I’m not gonna waste much time writing about this. I just wish it was possible to talk to someone who can produce actual changes, rather than at a wall. But it’s the old story, the same story that was already in place when I first opened this site, somewhere between 2004-2006.
But you don’t need to listen or believe me, there are youtubers now filling that role:
(and if you see your ad-blocker blocking something here, it’s now because of this embed)
Despite I’ve given close to zero attention to WoW since Cataclysm, I’ve written on this blog several times across so many years, how completely broken the WoW leveling experience has been.
See here my post written in 2016, laughing at how only then Blizzard “acknowledged” they had a problem. It was 10 years ago:
https://cesspit.net/drupal/node/2356/
Quote from Blizzard 2016:
we made levelling through the prior expansions a bit faster, and a bit faster, and a bit faster, because we didn’t want levelling to be such a barrier to entry.”
you shouldn’t be out-levelling zones before you’ve finished their story. You shouldn’t be doing one dungeon and finding that the zone you’re in is no longer relevant to you at all.”
the levelling-up experience through older zones at lower levels is “pretty broken right now. It’s not really very well tuned.”
But as the Warcraft development team focused on the live game of World of Warcraft, it definitely has shone a light on some deficiencies and areas where the game has been lacking recently, and that’s something we want to do something about.”
“Recently,” in 2016, was already a fucking joke. The leveling was completely broken at Cataclysm release, that was in 2010. So SIX YEARS before they finally acknowledged WoW “has a problem”, and now SIXTEEN FUCKING YEARS with the problem STILL THERE, MADE EVEN WORSE.
(You know what other big game completely fucked the new player experience, for several years? Destiny 2. Very similar causes. Shitty leadership on top of everything else.)
Cataclysm was one of the most HYPED expansion ever, and likely the biggest FAILURE of WoW. But the hype wasn’t misplaced. The world overhaul WAS GOOD. It was the pacing that was all broken, and all the stories, the area design, the quests… were all built around a different pacing. Only for some fucking IDIOT at Blizzard who must have decided to change something last minute, and break the whole thing. That still plagues the game to this day (and that, again, was literally admitted by Blizzard in that interview I quoted, in 2016). Fast, fast, faster, frictionless. Meaningless. Pointless. Forgettable.
Blizzard has forced players into a bunch of different “Classic” servers, shattering the community and the active playerbase, now with countless characters abandoned inside dead servers. To the point that UNOFFICIAL severs got extremely popular. Not because they are simply “free”, but because some of them do more competently the job you expect Blizzard to do.
Yet all those “Classic” servers were popular at some point, and continue to be. But more and more they become false promises, that push the whole “concept” of an ongoing server feeling more like the “seasons” in Path of Exile or Diablo: you just take for granted now that you’ll play a character for a few weeks, and then abandon it. You expect it to have a short expiration date, and just accept the deal for what it is.
But again, the classic content isn’t better, and it’s also false that it’s driven by nostalgia. It’s the pacing and balance that make the leveling experience FEEL RIGHT. That require at least some effort and that feels like a journey. Characters die if you don’t pay attention, the world has some good friction. It makes you actually soak some of that world and its stories, and buys your loyalty to it.
Since then I occasionally commented about this. It’s not worth mentioning, it’s always the same stuff.
The video above, from a competent “player”, shows plenty of evidence about how the game is still completely broken, for its BASE feature. And that’s not the first video he made about this. It’s even praiseworthy because usually veteran players who stick to the game to this day only care about raids, loot and builds. They don’t give a shit about new players experience and new characters. They just rush to level cap and farm gear and rare mounts.
Once again, all of this is so utterly stupid because it’s EASY to fix.
Those two groups of players are not reconcilable. Some players, indeed, want the leveling experience as fast as possible. They want to be able to level alts quickly, effortlessly because their own focus is elsewhere, and taking more time to level and complete a zone would be a giant chore. On the other hand there’s a “hidden iceberg” of potential players who would love to take their time through the whole of WoW. To “restore” that lost content, not though YET ANOTHER Classic-like server, but with something paced correctly. Where the content is not squeezed down, at every new expansion release.
(Classic does target this goal. As you started with the first release, and expansions were progressively added. But it implies YOU keeping some sort of pace with the content Blizzard releases. There is no reason why this feature cannot be made permanent, available at all times, where you can play at ease at YOUR pace. That you can pause and then resume whenever you feel like… see below)
So, if these two groups and goals are BOTH legitimate, yet not reconcilable, how do you solve this contradiction?
Again, old ideas. No, no need for entirely separate servers. This is mostly math, not actual content redesign. The content is there, it is good, and it does work. What you need is STRUCTURE and balance. You already have “phasing” technology for the areas. What you can do is give players the option to “flag” a special new character for a special, new game mode called “The Long Journey”, or something like that. At any time you can quit this mode and convert the character back to normal, and of course you can’t go back to that special mode after you quit it.
Since this is strictly about leveling pace and balance, against a game world, it doesn’t need some special server like “hardcore”. All characters can easily coexist, you would just put them into different “phases” of the zones, as it happens ALREADY due to timewalking and all that broken crap.
Emphasize then this new mode with some lightweight perks. Give it one special mount, maybe. A title. Or make these special characters have a unique color for their name. Just something to tell them apart and that encourages players to at least try this new mode. Make a new character to have a feel of how it plays.
You can also break it down into three base modes, or more if you cared:
1- the current “retail” experience. I’m not up to date, but it’s basically the newbie island to level 10, then fast-track to expansion level, and then the latest expansion content. In some 20 hours to get there. Nothing changes here, players who want to speedrun the game would still be able to do so.
2- “The Long Path”. Some sort of hybrid. You go to the noob island, exactly as above, then when you’re spitted out at level 10, you pick one of the many WoW expansions, and you get a journey to the start of the newest expansion at a slower, relaxed pace, a lot slower than current retail, paced just so you COMPLETE that whole expansion content, and its zones. Paced exactly so it takes a SIMILAR time to when that expansion was brand new. Not 10 hours, for sure, but also not 500. Just enough you can soak a whole expansion content and all its specific zones, with the right pacing as that expansion was built and balanced around at the time when it was designed originally.
3- “The Longest Journey”. The “crazy” mode. Just let players have it. Don’t judge, don’t argue. If the option feels foolish, just avoid it. This mode would be balanced and built so that you go through ALL the (retail) game. Through ALL the expansions. Linearly as they were added to the game. Linearly AS IF you made a character on day 1 of release, and were there from 2004 to 2026. In a way that is PERMANENTLY AVAILABLE. At any point, so you can start at any time, and HAVE IT. No, you don’t need classic servers, you don’t need the old world, because Cataclysm CONTENT was good. The pacing sucked. You just need to retool the balance, the XP curves, the formulas (and monster balance, still all numbers). You start with the base game and level up from 1 to 60 as it was in Cataclysm BUT with level curve of Classic, then level from 60 to 70, with the level curve and balance of the Burning Crusade… and so on, you go, linearly, through all the expansions, retaining the pace they had when they were designed in their prime. ALL THE WAY to the newest expansion, and RETAINING the leveling numbers. Only then, or whenever you decide to convert your “special” character back to normal, you “squeeze” whatever level achieved to an approximation of where the character would be in retail. And you enter retail, proper. At any time, whenever you feel like. If you exit early, then you just get your normal character. If instead you COMPLETE the whole journey, you get an achievement, and your character name color gets a special tint. Or something like that. Just a prize to show for what you’ve done.
Erase all that “timewalk” Chromie CRAP, and give these three different modes EXPLICITLY ADVERTISED AND SELECTABLE AT THE CHARACTER CREATION SCREEN.
1- “Retail” how it currently is, the speedrun to level cap
2- “The Long Path” exhaust one full expansion content, for each new character.
3- “The Longest Journey” all of Warcraft, the 22 years of content, through one single life of a single character. The whole leveling span, permanently available in retail servers.
There is no reason why this cannot exist. There is no reason to release a shitton of classic-like different servers. There is no reason to make Classic-Fucking-Plus as yet another slightly different flavor, scattering dev teams across a zillion of entirely different codebases, just to have something to announce at Blizzcon. You can do all of this now, in a single product that is solid for everyone.
Sure, it requires work. You need to actually balance those XP curves, quest rewards, monster damage across a fuckton of content. You need to add support for these different paths and level numbers (and class builds need to be tweaked to work, tho I believe it can wrapped around whatever retail is at, without major reworks). But it’s mostly tedious work, of tweaking numbers. It can be done by a minuscule team and be in a playable state in a very short span (95% of all of this can be automated with one formula applied to each leveling “segment”, then tested and tweaked). There is close to none technical challenge or implementation hell, since it uses tech already in the game, and only replaced the Chromie stuff with something that uses different numbers and makes actual sense. That is easily understood and presented to the players without having to look up wikis and guides, like the current, broken and convoluted system that pleases no one.
But more importantly, fuck you. And fuck me, because it’s 2026 and I’m still talking to a wall, because people get paid and still don’t have a fucking clue.
See you in 2030, when someone at Blizzard will realize the leveling curve is still broken. But then I’m pretty sure they’ll have a whole new game to sell you, to fix the problem they themselves created. That could have been fixed by a team of 5, in roughly a week of work, at any time, at any point since 2010.
(Path of Exile (1) made available a separate mode, “ruthless”, that somewhat fills similar shoes. It’s entirely optional, done by one dev in his spare time, and fully available at this time without requiring a separate client. It’s one option, most players stick to the default. But it’s GOOD, and you can play it if you want. That’s what should have happened with WoW “classic”, being built within retail, in a similar way to what I described, for 1% of the effort required to build all those pointless Classic versions. And, my personal bet, would have been far, far more overall popular and long lasting in appeal.)
