unfortunately i’m one of those people who finds it incredibly boring to have to go through all the low level stuff again.

hence why i have only 1 level 70, my druid which i’ve had since day 1 of wow.

my only other alt is a 57 mage. and he’s gone through periods of not gaining a single point of XP for 3, 4 or even 6 months. he’s never done an instance that i can remember. and he’s 90% levelled solo. i only use him now for bank alt and he lives in Og to check AH for me.

i dont believe he will ever see 70 and i cannot even be bothered to take him to outlands as i do not have the time or patience to level him through the 60′s and gear him via 5 mans.

so for me if i could have started him immediately at 40 or 55 etc it would have been a help and then i may well have decided it was worth levelling him to 70 having saved all the lower level time wasting grind.

having had my druid for so long and in the past done the raiding thing in 40 mans i’d love to experience some other class types at high level. but i will never do this due to the levelling from 1 to 70 factor and the time it still requires.

I did have a lot of fond memories of struggling through Jintha’alor (prior to those trolls being made non-Elite) with my warlock, or being scared to death in Hillbrads from alliance gankers on my warrior as I turn every corner, or besting a rogue who tried to gank my hunter in Stranglethorn Vale.

Grinding from 1 to 70 doesn’t make you better player than doing it from 60 to 70. The “grind” is all solo anyway, doing XYZ quests to get your loot and XP. I find nothing in the 1-69.99 content that comes even close to the gameplay of being a level 70.

Personally, I say WoW copies Guild Wars. Once you have a max-level character, you should just be able to make another max-level character. What’s the point of grinding all over again?

Also, the whole “profession alt” thing is useful for consumables…MAYBE. All of your uber gear from professions is BoP at some point – either the pattern is BoP or the resulting item is. Consider how useful having profession alts is now…I have a 60 Rogue as my bank alt who I levelled Enchanting with just enough to DE…about the only useful thing about having a 60 alt. Basically, having a profession alt is no more imbalancing than having a guildmate make stuff for you with your own mats. As for a “gathering alt”, why would you do that? Your main will likely have epic flight, incredible gear, and be able to go anywhere, do anything, kill anything, and be the best gathering toon you could make, UNLESS you dump a ton of time and cash getting your “alt” to that same level. At that point, you don’t even have an alt, you have a perfectly legit “2nd main” character.

- experienced players with a max level char
- new players.

While some players have fun leveling up alts from the beginning, I think the majority likes it 1-2 times. The game mechanics stay the same and tbh playing wow is no rocket science. Ofc there are mechanics that require deeper insight, but learning does not justify leveling for several weeks.

New players are discouraged because they have to “work” for 2 months until they can play with their friends at max level. As the way becomes longer and longer players may feel shut out from the game.

To speed up leveling was a nice idea, but there should long have been an option to start at later levels if a char has already max level. I would suggest to set the starting point of all classes to 55 in wotlk and to raise it to 65 in the following addon, adjusting the starting level for new players to lvl 20 or 30 maybe to speed up leveling and keep the players coming.

The general mechanics of the game don’t change, but the small details mechanics change from class to class.

Both sides have valid concerns and excellent arguments in favor and against insta-rising characters.

I do not need to steal more pumpkins or collect more Raptor skulls in order to learn the ins and outs of a new character. If Blizzard is requiring a string of quests to help us learn the ropes of playing a Death Knight what would be the objection to having a similar string of quests in relation to the other classes.

Itok

I like the lower end content, it’s not hard to level and it does give you time to learn your class. But would I still run through that with a new alt if I didn’t have to? I very much doubt it. Insta 55 and nip back and slaughter everything for rep, ruining the fun of any new players ‘Hey, you killed Hogger! I needed him =(‘

DK is fine, new class new rules. It’s no different to ‘Oh, I can’t get a mount till 60?’ ‘That sucks but I guess those are the rules’

Just my two penneth =)

And with professions, on a PvP server having a bunch of lvl 55 going back to Thousand Needles to farm iron and silver would be a nightmare for the lvl 24 noobs in the same zone. Though if they set professions at ~250 this wouldn’t be much of an issue. But who would buy lowbe mats?

Ugh!

I really hope this is something Blizzard will implement at some point, though I kind of doubt it’ll ever happen.