Blizzard never ceases to amaze its community in every way and most of their surprises come from ingenious and bold methods which somehow driven the game into one of the longest running MMORPGs to date. Today, the game director Ion Hazzikostas, has given his thoughts about the future of 'Leveling' in World of Warcraft.
World of Warcraft: Legion
One of the reasons why fans doesn't want to create an alt is due to the fact that leveling takes a lot of time in World of Warcraft especially with the new expansion which takes the level cap to 110. This also holds true on some of the recurring subscribers. Most of them feel like they need a lot of time to pour into the game in order to catch up although in reality, it's not that hard as most of the time is spent on travelling. But regardless of that, let's face it, if we ever hit to a cap of 150 in the future, new players may be reluctant to play the game as it'll be more of a repulsive matter in a beginner's perspective.
And in an interview by Kotaku, Ion Hazzikostashas has given his opinion about Leveling and the future approach that the studio is planning ahead. "There are times where we've considered, 'What if we get rid of leveling altogether?'"He then continues: "And we've always found ourselves coming up with a new construct that sounded a whole lot like levels, but with a different name. So at that point, it's like, 'OK, let's keep doing levels.'"
Will They Remove Leveling Entirely?
Legion has implemented new methods of leveling in the Legion expansion, there's the upscaling of the world content in comparison to your character's level as well as Artifact boosts and whatnot. According to Hazzikostas, this is their new approach of "modern leveling" which sets the game apart from traditional leveling where one is to grind on numerous quests throughout specific maps in order to progress.
But even so, the team still stumbles upon the inevitable problem. The longer the game goes, the longer it is for you to catch up. It's an undeniable fact regardless of the numerous in-game boosts that the game has to offer. The dilemma is, if they somehow upscale the experience rewards from quests, etc. then they will also indirectly make the questing irrelevant and will also destroy the beauty of exploration of the game.
Hazzikostas didn't make a straightforward answer to the question whether or not they will remove 'leveling' in the future expansions but the game director somehow hinted that they're on the process of developing alternative methods to that of traditional leveling. Legion is already the stepping stone of modern leveling and so we may expect more surprises from Blizzard in the future updates.
