Do we really need new levels in Warcraft?

Elcheeshead, (correct spelling) a commenter on Sunday’s Queue @Wow Insider brought up an interesting question. Do we really need more levels in Warcraft?

My immediate response was: “It would probably be wildly unpopular, but not leveling up would cut a lot of BS out. They are going to rebalance classes anyway. If you think about it, 50% or more of their development time is probably spent on the leveling process, which the majority of players probably does once.

What does this leave? Dungeons, raids, PvP, professions. Pretty much everything else. They could do epic questlines that matter and tie into the main story. They wouldn’t have to mess with filler content. If they so choose to do so, they can put some fun stuff in if they want. It would radically change the game. This could be a good community blog topic.”

So let’s take a look at this, rationally and as objectively as possible. No new levels? Are you f-cking crazy? Well, yeah but that’s not the issue. If we can agree that a good chunk (if not half) of the developers time is spent on questing from previous level cap to new level cap, this could free them up to work on other things:

Questing– They would still have quests, but these quests would be more meaningful. They would tell rich tales full of lore and character development. New races would be completely and meaningfully fleshed out. No loose ends. No abrupt stops. They could even add max level class quests. There could still be dailies and reputation but you would work on these from the moment you set foot in the new zones.

Dungeons– No more leveling dungeons, there would just be dungeons. Call them heroic or normals or whatever you want. They would be able to spend more time on making them epic and not worry about how fast we get through them.

Raids– With flex raids upon us, LFR, normals and heroic modes, there is plenty of raiding to do. Maybe some extra time now to make sure all the tiers have enough bosses.

PvP– Not worried about having to quest for 5-10 levels, you would go to work right away and start earning that honor and conquest. Maybe use your extra time to do rep work and craft some gear?

Professions– For crafting gear, they wouldn’t have to worry about arbitrarily putting lesser gear in for leveling. They could focus on good looking gear for PvE/PvP and transmog.

Gathering– Instead of not having time to level and work on your professions, you would have plenty of time to gather materials. Maybe some extra time to work on rep or do dungeons/Battlegrounds.

So far I really don’t see a downside. One of the complaints could be that you don’t see progress or an arbitrary power increase. They could very easily power everyone up who is at the cap. Just like they do when you hit the cap. They could put a class specific mini-boss in (kind of like in temple of the white tiger).

How would you feel if there were no more levels? Would you be relieved or cheated? Feel free to let me know how crazy or amazing you think this would be!