Leveling In Cataclysm - The Good and The Bad! | WoW Classic

[Applause] you're all right folks and welcome back so beta has been out for a couple of weeks and I've been working away leveling as you doing these things so I think it's time we discussed C leveling the good and the bad now as of recording the 1 to 60 experience is pretty much as expected for this expansion the odd buggy Quest or if you moment here or there but that's fine beta is beta for the most part the moment to moment gameplay is what it should be however 60 to 80 is as of this video unaltered if you were unaware and or never played cata when I say this Outland and North Rend don't undergo a facelift quite as Extreme as the old world in fact they should remain pretty much identical but during BlizzCon and an interviews post blizzard has stated that Outland and North Ren will see some tweaks to increase the leveling speed in those regions in line with their philosophy of an increased endgame content Cadence and getting people to that end game as quickly as they can when we get more info and can actually test the updated 60 to 80 experience I will of course make a follow-up video talking about that specifically but for now let's crack on so the good then to pil for something I said in one of my Beta logs leveling is quick it is mind blowingly fast despite my issues at the start of the beta it's been quite the blur and it's honestly a massively different experience to anything in classic up to now that is for a couple of reasons first and foremost experience rates in the Eastern kingdoms and calor have been increased and XP requirements per level have been reduced this is nothing new to CER something similar happened in previous expansions but it was never as noticeable as it was in cata because again if you don't know have been living under a rather resilient Rock calor and the Eastern kingdoms do get a facelift now this revamp is not purely aesthetic near enough every quest in every Zone has been reworked in some manner to reduce things like grinding or travel time and to generally make them faster to complete meaning you get through your quests more efficiently meaning you get XP more efficiently and a such level more efficiently this is also aided by each Zone more or less having a clearer story and overall be design in the majority of cases meaning that you follow a more linear leveling path whilst in them in days gone it would not be uncommon to rock up to a new Quest Hub receive five new quests that cover an entire Zone and take a couple of hours to complete due to respawn rates or mob drops being absolutely awful or the kills needed being completely absurd and then once they're done you go get another five quests to go back to the places you just were and instead gather up a mob's left AR cheek as opposed to the right ones you so skillfully for play from the last batch of NPCs you just slaughtered on the other hand there were also those zones with a grand total of three quests and two of those are offered up by Waring Hermits who live in caves at opposite ends of the region with each having their own respective reputations that prevent you from actually speaking to the other one this expansion neither is generally the case it's a little bit more in the Middle With The Quest you do get usually servicing a smaller area and you move through the Zone piece by piece in order to gradually complete it though of course there are always exceptions to that rule the dungeon finder is going to be a big help too now this will be the first expansion in classic as it was in the original timeline where this feature is available from launch and like in Wrath at the moment it becomes active at level 15 and will increase the rate at which you level drastically with the vast vast vast majority of dungeon related quests being located at the start of the instance itself it will not be uncommon in the early dungeons to possibly do two or even three levels on your first go through them this does also take into account other factors like heirlooms and gild perks too but you get the picture leveling is not going to be a slow methodical Affair in cataclysm gear rewards from quests and dungeons are also optimized much better you're not going to be seeing cloth Gear with strength and Agility on for example and if you think I'm being factious when I say that you clearly ain't played any version of vanilla this means that the gear you get is going to make you significantly stronger when compared to a counterpart of an equal level in expansions past because you're not going to have stats on your gear that are either dead or provide only very minor power increases everything you're using is going to make you meaner much more so than before and ultimately all of the things I've just mentioned function Under the Umbrella of leveling faster and keeping newer players hooked that is the end goal of these changes to make getting to max level far more palatable newer players are generally more likely to stick around if the leveling an early game doesn't inherently punish them for not knowing everything which even I have to admit it does do that a little bit in the vanilla version of the Eastern kingdoms and calor there will inevitably be a point that you reach where you've got no active quests and no idea where to go and even if you do there might be a chance you'll shy a couple of levels obvious ly add-ons exist to help you with that and sure if you've gotten to guide you you'll probably be fine but I'm talking about this content Sans add-ons which does have its own appeal I leveled my very first classic character without any leveling or questing guides I dug deep and followed ancient paths carved out in distant memory but if you've never played classic you would not have that to rely on but even if you're not a new player but you don't like leveling you're probably going to love it in C because your downtime is mostly non-existent so if you're rer rolling or leveling an ALT you're not going to have to spend potentially weeks slowly chipping away at that goal you'll probably get it done in a couple of decent play sessions on to the bad big one for me c leveling operates far more like a single player RPG and far less like an MMO where you are just one random murder hobo in a sea of murder hobos linear questing has its part to play here for sure but the world more often than not feels like it's been baby proofed it's much harder to make him stake or wander into a region that will turn you into a fine paste you're often actually discouraged from doing just that zones that once bordered higher level zones have for the most part had their re of access greatly reduced lock Madan to Badlands is an example here you just don't tend to spend as much time wandering about looking for things and because most of the quests are all located in one spot you don't really have any incentive to go and look in all the caves only to find a sleeping Dragon guarding a treasure horde and who ultimately turns you into a veneer on his walls as an example you get the first Hub and you don't really leave that area until you get a quest telling you to do so but speaking of the zones they do take quite a hit this expansion now that's not because I think the revamp is horrendous I mean yeah I'm not exactly Blown Away by it anymore because it's the same thing even in retail 14 years later what I do mean though is that because of how quick leveling can be this expansion unless you're a bit of a numpty you're going to go through them so fast that you're probably not going to notice the scenery which is a crying shame you just don't take the areas in you move through them so fast that you could reasonably do several zones in one session depending on how swift you are and what makes this worse is that in a lot of cases and I speak from recent experience on the beta you overlevel really easily about the halfway marking his own I start seeing green mobs appear in vanilla and TBC that's not the end of the world it's actually quite handy in a lot of cases it means you can definitely hit the stuff you're trying to kill but by cata it's just playing bad you don't want to be doing green quests or killing green mobs you're never in any danger of Getting merked By An appropriately leveled mob so sticking around to finish zones is rarely worth it and that's not great in an RPG MMO or other wise that is completely antithetical to what made a lot of wow zones so brilliant the atmosphere the music the visuals the memories made in the zones you're not likely to make lasting memories in a Zone you spend an hour in do half the quests and barely look at then there's the challenge or lack thereof now I'm not saying vanilla leveling was a ball breaker not at all but it punished stupidity very well so if you were to charge into a group of mobs without CC or stuns or whatnot you were likely to die if you didn't have enough food or drink to sustain you whil away from town you'd probably run into trouble and die if you didn't have enough back space to pick up Quest items trade items or junk to sell you'd struggle to make gold and Elites would in most cases turn you inside out and wear you as an evening gown those things aren't really the case in cataclysm you just point and go Elites are rarely Elite and the distinct fun is just there to make a certain NPC appear more threatening than it actually is and unless you pull insane amounts you can generally handle an entire pack of mobs by yourself with minimal fuss and the lessons you'd otherwise learn about your Class CC stuns interrupts Etc just aren't learned in cater leveling at the very least you don't need them which generally leads to a player at max level who is not as well equipped as they should be that's a real problem because you'll end up with people at match level who think they're the dogs bollocks because they eradicated the open world whilst questing then they get thrown into a heroic don't know what their interrupt is for and then end up being a drag on their whole group because their journey to max level has done nothing to prepare them for end game which is what it should do classic preat is actually very good at teaching people what their classes do simply by having enemies in the open World require more than a simple firm right hook now whilst I was leveling the beta I used some CC slows interrupts and so on but that's only because I knew what they were for I was never in any danger of dying if I didn't whereas if it were vanilla or TBC possibly even wrath I probably would have again that dying thing is very important because that's kind of the only game over screen wow has and it teaches players all right I've screwed up here I've done some it wrong how do I correct that cataclysm very rarely if ever has something to that effect as you making your way to level 85 also nothing feels overly earned in cater leveling there just aren't really any hurdles to overcome you're never short on funds so you never have to look at ways to make money to learn spells to get a mount or even buy food and drink there aren't any quests or mobs that are particularly difficult or require a group you can group up if you want but don't need to because more often than not a quest or series of quests that would perhaps be done with a party in vanilla to wrath would have some NPCs tag along to perform that role instead because of this rewards feel hollow if you get a blue you don't have that moment of oh this is a cool item that you'd otherwise have with something like the Whirlwind axe vargan fist or even a lucky Boe it's just H it's the last quest in the zone they gave me a blue that's nice as spur and you move on so let's be clear here I prefer the vanilla to wrath style of things having to buy food and drinks Elites generally being Elite zones taking a while and plotting through them having to be clever with my pulls and just generally enjoying the experience and usually when I say I like the vanilla style of content or a certain RPG aspect that's being removed I get numpties in the comments who feel the need to crop up and tell me oh that's such a bad take despite the fact what I'm saying is usually a company need by me stating something like but I get why people prefer the new version of things or why X aspect was ultimately removed from the game it's the same thing with cat leveling I get why people enjoy this I do to a degree there is nothing inherently wrong with cater leveling it's just that in comparison has its flaws like anything else generally it's got a good Pace you will Breeze through zone so if you're trying to get a character up to play at end game you will do it with minimal Hassle and unlike previous versions if you are inclined to explore or just wander off on an adventure to find your next Quest a guide or add-on is simply not at all required you will end up on a path that will take you all the way to maximum level no need to bounce around between different zones of similar levels before moving on to something more challenging on a different continent and yeah you will find that you overlevel zones in most cases I also know that I said the old world could be punishing when talking about positives then when discussing negatives I said in cataclysm it's not punishing enough it's about balance it's a bad kind of punishing that you're stuck in limbo with no idea where to go it's a good kind of punishing when a mob kills you repeatedly because you aren't using your abilities correctly and once you do you kill it and you overcome that challenge that's a lesson learned and something to carry forward but that doesn't happen if in the cataclysm version of the Eastern kingdoms and calor this one is definitely going to come down to personal preference but I've said it before those who are likely to enjoy the older style of leveling probably have all their characters up to scratch anyway and those who don't are likely to prefer cataclysm and as such will get much more use and joy out of it anyway that's me for now let me know your owns down below who like sub share your p and so on that'll be grand have a good one folks bye for [Music] now

Channel: Karrot

Views: 17,436

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Id: z6IJe9aHJRo

Length: 14min 52sec (892 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 23 2024