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    Multiboxologist MiRai's Avatar
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    Dungeons definitely became more difficult after level scaling was implemented, back in patch 7.2.5 (or somewhere around there). Now, while simply leveling, there are many bosses, and sometimes even trash packs, that will actually pose a challenge, to a multiboxer. Unfortunately, it seems to have come at the cost of everything being a damage sponge—including outside world mobs—and some fights can become quite boring, or even tedious, as it now takes exponentially longer to kill a boss, or even a basic trash pack—all for seemingly no good reason.

    However, since it was first introduced, Blizzard seems to have adjusted the numbers a bit, but maybe the stat/item level squish they recently did with the launch of Battle For Azeroth, inadvertently helped alleviate that perception. In my opinion, it's not nearly as bad as it was when it was first put into place, but it's still rough in more than just a few areas. Some areas feel tougher, all around, especially if you're new or, in your case, rusty, but other areas can feel like they were lazily scaled, and have not been looked at in ages *cough*cataclysm*cough*.

    Now, to be fair, I can't say that I mind it all that much, and I do prefer that leveling through dungeons will actually teach a new multiboxer basic mechanics and technique as they progress, rather than donning heirlooms and simply one-shotting almost everything until current-tier content, where it would then become a rude awakening the moment they stepped foot into a max-level heroic (now Mythic). Although, I find that you can still deck yourself out in heirlooms and enchants, and that helps immensely while leveling through dungeons. Blizzard has also consolidated certain dungeon expansions into entire level brackets ( 70-80 (TBC & Wrath) / 80-90 (Cataclysm & MoP)), so you generally have a good amount of them to pick from.

    I think what feels pretty bad, though, is the amount of time it takes to level. It's been a creeping issue for several expansions now, as max level has continued to increase, but they're trying to fix that in the next expansion, Shadowlands, with a level squish back down to 60, where they've publicly stated that they expect leveling to be 50-70% faster than it is now. I'd like to believe that most of the tedium felt while leveling, today and for the past few expansions, was masked by the fact that we could—along with the added 300% RaF experience bonus that has since been removed—just one-shot almost everything during the journey. After they changed that, a bigger issue of needing over one hundred exhausting levels to participate in meaningful content reared its ugly head, which, again, is why I assume they are, at least in part, doing this level squish.

    After BFA's, largely, lackluster early delivery of gated content outside of the most highly-skilled areas (raiding), painstakingly locked behind layers of random luck completely out of the hands of the player, they, unsurprisingly, lost a large chunk of their subscribers, and so they've been playing catch-up ever since and throwing band-aids over gushing wounds, hoping to weather the storm until Shadowlands, while the art and cinematics teams keep the ship afloat. Unfortunately, if Blizzard continues to strike out every other expansion (Cata, WoD, BFA), this is, in my opinion, going to kill this game quicker than anything else. It's not a simple task to keep people playing the game, and it's even more difficult to bring them back after they've left, but it's incredibly easy to lose them. So, they need to stop screwing around with these intricate or overly complicated per-expansion systems that come with a heavy development cost and a high risk of failure (looking at you, Azerite gear), and get back to the roots of an MMORPG. I realize I speak as if I have the answer, but I'm certainly not the only one who feels this way, and I think if they're going to dump time and effort into any particular system, then allow it to transition across the borders of an expansion, and don't leave it behind to die.

    A bit of a tangent there at the end, but it is what is, and I still thoroughly enjoy the multiboxing playstyle, as well as the theorycrafting and design elements behind all of it. I'm really hoping to get my teams together at 120 so I can begin to jump into some Mythics myself, shortly after the release of the next season, and I'm currently planning for just that. However, here's to hoping that they loosen the reins a bit with the release of Shadowlands, and that overall gameplay becomes quicker paced and a bit more fun—even if that second metric does happen to be measured subjectively. However, if they don't, then, at that point, Classic TBC will be right around the corner.
    Last edited by MiRai : 12-21-2019 at 03:24 AM
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    Author of the almost unknown and heavily neglected blog: Multiboxology

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