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Following the announcement of World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth, the MMO’s next expansion, at BlizzCon 2017, Blizzard got into more details about what’s coming next for the game. The studio revealed details during a World of Warcraft panel following the convention’s opening ceremony, but not all of them were about the expansion.
At least one major change is coming to World of Warcraft before Battle for Azeroth launches, and it has to do with the recently introduced level scaling system. First revealed in the last expansion, Legion, level scaling allows for all of the zones in that expansion to be relevant no matter what level players enter them at. Blizzard is expanding that system to all of Azeroth and the other areas that are part of World of Warcraft.
Every zone in the game will now feature a much wider spread of levels, and enemies and quests in a zone will scale based on the level of the player. There will be a max level that zones can scale to, so if you enter a beginner zone as a level 120 character, you’ll still be able to slice through pretty effortlessly.
More interestingly, Blizzard is mixing together different expansions via level scaling. For example, all of the content from the first two expansions, The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King, will range from level 60 to level 80. That means players can choose to play through one or the other of these expansions up to level 80, or they can hop back and forth between them at will as they level.
Blizzard is referring to this change as “flexible expansion order.” As part of this system, the Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria expansions will also both scale from 80 to 90. This change will apply to dungeons and rewards as well.
These major changes to World of Warcraft’s leveling process will be implemented beginning in patch 7.3.5, well before the Battle for Azeroth expansion arrives. That expansion is due some time next year, and you can read more info on it in our new cover story feature.
