World of Warcraft Shadowlands is now just about one month away from launch and players are still anxiously awaiting an official release date confirmation for the upcoming expansion's two pre-patches. The first of those updates is likely to bring along the major level squish to the iconic MMO, which will forever change the way that alts and new characters progress through content in Azeroth from levels 1-50.
When the level squish arrives, level 120 characters will hit the new temporary max level of 50 for a few weeks until Shadowlands arrives and raises the cap back up to 60. During that time, World of Warcraft players may also want to check in with their alts to see how the new scaled leveling system works. In order to do that, they'll first need to activate Chromie Time.
Once the pre-patch is in place, Chromie Time will be a new feature that allows players to turn on level scaling and make everything in the pre-Shadowlands zones level 50. This will also cause all quests and objectives from the pre-Shadowlands content to scale up to level 50, as well. Players who want to activate Chromie Time after the level squish arrives will need to visit Chromie in Stormwind or Orgrimmar to get started. The time-bending NPC can be found just outside city's Embassy.
Once players arrive at Chromie, they'll be able to opt into Chromie Time by selecting an expansion that they would like to level through. This will give them the starting quest for that expansion and will populate their dungeon finder tool with the instances appropriate for that selection. That said, players can still visit any of the expansions and level in those areas as well. They'll still find the appropriately scaled enemies in any pre-Shadowlands zone necessary for leveling up.
Those are all the basics that players should need to know to get started on leveling up their alts when the pre-patch finally drops sometime in the next few weeks. Reports from the beta indicate that the new leveling experience is very fast, even considering that Blizzard nerfed experience bonuses from Heirlooms and a few other sources. It will be sad to see the 100% experience bonus that has been active since the pandemic began go away when Shadowlands launches, but hopefully the Chromie Time leveling experience is fast enough that it won't be missed very much. Many players on the PTR have been reporting 10-15 hours as the average 1-50 leveling time for players who aren't applying any intense speed leveling tactics.
Be sure to check back in the coming weeks as more details about Shadowlands emerge. Until then, For the Horde!
World of Warcraft is available now for PC. At this point, World of Warcraft Shadowlands releases on October 26 or 27 (depending on time zone) for PC.
Source: WoWhead