Yet another lengthy digression on World of Warcraft. Bear with me 🙂
My main character, Aabde (human warrior, on Staghelm), has finally finished off Redridge, and Loch Modan on the side. This puts him at level 27, a bit ahead of the game for Duskwood. I also finally did the Deadmines run, tagging along (for free) with some lvl 80 paladin who was escorting a bunch of his low-level newbie friends through for loot. They kindly offered me a share of the loot but I declined, I was just interested in ticking Westfall off my todo list for good. I’d made a solo run attempt at level 25 but got overwhelmed by the mobs, I just don’t have enough area-of-effect damage techniques yet. I did ask the paladin for the chance to take on VanCleef solo, which went pretty well, though they had to heal me a couple of times (if I’d been solo, assuming I’d have gotten that far, I’d have used potions and bandages accordingly. I think I could have taken VC myself, but it was nice to have help).
At present Aabde has a pile of Stockade quests and the initial slate of Duskwood quests to start working through. I had a big pile of gnomeregan quests too but I’ll do that later, the quest log is too full again. I’ve decided to table Aabde for a bit and refocus on Zzamba (nelf druid). When I left Zzamba he was lvl 14, and had graduated from Teldrassil to Darkshore. To be honest I was getting a bit tired of Darkshore though – I decided to ship out to Azuremyst and work my way through the Draenei realms instead. This has been a nice change of scenery and provided for some easy questing to get me used to playing a druid again. I am now about halfway done with Bloodmyst isle and it is beginning to get a bit tiresome, but when I am done I’ll have a nice level surplus when I get back to Darkshore so hopefully that will go a bit more quickly, too. I’ve already got Zzamba to lvl 20 there and will probably be at least 23 when I’m finished with it (unfortunately, non-Draenei characters don’t get eth cool parade with teh chickens and all when they finish, though).
I wonder though, whether anything really changes up ahead. As you scale up, so too do the zones, meaning that you still end up with the same sort of grinding quests in your mid-20s as you did in your mid-10s. Since the mobs scale too, it takes about the same amount of time and has the same tedium factor. I don’t think I’m going to stay interested in this past the 30s at this rate. I’ve already abandoned my other alts, GGanda the dwarf rogue and Aelasha the belf paladin, because the cursory attempt I made at logging in with them was yet more tedious leveling all over again. The narrative on bloodmyst is at least more interesting, and I am enjoying the Stormwind storyline as well to a lesser degree, but at some point the relentless leveling is going to wear me down.
If there are fewer of the “go kill X number of such-and-such beastie” or “retrieve N knick-knacks” up ahead, that will really be much appreciated to know. There’s one quest to retrieve Galaen’s amulet on bloodmyst that has a horrific, absolutely horrific drop rate – I am only trying to get a single drop but I’ve killed at least 50 sunhawk belves so far with no results. I’ve given up and am just picking off a belf whenever i happen to run past that area now. This is an extreme case but I’m just not interested in collecting murloc knives or bear flanks or whatever anymore. The better quests are the ones where you need to go discover an area, retrieve a single item, or take on a boss baddy, but these tend to be stingy on the XP (thus far anyway). I suppose I could just harass my guild members to help me level by walking me through some high-level instance somewhere, but once I’m level N, its going to be the same thing. Or will it?
I suppose i could just focus on professions and achievements, especially the world events. I had an absolute blast running Aabde all over Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms after those bonfires. I also leveled pretty well in there too, mainly because the bonfires were so generous with XP. And I have been making a point of fishing whenever I can. I don’t want to repeat all of this though with Zzamba too – improving your skills gets tedious, too. I know a lot of people tend to proliferate alts all over the place, and that was my initial inclination too, but to be honest even two toons are getting to be too much for me. What I ultimately crave is novelty, and it seems that even the World of Warcraft gets to be pretty small after a while.
Small?
Never.
WoW is the Ringworld. Only more infinite.
😉
the endgame is teh game, which why Blizz is always making it easier to level.
but you need to lvl…… lvlin’ is learnin’ to play your class.
pvp and arena, battlegrounds and raids.
get to 80.
😉
battlegrounds are crap at lower levels. all the people with lvl 80 mains have twinked out toons at lvl 19 and 29 with insane gear. If youre a newbie and you want to run your hard-won lvl 19 thru Warsong Gulch, youre toast. youre just toast.
only at higher levels, like the 39 or 49 and above, are where I hear that the battlegrounds are any fun. Thats because its much harder to twink a toon at 39 than it is at 19. not that you cant do it, but it just requires even more of that tedious grinding.
i dont buy the argument that endless grinding through my 30s and 40s isgoing to teach me anything more than i learned thru my 10s and 20s. yeah, ill have more Talents but its still going to be an even matchup for the mobs in your lvl-apppropriate zone. Go kill 10 Dire Spiders! Collect Ten Murloc Knives! etc etc, ad infinitum. blech.
everyone tells me they spend way more time at lvl 80 than at lower levels. but everyone i meet is leveling!
“everyone tells me they spend way more time at lvl 80 than at lower levels. but everyone i meet is leveling!”
Partly that’s because of where you are. The 80s are mostly based in Dalaran in Northrend, and only journey back to the home cities to use the auction house. Many 80s never leave Northrend, using a bank alt to auction. Some people work on leveling alts, but many have a couple 80s and no more interest in more, so you might not meet them except in guild. When you get to Northrend, you’ll see just how crowded it is, and how many 80s there are. We’re like locusts.
You aren’t the only one who’s complained about the repetition of quests. Blizz made a decision to go with fewer such quests in the later game (Outland and Northrend), but in the “old world” you’re pretty much stuck until you get out of it.
The quests in the latest expansion involve a lot more gimmicks like infiltration, escorting, and blowing things up with vehicles. The quests also move the story along far better than the older lvl 1-60 content. Don’t get me wrong, there are still “kill X of Y” quests, but fewer of them.
There are some changes coming to battlegrounds in the next patch: you will be able to “turn off” experience… battlegrounds will give XP if you don’t, meaning those twinks will hit 20 or 30 after a few games, ending their twinking for the moment. Those twinks who’ve turned it off will ONLY be fighting against others who have done so. This will effectively mean that most of the time twinks will be battling other twinks. And good riddance to them. They made low level BGs very un-fun for me when I was leveling.
As far as learning characters, grinding doesn’t do that very well. Since at endgame, each character has a role (tank, DPS, healing) that is their main focus it does take practice to get the hang of, but that’s the role of instances. The instances usually give better quests and rewards than grinding, so it may be worth your while to ask for the occasional run-through.
Sadly, as far as questing goes, it gets worse before it gets better. By the end of the 20s, and straight up until Outland, the designers decided that it’d be fun to give you quests that involve running in circles around the world. It’s not bad if you already know where to go and what to do while you’re there, but it can get frustrating when you discover that half the quests you just picked up require jaunts to the other side of the planet.
Paying a mage to get you to Shattrath or Dalaran will speed your transport around the world a lot; the downside is, you end up stuck hearthing to the hub city, and southern Kalimdor is still a long ways from Darnassus.
This is much improved in Outland and Northrend, where generally all the quests that go to a spot on the map come from folks standing near each other, and generally they don’t send you outside the zone, much less a different continent. When they want you to go to the next area, they’ll send you on a quest there. Singular. That doesn’t require you to trek all the way back to complete it.
Probably the best thing you can do is try to find folks to play with; the game is far, far more fun with a good group. Even outside dungeons, pre-Outlands quests become available at much lower levels, so in a group you can tackle those orange and red quests and reap the rewards much sooner than you can soloing; more to the point, for me, is that doing that lets you do questing in a group and still have the fights be a little challenging.
Otto, you kind of inspired me yesterday to see if I could get into Shattrath – I asked a Guild member to port me there and then I set my hearthstone to the inn. this is for Zzamba, my lvl 22 druid, so i think im probably the lowest level player in town 🙂 Meeting Haris Pilton was quite a treat, as a bonus.
Its handy because now just as you said Boobah, I can just hearth there and portal out to any of the major cities. couple that with the druid’s teleport to moonglade spell (and the FP from moonglade to the Kalimdor network) and I think I can pretty much get anywhere I need to go. I’m keeping Zzamba restricted mostly to Kalimdor – UI just finished bloodmyst and am now headed back to auberdine to finish up the quests there. Along with a Deadmines run last night, I’ve managed to rack up enough extra levels this way that I have an advantage which should make the quest grinding more tolerable.
Right now though Zzamba is in Westfall so I’ll make sure to collect the easy FPs (the Shires, booty bay, Tanaris). Then i can take a boat back to kalimdor and build up my fp network there too. Im planning ahead – the FPs really are critical to facilitate my movement, especially with my shattrath strategy.
The only downside is I cant do the local-hearth method for escaping a tght jam. Thats where my 5-level advantage for my zone will come in handy. I hope I can maintain that as I finish off auberdine and start entering the next regions.
Im going to stick with zzamba until I finish Darkshore and then switch back to AAbde and do Duskwood, I think. Its nice having two mains on dfferent contnents so i dont have to repeat quests.
I admit to really being tempted to buy Lich King, just so i can get access to Dalaran. However I cant really justify spending another 40 dollars on this right now. Will just have to wait, I guess.
Leveling is much, much less tedious than it was. I’m leveling my third alt (a mage) and it is a lot faster, even with the heirloom items that I’ve mailed back.
Part of what you have is, frankly, loneliness. The people leveling the alts aren’t too worried about learning, and like you said, there aren’t as many truly new people. (Trust me — back in the old vanilla days, you could barely walk through IF because of the lag.)
Its a cliche, but the game really starts at 60 70 80. Right now, you are learning to play your class. I don’t think I am stepping on any toes when I say that a druid is the hardest class to learn to play well. You are getting your abilities in a steady progression and that is a good thing. I’ve seen ebayers that come into Northrend with a 70 or 80 that they bought. They are easy to identify, because they are the worst players in teh game.
One good thing is that there are soooo many quests and the xp is so much higher now that you can pretty much skip most of the “kill x mobs” quests. Check thottbot and see if they are a chain (check the comments too) and if not, or if it just chains to more kill quests, don’t worry about it. There’s enough XP around that you can just quest, skip 2/3 of them, and still stay challenged. (Back in MY day, you had to pretty much do every quest in every zone you could get to, and you STILL needed to just grind mobs a little too, you whippersnappers.)
The other thing is to concentrate on instances. Gear really matters — you shouldn’t have skipped that stuff in VC. With good dungeon gear, everything gets easier, the kill rate goes up, and everything just gets smoother. Take a power run if it falls into your lap, but if you can put together an at level group to do an instance, it is sooooo much better. (and FUN). Like I said, this is training, and a lot of people get all the way to 65-80 before they ever figure out how to REALLY play the MM part of this MMO.
thats good advice – i just started dropping quests from my auberdine log, and i am feeling much happier about it. Its really my goal to move onwards so who cares if I dont finish Buzzbox 323 or whatever… plus the questr rewards are insufficient.
i see your point phelps about deadmines – in fact a couple of nights ago i did end up going in with others in the lvl 20-ish range and we 1. had a blast (way more fun then when my warrior was shepherded thru by a lvl 80) and 2. i did pick up a few nice upgrades – two pieces of a defias leather set and a slightly better staff. now i kind of want to go back and see if i can complete that set actually.
I also spent a gold and reset my talent tree to be mostly Feral Combat. that was refreshing to be able to do.
Now just need to polish off tehse last few quests in Dakshore and then head to Ashenvale…
Meh.
There are speed lvlers that can get to 80 in a week. Like Joana/Mancow.
They go to a new server and play 24/7.
Race to see if they can get world titles.
If you want company, when Blizz starts a new realm, go there.
Blizz won’t allow trnasfers in for 6 months, i think.
Twinks don’t ruin battlegrounds, plows do.
A plow is a pvp guild run made up of bracket twinks.
My druid was a lvl 60 AV twink, until I lvled her for Lich.
take one of your toons and put him in a pvp guild for good twinking experirnce.
😉
dragonfractl is waiting for you to get to outlands.
May Elune light your path.
I generally don’t play any more, but Auburdine, etc. was one of the worst areas for questing. Few people played that area for just that reason. Only worse area, IMHO, was the dwarf starting zone.
VC and Stockade runs FTW and gear. If you’re on a non-pvp server, there’s another good low-level (20-30ish) dungeon in the Barrens, though it’s hard to get to for Alliance at your level. Take a group, you can’t solo it until way higher.
sigh
okfine.
get dungeon runs until your rest bar is exhausted, then quest.
the speedlvlers just quest, and do it solo.
that way they dont share xp or loot. quest helper will promise 3 lvls a day, if you follow their sequence.
what addons are you running?
you are a pretty l33t keyboard jock….learn lua and write some of your own.
😉