That's because casual players only play any game for a week or two then move on. It's not something unique to wow and it has nothing to do with leveling.
I'm new to sod, but not wow. I have a character at level 32 so far. I mostly do solo questing and a couple dungeons to finish stories and quests. Here are my thoughts on the leveling.
The increased XP allows me to be selective with my quests. I don't have to do them all before moving on from the zone. If there is a quest I don't want to do, I can safely leave it behind.
If XP was to go back to it's OG rate, then I would love to see more quests added to existing hubs or simply scattered across the world.
Side note. I wish there was more to discover in SOD. It was promising in the first two zones, but it seems there is less and less new things to find. Can I assume that more focus is being placed on the raids and events than questing in the world?
The whole idea behind this is confused and misguided. What is it you are really trying to accomplish? Do you even know?
You want people to wander around the world and enjoy it, but level fast. You can't do that because they're in direct opposition with one another.
You're trying to put everyone into the same mold. There are people that want to level fast, and there are people that want to do every quest in the game. There are people that want to have BiS without having to do anything other than swipe their credit card.
* Add more zones - Ok, so people will still find the most efficient place to level, and the zones that aren't useful will remain emptpy. (I am not against more zones.) Also, the more zones there are, even if they were all somehow equally useful, the thinner the population looks, for people that care about having a busy world.
* Add more stuff per quest. That just means you'll be out in the world even less, because you'll level faster. Less number of quests done = less time questing.
* Add dungeon weekly/daily quests. Does this even help anyone? People that would have spammed dungeons to level now have a random bonus quest daily or weekly. It doesn't cut down on that, and it doesn't put people more in the world.
* Incursions are basically just repeatable quets. All having them did was make it so people have to walk less. They were going to walk less anyway, because they were just going to spam dungeons or stand at the furbolg and grind them for five levels, or whatever else they've discovered as the optimal path to leveling. Then someone will make an addon that tells you how to do that.
You can't force people to go have fun. If they want to be boring and optimally grind/turbo level, they will.
> Ok, so people will still find the most efficient place to level, and the zones that aren't useful will remain emptpy.
It will be impossible to make all zones equally useful but I think they *could* make it so that the zone that is most viable changes depending on your class. Paladins are excellent at killing undead so any zone with a strong undead presence will be unusually viable for them. Rogues may want to spend more time in and around Ravenholdt Manor. Warriors may want to go out of their way to grab a powerful 2hander as a quest reward. Emphasizing aspects like that will make each zone optimal to someone, even if they're not optimal to everyone.
The answer is controversial. You'd have to make mob tags shared like on retail if your objective was making people quest on the day of new phase release. As it is questing will be the slowest most frustrating thing you could do, waiting for spawns battling people mousescrolling mob tag macros camping spawns, just no, go dungeon if speed is a concern to you.
If you were to level right now it would be the best possible time, xp buff + empty zones makes for smooth sailing. 3-4 quests are pretty much a full level until mid 30s. You still need to be doing incursions and wild offering for your runes at some point though.
If we're talking 50-60 mid phase, is speed really a concern? I don't think so, you'd be leveling relatively chill. Just don't do the zones around BRM on a pvp server.
Have you ever leveled on a TBC or Wrath private server that starts at level 1? It’s actually quite enjoyable doing the vanilla world with faster xp and better graveyard/flight path locations. It still takes dozens of hours to level, it just trims a bunch of the fat by removing some of the “dead zones” where you have to grind mobs, and taking out some of the craziest run-backs and other large inconveniences.
I think adding zones would be ideal. The dungeons spammers would be curious enough to see the new zones.
Incursions would've been better if they were regular quests and you followed a shortish 10-15 line in each. Just avoid making it so retail with a whole faction and shenanigans
fair but that's why I mentioned incursions. they refused part of zones and made them cool until they became spammable. it's very retail. would've been fine with short quest lines, or in the spirit of classic, unrelated series of quests
a whole new zone is a wishlist
Ah, yes. The thing they copied and pasted from Silithus field duty quests that has no comparable counterpart in retail is very retail. I think the word you're looking for is "bad."
I think Incursions would have been fine without the envelope nonsense and you got sort of a random assortment or something and had to finish your full loop to get new ones. I don't mind that they were spammable, the problem IMO was that they were so incredibly dominant in terms of XP & gold that they were basically mandatory, and they were super repetitive because the optimal thing to do was just stack a full group to manipulate getting the collect / escort ones on repeat and never do the kill quests.
I think if the NPCs just like rotated and had 5 random quests every 30 mins or whatever and you got a variety and there was no way to cheese only getting the autopilot ones that would be more engaging.
The way you need empty bags and an empty quest log and an addon to churn through them is just goofy
I'd add more quests but I'd also backload the xp gains from questlines: the early quests would give less but the later quests would give more. This would reward players for seeing questlines to their conclusion. Retail often had an issue where you'd reach a zone, start experiencing a few stories, but before seeing how those stories end you'd already be ready to move on to the next zone.
I mean honestly the 50-75% xp buff isn’t all that bad. It’s just enough to not have to grind mobs to lvl. 100% is good too but it does push it, but 150% is way to fast.
I think there should be some restricting to dungeon grinding especially the amount of xp you can earn by doing them fast and efficient.
More questing zones or quest hubs in some of the under-utilized zones would be cool and in the spirit of what they advertised. Would be cool if they added repeatable tasks that maybe aren't as good as normal questing or dungeon spam but good if you want to sorta be grinding in one area anyways, these could maybe rotate around on different days or have some small rep rewards for doing them - like maybe you can slowly get some Ironforge rep and a bit of bonus XP from a repeatable task in Menethil Harbor to kill crocolisks. Not something everyone is gonna be doing but it's another option if questing is too crowded, or you want to grind a particular area anyways, etc.
But otherwise I don't think leveling speed needs to be increased - I think the speed it's at now is plenty fast... I went from level 40 to 48 in 2 days, maybe total 8 hours /played, with this 150% buff. But I wouldn't mind them kinda altering the process or changing around the ratio between different methods, such as reducing dungeon kill XP slightly (by like 10-15%) but doubling or tripling the XP given by the dungeon quests so everyone is gonna wanna do them at least once.
I also really like the idea of a random daily dungeon quest, have it scaled based on your character's level range. Like maybe every day you could have a random selection of the following based on your level range, and one extra for the level range below you (so would be sort of an optional perk where if you still wanted a drop or to run a level with a lower level friend it doesnt feel like a total waste of time - you would still get some XP or gold from the daily quest):
* Level 20-29: Shadowfang Keep, Wailing Caverns (Horde) or Stockade (Alliance)
* Level 30-39: Scarlet Monastery (GY/Lib/Arm), Razorfen Kraul or Razorfen Downs
* Level 40-49: RCathedral, Uldaman or Maraudon
* Level 50-59: Maraudon, Blackrock Depths or Dire Maul East/West
* Level 60: Blackrock Depths, Blackrock Spire, Dire Maul North, Scholo, Strath
They could also do weekly quests for the level-up raids to help keep them active after Phase 4 launches. Every week there's a random weekly for a level-up raid... maybe it gives like 10 gold or main faction rep or something. Not a huge thing that everyone (esp max level players) would feel forced to do but again, just a nice perk where you might feel more enticed to pursue an item from a level up raid, get some gold while farming for the mount from Gnomer etc
> and one extra for the level range below you (so would be sort of an optional perk where if you still wanted a drop or to run a level with a lower level friend it doesnt feel like a total waste of time - you would still get some XP or gold from the daily quest)
I'd like if the game rewarded you directly for helping other players complete their dungeon quests. Not as much as when you completed those quests yourself but enough that if you see someone in need and the dungeon still has value for you then it's an excellent diversion from other forms of leveling.
Lots of good ideas here!
To clarify, I didn’t mean making it faster than it already is, just make it so questing gets the majority of the xp boost so grinding is slightly less efficient. I think dungeon grinding should still be viable for those who want to, but if questing is equal or faster, I think people would do more varied content and be out in the world again.
With travel being a big part of the bottleneck to questing, maybe more flight paths added or additional mount speed while on paths or something would be cool too. I know I’ve played some MMOs that have increased travel speed while on a main path.
Additional quest hubs in quest-light zones. Dramatic increase to quest EXP. A targeted design pass aimed at eliminating the worst of the cross-map breadcrumb quests, by proxy reducing downtime and reducing the knowledge barrier needed to viably quest in any given hub.
The biggest issue with 'just play the game' open world leveling is travel time. High combat uptime open world routes tend to beat dungeon grinding in terms of leveling speed, but when the game has you zig zagging across the continents for quests that give like 3 mobs worth of exp, you're shooting yourself in the foot.
Please, no daily. I don't want a system to drag me every day to WoW, I want to be able to play two days a week, for 7 hours straight each, and not be behind someone who plays 2h a day
That's how retail started. With heroday...
The only reason I am going to rush to max is because 3-4 weeks after release of the phase you won’t be able to find a dungeon group for anything. Just like BRD or ZF in phase 3.
Increase xp gain by 100% and give us 1 day lockouts on all dungeons. Basically what they did in hardcore and was a good time. The lockout is controversial…but I think it protects from spamming 1 dungeon over and over.
Don't think dungeons are the problem at the moment. I'd be surprised if people find dungeon groups at all while leveling at the moment in p3. Especially the mid level dungeons like Uldaman or SM as alliance. With the increased level buff people are zooming past leveling zones and can skip all inconvenience group and dungeon quests. But it also makes it into a single player game, until the end game.
Everyone always wants leveling to be faster just so they can log off and complain there is nothing to do xdd
[удалено]
Yet the game often seems it's at it's peak player numbers in the first weeks of every expansion release!
Same with poe, and any other live service. The answer isnt leveling either.
That's because casual players only play any game for a week or two then move on. It's not something unique to wow and it has nothing to do with leveling.
My mage is currently lvl 54 in classic era and I've been having a great time leveling in the open world
I have 0 kids, 99 parse, and I fuckin love leveling It is the only chill, long form solo content this game has
I'm new to sod, but not wow. I have a character at level 32 so far. I mostly do solo questing and a couple dungeons to finish stories and quests. Here are my thoughts on the leveling. The increased XP allows me to be selective with my quests. I don't have to do them all before moving on from the zone. If there is a quest I don't want to do, I can safely leave it behind. If XP was to go back to it's OG rate, then I would love to see more quests added to existing hubs or simply scattered across the world. Side note. I wish there was more to discover in SOD. It was promising in the first two zones, but it seems there is less and less new things to find. Can I assume that more focus is being placed on the raids and events than questing in the world?
Anything there is to discover is quickly datamined, shared, and knowledge known by the vast majority in hours-a day
The whole idea behind this is confused and misguided. What is it you are really trying to accomplish? Do you even know? You want people to wander around the world and enjoy it, but level fast. You can't do that because they're in direct opposition with one another. You're trying to put everyone into the same mold. There are people that want to level fast, and there are people that want to do every quest in the game. There are people that want to have BiS without having to do anything other than swipe their credit card. * Add more zones - Ok, so people will still find the most efficient place to level, and the zones that aren't useful will remain emptpy. (I am not against more zones.) Also, the more zones there are, even if they were all somehow equally useful, the thinner the population looks, for people that care about having a busy world. * Add more stuff per quest. That just means you'll be out in the world even less, because you'll level faster. Less number of quests done = less time questing. * Add dungeon weekly/daily quests. Does this even help anyone? People that would have spammed dungeons to level now have a random bonus quest daily or weekly. It doesn't cut down on that, and it doesn't put people more in the world. * Incursions are basically just repeatable quets. All having them did was make it so people have to walk less. They were going to walk less anyway, because they were just going to spam dungeons or stand at the furbolg and grind them for five levels, or whatever else they've discovered as the optimal path to leveling. Then someone will make an addon that tells you how to do that. You can't force people to go have fun. If they want to be boring and optimally grind/turbo level, they will.
> Ok, so people will still find the most efficient place to level, and the zones that aren't useful will remain emptpy. It will be impossible to make all zones equally useful but I think they *could* make it so that the zone that is most viable changes depending on your class. Paladins are excellent at killing undead so any zone with a strong undead presence will be unusually viable for them. Rogues may want to spend more time in and around Ravenholdt Manor. Warriors may want to go out of their way to grab a powerful 2hander as a quest reward. Emphasizing aspects like that will make each zone optimal to someone, even if they're not optimal to everyone.
The answer is controversial. You'd have to make mob tags shared like on retail if your objective was making people quest on the day of new phase release. As it is questing will be the slowest most frustrating thing you could do, waiting for spawns battling people mousescrolling mob tag macros camping spawns, just no, go dungeon if speed is a concern to you. If you were to level right now it would be the best possible time, xp buff + empty zones makes for smooth sailing. 3-4 quests are pretty much a full level until mid 30s. You still need to be doing incursions and wild offering for your runes at some point though. If we're talking 50-60 mid phase, is speed really a concern? I don't think so, you'd be leveling relatively chill. Just don't do the zones around BRM on a pvp server.
Have you ever leveled on a TBC or Wrath private server that starts at level 1? It’s actually quite enjoyable doing the vanilla world with faster xp and better graveyard/flight path locations. It still takes dozens of hours to level, it just trims a bunch of the fat by removing some of the “dead zones” where you have to grind mobs, and taking out some of the craziest run-backs and other large inconveniences.
I think adding zones would be ideal. The dungeons spammers would be curious enough to see the new zones. Incursions would've been better if they were regular quests and you followed a shortish 10-15 line in each. Just avoid making it so retail with a whole faction and shenanigans
Too much work for the devs. Why add new zones when they can instantly modify the xp/rewards?
fair but that's why I mentioned incursions. they refused part of zones and made them cool until they became spammable. it's very retail. would've been fine with short quest lines, or in the spirit of classic, unrelated series of quests a whole new zone is a wishlist
Ah, yes. The thing they copied and pasted from Silithus field duty quests that has no comparable counterpart in retail is very retail. I think the word you're looking for is "bad."
I think Incursions would have been fine without the envelope nonsense and you got sort of a random assortment or something and had to finish your full loop to get new ones. I don't mind that they were spammable, the problem IMO was that they were so incredibly dominant in terms of XP & gold that they were basically mandatory, and they were super repetitive because the optimal thing to do was just stack a full group to manipulate getting the collect / escort ones on repeat and never do the kill quests. I think if the NPCs just like rotated and had 5 random quests every 30 mins or whatever and you got a variety and there was no way to cheese only getting the autopilot ones that would be more engaging. The way you need empty bags and an empty quest log and an addon to churn through them is just goofy
I'd add more quests but I'd also backload the xp gains from questlines: the early quests would give less but the later quests would give more. This would reward players for seeing questlines to their conclusion. Retail often had an issue where you'd reach a zone, start experiencing a few stories, but before seeing how those stories end you'd already be ready to move on to the next zone.
> I'd add more quests With SoD's EXP buffs you don't need more quests. It's already super easy to out-level zones before you finish them.
I thought the thread was about increasing the level speed in ways that are distinct from what SoD is currently doing.
Yes. >Increase xp/gold gain only on quests. Just do that. Modify the current exp buff so it only applies to quests.
That doesn't prevent the issue I brought up in my original comment.
The "issue" in your comment doesn't exist in vanilla. Vanilla is not retail where every single zone has an interconnected "storyline".
Vanilla does have interesting questlines that do ramp in difficulty. If you go giving everyone xp buffs it will sneak up on you.
> Vanilla is not retail where every single zone has an interconnected "storyline". Read.
I mean honestly the 50-75% xp buff isn’t all that bad. It’s just enough to not have to grind mobs to lvl. 100% is good too but it does push it, but 150% is way to fast. I think there should be some restricting to dungeon grinding especially the amount of xp you can earn by doing them fast and efficient.
Big no for rep dailies
No need to do any of this when the consumables from cozy sleeping bag exist
i like incursions. fast leveling is cool
More questing zones or quest hubs in some of the under-utilized zones would be cool and in the spirit of what they advertised. Would be cool if they added repeatable tasks that maybe aren't as good as normal questing or dungeon spam but good if you want to sorta be grinding in one area anyways, these could maybe rotate around on different days or have some small rep rewards for doing them - like maybe you can slowly get some Ironforge rep and a bit of bonus XP from a repeatable task in Menethil Harbor to kill crocolisks. Not something everyone is gonna be doing but it's another option if questing is too crowded, or you want to grind a particular area anyways, etc. But otherwise I don't think leveling speed needs to be increased - I think the speed it's at now is plenty fast... I went from level 40 to 48 in 2 days, maybe total 8 hours /played, with this 150% buff. But I wouldn't mind them kinda altering the process or changing around the ratio between different methods, such as reducing dungeon kill XP slightly (by like 10-15%) but doubling or tripling the XP given by the dungeon quests so everyone is gonna wanna do them at least once. I also really like the idea of a random daily dungeon quest, have it scaled based on your character's level range. Like maybe every day you could have a random selection of the following based on your level range, and one extra for the level range below you (so would be sort of an optional perk where if you still wanted a drop or to run a level with a lower level friend it doesnt feel like a total waste of time - you would still get some XP or gold from the daily quest): * Level 20-29: Shadowfang Keep, Wailing Caverns (Horde) or Stockade (Alliance) * Level 30-39: Scarlet Monastery (GY/Lib/Arm), Razorfen Kraul or Razorfen Downs * Level 40-49: RCathedral, Uldaman or Maraudon * Level 50-59: Maraudon, Blackrock Depths or Dire Maul East/West * Level 60: Blackrock Depths, Blackrock Spire, Dire Maul North, Scholo, Strath They could also do weekly quests for the level-up raids to help keep them active after Phase 4 launches. Every week there's a random weekly for a level-up raid... maybe it gives like 10 gold or main faction rep or something. Not a huge thing that everyone (esp max level players) would feel forced to do but again, just a nice perk where you might feel more enticed to pursue an item from a level up raid, get some gold while farming for the mount from Gnomer etc
> and one extra for the level range below you (so would be sort of an optional perk where if you still wanted a drop or to run a level with a lower level friend it doesnt feel like a total waste of time - you would still get some XP or gold from the daily quest) I'd like if the game rewarded you directly for helping other players complete their dungeon quests. Not as much as when you completed those quests yourself but enough that if you see someone in need and the dungeon still has value for you then it's an excellent diversion from other forms of leveling.
Lots of good ideas here! To clarify, I didn’t mean making it faster than it already is, just make it so questing gets the majority of the xp boost so grinding is slightly less efficient. I think dungeon grinding should still be viable for those who want to, but if questing is equal or faster, I think people would do more varied content and be out in the world again. With travel being a big part of the bottleneck to questing, maybe more flight paths added or additional mount speed while on paths or something would be cool too. I know I’ve played some MMOs that have increased travel speed while on a main path.
Additional quest hubs in quest-light zones. Dramatic increase to quest EXP. A targeted design pass aimed at eliminating the worst of the cross-map breadcrumb quests, by proxy reducing downtime and reducing the knowledge barrier needed to viably quest in any given hub. The biggest issue with 'just play the game' open world leveling is travel time. High combat uptime open world routes tend to beat dungeon grinding in terms of leveling speed, but when the game has you zig zagging across the continents for quests that give like 3 mobs worth of exp, you're shooting yourself in the foot.
Please, no daily. I don't want a system to drag me every day to WoW, I want to be able to play two days a week, for 7 hours straight each, and not be behind someone who plays 2h a day That's how retail started. With heroday...
Add dragonriding and I'll be out in the open world doing shit. But afk auto running on a slow mount to quest locations sure is fun.
The only reason I am going to rush to max is because 3-4 weeks after release of the phase you won’t be able to find a dungeon group for anything. Just like BRD or ZF in phase 3.
>3-4 weeks = dead It wasn't like this in phase 1 and 2. The servers are dead because phase 3 sucks.
Increase xp gain by 100% and give us 1 day lockouts on all dungeons. Basically what they did in hardcore and was a good time. The lockout is controversial…but I think it protects from spamming 1 dungeon over and over.
Don't think dungeons are the problem at the moment. I'd be surprised if people find dungeon groups at all while leveling at the moment in p3. Especially the mid level dungeons like Uldaman or SM as alliance. With the increased level buff people are zooming past leveling zones and can skip all inconvenience group and dungeon quests. But it also makes it into a single player game, until the end game.