Why does WOW have levels?

Bladestrom

Heres an interesting question. why does WOW have levelling?  Blizzard have streamlined 1-80 levelling to rush you to end-game, once you hit max level the game is designed for you to discard older zones, so why bother?  The old zones are dead and pointless, the old instances are dead and pointless.  Im asking as free trials allow you access to the levelling process - but is this a good trial?  Surely it would better to allow you to join WOW max level to enter the real meat of the game to see how the gameplay will really look over the years.  

Taking this to the natural conclusion, why doesn't blizzard just discard leveling alltogether and focus all their resources on end game? after all if an expansion keep you occupied for 2 years, and the levelling process gives  2 weeks or so of content, it is a waste.

BeansnBread

This is a question I started asking myself a long time ago. It started when I wanted to do some arena with a disc instead of a warrior just to get some variety.

 

I think it's why, with a resurrection scroll, you can have a free level 80. 

http://us.battle.net/support/en/article/scroll-of-resurrection-faq#q18

Yakkin

To pad out the game and make it look like they gave a damn about leveling.

Nadia

Originally posted by Bladestrom

Surely it would better to allow you to join WOW max level to enter the real meat of the game to see how the gameplay will really look over the years.  

Taking this to the natural conclusion, why doesn't blizzard just discard leveling alltogether and focus all their resources on end game? after all if an expansion keep you occupied for 2 years, and the levelling process gives  2 weeks or so of content, it is a waste.

probably the biggest offender is EQ -- talk about wasted content

18 expansions

level cap of 95 with around 50,000 aa

 

most the EQ players are playing in the latest expansion (like all mmos)

Bladestrom

Ye its is the fundemental flaw of stat based progression games, the more you progress the less content that is fun.  When you think of it that way - is that not a totally insane and poor design decision?  it only looks good from a profitability point of view for the publisher/developer.

Blizzard should be honest with themeselves and players and abandon levelling and focus on end-game.

nolic1

That what I hate the most about most mmo's is the fact they want you to get to end game and make your forget about the rest of the game to worry about a few dungeons that take 20 - 40 players to complete. When in fact the rest of the world is not needed and the game should be a city setting with a portal to all the raids and gear is the only progression.

 

Thats why I have to say this but GW1 did it right in a sense they made there game about playing throught the content but not making it all worthless you still could enjoy the game in any area and it still had some need to be there. And A-net is continue into GW2 with the auto leveling this makes all content playable and still fun cause you are still rewarded for your lvl not lvl of area at least by what I have seen.

 

But most companys is they waste 99% of there content just for players to get to end game to stand around for raids that give you a reward that will be wasted on the next big raid and so on.

Bladestrom

Originally posted by nolic1

That what I hate the most about most mmo's is the fact they want you to get to end game and make your forget about the rest of the game to worry about a few dungeons that take 20 - 40 players to complete. When in fact the rest of the world is not needed and the game should be a city setting with a portal to all the raids and gear is the only progression.

 

Thats why I have to say this but GW1 did it right in a sense they made there game about playing throught the content but not making it all worthless you still could enjoy the game in any area and it still had some need to be there. And A-net is continue into GW2 with the auto leveling this makes all content playable and still fun cause you are still rewarded for your lvl not lvl of area at least by what I have seen.

 

But most companys is they waste 99% of there content just for players to get to end game to stand around for raids that give you a reward that will be wasted on the next big raid and so on.

Can you imagine if WOW took on a few simple changes - download your level to match the zone, and upgrade reward to make it fun, and removed stat based progression.  In 1 quick fix they would make their entire massive world with all its instances fun again for the ENTIRE player base.

And that begs the question, considering 90% of the wow population is casual that would love to play old content that was fun and not pointless, why dont they?