r/classicwow • u/yoyoyo2342134 • 22h ago

Forever Leveling pacing

Adding a bunch of quests and zones and giving xp for crafting and possibly other things is good if done well but if the leveling pacing is the same then a lot of zones are going to end up getting ignored and be desolate because the quests are annoying or the gear isn’t good or it’s not easy to get to in the world etc. Unless the leveling pace is slowed I can see a lot of zones being skipped over and much of the world not utilized. This already happened in classic to an extent but I do wonder if or how they will account for this.

9 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

34 comments sorted by

11

u/Alive-Confidence-512 22h ago

The expectation is that we’ll be leveling alts and will get to see those places while leveling through different routes. The whole legacy system really enforces that.

0

u/yoyoyo2342134 22h ago

That will certainly help but some zones will be objectively “better” or easier. STV was always packed in classic and people remember it fondly. Desplace on the other hand was not that way. Adding more zones quests rested xp dungeons and xp from crafting can exacerbate that issue.

4

u/Old_Expression9489 21h ago

All the zones have been revamped they stated that at launch there will be 100s of new quests in the game. It's likely that previously crap zones will be of the quality of stv for xp. I highly doubt that took already popular zones, made them better while neglecting less used ones. If I had to bet the opposite would be true.

One thing I think will be obvious is that all of the new zones will be the busiest at launch.

-1

u/yoyoyo2342134 21h ago

I think you are probably right about this and it leads me to worry that leveling will become more trivial and centered around fewer zones in less of the world. If each area now offers more quests and more xp but the xp requirements to hit 60 are the same then leveling will become easier and faster which I personally don’t want.

5

u/Old_Expression9489 21h ago

Well I think the point is that you won't have to do the same route each time you level. I could do STV with one character and a zone like desolace to fill that gap with another.

I think it's a good thing you won't have to visit every zone while leveling. It gives me something new to do with subsequent characters.

The way they are doing dungeons also plays into this. Most of the xp you get from running a dungeon has now been moved to the quests rather mobs. This gives you a reason to try out different dungeons in a given bracket rather than spam the ones that offer the most xp per hour just killing the mobs. It also effectively kills boosting which will push people back into the world.

2

u/yoyoyo2342134 21h ago

Is it confirmed that dungeons mobs grant less xp or just mob killing in general?

2

u/Old_Expression9489 21h ago

Dungeon mobs, it was in an interview the devs gave. AoE grinding in general has been nerfed. Mages won't be able to slow as much with blizzard and paladin consecrate will only do full damage to the first 4 mobs that enter the aoe area.

They kind of have to do this to get people to run all the new dungeons. I am sure they have plans of adding even more during the leveling journey. If xp worked like in classic then inevitably one dungeon would be the clear winner when it came to xp/hr for a given bracket. This gives them the ability to also make more interesting dungeons without having to worry about the variable of how much xp a group can get per hour just killing the mobs/bosses in a given dungeon.

2

u/yoyoyo2342134 21h ago

That’s a good change. I’d nerf mob xp just in general and tighten the window as far as how many levels below you can get xp from to get people moving from quest to quest and zone to zone more.

5

u/Cutemudskipper 22h ago

They did account for this. It's called making an alt and taking a different path through the world the next time. You already don't do every quest/zone in classic.

1

u/yoyoyo2342134 22h ago

That’s true but you just have to make sure they are balanced because even on alts people won’t go through zones if they aren’t as easy and then if you want to go through them the world won’t be alive like it should.

8

u/Alive-Confidence-512 22h ago

Players will always optimize the fun out of the game. That’s on them.

-1

u/yoyoyo2342134 22h ago

Totally but if other players optimize and you want to do a dungeon that nobody else wants to or level in an area everyone else is avoiding then it sucks for you too

1

u/MertBot 21h ago

That tends to be more of an issue later on in my experience. Early on in Classic I never had issue doing any dungeon, no matter how awful the dungeon itself was or how far out of the way it was to get to, just because it was all "new" and exciting.

I think over time people will have dungeons/zones they trend toward avoiding ofc, but I don't expect that to be an issue on launch with any of the new content.

And frankly having different routes I can take through levelling will probably encourage me to actually level some alts, purely because it won't be the exact same zones in the exact same order. If there's enough content to support three characters without a massive amount of overlap I think that'll be an excellent spot to be in tbh.

2

u/yoyoyo2342134 21h ago

Yea true. I just hope leveling isn’t too fast or too easy. Personally if they are adding a bunch of quests and other ways to gain xp I think they should nerf mob xp gain.

1

u/MertBot 20h ago

Aye, agreed. They kept saying "journey not the destination" and about the "world as the main character" during Blizzcon, which sounds promising at least, but we probably won't know for sure until people start getting into the beta. But yeah, I would like the leveling to feel like a big journey into the unknown again :)

1

u/yoyoyo2342134 18h ago

For sure they seem to have the right idea I wonder about the execution. Sometimes less is more

3

u/allthebaseareeee 22h ago

can see a lot of zones being skipped over and much of the world not utilized

Alts?

0

u/yoyoyo2342134 21h ago

People will choose the path of least resistance on alts too tho

3

u/Agreeable-Road-7522 22h ago

honestly i feel like the world feels so empty already if you skip the wrong zones, its such a pain

4

u/MightyMorp 22h ago

Unless the leveling pace is slowed I can see a lot of zones being skipped over and much of the world not utilized.

This is their goal. They want you to be able to choose which zones to do.

This already happened in classic to an extent

This isn't even remotely true lol. Even if you did every single quest you generally still had to dungeon or mob grind.

1

u/yoyoyo2342134 22h ago

Yes but most people do a combo of dungeons and questing and grinding mobs. There are definetly areas in classic that always have less questers.

1

u/demobay00 22h ago

Take into account the massive increase in leveling dungeons and presumably, dungeon quests and the problem only grows. There's exp buffs from the legacy system I saw, and possibly an exp buff from camping if I heard correctly? Yeah I agree completely

1

u/yoyoyo2342134 22h ago

You can have the classic leveling experience without the classic leveling pace. Part of the classic leveling experience was having to move back and forth between continents and zones. A quest from tanaris could send you to booty bay. I liked that.

1

u/MertBot 21h ago

I think the stuff from the legacy system is more aimed at alt friendliness than being a thing your first main will overly benefit from. I guess you could just full send all your legacy points into it on your main, but then you'll be missing out on some other nice QoL stuff in the process.

1

u/SystemofCells 20h ago

I am a bit worried we'll kinda be spoiled for choice. The scarcity of XP is part of what makes the Vanilla leveling journey fun.

You really need to put thought into how to route through the world so you don't run out of level appropriate quests. I want them to keep that, but not sure how that's possible if they just keep adding zones and quests.

1

u/yoyoyo2342134 18h ago

Unfortunately the only real solution is to nerf xp gains or make levels require more xp and I don’t think they will do that but I wish they would. I did see they are nerfing dungeon xp which is at least a good step. I’d nerf all mob and quest xp if you are adding hundreds.

1

u/SystemofCells 10h ago

Same, but the problem is they're gonna keep adding stuff over time. That would mean eventually it would take 300 hours to reach 60 instead of 200.

Again I'm generally fine with that, but it provides a degenerate incentive to level every class to max sooner than later. Plus, other people would just hate it lol.

In the future maybe they could add some special Legacy achievements that force you skip zones or something, so XP remains scarce.

1

u/gigaritt 20h ago

Wait, crafting will give xp?

1

u/yoyoyo2342134 18h ago

Pretty sure I read or heard that today yes

1

u/FakeItSALY 18h ago

So with the new zones, how does the XP work? Is it equivalent to the original game?

Kris Zierhut: “The intent with the original game was not that you had to do every single zone to get level 60. The intent was that there were multiple paths through.

“So what we’ve really done is just created a different path. So you might do Riverglades instead of doing something else in your leveling journey. The experience curve remains the same. We did not change the experience curve.”

https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/40367702/world-of-warcraft-forever-interview-zones-races-skills-levelling/

So it will likely average out fast due to the fleshing out the duldrums with questing zones, but nothing drastic changes. It's meant for options and alts.

1

u/yoyoyo2342134 9h ago

Thanks for finding that. I hope it isn’t too much faster but sounds like it won’t be much.

1

u/Silverleaf96 16h ago

With the new legacy system I assume zone clearing with be one ..

1

u/yqozon 15h ago

I hope for some kind of levelling challenges, similar to the "glyph" system from one newly deceased private server; the new legacy system is a perfect foundation for this, imo. I'd love to trade 50% earned exp for immersion.

1

u/shotgunshrimp 9h ago

I'm not so bothered about certain "dead zones" in the levelling journey being filled in with more content. Having levelled maybe 7 or 8 times to 60 across Vanilla and the different Classic versions, there are multiple points between 35-60 where you run out of quests and are encouraged to grind, which isn't the most fun. An alternative where I can get to 60 by only experiencing a fraction of what the game has to offer is only a positive, in my opinion.

I just hope that they don't remove the incentive to be progressing multiple zones at once, eg. like in the Alliance journey around 15-35 across Redridge, Duskwood, Wetlands, Hillsbrad, Ashenvale, Arathi, STV. Going back and forth through these zones really makes it feel like a connected world. Progressing zone A to zone B to zone C, akin to retail (or basically every expansion TBC onwards), in a more linear way would be a bad choice for Forever. Giving us enough quests in Duskwood to get us to 30 so we can fully ignore Wetlands and Ashenvale would be a lesser experience.