Of the major complaints, one that Blizz has decided to address with this expansion is the issue of having to level and regear all of your characters for a full ten levels. While we may find it annoying, I have to admit that WoW Cataclysm Leveling is necessary to succeed and keep the game interesting. The primary purpose of an expansion is to essentially reset the game, putting old content to rest to make room for the new. This also removes the gear gap between players when they start the new content, and lets Blizz make drastic changes to class mechanics. Like replacing hunter mana with focus, replacing hunter AP with agility, and replacing the hunter class designer with someone who clearly isn’t insane. It isn’t practical to close down old instances and impossible to just delete people gear, so the only way Blizzard can get a game reset is to “discover” a new previously unknown continent and send everyone there to get stronger.
Blizzards decision this time around to only expand the game by five levels instead of ten is a very interesting one. They will still gain all the benefit of a game reset, but it won’t have as nearly a drastic effect on the player base. The major problem with leveling is that it is exciting in the beginning when everything is new and at the very end when you start preparing for the end game. But in the middle it’s just a grind. By reducing the level cap by five Blizz will compress the process and eliminate this middle ground. What I find most interesting though will be how it prevents expansion fatigue. If the expansion is only a few months away, why bother banging your head against Kel’thuzad or Kil’Jaden when any gear you may get will be replaced by a quest reward? We have no idea what kind of epics there will be in Cataclysm. But in the past epics that drop from the last raid in an expansion will be slightly inferior to the epics in the first raid, ten levels later. Since we are only going up five levels your Icecrown epics will probably be on par with the gear from the first Cataclysm raid. So even if the expansion is coming out next week, kicking Arthas off his frozen throne will be well worth it. Just don’t forget your mittens, it isn’t called Warmcrown after all.