Dar'Khan Drathir killed me. Several times. In fact there was no way I could take him down until a mage showed up halfway through my third or fourth run at him and added enough DPS to finish him off.
So exactly one enemy in Ghostlands killed me. Knucklerot and Luzran – the only other elites in the zone – were tougher to take down than Anok'suten or Kel'gash, but I still killed them, repeatedly, in 1 v 1 fights. Nothing else came close, even when I made most of my kills in Deatholme while under the debuff that Dr. Whitherlimb throws out.
So much for Ghostlands.
Level scaling has broken World of Warcraft. The one upside to it – spending more time in zones I like – has proven to be a damp squib. I finished Ghostlands at level 24, a total of 2 or 3 levels higher than I've been in the past. Seeing as I was already level 15 when I entered the zone I actually got less levels out of Ghostlands this time around.
This wasn't a speed run either. I did every quest, I killed far more mobs than I needed to, and I levelled up my professions along the way.
The underwhelming levelling is only part of the problem though. In the past If I hit a brick wall with Dar'Khan I'd come back after I'd gained a level or two on him and finish him off – with level scaling that's no longer an option. He'll always be that strong relative to me.
Of course he's not meant to solo'd, but cross-realms only provide the illusion of a populated world. Forming a group for any low level, non-dungeon content through zone chat is as hit and miss as it ever was. This is WoW, and that means most of the playerbase is in dungeons or endgame zones.
Ultimately though the absolute dealbreaker for me is that level scaling makes it impossible to solo the 5 man dungeons as I level up, and that has – for years – been my favourite thing to do in this game.
Doing this on-level with a non-twinked, non-heirloom'd character has never been possible, so it became a game within a game for me to see just how close to on-level I could beat the dungeons. I'd start off in Ragefire Chasm, then move on to Shadowfang Keep and Wailing Caverns. I'd make the long run up through Stranglethorn Vale to reach the Deadmines and later on I'd corpse jump my way through Stormwind to get to the Stockade.
Not anymore. The dungeons scale like everything else, and I'll be level 60+ before I even start to outlevel them.
Assuming I get that far. I'm 12 hours in and level 24, and with a long stretch of Cataclysm era zones ahead of me and no dungeon soloing to break up the grind I'm honestly not sure I can be bothered.
As I said in my last post whenever I come back to WoW I enjoy it, for a time, until the things I dislike pile up enough to outweigh the things I like. I knew it would happen, I didn't think it would happen this fast, and the best thing I can say about the current state of WoW is that it's making me look forward to Classic.
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