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Blizzard Issues Hotfix To Deal With World Of Warcraft Leveling Problem
35 minutes ago
With the next World of Warcraft expansion scheduled to drop in just a couple of weeks, Blizzard has rolled out a fresh hotfix that will hopefully address one of the game's current issues: leveling. If all goes well, the game will no longer chug between levels 60 and 80, which should go a long way to keep players hooked through the mid-game.
In recent weeks, players have been giving Blizzard an earful concerning experience gains and leveling in World of Warcraft. It looks like a couple of issues are at the heart of these problems, including time to kill certain baddies and the time it takes to level up between levels 60 and 80. While Blizzard is still trying to figure out why some baddies are taking too long to kill, the hope is that a hotfix launched this week will address the problem of leveling.
In short, players felt like the grind to move up in levels between that particular range was taking too long. That's a pretty big issue in a game like World of Warcraft, because players will sometimes move away from an MMO if they don't feel like they are being rewarded for their effort regularly enough.
According to a recent report, the developers dug into the numbers and saw that this was a legitimate issue, as leveling in that range took about 15 percent longer than levels before or after. While the hotfix notes don't go into too many details, Blizzard explains that the experience required to gain a level has been lowered for the range of levels 40 to 100. That brings the amount of time needed to level between the magic 60 to 80 range down by 14 percent, with a smaller reduction in time between levels 40 and 49. We figure a lot of math had to go into figuring out a proper adjustment here but, assuming Blizzard's estimates are correct, that should appease players who felt like they were stuck within a certain range for too long.
Now all Blizzard has to do is figure out why some monsters are taking too long to kill. As it was explained, they found some enemies were simply dying too quickly. That meant battles weren't all that much fun, especially for classes with abilities that took a moment to charge.
The community was apparently frustrated with Blizzard for a lack of communication concerning the issue, but it looks like that was due to the fact that their heads were down as they worked to understand the problem. It was explained that they didn't want to just roll out a quick bandage, as that would likely cause unforeseen issues down the road. Instead, they're crunching the numbers and digging into the code in the hopes of discovering a legitimate source of the problem.
Hopefully, they're able to work their magic soon, as the Battle of Azeroth expansion is set to launch on Aug. 14.
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