50.

Reasoning:
1. With the amount of Alts most accounts have, players will thoroughly explore the new content regardless. There's been little non-raid content in the past year and a half. Unless you're a dedicated raider, then you've probably levelled several alts to 60, just because there's nothing else to do. When the Expansion gets, I'll probably have four 60s, possibly even five. So that means 40 new Dings.

2. WoW has never put the timesinks into Levelling. Why bother, when players have no problem putting their time into loot acquisition, rep grind, and/or PVP? Far easier to have an easy grind to 70 for the casual players, then several time sink paths for the gifted... less overall new content to develop.

3. The centerpieces of the new Expansion are the Instances, not the outdoor regions. People get excited about Caverns of Time.. Karazhan.. Black Citadel... No one gets excited about the Ghostlands, or whatever it's called. A punishing level grind makes no sense to WoW's philosophy of removing pointless obstacles.

I'd expect the grind to take two weeks for the hardcore, and four-six weeks for the bored. But I also expect more refined and intensive timesinks outside of the levelling, such as Outdoor PVP, Instance design, and so forth.

 

saramin

Pretty much. Just going by the exponential formula for level requirements if they made the time investment of 60-70 have roughly the same relation to 50-60 that 50-60 had to 40-50, it would be about right. Keep in mind 10 levels is a rather narrow range and any instanced content over 65 would be akin to strat/scholo.

A more interesting question would be how they plan to implement their much-vaunted "all 2004-2006 items aren't marginalized because they will help you level faster!" strategem. Raising level caps isn't a particularly graceful way to get around mudflation and content consumption can become redundant. It will be amusing to see the interplay between "casual" lvl 70 content as opposed to 10-manning MC.

 

Shadout

Think the levelling will be fairly quick (though I hope Ill be wrong), maybe a few weeks.
It somewhat seems as a waste for me, that they have more or less covered all the lvls from 60-70 with 5 man instances, which we will probably only see a few times (at least with mains).
Had been more interesting with more 5 man instances at lvl 70, maybe that could shut up the non raiders too ^^

If the lvling in fact takes long enough to make the new 5 man instances worth it, then its not bad. While I prefer a fairly long way to lvl 70, Im not a big fan of pure grind, much rather a long way with enough content to keep me going without the need to grind.
Just afraid it will be lots of content, but no use for it, since we will outlvl it too fast.

After that its back to the raiding for another year or so I guess, which would have made some long lvling time nice, to chance the game for a while.

 

◊ chalon

My hope for the expansion leveling curve is that it will take the hardcore player that still has a job (and thus can't be online 16 hours a day during the week :p), approximately 4 or 5 weeks. It took me like 15 days /played to level to 60 without grinding, and instead questing/doing instances/leveling tradeskills. I'm hoping that to go from 60-70 will take like 8 or 9 /played assuming you're not grinding.

 

syr

I'm personally hoping that the 60-70 grind, however it may be based is atleast a reasonable amount more difficult than around 30-60. I got to 60 on my rogue with 20 days played time in under a month. I had'nt played the beta and my focus was purely getting to 60 rather than learning the game / class - since I figured I could do that when I got closer (note yes I was blowing huge/exccessive amounts of time on the game).

I've often felt the "grind" phase of this game was easy, too easy infact. I preferred the idea of it being a challenge to get there to limit the top level to only those more commited to working their way through the levels. So I would really like to see going from 0-70 being just abit more difficult to make being 70 feel a little more "valuable" rather than everyone having attained it. I myself won't be able to throw (or probably even want to) anywhere near as much time as I did at the last one but I'm still hoping it's going to be more difficult.

I may be entirely wrong but I'm assuming from Blizzard's point of view the intention's of the level 70 cap seem to atleast be,
Re-adjust class balance/scaling. - Making sure classes scale appropriately in the directions they want.
Selling point for the expansion. - Casual player's who enjoy levelling will want more levels to work through.
Re-igniting interest among current playerbase. - Add's advancement to our classes and may even bring us in a new or more indepth direction.

Getting to 60 has never been a challenge compared to many other MMORPG games, which to me signifies an "active" choice rather than a mistake on their behalf. I can't really see Blizzard repeating the "Kunark" problem. Blizzard simply won't want to alienate so much newer content from paying customers, which they realise it could easily do to the less dedicated playerbase.

I'm interested as to how this will affect guilds though as you could have some players, who get to 70 in 1-2 weeks and some who take 1-2 months. No doubt this itself will hinder some guilds aiming towards end-game content (though less likely among the more "hardcore" guilds).

 

xkmonkey

I personally hated the levelling process, and I don't look forward to it with the expansion. I heard the phrase when I started playing that the game starts at 60, and I do believe that to be true. If I could somehow do raid content almost every hour I played, I think I would. The strange thing is though, that I hate raid pvp, and much prefer small group content for pvp.

 

Poke

I'm not sure the problem with WoW's leveling curve is the speed. Rather, I think that for most classes, the process emphasized skills irrelevant or tangential to their roles in the endgame. Warriors, for example, learn nothing about tanking effectively, whether the mitigation aspect or the threat-building aspect, from grinding. Over the course of probably about 30 runs on my disc/holy priest through Uldaman, ZF, Maraudon, and Sunken Temple, I met maybe three warriors capable of holding aggro on more than one mob at a time, and one of them needed Berserker Stance to do it. Roughly half of the few shamans I ran with knew how to be effective in a group; some dropped all the right totems and were prepared to backup heal if necessary, whereas others blew all their mana dpsing and ignored requests for totems, all the while wasting my own mana by pulling aggro with their Rockbiter-enchanted weapons. The rogues played quite differently as well, frequently moving to off-tank mobs the warrior was ignoring and eagerly sapping in any instance where it was possible but also sadly indifferent to the existence of Feint. In fact, a lackadaisical attitude to overaggroing characterized most members of dps classes I met.

All of those players were probably relatively good at solo grinding and leveling quickly, judging by the effectiveness of their gear for it, but those skills didn't help them play effectively in a group setting. WoW's combination of easy solo leveling and technically simple group content enabled them to coast to 60 without ever really learning their classes properly. Encounters requiring high performance from every member of the group, such as Eranikus in ST, the stairs event in ZF, and especially Archaedas in Uldaman often frustrated my groups for this reason. But I did notice that after we had suffered through the wipes and eventually come out victorious, everyone in the group finished the instance a little better at the game than they had begun.

I would solve this issue not necessarily by slowing down the leveling process but by emphasizing different parts of it. Perhaps the division of the rest system into "grinding rest" and "group rest," the former affecting world mobs and the latter related to those inside instances, would encourage players to spend more of their time inside instances and less killing single mobs over and over. The difficulty of most instanced content could be tweaked as well; the fact that my mostly clueless groups had trouble with only a few bosses is indicative to me that the others did not present enough of a challenge. Finally, I'd add "trials" at the 19, 39, and 59 marks requiring players to complete instanced content solo by utilizing all of their class skills in order to continue to the milestone levels. I'd model them around existing quests like the one priests must complete to obtain Benediction. For example, a warrior trial could require him to preserve threat-generating totems by holding aggro on mobs coming to attack them. To compensate for the increases to difficulty in these areas, playing the game "the right way" would yield superior loot and faster advancement to a greater extent than it does today.

So in summary, WoW does not have an issue with players leveling too fast. It simply enables them to do so in unproductive ways. A change in the way instanced content compares to solo overworld content, including exp modifiers and perhaps buffing instance loot to appear more favorable next to what can just be bought off the AH, would give players a reason to experience content 1-59 more fully and prepare them better for the endgame. But because the problem runs so deep, making the leveling process from 60 to 70 especially long will most likely not solve any problems. If the philosophy evident in the leveling process 1-59 remains, the new dungeons will have to contain loot particularly helpful in the most difficult level 70 raid instances to remain relevant, sort of like how Dire Maul provides several classes with important FR gear for MC and BWL.

 

Oaken

In an interview that came out around E3 a Blizzard rep said something to the effect that "...we expect it to take you twice as long to get from 60 to 70 as it took you to get from 50 to 60." (I looked but couldn't find the source of the quote). So they do expect levelling to take longer but not hugely so.

It is an interesting point you make Saramin about marginalizing your existing gear. I actually want my gear marginalized as I get closer to 70 although I expect it won't happen. It is going to be kind of sad to put on 10 levels and d/e every reward item I receive along the way because I'm in Tier 3 already.

On a related note, are any guilds considering allowing their people to switch mains as part of the expansion? The argument I've heard from some people is that "Grinding to level 70 will provide a lot of equipment rewards that will really help close the gear gap between alts and mains. At that point, it wouldn't set a guild back very far to let well-geared alts permanently replace mains." Interesting although, again, with Tier 3 gear I'm not really sure it would be true. Especially if all the healers decided they wanted to be dps classes :blink:

 

saramin

Have there been any dev comments made with regards to what "BC Tier 1" will be? Or what the highest launch tier will be? It goes without saying that there will be at least one instance at launch with gear of higher mean ilvl than Naxx, but I wonder if it will actually require AQ/Naxx loot to attempt or be more MC-style and doable in ilvl 70 blues. And building on that, if it's the latter how will you keep it from being wholly trivialized by fledgeling guilds giving lvl 70 blue-yielding 5-man instances the finger and instead running BWL with 15-20 people? Main-hopping will likely depend on the answer to this.

My guild is pretty much setting the rule where if you can lvl a new character to 70 before the rest of the old guard has enough men to start raids, you keep him. Mind you, I fear all rational discourse has been usurped by the female Draenei paladin seduction. (I'm terming this the "FDP Phenomena." Progress is being made towards a wikipedia entry.) Something about that class/race combo is making grown men on vent act in ways that would embarass their children.

 

Mist

I'm willing to bet there will be at least 2 40 man instances at the expansion launch, one for people just starting to raid at 70, and then a progression one for the top end guilds.

 

◊ chalon

There better be more than 2 40 man instances at expansion launch :P.

 

Soul

I'm also thinking that the issue with WoW's levelling system is that what you do when you're levelling is entirely different than what you do at the end. I'm not sure whether the solution is to alter the grind so it more accurately reflects end-game play or to alter end-game play such that it reflects what's happened up to that point. For example, as a Frost mage in 5 and 10 man instances, I wasn't overly concerned with overaggroing because I could kite. Liberal use of stuns, gouge, riposte and blind allowed rogues to "offtank." Come MC, most of this went flying out the window... our snares, roots and stuns are for all for naught in most of the end-game now, which kind of obviates the purpose of the Subtlety and Frost trees.

I'm thinking that being able to use various forms of CC adds a lot to the game and am kind of hoping that we don't see another MC-like instance where next to nothing we've seen work in the run-up to it applies any more.

 

BarunN

Back at Blizzcon, after Tom Chilton gave a speech about TBC, I managed to ask him how long will it take to get 60-70. His reply (not word for word) was, "It's going to scale at about the same rate as 1-60."

So my reply was ,"So it will take someone 2-3 weeks to hit 70?"

He said, "Yeah, about that rate. But we want people to experience the content as they level up, and there will be plenty of content to make the experience enjoyable."

 

Bocheezu

This essentially represents the same amount of time in both cases. If it takes you 16 days played to get to 60, the time at each level bracket is approximately like this:

1-20 -- 1 day
20-30 -- 1 day
30-40 -- 2 days
40-50 -- 4 days
50-60 -- 8 days

(16 days total)

If the 60-70 is double the 50-60, you get 16 days, which is the same as 1-60.

 

Rogar

Unless completing level 61-70 content is required to get keyed/attuned to the 40-man instance(s), the people I play with will just grind their way to 70.

 

Shadout

Not a bad idea ^^

 

◊ Praetorian

This is an interesting question. Yes, a while back I'd made a post (I think it was on these boards, actually, not FoH: http://forums.elitistjerks.com/viewtopic.php?id=5174 ) about the leveling pace. My concern wasn't so much that Blizzard wasted their mid-level content, but rather that they screwed themselves when they knew they didn't have the endgame content ready to go. The truly hardcore will always run out of content, and you can't design around them. Someone who has no job, or takes two weeks off from work, and plays 18 hours a day 7 days a week is going to hit max level in no time and run out of stuff to do. Sucks for him, but he's a minority. The problem with WoW's release, however, was that leveling was so fast compared to the rest of the genre that hundreds of thousands of people found themselves in a position that had once been reserved only for the hardcore cutting-edge guilds and players in prior MMOs: having consumed all available content, waiting for more to be released. If BWL and AQ and Battlegrounds and so forth had existed at retail release, then there would've been no problem with the leveling curve, in my opinion. But Blizzard made a mistake when it came to their "core" gamer, who is neither casual nor someone who does nothing but play WoW. The guy who plays an average of 20 hours a week. Maybe a couple of hours every night, and then longer chunks on weekends. He loves the game, and if he has time off from work/school he'll certainly play more in a given week from time to time. I think that description applies to a lot of people. The problem is that this player, in WoW, was 60 within 4 months of release. Dire Maul came out then, which was good, but beyond that there just wasn't much to do. If you raided, there was MC, and BWL came out (was rushed out?) quickly enough, I suppose, that most people weren't bored with MC for too long. But if you didn't raid, there was nothing to do except roll an alt or start raiding. The honor system came out, but we all know about its flaws. My concern, originally, was that Blizzard could've and should've bought itself a bit more time to release new high-end content before most of its players hit that wall. If it took 20ish days /played to hit 60 instead of 14ish, would that have turned WoW into a horrible grindfest? I really don't think so. It's practically impossible to do every quest and instance as things stand -- you outlevel everything so easily. But if Blizzard had done that, they would've had more time to catch up.

Anyway, 61-70. This one is going to be a bit of a nightmare to balance, I think. Is it going to be balanced around a player in largely greens and blues from instances and questing, the way 1-59 is? I think it may have to be, so that a new player leveling from 1-70 has a smooth progression all the way to the end. Alternately, they could tune it all at the same level as they've tuned UBRS, with an expectation that everyone has to stop for a while and gear up in DM/Strat/Scholo/UBRS before they're geared enough to advance. If they don't do that, then how many people will seriously continue to do those old instances more than once for quest exp? But anyway, it has to be balanced around, at most, instance blues. How does a t3 rogue with Kingsfall and Death's Sting fit into that picture? Poorly, I think. t3-geared people (or in the case of priests, paladins, shamans, and druids, AQ-set-geared people) are going to just tear through the new content.

Personally, I'd like 61-70 to take ~16 /played, as suggested above. I'd like it to take a couple of months for the hardcore, and half a year for the more casual, so that the instances in the mid-60s mean something, so that gear and other upgrades aren't something to be discarded two days later in the next instance along the line. But mainly, I'm worried about people just grinding to 70. I have an irrational dislike of that mode of advancement, and can't really understand the people who consciously have avoided questing in a game that was built around it -- when I hear about a guildmate who has never been to RFD or who never did any of the major questlines, my reaction is thinly-veiled contempt. I refuse to do it, and if that means all the DPS classes in my guild are waiting at 70 while I'm doing all the available solo and instance questlines, then so be it. But I'd prefer if Blizzard explicitly disallowed it. I'd suggest something like requiring completion of a "test" every two levels (62/64/66/68/70) before you're allowed to advance to that level. There could be alternative means of attaining each benchmark: a solo questline, an (Elite) instance quest, and a (PvP) quest tied to the new world objectives and new Battleground for those who prefer that style of gameplay. But sitting in a field slaughtering trolls for a day, then moving to a mountainside and slaughtering demons, etc., shouldn't get you to 70 on its own. An advantage of my approach would also be to throw a bit of a wrench in the plans of people who bot-grind characters to max level to use them for farming, to resell, or as part of a pay-for-leveling service.

 

Shadout

Agreed, would be nice to get rid of the xp-grinders :)
Or simply not make it worth it to grind instead of quest/group/instance.

Would also be interesting if the lvl 60-70 progression started out as one long "quest", going to Outland to "solve" the Burning Legion/Illidan problems, with a long quest serie leading you through all the 5 man instances. And then in the end leading you to the 40 man instances at lvl 70. (So raiding attunements through the 5 man instances would fit quite well).
Rather than just, "oh btw, you can go to Outlands now, good luck..."


Anyway, tier 3 players will probalby be able to zerg though all the 5 man instances.
Not much to do about that, guess thats what alts are for :)

The lack of content for end-game in the beginning:
This was much better for EU release, guess blizz should simply have released the game a few months later (if EQ2 release hadnt got in the way).
Only the fastest players got to lvl 60 around the time Dire Maul were released, and then pvp system. So noone really felt they were running out of content the same was the US players did, I think.


Slightly slower leveling would be nice, if it is supported by enough non-grind content to make it worth it.

 

Digo

Personally, I'd enjoy that as well, but I really don't think it meshes with the Blizzard design philosophy. They're not going to pull another Kunark with an awful grind to access new content. My guess is most people (currently in instance blues/few epics) will hit 70 in about 6 weeks. Then they'll try the level 70 5-10 man instances and get annihilated, realizing they have to go backwards and farm the 60-65 instances. The whining will be unprecedented.

I'm somewhat skeptical about the amount of content that will be released with the expansion compared to how long the production time has been. It also makes me wonder if they'll continue with 1.0 model of steadily releasing live content in between expansions, or go with the EQ model and just release a batch of new stuff every year (or two, christ) in a single expansion.

 

◊ Praetorian

But why would it be an "awful grind to access new content" if the grind is the new content? On some level, isn't that what WoW was about, from the beginning? Questing and sometimes getting 5 people together for (Elite) quests and instances? Wasn't the original selling point of WoW, "hey, leveling is fun now? Maybe on some level it's still a grind, but all these quests do a wonderful job of disguising that fact"?

Isn't the puported grind itself the new content? When I say I want it to take 16 /played, I don't mean that people should have to grind mobs for 400 hours. I mean that there should be enough content packed into the new zones that you can spend 16 /played getting from 61 to 70 without ever having to sit down and grind because you're out of quests or instances.

 

Digo

Yeah, you're right. Sorry, I just recall Kunark/Velious days where leveling was agonizingly slow and tedious and had a hard time disassociating that from my expectations of all future MMO expansions. Hopefully this one will destroy that concept.

 

Oaken

Ah, here was one of the articles I had read:

http://www.tentonhammer.com/index.ph...ceid=308&meid=

So I think it is reasonable to assume that Blizzard intends players to take a lot longer to add on 10 levels than it took them earlier. I do agree they could have slowed the initial progression without really hurting the game at all. I have two 60's right now and I managed to level them both with very little zone repetition (except for the instances themselves) although I could not level a third character without repeating myself unless I swapped faction. They could have cut levelling speed in half without forcing people to grind (although it would have significantly curbed any replay value of the game for a lot of players).

Regarding instances, Gurgthock, he goes on to say:

Eight new dungeons, 20-30 wings. That is pretty significant if you compare it to:

The Deadmines (1)
The Wailing Caverns (1)
The Stockade (1)
Shadowfang Keep (1)
Blackfathom Deeps (1)
Gnomeregan (1)
Scarlet Monastery (3)
Uldaman (1)
Razorfen Downs & Kraul (2)
Zul'Farrak (2)
Maraudon (3)
The Temple of Atal'Hakkar (1)
Blackrock Spire & Depths (3)
Scholomance (1)
Stratholme (2)

you are on the same order of magnitude as the first release.

Personally, on the subject of grinding, I'd like to see more keying quests. I know the Onyxia key quest has had mixed reviews but I enjoyed it. It actually gave you - if you were Alliance - a reason to spend time in BRD. Put in long-ass key quests for the 40-man raid instances that require you to do multiple runs in every single one of the 8 dungeons he mentions above. and you don't have to worry about people grinding to 70 without spending time in the new content. This would avoid the need for artificial tests at different levels. Sure it means you could pay-for-level and avoid these but you'd still have to go back and get that experience if you wanted to do much of the end-game content.

 

Oaken

Only partly true.

(a) The whining won't be unprecendented - we've already seen it with the Tier 0.5 quests.

(b) Do you really think they'll realize they need to go backwards and farm the 60-65 instances? I honestly expect they will spend most of their time asking to have the new level 70 content nerfed instead. The whole idea that you need the right gear for some instances just seems like a very foreign concept for a lot of players. Because, as somebody pointed out earlier in this thread, it isn't something you learn levelling from 1-60. If I go to Scarlet Monastary at one level with my crappy green gear and get owned, what a lot of people do is blame the other 4 members of their group and try to go back again with a higher level party. The problem being, of course, at level 70 there is no higher level party to go with.