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World of Warcraft: what's the current status of low level PvE playthrough?

My question is quite specific.

I'm not new to WoW, I played since early beta and up to the release of Cataclysm. And that's when I left because I was disappointed.

I'm one of those players who enjoy going through the content at a slow pace, so I don't care about rushing to level cap and doing bleeding edge content and itemization. I like instead discovering the contained stories that the zones have been built around, complete all the dungeons progressively, and stuff like that.

With Cataclysm's rebalance what happened was that I'd get in a zone, do a couple of quests and already outlevel everything around me. It became impossible enjoying even the most bland of quest chain because I'd outlevel it even by the middle of it. It was even worse with dungeons because even after a couple of failed attempts I'd have outleveled the dungeon itself and entire zones outside, to the point that I stopped doing dungeons entirely.

I of course enjoy doing content at its proper level and don't like to power level through stuff. Like doing a low level dungeon with a high level player in the party that makes everything trivial.

I see that now I could resubscribe and I'd have all the expansions minus Legion. My question is: how much of all that PvE content in the game is actually playable now?

Do I get to find group members to do that myriad of dungeons, or is all that content rendered totally obsolete and unplayable now?

The idea I have of the game, that I hope is wrong, is that even new players just get close to top level in a couple of days and then simply play that 5% of content that has been recently released and is where most of everyone already is. Whereas the remaining 95% of the content sits there as an obsolete, desolate place.

So what's the situation, and what about the problem I described that made me left after Cataclysm?

Can I do (and enjoy) content even in Wrath of the Lich King, or Outland, or Draenor, or is it all abandoned?
 
The focus is always on the lastest expansion and pre-current expansion is always trivial. You might want to take a look at FFXIV if that's your thing tho, you can level and item sync every dungeon / raids in the game. Just have to find a community / guild willing to do so.
 
With Cataclysm's rebalance what happened was that I'd get in a zone, do a couple of quests and already outlevel everything around me. It become impossible enjoying even the most bland of quest chain because I'd outlevel it even by the middle of it.

The exact same thing, but a little bit faster, you wont even reach the "middle of it".

The only way to enjoy low lvl content is to turn XP gain off, but you'll probably still be vastly overpowered by gear.

The zones are mostly ghost towns to, Its rare to find anyone around questing, maybe once every 20 minutes.

Edit: even more Heirlooms and LFG Dungeon power level only made it worse.
 

Zelias

Banned
It's still much the same. You'll outlevel zones before finishing them, and while you can use Dungeon Finder to do dungeons at-level, you're probably going to be running with people in heirlooms who will tear through the dungeon, not to mention that levelling through dungeons is even faster than questing.

So I wouldn't necessarily recommend it right now, but maybe keep your eyes out for the next expansion - there's speculation about another old world revamp as well as level scaling (similar to what Legion has for 100-110) so maybe that will address some of the problems.
 

TheYanger

Member
All of that stuff is unchanged. You can get groups for the dungeons fine in the dungeon finder. You'll outlevel quest zones insanely fast.
 

Artdayne

Member
I guess I'm not sure what old content you're referring to. You can do PVP and dungeons just fine in old content and you will not have any issues finding groups for those. That was the same in Cata though too. If you're trying to do old raids with a 25 man group, that will be a lot harder to find a group for. If you do not want to outlevel content be sure you're not using any heirlooms, you should be able to get through the story line of a zone at the right level. Though there are some zones that run fairly concurrent with each other and if you want to do those as well, it will be more difficult to do them at a level appropriate stage.
 
The problem is whether I'd find players for the actual dungeons.

You'll find players through LFG almost instantly if roling as Tank/Healer, about 10-15 minutes wait as DPS BUT everyone will be in heirlooms, everyone is strong enough to solo dungeons, so it'll not provide ANY challenge, or fun except for "sightseeing"
 
So I wouldn't necessarily recommend it right now, but maybe keep your eyes out for the next expansion - there's speculation about another old world revamp as well as level scaling (similar to what Legion has for 100-110) so maybe that will address some of the problems.

Yes, a form of power scaling locked to both zones and dungeons would be exactly what would fix my problem.
 

Ramirez

Member
Every time I try to do a new play through, I enjoy the brisk pace from 1-60, but then you always hit a wall once you get to Outland and levels start taking much longer. I know you only have to do like HFP and Zangar/Terrokar to move on, but it still always felt like leveling just really slowed down at that point and I always fizzle out.
 

Par Score

Member
The current levelling content is the best it's ever been. Levelling through Legion was an absolute joy.

All the old stuff has been abandoned and you'll speed through it even faster than the last time you tried.
 

Piers

Member
You'll find players through LFG almost instantly if roling as Tank/Healer, about 10-15 minutes wait as DPS BUT everyone will be in heirlooms, everyone is strong enough to solo dungeons, so it'll not provide ANY challenge, or fun except for "sightseeing"
Eff that.
 

Parfait

Member
The focus is always on the lastest expansion and pre-current expansion is always trivial. You might want to take a look at FFXIV if that's your thing tho, you can level and item sync every dungeon / raids in the game. Just have to find a community / guild willing to do so.

Good luck, running those things are still the worst at level sync years later. I never do low level dungeon roulette no matter what and never use dungeons to level If i had a job left that was low enough to do the dungeons normally, I still wouldn't, because i'd just use deep dungeon over and over. Old dungeons are a mess and losing skills/mechanics because of how idiotic the level sync works is the worst thing.

At least in WoW in older dungeons most of your mechanics come in early and it's not 80% different than what you do at max level.
 

rhayader

Neo Member
You'll get your wish, but you need to level to 100 first. I'd recommend just purchasing a booster so you don't have to suffer through 1 to 100.

Otherwise, the fastest way to level up is to spec tank/healer, equip heirlooms and repeatedly queue for random dungeons until you reach 100

Don't expect to have much fun until you reach the current expansion
 
It's great on a certain server that will not be named. Tons on players leveling in every zone. Such a shame...

You'll get your wish, but you need to level to 100 first. I'd recommend just purchasing a booster so you don't have to suffer through 1 to 100.

Otherwise, the fastest way to level up is to spec tank/healer, equip heirlooms and repeatedly queue for random dungeons until you reach 100

Don't expect to have much fun until you reach the current expansion

This is just... my whole point pretty much haha.
 

Syf

Banned
You can always find groups for those dungeons, I've leveled lots of alts lately and that's not been a problem at any point.
 
This is one thing I’m hoping they fix in the next expansion. I could see them applying the scaling zones to the entire world. It just feels like the next logical step to make old content relevant and allow people to play more with their friends.
 

Yam's

Member
If you are interested by the zones themselves and their stories, nothing stops you from going back to them when you're done with leveling. You won't get any challenge, but this won't stop you from following the different quest chains and their dungeons. You'll even have a better time discovering low level dungeons alone rather than with some random rushers who just want their xp as fast as possible.

You'll get plenty of challenging contents at max lv anyway.
 

frequency

Member
I've been leveling a mage and a shaman. Up to TBC right now on both. I finished zones. I was still getting good exp on them at the end. I didn't out-level them. I do end up skipping zones though.

But I don't see quests turn grey like they used to. I don't know if something changed or what's going on. Anecdotal of course.

The last couple days I started at level 45 or something and ran through Searing Gorge, Burning Steppes, Swamp of Sorrows and Blasted Lands almost in full to get to level 58. I skipped the last few quests in the Worgen place in Blasted Lands. Half of Hellfire Peninsula brought me to level 60 where I stopped for the day.

I used to see grey quests by the time I was half way through a zone. I don't know what happened. I don't recall hearing about any changes.

Note: I'm not using any heirloom gear.
 

zabuni

Member
Yes, a form of power scaling locked to both zones and dungeons would be exactly what would fix my problem.

The Legion power scaling worked really really well. You could go to any zone in the expansion at any time, and everything would scale to your level. It was wildly successful and there have been mumblings about expanding that.

So, yeah, wait and see for Blizzcon.
 

KiKaL

Member
I know it's a bit different of a game but have you checked out Guild Wars 2? I am currently playing through it and it seems to do a good job of letting you go through the content no matter what level you are do to level scaling. I haven't played WoW since vanilla so I can't really compare the two but GW2 seems like a decent fit if you just have the itch to go through the world and explore.
 

Hobbes211

Member
Man that sounds miserable. I really only played BC/Wrath but I loved the level grind up to 70, exploring areas, doing instances. The fact that it's all just end game rush and empty zones (which is how a lot of the Vanilla areas were in BC anyway) sounds boring as hell.
 
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