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Demon Hunters, Level Boosts, and You

by - 9 years ago

World of Warcraft: Legion was officially announced yesterday and one of the hot topics is, since they are a hero class, what level will Demon Hunters start at? Developers are still debating internally about what level to start the class at, but I’m going to lay out why I think it makes sense to start them at a high level.

In Wrath of the Lich King with the introduction of Death Knights, Blizzard announced that this class would start at level 55 and progress through their own starting experience before officially joining their faction. At the time Death Knights were released, level boosts didn’t exist and heirlooms were not as prevalent in the leveling process as they are now so Death Knights typically joined the world at level 58 and would level through Outland before heading to Northrend. The level cap was level 80, which meant new Death Knights had approximately 22 levels to grind through before they could participate in end-game content.

Fast forward to now and the experience for a new character is very different. Heirloom items are fairly easy to come by, much of the questing experience across various expansions has been streamlined, and if you don’t want to level the usual way you can always drop some cash and get a character boost from the store. There’s also a free boost included with the Warlords of Draenor expansion and it sounds like that will continue on into Legion.

The level boost is a great tool, but it also potentially makes a starting experience like that of the Death Knights irrelevant. If Blizzard starts Demon Hunters at level 85 and their starting experience takes them to level 88 (based on the Death Knight model), then players can potentially skip that experience entirely by using their level boost on the character even before signing in. If the player chooses to complete the starting experience then use their level boost, they’re still making 22 levels of anticipated content and learning experience irrelevant.

So, what does this mean for Demon Hunters?

I would anticipate Blizzard taking one of two stances. I’m sure we’ll find out the answer on Sunday during the developer session, but for now here’s how I see it:

Option 1: Demon Hunters start at a relatively high level (mid 90’s) during their starting experience and end the experience at level 100. This allows them to launch straight into the current content without players feeling forced to use a level boost to skip content they have done several times over. I think this option is the more likely.

Option 2: Demon Hunters are not eligible to use a character boost token and start at the beginning of a prior expansion. I doubt this is the route Blizzard will take because, depending on the requirements for having a Demon Hunter, it will cause a lot of players to turn away from the class. Even with heirlooms, leveling a character through 10, 20, 25 levels of content is pretty daunting. That’s why we have the character boosts in the first place.

Yes, there will be a lot of players who choose to grind out the levels anyway because they’re just that excited about Demon Hunters, and I say “More power to them.”

Let me know what you think in the comments and which experience you’d prefer to see.


Timothy Prine

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0 responses to “Demon Hunters, Level Boosts, and You”

  1. Eldorian says:

    Option 3 and the one I feel is more likely – players will start in the high 80’s and will be level 90 by the time they enter the new zones for leveling 90-100. We probably haven’t heard the level yet because they may not know yet what that experience gain will look like.

  2. Jasön Allred says:

    I think they need to slash everyones level to 60 ( it is just a number shown ) and make every character level 1-60 regardless. ( also just make multiple zones the same level so theres multiple paths to take while leveling. )

  3. Aeroshe says:

    I think the two most likely levels that Demon Hunters would finish their starting quests would be either 90 (and launch straight into WoD content, which is fairly quick to level through and have SOME story relevance for setting up Legion content) or 100 (and jump straight into Legion content).

    They most likely haven’t announced it yet because they haven’t decided yet. I’d prefer they start out at 90 after finishing their starting area, personally, but considering the lore presented so far (that the Demon Hunters are being awoken SPECIFICALLY because of the Legion invasion) it doesn’t make much sense lore-wise for them to be anything other than 100 after their starting area.

    Then again, it didn’t make much sense for Death Knights to travel back in time and do BC content after their starting area either, so I guess either option is a valid possibility.

  4. Kharon says:

    yeah…wonderful…so we have a crap ton of people that have absolutely no clue how to play a class jumping right into current content. saw how that worked with monks. they had to be WAY OP and that still did not stop them from sucking.