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With the November 23rd release of World of Warcraft: Shadowlands, like any new expansion it's bound to bring in new players to the venerable MMO. This handy guide can serve to help those new players get their bearings as they start their adventure in the Shadowlands.
Comments
You can level is any expansion you like. Everything scales now.
There is much more freedom in the leveling process. The new starter zone is not a spoiler. Its to teach you the game in a short compact amount of time. It quickly sends you to BFA that most up to date area next to level up to 50. You can level to 50 in any expansion you wish. Once you get 50, off to Shadowlands. The curve to level 50 has been sped up as well. 50-60 is a little slower.
EDIT: Also you dont need to do the starter area if you have leveled a char before.
You have to have a max level character (or be an already existing player when the pre-patch happened) to be able to do Chromie time. If you don't fit either of those criteria then you need to play through BfA quests until you hit level 50, at which point if you make other characters you can level through any expansion to level them up.
https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/000275056
I've done the new starter twice and had the same issue both times. Was at the dungeon, effectively it was a normal nag about a person left the group and i could not get it to go away, didn't try reload though, never thought about that until i read this article.
What an interesting observation in that wow is a dimorphic MMO, i know that is the case, i know that happens but never observed it as such, nice way to "fact" that
Agree people should read the start zone text, and tbh should read it everywhere. It completely transforms the game as i've recently been discovering, huge immersion value and understanding of why, when, and where you are, and knowing what is going on and doing what you're doing makes it... i dunno... awesome! Plus there much humor in there too.
Overall on podcasts i getting the feeling that most people think the leveling is too fast.
I couldn't be more opposite in that i find with warmode on 10% and the 16% anniversary buff, an extra 26% boost above the already faster norm to be just right if you're taking your time and reading quests.
If you smell the roses you still feel like you're getting somewhere at the end of a play session and not punished (so to speak right) that you're taking your time. So yeah it's not a mystery for people to feel it's too fast if you're plowing through, then ofc it'll feel that way.
I mean i kinda had to get past a few old thoughts after leveling so many alts in the old system, such as i had a hard time shaking the feeling of i'll be leaving this expansion soon, no you won't, you're able to go and do any expansion you want, including BFA, and most of all slow down and enjoy the content for a change.
I'm also really curious how this system will evolve as new expansions are added. For example, one of the disappointing things for me was you only really see the story from leveling in each expansion. You don't get to really see much of the content added throughout the expansion. Now, n the future as more expansions are added and the level cap increases, that might be a self fixing issue.
It scales to a point. So, everything in Chromie time will scale up to level 50, which doesn't matter too much because 50 is the current max level. However, once Shadowlands goes live players will still be locked at 50 in Chromie time. So you can continue playing through it, but you won't be able to play it all the way to level 60 because Blizzard wants the last 10 levels to be current expansion content. While there are certainly players who will happily keep playing the storylines at 50 with no xp even after the expansion launches, for others they don't want their leveling to be halted just because they want to finish out old storylines.
Blizzard has scaled everything and level squished it all to get rid of the out of control stat, damage and healing numbers that were starting to get very Diabloish (EDIT: for those who don't know what I meant by "Diabloish" in Diablo 3 at level 1 you deal damage in single or double digits, but once you're at geared level 70 pushing Greater Rifts in the 70 - 150 range, your normal attacks deals damage in the millions or billions with the better builds routinely doing trillions with occasionally quadrillion level spikes), but they still hold on to their "new content for max level" release style.
All in all though, kudos to them for the full scaling rework everywhere but the latest expansion.
PS: Very nice and well written content again, Robin. Keep it up!
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
That means they can now fly in WoD and Legion which had their xpac-specific flying requirements removed but not in BfA which didn't,
Personally I'm still leveling in BfA nevertheless because I find the story there more engaging. The gold per hour played just questing without grinding also just seems to be better there than elsewhere.
I last played WoW regularly in Pandaria although I did flirt with WoD for a month and Legion for about the same time last year so I have many of those squished characters that can fly. But I'm not leveling those yet since I'm just trying to get reacquainted with all the classes at the moment playing them at low levels before I start playing my mid-level ones again. 1-10 just takes about an hour and taking them to level 20 about 2 or 3 more. It slows down a bit after that but it's very easy to get a feel for every class if you so wish in the pre-patch.
I was an Afflock main through WotLK, Pandaria and Cata and so far I see no reason to change that - they're still powerful and quick to level. I must say though that I'm enjoying what they've done with Shadow Priest a lot so who knows
From what I've seen on Reddit when people ask where the fastest place to level is, WoD seems to be the most popular answer. /shrug.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED