[WoW] Want to start a petition to Blizzard to improve "group" leveling...please read.

[Osiris]

Hi all,

I like to play multiple teams, as many people on this forum do.

RAF blah blah blah to 59.5 or so. Then came the long journey from 60-80 for my multiple teams.

I decided to write a questing guide for 60-80 so you wouldn't have to do instances unless you wanted to and would avoid all collection quests unless they lead to a decent number of follow up quests. I started it mainly because I was leveling a rag tag group of 2 warriors, a hunter, and a mage and I felt they wouldn't be too effective in instances, and I could follow it with other groups. That and in general I think questing is fun.

It's been a couple of months, my toons started at 59.5 and are at 69.5 and i've done all of the Outland quests I wanted to. Could squeeze in another .5 level by picking Scryer and finishing up Shadowmoon Valley...

I have this guide that is about 18 pages long, and was looking at the task of doing the same for Northrend, which will probably be 3 times in length...while taking a break, I was hit with an idea...

Blizzard is constantly changing the game for updates, etc. What if we posted on their suggestion forum or bug fix, or whatever it is that gets their attention, and post something like the following:

"I love to quest with friends while leveling in World of Warcraft. Something I've noticed that makes this difficult for groups is the collection quests. If a collection quest is designed to take 10 minutes, and there are 5 of us in our party leveling together, it may take us 50 minutes, making it innefficient, so we usually end up skipping the collection quests. To fix this, I would suggest that if a collection item drops from a mob, that all party members can loot it. I've noticed this occurs with some quests, so I know it is possible, but changing this for all would greatly help. Also if the collection item is a node, if the node can stick around for 20 seconds or so for everyone in a party to be able to loot it before it despawns, or even if it becomes "tagged" by the party to prevent 30 people from looting it. Then our party can continue to quest without being slowed down by the collection quests or skipping them. This is especially important in Northrend as some areas have intricate quest lines that unlock other quests. I know my friends and I can run instances if we are a party of five, but we would also like to enjoy all of the quests without having to play them all solo. This will make it possible (but not require it) to allow leveling to be more of a social activity which will in turn make it more fun, instead of people having to "put in the work" of leveling to 80 before they can play with their friends.

If this cannot be done for Outland and Northrend, please keep it in mind for future game design."

If we can petition Blizzard to change this game mechanic (in the name of group play) it would mean I wouldn't have to create a 70-80 questing guide skipping the collection quests, you could just follow any of the standard questing guides and would get the full advantage of playing and enjoying all of the quests from the expansion without slamming your head against your keyboard while spending 50+ minutes to do a quest designed to take 10 minutes. We as boxers would then be able to take advantage of tighter quest hubs, and ultimately would level at closer to a normal progression.

What does everyone think?

[whitechapel]

I think this is a brilliant suggestion and something I've been wondering about myself lately. It's as though Blizzard are forcing you to quest solo at certain points. If you were feeling lucky you could perhaps add that you feel as though it's "not in the spirit of the game (hate that terminology)" to force people to solo collection quests instead of playing with friends.

I really hope they do something about it, we all know they can.

[Multibocks]

considering I am leveling a new group of characters without RAF, I am all for this change!

[Matt007]

Leveling from 1-60 with RAF goes very fast, maybe they could extend the time you can level faster with RAF (now it's 60 or 90 days). From 60-70 should be after 3.0 no Problem, because they lowered the XP you require per level and the Outland Quests are not so bad for Multiboxing, because you can now skip all the collecting quests :) But leveling in WotLK is a pain in the ass, alot of collecting quests and alot of quests you have to do with machines ... boost leveling from 70-80 :)

[Sam DeathWalker]

They should increase mob range (before they stop following you) by about 20percent (so you can pull more mobs at one time), and increase the exp each mob gives for killing it from 5 to 6 X the mob level. Make killing mobs equal to questing for leveling.

[Malekyth]

I'm not trying to convince you that should shouldn't bother, but I can't believe that Blizzard wouldn't have already considered and put off, or rejected, these ideas. It makes complete and obvious sense for us multiboxers, but there must be some reason they haven't made the change for traditional groups. I don't have the answer, but for whatever reason, the current collection quest mechanic is OK to them.

I think this is because they're geared to smaller groups than we tend to run, 1-3 people maybe, which seems to be a maximum usual group size outside group quests. This is an assumption I'm making, but I'm considering my personal pre-multiboxing group experience, and the fact that I never ever see a group larger than 2 or 3 outside PvP or a meeting stone. Consider also that the collection quests that are explicitly written for 5-man groups tend to have drops in abundance, or at least just enough so that all five players will have barely or almost completed by the end of the instance (I'm thinking Zul'Farak and Shadow Labyrinth). In my experience, collection quests with 1-2 other humans do not seem that arduous, they're just a different flavor of quest.

I can only speculate why it would be OK with Blizzard that a collection quest should take a 1-3 person group more time than a non-collection quest, but I assume that it's in the spec. Maybe, to put it vaguely, they have a certain amount of time they want each quest hub to take and allocate long-ass collection quests along with non-collection quests and group quests to reach the total, all the while assuming a certain maximum group size. Changing the balance of the different kinds of quests changes the flavor of that zone or quest hub. Or they could have some completely different idea, likely because they do this for a living while I just thought about it for six or seven minutes, but I assume it's by design and not accident.

[Starbuck_Jones]

Here is my Theory on how it should work.

Collection quests: These items should not take up bag space. If someone 'loots' the required item it should just give quest credit like a kill quest does. Think of it like a quest bag or something like our key rings. Or the basic everyone can loot the item flag. This makes a lot more sense for quests where your asked to get like 5 skulls or something to summon a deamon. Why do we need 25 of them? Are we going trying to end this threat or make it 5 times as worse?

XP gains while grouping: Right now with a 5man group the xp per kill is lame. Its ((xp/5)*1.2) or near that. It comes out to be like killing 4 mobs in a full group equals the xp as killing one solo. On kill quests where everyone gets credit this greatly reduces the xp for that quest than doing it solo. Change: Remove the xp division from grouping, but keep the bonus to 5% per group additional member. So solo a guy for 100xp. 2man group its 105xp full group 120xp. I would keep the current xp reduction in place for level 80's grouping with noobs. I would half the current xp given from elite mobs (they should still give out a ton of xp but not like 10k-15k a kill that you would get with rested soloing a xp giving northrend instance mob). 90% of the games content is not group friendly (all quests and areas not group specific) and you are penalized for grouping, yet 100% of the end game you have to group. This would help people with knowing how to play with others instead of soloing to 80 then wtf noob the endgame.

New Toons: I would either offer a one time paid subscription upgrade or make this something for a new expansion. Create 2 new start zones, one for each faction and make it just like the Deathknights start area. Pick whatever toon you want and they start at 55 quest to 57ish to get your talent points.

Recycle old content: So far other than to train, the only time I have left Northrend was for the retakeing of undercity event. Given the new ability to the game to instance areas, this should be done to vanilla wow. We should be going back to an updated Stratholme, Scholomance and stuff. The old instance should be there as well, but I see no reason not to cut/paste and repopulate these old instances when it is very relevant to the game. This will also spread out the population again, instead of 80% of the players all crowding each other in Dalran. The Malygos problem should have us maybe going back to Onyxia or Blackrock, Heck even Wailing Caverns and the emerald dream or Sunken Temple. Vanilla wow is litte more than a place to go farm old mats to level tradeskills.

I will give them credit for the RAF buisness model. I have friends and people I know that do not consider themselves multiboxers in anyway that shell out $15 for wow and $25 for a paid transfer to skip the 1-60 antique tredmill.

[mikekim]

I think blizzard have started nerfing quests already..

whilst running my latest mixed group through Nagrand I noticed that the Nessingway kill quests are only 12 of each now rather than 30, the Boulderfist mage and warrior kill quest cut from 20 to 10 and the telari supply crates collection quest has been halved from 20 to 10.. there are probalbly lots more thay have changed, but those are the only three i really noticed

[sqeaky4100]

Multiboxing aside, I HATE how blizzard treats Group Leveling.

They completely penalize it, resulting in 95% of people leveling on their own. Killing XP, killing collection quests, etc.

While im not about to spit out ideas of my own, I really want blizzard to implement ways to make us WANT to group up to quest/level. As it is, the only reason for group questing is Elite Mob killing quests. Totally stupid >.<


By no means do I want it to become FFXI like, where your only option is group questing, and I also don't want future solo'ers to be punished for soloing. I just think group questing needs a total buff.

[falsfire3401]

I agree heartily with this. Already twice now I've had to pause my normal following of my leveling guide to grind out a few bubbles to next level so I can accept a quest the guide wants me to accept.

(It also sucks that the pally got a 25% exp boost over the priest thru doing her resurrection questline...I wanted to keep the toons equal all the way along, but I've already once had to rez the priest so glad I did the quest).

[Bigfish]

I'd lay the blame on Blizzard's poor groundskeeping when it comes to old world content. They've come about as damn near close to giving new players level 70 characters as they can without actually just giving them level 70 characters. Problem is, those improvements are all from the perspective of the more commonly used leveling methods, ie, solo questing. It more or less leaves multiboxers sitting there with the older, slower methods of leveling, and it hits us in the time department.

Good luck getting them to do anything about it though. Then again, every time I quit and put a cut-n-paste response on 10 accounts, they tend to fix whatever the issue I was quiting over is.

[Talamarr]

My one and only devils advocate to your suggestion is that 5 people can kill things 5 times faster. So while your solo guy takes 10 minutes for a collection quests, 5 people won't take 50 minutes because there would be less downtime and mobs die faster. Of course, then there's the issue of total available mobs without waiting on respawns to counter that but whatever.

Obviously as a multi-boxer I like the idea. Good luck though, I'll /sign whatever suggestion you make along those lines.

[Starbuck_Jones]

Well 5 guys does not mean that things die 5 times faster. Yes they do kill things faster than a solo guy, but you have to look at how fast you can put out the damage and the biggest factor is how many times you have to cast. For example. Lets say a mob takes 6 spells to kill. And for ease of math and all things equal we will use a 2 second casting spell so we don't have to factor in the global cool down. That will take the solo guy 12s to kill the mob. A Duo, 6seconds. a group of 3, 4 seconds. Now here is where things get goofy. Group of 4 still takes 4 seconds as does a group of 5. So a 3, 4, or 5 man group kills the mob in the same ammount of time. So 4 seconds over 12 seconds is only 3 times as fast as solo in this example. Thus it will take longer for a 5 man group to get all the drops (3 times faster, but 5 times the drops needed), they take a penalty to XP by grouping.

Solo: 12seconds per kill for 10 drops = 120seconds
Duo: 6 seconds per kill for 20 drops = 120 seconds
3man: 4seconds per kill for 30 drops = 120 seconds
4man: 4seconds per kill for 40 drops = 160seconds
Full group: 4seconds per kill for 50 drops = 200 seconds

Now lets factor in that each member adds an additional multiplier for running around. A duo will have 2x the run around time getting to the mobs. Thus a full group will have 5x the time of running around. Lets say 10seconds to get from mob to mob. now it looks like this.

220s
320s
420s
560s
700s

This is all things being equal. It doesn't seem unreasonable as right now it takes my 5 man group 2 castings to kill normal mobs. But all this maths is nothing more than to show that a full group doesn't do things 5 times faster.

[Duese]

Honestly, I don't think that making loot quests "group" lootable is going to make that big of a difference. The problem is that these quests are DESIGNED with a person doing them solo. The problem isn't with the looting, it's with the design of the quest to begin with and on a more grand scale the way the game has evolved.

Most of the "Group" quests even aren't worth doing with a group because they are easy enough just to solo with most classes. The ones that aren't soloable are so easy with a group that they aren't even fun. I mean, how many non-tank-n-spank group quests are out there?

The other problem is that their really isn't many group quests. They are assuming that you want "group" quests to extras and the real "group" quests to be "instance" quests. I would guess that out of any zones quests, maybe 3% of them are "group" quests.

If they want to improve "group" leveling then they need to really put in "group" leveling. Increase the amount of group quests that are in a zone and for the love of god make them fun and at least somewhat challenging. Fighting ONE elite that has the same amount of HP as a trash mob in the 5 man next door does not quantify a group quest.

I dunno ... maybe they could...
- Make event driven quests rather than quest start driven. For example, the way the Battle for Undercity fight starts every X minutes once someone talks to him. Then make the events about as long as the undercity one. It shouldn't be as long as doing an instance but it shouldn't take you longer to put a group together than it does to actually do the quest.
- Make dynamic quests. Wintergrasp was a great idea, but they wasted it on PvP. It should have been part of the PvE content. Have the scourge attacking constantly and destroying different parts (or all of the zone). You can fight to reclaim different parts of it to increase the amount of questgivers or the defenses. But make it so it's not incredibly easy to win or incredibly easy to lose areas. If you've ever played FFXI, then the beseiged events are exactly what I'm talking about with the attacking and defending thing.

I would love to see a zone at war where the current quests are based on the needs of the actual fight. Have generals and captains and such (all nps) that fight alongside you. You could queue up for "group" quests which would be anything from escort quests to being deployed to an area to defend or attack. You could queue up for "solo" quests which would involve anything from bombing runs to stealth missions to delivering orders or relaying messages. You could even work crafting into it where you can be given items and craft them, then deliver them to people, doing so will increase the armor or strength of a given army.

Instead of a "questing" system, I would do it on a "queuing" system, where you queue up for quests. So, if you have like 5-6 groups there, then they aren't all trying to click 100 mph to get a quest from a captain or whatnot. That and they can push out quests faster based on the number queue'd. The more people that are queue'd up the more intense the battle gets. The opposition can send in non-elites, elites, bosses, raid bosses, etc. Loot could be something along the lines of the honor system, granting "seige" points instead of actual badges or crap like that.

You could base xp gains off the type of quest and do area xp. If you successfully defend an area, everyone in the area gets xp. They could go based on the amount of participation to get a percentage of the amount of xp. The amount of things they can do with this system is pretty endless.

So, if you wanted to go quest, you could head out, queue up for the battle and then spend a few hours in the mix of the fight.

This could be part of an intermediate update between patches to. They could add different things or take things away from different areas in the zone occasionally so we don't end up with 6 months and no new raid... *cough*.

[thinus]

If they want to improve "group" leveling then they need to really put in "group" leveling.

It's not feasible for old content. Just changing the quest drops for collection quests to be lootable by the whole group sounds a lot more achievable. The mechanism is already in place for quests with single item drops. It will also reduce mob contention. A group of 5 won't be killing everything in sight for hours to get quest drops for everyone, they only need to kill as many as a solo person would.

And I am sure the millions of people that play solo don't want the burden to find people to group with to complete elaborate group quests, not more than they already are anyway. I played a DK solo the other day and struggled for probably an hour to find someone to help me kill the elite forest walker giant things as I couldn't solo them at 70. Eventually someone that already completed the quest line took pity on me and helped me out.

[Duese]

It's not feasible for old content. Just changing the quest drops for collection quests to be lootable by the whole group sounds a lot more achievable. The mechanism is already in place for quests with single item drops. It will also reduce mob contention. A group of 5 won't be killing everything in sight for hours to get quest drops for everyone, they only need to kill as many as a solo person would.

And I am sure the millions of people that play solo don't want the burden to find people to group with to complete elaborate group quests, not more than they already are anyway. I played a DK solo the other day and struggled for probably an hour to find someone to help me kill the elite forest walker giant things as I couldn't solo them at 70. Eventually someone that already completed the quest line took pity on me and helped me out.

While I agree that it's not feasible for old content, the fact that you can basically turn in 3 quests and get a level with RAF makes it a moot point. 1-60 is so incredibly fast and easy that I have an extremely hard time with people who complain about it. I already had a problem with people complaining about it before the xp changes, RAF and quest rewards were boosted. 60-70 is just about in the same boat. I was one of the people fighting against making leveling 1-60 easier. I fought against DK's starting at lvl 55. I fought against just about everything that people have complained about in making leveling easier. It's a staple of MMO's and WoW makes a mockery of it.

The general theme of making leveling faster or easier is equivalent to making it more fun, but why? Some people seek fun in the journey and some people seek fun in the destination, well the journey is over before it starts and the destination is a beautiful place where a billion other people are already.

The thing that everyone attributes to the greatness of Vanilla WoW is that it was new, yet the same essential quest dynamics haven't changed since they were introduced. The only real "new" thing that was added was the "mounted" quests and those are already a tired mechanic from overuse.

Blizzard's answer for the questing system has been basically to add more quests. Northrend having more quests than either of the two other continents and containing 10 levels vs the 60 the other cover is a confusing resolve.

I also attribute this to the "lack" of content each of the zones have and the more dependence people are putting on addons like questhelper to push them along. It's not lack of skill or even effort, it's lack of desire to read through loads of quest text to "save the day" by looting 8 raptor eggs that has no effect in the grand scheme of things.

[Catamer]

I find WoW to be very anti-teaming. I think the non-group drops show this. What few grouping items they had have been removed or seriously weakend ( most non-instance elites were eliminated ).
What is worse now is that all of the instances prior to UK do not prepare you for how hard UK is going to be when you get there. Kara is easy.

I'm feel like the people who wrote WoLK never played WoW before. The mount quests, the way things are looted such as kick before loot or talk to the dead to loot or just plain overly complicated looting ( mind control a pet to loot, mind control a pet to kill something ).
I kind of found pre-wolk questing to be 5x the fun to have a team and WoLK questing is almost like having 1/5 the fun to have a team.

WoLK pvp sux, WoLK rewards from heroic badges sux. Having everything you have worked for so hard for invalidated every time they spit out a change to the game sux.

[offive]

I agree with the intent of the OP. However, I doubt Blizzard would look at this seriously. Blizzard should simply revise / expand RAF.

As I have said before, I don't quite get why RAF benefits die at level 60 and/or after a set number of days. The whole point is to get more new people into the game, and for the most part if you RAF you miss the experience of leveling (very useful and fun for solo players new to the game). So I guess while I found RAF to be very fun for extra teams, I would not have liked to have RAF'd my main toon when I started at launch. Maybe a RAF++ system. RAF++ should really be for existing players who play together and want to fall into the bottomless pit that is alt-itis, but it would have to be changed to allow triple experience all the way up to 80. Leave RAF out there for new players, bump 3x EXP to level 70 (RAF was for the end of the TBC cycle so you really only needed to level 10 normal levels not 20) and let the new people figure out how to play in Wrath content that is tuned for their talents and spells. Possibly have a level requirement of 80 for RAF++ to ensure people get the full impact of playing the original game as intended.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

I'd love to see any improvements/incentives to actually group outside of instances and quest elites. As most folks note, the collection quests and the way XP is halved for each additional member = suck. They added a slight group bonus a while back but it was so negligible as to be hardly worth whatever time it took them to code it. :P

[Sam DeathWalker]

Very simple minor changes can fix everything.

1) Add 20 percent to the max range of mobs so you can get bigger pulls

2) Just increase the group bonus by say 30 percent.

3) As to RAF just say it ends when you get 120 total levels on all characters on that account, or in 6 months. And offer a $15/month deal to keep it going monthly after that.

4) Allow Raid instances to give group exp (i.e. once you enter the instance in a raid you can break into groups without being kicked from the instance, if you so desire).

[Moorea]

Very simple minor changes can fix everything.

1) Add 20 percent to the max range of mobs so you can get bigger pulls

2) Just increase the group bonus by say 30 percent.

3) As to RAF just say it ends when you get 120 total levels on all characters on that account, or in 6 months. And offer a $15/month deal to keep it going monthly after that.

4) Allow Raid instances to give group exp (i.e. once you enter the instance in a raid you can break into groups without being kicked from the instance, if you so desire).

I don't think 3) would apply to anyone but you - normal people get enough teams to 60 in 1 3 months RAF that they don't need more time; likewise for 4)

I think the only broken thing are collection quests; maybe 2) would be nice though

[Sam DeathWalker]

Ya 4 would only apply to me but no one really knows how many 11 plus boxers there will be in the future, a few years ago no one would have predicted there would be as many multiboxers as there is now.

[Bigfish]

Ya 4 would only apply to me but no one really knows how many 11 plus boxers there will be in the future, a few years ago no one would have predicted there would be as many multiboxers as there is now.

Well, to be fair, up-to-5 boxing leaves you with large amount of content to play in, so people with their own group isn't too surprising. 10 Boxing is a lot less common, simply because its twice the commitment without nearly the same level of reward. 11+, I don't see in anything but the most dedicated of boxers, if only because at that many characters, you more or less are restricted to wtf-pwning people in PvP, and this is after an extensive investment in hardware, software, and leveling time.

So no, I don't see many 11+ boxers. It would be nice if it was taken in to cosideration that such large groups are difficult for solo players to form solely to grind xp, and boxers have to put a substansial effort in to that many characters, such that the xp penalties far surpass the difficulty in putting together such a group. Just my 2 gil on party xp over a certain number of people.