WoW Level-up has very few rewards?

[Rebel_L]

Its not really dumbing the game down. They are giving you 6 compelling choices vs 41 obvious ones. If you have 2 talents and one increases dps by 5% and one by 10% which do you pick? That is essentially what we have now.

Now choosing between a snare a root and a stun is a much better choice and will depend on fights and your raid composition. Even better for some DPS classes like take Hunter tier 5. Do you want a passive focus regen, a focus regen cooldown or a cooldown reset? Depends on the fight or your personal playstyle.

There are more choices that will not make or break your play but will matter.

If a choice matters you can screw it up, the only choices you cant screw up are ones that dont matter.

I can understand where the OP is coming from, its not fun to have no meaningful input in your character. Even if that input has to be a done a certain way in order to have a good character its still nicer to get to click a few buttons yourself so that you feel like your having some input rather than having the game do everything for you. The less often a game lets you make any decision the more it feels like you dont get any say. Getting to click a few buttons every level generally feels much more rewarding than clicking a button 6 times over 85 levels

 

[thescreensavers]

what's Level Upping useful to? What makes me happy that I leveled up?

So you can hit max level sooner, leveling suck ass

 

[Axonn]

thescreensavers: LOL, funny ::- D.

Rebel_L: Yeap, that's exactly what I meant. Besides, the spell system in Diablo 2 is great. Plus the respec at the beginning of each difficulty makes even the stupid early spells worth it! Because you can re-invest in new spell when you're on Nightmare/Hell.

But if I understand correctly, the new system in the next WoW expansion is going to allow specializing in more different ways you can be useful, all of which will be almost equally good, but accommodate different playing styles. If that's the case, then it might be nice.

 

[kami]

In a old MMO like WoW you basically want to get to max level ASAP since no one is down in the lower levels for you to play with. As for rewards for leveling up, again WoW is old. There's 85 levels now so they have to distribute all of your abilities and skill points over 85 levels. If they gave you something every level it would be overwhelming once you were max level. They used to have spell ranks but they changed into just scale automatically with your stats, which increase with gear and leveling up so that also reduced the amount of granted skills. I.e. there used to be say 8 ranks of Arcane Shot but now it's just one and it scales as you level instead.

Once you get one character to max level you can buy gear called heirlooms. Heirlooms are items you can mail to other characters on your account. They are made purely for leveling and their stats scale with level and they have XP boosts on them. With full heirlooms and guild perks you can have around a 45% XP bonus so when people roll new characters they blaze through it basically. It's quite a bit longer for a first timer though. It helps if you can get someone to recruit you through the recruit a friend program though.

 

[Chiropteran]

Wow levels are rather pointless right now. They could reduce the max level to 25 or 15 and you could actually feel like you gain something when you level.

Example, max level 15-

level 1-8 > 1
9-16 > 2
17-24> 3
...
73-80> 10
81> 11
82> 12
83> 13
84> 14
85> 15


But it seems like a lot of players consider bigger numbers more impressive. "Hey, this MMO has a max level of 90, it's obviously a lot better than that other MMO where max level is only 40!" I'd rather have fewer levels with meaningful bonuses myself.

 

[yuppiejr]

this is the great secret of WoW. going up in level means zippo beyond the fact that you suck a little less and your 1 level clsoer to actually being able to play with all your high level geared out friends.
its really quite funny, your like a deer in the ehadlights in my mind right now, realising youve been smacking ur head in a wall for two levels and gotten basically nowhere (3/85 wohoo)

Don't forget the unofficial gear levels you still need to grind through once you hit max level to get your class's numerical level of contribution to a level that will open up the endgame raids. The point of smaller steps in the levelling process is to give players enough reward for the time spent to keep them coming back until habits form and they are hooked.

High level MMO playing, be it EvE, WoW or any other is pretty much a second-job if you want to stay competitive. I bowed out of WoW permanently when the time commitment to prep for raiding (planning/consumables/etc..) turned the game from a recreational activity and into a second job. When time was abundant and commitments were few, no issue... wife/kids/job - not so much.

Not that the cycle is completely broken, now I spend my free time pursuing a meatspace hobby that has more physical/tangible rewards (target shooting) but some of the same basic mechanics including crafting (reloading/gunsmithing), playing the auction house (continually scouring forums, gun shows & shops for parts/upgrades & supplies), grinding/levelling (range practice) and occasional raiding (competitions).

 

[Grooveriding]

WoW has been slowly devolving to the level of a pez dispenser. With two more xpacs to go after the upcoming one, they should have it reduced to click 3 times and click your heels to be completely geared and at max level for the final xpac to level 100.

 

[Rebel_L]

thescreensavers: LOL, funny ::- D.

But if I understand correctly, the new system in the next WoW expansion is going to allow specializing in more different ways you can be useful, all of which will be almost equally good, but accommodate different playing styles. If that's the case, then it might be nice.

Like I said earlier any choice which matters can be screwed up, one of the choices will mathematically better than the others and it will be the one some people will expect you to have, if some choices are better for some fights than others then you will be expected to respec for fights, nothing will really change, the only difference sounds like you only get to choose 8 times instead of the old 40 times however many talent points a level 85 had, and for me I would rather get to choose 40 times so I feel like I am more involved.

If you stay out of the min/max circles they have always been more tolerant of weird specs regardless of how many choices there were to screw up. But top tier level raid guilds will always insist that you come as best prepared as possible, including spec/gear/consumables the only way to change that is to take away choices in spec/gear/consumables. Wow has been slowly doing that over the years so that the average person has an easier time getting all those things together. Those people though that rather enjoy the tinkering with their characters will not be in favor, those that want a simpler game with less choices will be in favor. And from the continual changes in that direction I would guess that most of the wow playerbase is in favor of the simpler version of the game.