Why Change Leveling?
At BlizzCon 2019, WoW developers identified three key areas needing improvement, based on observations of leveling up through and including Battle for Azeroth:
- Time: leveling takes too long
- Satisfaction: too many levels = not every level is rewarding
- Consistency: too many storylines and not enough time to explore them all before leveling out of an area or expansion
Fifteen years and eight expansions can overwhelm and confuse new players. The traditional "newbie" zones don't adequately prepare brand-new players to the wide variety of concepts even a beginning player needs to know to progress through World of Warcraft. The challenge is how to balance the requirements for new players with the needs of experienced players who want to level up alts for the endgame.
This process started with the introduction of scaling words introduced with the Battle for Azeroth expansion, allowing leveling players greater choice in where to level instead of being stuck in narrow-band zones that would go grey before they could even begin to explore the area's storyline. Shadowlands will take that scaling one giant step farther.
