Earlier this week, Blizzard announced that it would be changing how leveling up works from level 70 to 80 in the recently released World of Warcraft expansion, The War Within, and now, following criticism from players, the developers have assured that the overall impact on leveling time will be “minimal.”
The changes were announced in an official post yesterday, with community manager Kaivax sharing that the team noticed that players coming into the new expansion with endgame gear from the previous expansion, Dragonflight, were “significantly more powerful than its intended content.” The post went on to say that the hotfix being pushed out today will “adjust enemy scaling in War Within's leveled content to increase the power of lower-level enemies and bring combat times closer to expected behavior in WoW. These changes will be most noticeable at level 70, with the impact decreasing as you level up.”
All of this sounds relatively normal, but as someone who started playing The War Within with a full set of Dragonflight endgame gear, I sorely needed it. I found that even difficult enemies were easy to kill with just a few hits, especially in the first half of the new expansion. Over time, I leveled out, but the speed of the experience meant I was rushing through content and levels without having time to blink. Indeed, many in the community agreed that something needed to change. However, the ensuing discussion revealed a significant amount of dissatisfaction with Blizzard's response.
Players expressed two main concerns: The first, as indicated by some of the top comments in this thread, was that players who come into the expansion in bad gear (perhaps because they skipped playing Dragonflight or were leveling up a new character) will be comparatively weaker and will disproportionately struggle with the content once their powers are nerfed.
But the second issue players brought up was the timing of the change. The War Within technically released on August 22 for those who bought the Epic Edition of the game, with the worldwide release on August 26. This means that those who bought the more expensive version for early access essentially got an extra four days (including weekends) of super-fast and powerful leveling, while those who didn't pay the extra money only got about a day and a half.
As one Reddit user put it, “The time to make the change was almost a week ago, and it's completely foolish to arbitrarily slow things down for people who are already behind because of the delayed release. This is a situation where they should simply admit the mistake and leave things as they are.”
In response, Blizzard has clarified what the changes to leveling up actually are, in an attempt to allay at least some of these concerns.
We want to provide some additional details regarding today's level changes and group content balance fixes.
• The changes aim to make the difficulty curve more gentle: in the mid to late 70s, enemies will become less strong per level than before.
• Participants scheduled to participate…
— World of Warcraft (@Warcraft) August 28, 2024
Blizzard said in a tweet that the level-up scaling changes will make the difficulty curve “gentler,” making leveling “manageable” and “getting to powerful gear quickly” for players who come into the expansion with basic level-up gear, while players at level 78 and above should see “no changes” to combat.
Now that the change has been implemented, players are reporting that Blizzard's explanation was mostly accurate and that it's a much-needed balance adjustment. However, frustrations over the timing of the update remain, exacerbated by existing dissatisfaction with The War Within's Early Access period in general. The four-day early launch for Epic Edition purchasers has been quite controversial, with top-tier players expressing outrage at having to pay extra to get to the top of the competitive scene for an early expansion, and others frustrated that they missed out on what was technically “launch day.”
Perhaps to Blizzard's advantage is the fact that the Early Access period significantly reduced server issues and queues on both the 22nd and 26th, and that players are reporting little of the friction that typically occurs on launch day due to the splitting of the player base in both scenarios.
Game director Ion Hazzikostas called the Early Access period “a bit of an experiment” in an interview earlier this year, but it's unclear whether Blizzard will try something similar with future expansions Midnight or The Last Titan.
We're currently reviewing The War Within, and while launch content will be gradually revealed over the coming weeks, our ongoing review states, “There's a lot we haven't seen yet in The War Within, but so far I'm really enjoying it, which is the highest compliment I can give to a launch expansion pack.”
Rebecca Valentine is a senior reporter at IGN. Have a story tip? Send it to her at [email protected].
