Leveling and Chromie Time Changes with Dragonflight - Level from 10 to 60 in Any Expansion

Posted 2022/04/22 at 8:45 AM by Anshlun

New Players

Jackie Wiley via BlizzPlanet

Oh, so we’re keeping it. For the new player experience, new players specifically will be sent from Exile’s Reach to BFA, then onto Dragon Isles. More veteran players, people who have already leveled a character to max can choose like Chromie Time to go level in Draenor or Pandaria or Shadowlands. But for new players, it’s going to go: Exile’s Reach, BFA, Dragon Isles.

Ion Hazzikostas

How will Dragonflight handle Chromie Time?
Our current plan is to rescale all of the existing expansions including Shadowlands from 10 to 60 so that its come out of Exile's Reach or play the starting experience of your choice and then pick any of the single expansions that you want to play through and that will get you through to Dragonflight.

Are there any plans for when there are inevitably too many levels once again?
It's something we're discussing, we know that in the year 2030 or something we'll be back to be well into three digits and what does that means and how do we avoid having the same problems. I don't think 70 is too big a number and I think the changes that we're making to Chromie Time in Dragonflight to make sure that at the end of the day, you can pick up a character, you could be a brand new character to World of Warcraft and play through a single expansion, get caught up to speed and jump into the new thing. That's already a vast improvements over the disjointed world that we lived in in the past, where the increasing level cap meant you were just jumping between more and more disperate settings in the roughly the same amount of time.

I think eventually, I'd love to find the perfect solution there. We've definitely tossed around the idea of what would it look like if we stopped adding levels or if we did level-less expansions but levels do a lot for us and for every RPG, there's a reason that they're a tried and true method and it's a straightforward increase in power, new stuff to look forward to, now new talent points and so saying we're just going to stop doing that would raise a lot of questions that we would need to find satisfying answers to but we keep talking about it. In the meantime, we also want to focus on making sure that the experience you get tomorrow is as good as it can be, and not necessarily hamstring that for the sake of solving the 6 years from now problem. 6 years from now doesn't matter if this year isn't fun.

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Comment by JohnnyMaverikTo be fair sending new players to the Shadowlands would be a bit confusing so that's probably the best possible decision.Comment by LykaiosBFA? Not Shadowlands? So, are they saying Shadowlands is not canon?Comment by shimonuYay (not fan of shadowlands)Comment by MorthedubiPoor new players... I think BFA doesn't really have a fun leveling experience. SL's would be much better imo. Having gone through BFA chromie time twice while getting 2 friends into wow, it just wasn't fun for us at all...Comment by pallybebSeems like it would make more sense for the New Player leveling experience to take them to the last expansion. In this case, Shadowlands instead of keeping it BfA. I think it would have been more sustainable to just also have it level squish everyone back to 50 and have the 50-60 leveling experience just be whatever the new expansion is again. Apparently Blizzard likes to eventually paint themselves into corners.Comment by nantesfranwhy BFA to DF tho? BFA has a questionable open world new player experience and an outright horrendous dungeon experience with near zero coherence to DF.Comment by KelfyrApparently Blizzard likes to eventually paint themselves into corners.decadesComment by EacrataesBFA? Not Shadowlands? So, are they saying Shadowlands is not canon?Comment by nerzhul629I'm not sure there is a good expansion to start from for new players.
If we talk about lore, BFA is the closest to nowadays because you will understand that there is 2 factions fighting (but ok we will do dungeons together soon).
On SL there is nothing for warcraft license it self. As a new player, why i start in the death world ? Who are those factions, and then you come to real azeroth and you never saw them anymore or any reference.
Legion is a good one to exp , but a bit old now in terms of lore. Maybe the new player pexing experience should be done differently, to explain the real azeroth history, and not a melting pot in any expansion where you won't do more than 25/30% of the content and don't understand where you are when you come in retail expComment by RealxinGuessing they just view Shadowlands as not very lore relevant going into Dragonflight compared to BFA? I mean tbf not much at all happens in Shadowlands that affects Azeroth besides The Jailer boss fight but still seems weird lol.Comment by LobscotchTo be fair sending new players to the Shadowlands would be a bit confusing so that's probably the best possible decision.Comment by Eriuzwhat sword i mean, what expansion ? that never happen is just a bad dreamComment by VSozonovI'm just hoping they rebalance the time it takes to reach 60 while in Chromie time to be the same (or very close) as it is to reach 50 now. Leveling should be as fast as possible and we should never get to the situation where it takes literal days to reach max lvl again.Comment by WillowwhispSeems like it would make more sense for the New Player leveling experience to take them to the last expansion. In this case, Shadowlands instead of keeping it BfA. I think it would have been more sustainable to just also have it level squish everyone back to 50 and have the 50-60 leveling experience just be whatever the new expansion is again. Apparently Blizzard likes to eventually paint themselves into corners.Comment by Rellynewhy BFA to DF tho? BFA has a questionable open world new player experience and an outright horrendous dungeon experience with near zero coherence to DF.Comment by NevcairielI'm just hoping they rebalance the time it takes to reach 60 while in Chromie time to be the same (or very close) as it is to reach 50 now. Leveling should be as fast as possible and we should never get to the situation where it takes literal days to reach max lvl again.Comment by GlocktharBFA? Not Shadowlands? So, are they saying Shadowlands is not canon?Comment by RellyneTo be fair, the only real news here is keeping ER > BFA as the standard. Because everything else was said to work like this when they've implemented the current new way to start the game.

It was all about if they would update the new starter area or not. Since they're not doing it, ER > BFA it is. It still "makes sense" for the story to go ER > whatever % BFA you do > DF.

But I would be taking notes from a few other mmos regarding levels and player power. Level squish was stupid, but they did it, so they should be thinking about it asap to not do it again.Comment by GlocktharSeems like it would make more sense for the New Player leveling experience to take them to the last expansion. In this case, Shadowlands instead of keeping it BfA. I think it would have been more sustainable to just also have it level squish everyone back to 50 and have the 50-60 leveling experience just be whatever the new expansion is again. Apparently Blizzard likes to eventually paint themselves into corners.Comment by LostelfI still think the base experience for a new player should be eastern kingdoms and kalimdor. You know, the actual WORLD of Warcraft. Not some mostly-irrelevant, half-cut (Battle for Lordaeron and Teldrassil aren't present at all but are frequently referenced) levelling experiences for one of the worst expansions they've ever put out.

I mean as it stands currently, new Horde players will be introduced to Sylvanas being Warchief and the levelling experience doesn't even -touch- how and why she got ousted. She's just suddenly a bad guy in 9.1. Or AWOL altogether if they don't touch the Shadowlands.

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