Idea for future WoW leveling and world design

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There was some talk on future of levels and leveling in World of Warcraft during Blizzcon as well as some ideas and comments from WoW content creators like Thete or Preach. Taking the opportunity I want to show my idea on how leveling and in bigger picture expansions could look like. Looking to hearing your opinions too!

Legion was a fun although not perfect expansion, more is needed to make BfA and future of WoW great again

In BfA professions have been split into parallel paths for each expansion. You won't have to have 1000 alchemy based on every past expansion to start making potions in some future expansion. My leveling and game world idea is also based on the concept of being expansion quantity neutral.

Short version:

• Fixed max level not increased by expansions
• New custom 1 to max level leveling path that teaches lore and game mechanics through quests, running dungeons, a basic raid, PvP instances, professions, gearing, class roles - general concepts
• All of existing content is now for max level (open world)
• Old raids/dungeons/mobs may have a debuff allowing you to farm them
• Faction reputation and not levels (experience) for each expansion/zone progression
• Alts have a shortened leveling path (as you know the game, but not the class/race)

According to warcraftlogs I'm number 8 in DPS world wide on Eonar among Mistweaver healers. Breaking the bonds of retail WoW class normalization - cool!

Extended options:

• Other game elements like gear ilvl may also have a fixed scale, relevant to given expansion content - no infinitely increasing numbers with subsequent expansions
• Any existing zone or instance may be used for current expansion story as it's already for max level
• With increasing levels you get more and more of your class abilities and you get quests to use them in practice (like dungeons, some pvp instances or sort of proving grounds/mage tower to train specific things like CC, AoE versus ST, class roles)
• The leveling process takes you around the world to unlock initial flight paths, teleports and tell the story of given area or expansion and it factions as you may want to farm faction reputation on max level
• If you want to complete various achievements, get transmog or future old expansion or old zone specific new cosmetic items you do existing old quests - that instead of experience give reputation to appropriate faction.
• Gear ilvl may be on a simple scale, like 1-100. Any gear from open world or old content has low ilvl and considered leveling gear (so you can actually wear T2 from vanilla while leveling in BfA). Any ilvl increase would be on the gear from current expansion only. When next expansion launches all previous expansion gear is dropped to low ilvl (but retains it high ilvl for when in that expansion content).

• The old content debuff allowing you to farm it could be turned off to get a normal challenging content with generic timer unlocking raid tiers, zones, quests, ilvl increases in parallel to current expansion lifespan - so you can raid MoP, get MoP gear with increasing ilvl as you progress (only in MoP content) - for the fun of it and some extra achievements/cosmetics and if the progression is hard enough - increased drop percentages of some objects similarly like when it was current but not as high and not for everything.

Quests in vanilla were sparse, way harder and thus incentivized to work together without magic group auto-finders

The feeling of overcoming a very tough challenge while barely hanging on makes you really engaged

That's at least few epic mounts in value guildies dedicated to the good of the raid group and not for themselves. Plus being the guy in the guild with the crafting recipe is a big thing

Special options:

• Redesigned leveling may teach players the importance of cooperation and the good values Vanilla offered; like giving a quest to kill a Hogger 2.0 mob that will steamroll the player after which the game will change the quest to resurrect, heal up and find other players via zone chat to help you
• As realms are close to non existent now there could be more guild unique big quest chains/progressions like the Scepter of the Shifting Sands from vanilla - something that is hard to get, requires working for the good of the guild or also for guild representatives and something not everyone will accomplish. (a.k.a game would stop giving and start rewarding again)
• Things like increasing debuff on aging raid tier could be related to some guild organic progression (excluding mythic)
• Expansions may become different than: stockpile class changes, add few new zones, add quickly forgotten leveling quests, drop few raids, cinematic, sometimes kill a Warchief and done
• Expansions could focus more on long time progression story and faction reputations and use a lot of existing zones making them usable and non-dead again (like your guild would have to have X characters revered+ with Timbermaw for them to reveal a valuable information needed to find a weakness on a raid boss or to convince current expansion faction to become active for progression and questing)
• Existing crafting resources could forever be relevant in professions instead of copy-pasting every tier of crafting material to new expansion (also possible cosmetic value for zone/expansion themed cosmetics by using resources from that expansion)
• New expansion would not increase ilvl, character level so expansion class changes could be much smaller or even non existent or not needed at launch day of expansion story and events

What's this, a mysterious keg? What mysteries lay in it?

Class specific skills, lack of ability parity leads to eSports competitive imbalance, but fun and uniqueness for everyone else

Noob goes fishing and finds out his work is rewarded and the gold is earned while not given or devalues by farming hardcores

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