Leveling Nerfs Incoming for The War Within

The War Within has released and with it has come some positives and negatives that Blizzard has needed to address. One of the first things on that list appears to be the general leveling speed/difficulty in The War Within.

There has been a lot of controversy in the gaming industry over the last few years with companies monetizing early access to the full launch of their games. One such game that has adopted doing this, is World of Warcraft. The War Within is not the first WoW expansion to allow for players to pay for early access, but it has definitely had just as much controversy and issues with its early access model.

Leveling is one of the most important parts of World of Warcraft. Accessing any of the end game content, requires reaching max level first. This has been one of the biggest sources of WoW's early access controversies. Players who pay extra money for early access will get to level their characters first, get access to an additional week of running mythic 0 dungeons for better gear heading into the start of the season.

One thing that's never really been an issue before, is how much easier the leveling experience for early access players is compared to non-early access players. The War Within is now dealing with this unique problem.

Related Article: The FASTEST Ways To Level In 'The War Within'

What is the core issue?

Leveling in World of Warcraft has a level of difficulty to it. Now, that level is usually quite low in general, but there is an expectation of how difficult/easy it should be to level a character in WoW. This expectation is determined by how fast mobs die, how fast players die, how easy it is to pull multiple mobs while out in the open world, how fast or slow dungeon spamming is, and a variety of other factors.

Every player has to level whether they like it or not; that makes leveling a system/mechanic that literally all players have to engage with to some extent. Meeting the expectations/intended design of a system that integral to the game and keeping that experience fair for all players, is extremely important.

The entry level content of The War Within has been undertuned for a while. It was undertuned on beta and is undertuned now during the early access period. Blizzard is hotfixing mob health, damage, and other factors to make leveling a more difficult experience that is more in line with how leveling has been for other recent experiences.

The core issue is the timing. Blizzard is making leveling slower and more difficult immediately after early access ends so that only players who paid extra money were allowed to engage with this advantage.

Is this a big deal in the long run? No. Is it a questionable look for Blizzard? Yes. Do players who didn't purchase early access have a right to be upset? Yes.

What changes are coming?

WoW Community Manager Kaivax made a post on the WoW forums explaining what's going on:

As players have jumped into The War Within and begun leveling up, we’ve seen data and heard a great deal of feedback that players coming into Khaz Algar with endgame Dragonflight gear were extremely powerful relative to that initial content. It is entirely intended that effort put into gearing translates into a significant combat advantage at the start of a new expansion, but the values we’ve been seeing are extreme, often not even allowing time for normal combat rotations. This disparity also caused mixed-level groups to experience skewed results, with lower-level players contributing drastically more than level 80s. Tomorrow, Wednesday, August 28, we’re going to apply hotfixes to the game to address this.

The hotfixes will adjust the scaling of enemies in War Within leveling content to increase the power of lower-level enemies, bringing the duration of combat more in line with expected WoW behavior. These changes will be most noticeable at level 70, and will have a reduced impact as your level increases. Enemies at level 80 and above will be unchanged.

Again, we’ll make these changes tomorrow, August 28.

Thank you!

- Kaivax, Community Manager at Blizzard

Essentially, mobs are going to hit harder, have more health, and will be far more noticeable at the beginning of The War Within leveling experience than at the end.

The core problem of early access players having an easier time leveling still remains. The nerfs certainly make sense, as The War Within is easier than it should be, but the timing remains the issue.