BlizzCon has come and gone, and we received plenty of news regarding WoW's next journey. With any expansion comes a lot of changes and improvements, and for Battle of Azeroth, level scaling will work throughout the entirety of the game. I explained this new feature in a previous article here. It's a awesome change and long needed. Let's take a look back of how WoW's leveling system evolved throughout the years.

Vanilla and Burning Crusade

Those that played back in the day claims that Vanilla WoW was one the best experience you can ever have in an MMORPG. You can bet leveling was a big part of the nostolgia. I didn't start WoW until Burning Crusade, but the journey was more or less the same. You had to individually level your weapons, a pain if you played a melee class that wielded multiple weapons. Imagine traversing a high level dungeon with your trusty two handed hammer. You and your group down a challenging boss which drops an epic two handed axe. This is obviously a dps upgrade, so you roll for it and win! Upon equipping the newly acquired weapon, your group pushes on deeper in the dungeon. You encounter a group of enemies in your way, so you charge in and attack...only to miss all of your attacks. You check your combat log and face-palm as you read "Your two-handed axe skill has increased by 1". Of course people worked around this issue, but it got tiring if you were the type to roll alt characters.

Travelling back in Vanilla/Early BC wasn't too bad, but dreadful compared to how we get around now. You received your first mount at level 40, so you were stuck with whatever movement increasing ability in your class arsenal. Luckily I played a shaman back then, so I was blessed with ghost wolf at level 20. It's wasn't as fast a 60% speed mount, but it's a noticeable difference compared to walking. Other classes weren't as lucky, so unfortunately it meant running through huge zones until level 40. Flight paths were essential since it helps cross huge distances in short time. While leveling it was practical to visit all the flight paths in the zone you were in. Mounts were great, but didn't compare to a flight taxi. Questing was also inconsistent, more so in Vanilla. Zones such as Azshara were gorgeous to look at, but devoid of quest content. BC fixed this with having plenty of quest content throughout it's zones. It also made improvement to some vanilla zones such as Dustwallow Marsh by updating certain areas, and adding more quests.

Wrath and Cata

The later expansions brought much improvements to the leveling scene. In WotLK, heirlooms were introduced. Heirlooms are separate pieces of gear or weapon that binded with your account. Meaning any character you roll on that account (on the same server) can wear the gear, granted they're the appropriate class. Excellent for altoholics that didn't want to go through the annoyance of gearing up their alt while leveling. They scaled with your level, and some pieces boosted your experience points gained. You can guarantee that upped your leveling speed by quite an amount. Of course Blizz made many class ability changes. This greatly helped many classes solo content more easily. Mounts also received a big change. You can now get your 60% speed mount at level 20, your 100% mount at level 40, a flying mount (for BC content) at level 60 and epic flying at level 70. As far as the ground mounts go, this was an exciting and welcoming change, especially for those classes with no movment increasing ability. PvPrs got something nice, as now they can gain XP in Battlegrounds which will help make leveling more dynamic.

Wrath was also home of one of the biggest game changing additions to WoW - Looking for Group. This is a fully fleshed out queuing system for dungeons. Before, we had to post in chat or ask guidies/friends if we wanted to form a group. Now it's completely automatic. Just select your role, choose if you want a random dungeon (with extra rewards), or a specific dungeon, and queue up. Yes, dps players encountered longer queues, but LFG was a godsend for tanks and healers. It's great as an alterantive way to gear up since you recieved a piece of gear at the end of each run. If you don't want to quest, you can LFG to your heart's content. Too bad it made summoning stone obsolete, unless you're raiding.

It wasn't until Cataclysm when the talent system saw big changes. Before, you had the freedom to put your talent points however you wanted, which resulted in some interesting hybrid builds. (Shockladin anyone?) All of that came to an end when Cata's "Specialization" system dropped. When you hit level 10, you had the choice of three specializations for your class. Nothing new, but once you selected your spec, you're locked to it, meaning you can only put points in the spec you chose. Not only that, they chopped down the talent points you collected, from 71 to 41 points. Some players saw that as stripping away options on how we play our class. In my opinion, I was a little indifferent. I enjoyed making hybrid builds prior to the change, but I can see the need to streamline the system a bit. If this makes for a better player experience in the future, then I'm all for it.

This wouldn't be a article about leveling if I didn't mention the biggest leveling change ever in the game. The Cataclysm expansion brought 'cataclysmic' changes the the Vanilla continents, flipping the world upside it's head. This meant entirely new quest content across the board. Zones that rarely had any quests are now to the brim with them. They also have their own story and struggles, and a lot more personality. The undead has some of the best and unique leveling content in the game, and it's amazing how Blizzard put in the work to all the other racial areas as well. Even the human starting zone is a bit more interesting with the orcs invading the vineyard. Although not everyone was on board with changes Cata brought, but I'm a proponent of change, and I'm glad Blizzard shook things up a bit.

Mists up to Legion

With heirlooms, and revamped Vanilla world, a (even more) revamped talent system, leveling in WoW is a breeze. There's so much content that you oftentimes outlevel the zones you're in! This was a problem for those who wanted to complete the entire zone, but was unable to because they were grayed out. But at this point, a good chunk of those leveling have been playing for years, and just want to get to level cap as soon as possible. Sucks for the new players, though. Not much as far as leveling has changed From Mists, Warlords, and Legion outside of minor (or in Legion's case, major) class changes and Legion's scaleable zones. One change in Legion, however, give all classes one armor type at the beginning. For instance as a Shaman, you started as leather and then upgraded to mail at level 40. Now Shaman starts with mail at level 1. This also affects Warriors, Hunters, and Paladins. Also, starting with WoD, you can skip entire content! Blizzard introduced a level boost system where you can boost a character of your choice up to the current content. This started with the WoD pre-expansion patch. Anyone who preordered was given one free boost to level 90. Any boost after that is $60 per character. This trend continued with Legion boosting your character to level 100. WoW at this point is an enormous game, so it's understandable if there those who just want to catch up to the current content. Great if you missed a couple of expansions and want to quickly catch up.

Conclusion

It's always fun to look back on how certain aspects of WoW has grown. The game has been through a journey in itself with how the leveling system evolved throughout the years. With Battle of Azeroth introducing leveling scaling all over the game, this will help alleviate the woes of out-leveling zone you really like among other things. I guess we'll find out how it pans out in the near future. Until next time!