Leveling in WoW

[Moosey]

another important thing to note is that Bliz did a really good job of putting War back into Warcraft. Instead of fighting some random animal, quilboars, raptors, or ogres, you fight forces of the alliance or horde. For example, the questing experience on horde side in kalimdor has you fighting night elves repeatedly through stonetalon mountain. And then when you reach Southern Barrens, you repel down a cliff with some rope to steal supplies from the alliance base there. HOW FUCKING AWESOME IS THAT?!

Horde and Alliance also repeatedly are sent to the same area for quests also, so if you're on a PvP server, expect to often run into fights.

Also, the Horde has nukes.

[Burningthought]

I don't understand how someone that leveled jobs in ff11 can hate leveling in WoW, but yea wait a bit for cataclysm changes, it'll be more easy than already is.

I played FFXI and leveled multiple jobs, and I had an absolute horrid time leveling in wow.

A Few Issues:
- Quests are scattered all over the place during a few level ranges.
- Effort vs. Xp Received was a huge issue too (Ex. Spending an hour gathering an item drop off of a mob for 9880xp vs. Killing a target (elite/boss/nm whatever the fuck they are called) for 9880xp)
- Quest grinding didn't always work, during some level ranges you would finish a quest hub and not really have anywhere else to go. (Although there were plenty of quests scattered all over the place, but this doesn't make efficient leveling.)
- I did grind through some of those boring level ranges, (late 40s come to mind) using the dungeon finder, but sometimes groups just blew ass.
- I guess I should mention I played as a hunter, and they're supposed to be gods of soloing or some shit.

What made XI easier and wow more difficult:
- FoVs
- Xp Rings
- Occasional Awesome Parties
- Knowing exactly where to go and where to next (The leveling guide on wow.com helped I guess, it showed the region levels)
- Pacing - I knew about how long it'd take me to hit the old cap (75), and my motivation never changed. (In wow, I had no idea how long it'd take me and occasionally especially in the late 40s I felt like I was doing something wrong, when I probably wasn't.)
- In FFXI I knew when to duck out of a party if it wasn't going well, in wow I had no idea wtf I was doing, or if I was doing anything right.
- In FFXI leveling is relatively consistent (FoVs/Xp Ring timing can effect this and other shit I suppose but I'm not gunning to be 100% accurate with this claim) while in wow some levels were a lot faster, while some were a lot slower.

Basically I started on The Underbog and leveled my hunter to 55, and then made a Death Knight on another server so I could play with a few co-workers and distant friends. Right now I don't have any issues leveling, 48-55 sucked on my hunter, but I just turned on some black eyed peas and autopiloted the shit out of it(questing/grouping).

Once I finished the Death Knight starting quests and hit the outlands, my issues with leveling disappeared, everything was closer together, and everyone who has ever played wow up to this point already knows what I'm talking about so I'll save you the rest.

Anyways, I did talk to a friend who plays both wow and FFXI and he has no clue why I suck so much at leveling in wow. It might be my talent specialization, it might be the way I play, or I might not have any issues at all and it's all in my head.

Edit: Drinking vodka so I'm probably just being talkative, sorry in advance~

I even tried out a leveling guide, but found that a lot of quests didn't match up, or I didn't have prereqs for, and that pretty much failed. I was able to do 55-68 on my DK in about 2-3 days. Right now I'm currently waiting on my friend to catch up so we can do Northrend stuff together (The main reason I took a month off of FFXI.)

I do want to level a priest or paladin so if anyone has any tips that'd be awesome. I leveled hunter 28-55 in about a week and a half, just playing casually. Like I said I really don't know if I'm actually having issues, or if I'm going at a normal rate.

[Clemz]

Going to avoid the WoW vs FFXI leveling. Just about everything you mentioned that made WoW leveling tough for you(diff'rent strokes, I've always found it to be easy) is being fixed with the revamp. As others have said, leveling is a blast now. Exp rewards are up, as are the equipment rewards; ie no more spirit/agi gear, the stuff is actually itemized well. Dungeon quests(I think it applies to old world too?) are being moved into the beginning of the dungeons. There's still some collection quests, but they really aren't bad.

The flow of leveling is vastly improved, there's very few snags anymore, zones flow incredibly well together and you aren't running halfway across the continent to the next zone anymore.

The heirlooms Krye was talking about are tied to guild reputation, there's a helmet and cloak, if I remember once your guild has achieved a certain level and you have a certain reputation with them they cost 1500g each, though that may have changed(or could change).

Seems like you're going at a fairly normal pace, nothing outstanding, but not too slow either, which is fine.

[Burningthought]

Going to avoid the WoW vs FFXI leveling. Just about everything you mentioned that made WoW leveling tough for you(diff'rent strokes, I've always found it to be easy) is being fixed with the revamp. As others have said, leveling is a blast now. Exp rewards are up, as are the equipment rewards; ie no more spirit/agi gear, the stuff is actually itemized well. Dungeon quests(I think it applies to old world too?) are being moved into the beginning of the dungeons. There's still some collection quests, but they really aren't bad.

The flow of leveling is vastly improved, there's very few snags anymore, zones flow incredibly well together and you aren't running halfway across the continent to the next zone anymore.

The heirlooms Krye was talking about are tied to guild reputation, there's a helmet and cloak, if I remember once your guild has achieved a certain level and you have a certain reputation with them they cost 1500g each, though that may have changed(or could change).

Seems like you're going at a fairly normal pace, nothing outstanding, but not too slow either, which is fine.

Okay cool, that's all I really wanted to know.

[Kaylia]

WoW
-but sometimes groups just blew ass.

FFXI
- Occasional Awesome Parties

Eh?


Anyway, most issues you mentioned come from the lack of experience. Moving to another mmo always require an effort because you go from knowing everything to knowing nothing. Spending 1 hour on a quest? It's not something that should ever happen while leveling (not quite sure what quests you're talking about). If you know how to duck from a party in FFXI, you should be reasonable enough to know when to drop a quest in WoW.

As for the pace, it's pretty constant throughout the game normally. 45-60 are kinda boring quest wise, but no level take insanely long. You're rarely looking at more than 2hours/level on your way to 60.

[Militant]

www.ding80.com

[vrumpt]

www.ding80.com

horrible idea, i've tried using one before and it just takes all the fun out of playing the game, because you essentially are no longer playing the game, just following what some guy tells you to do down to every little step you make.

[Katlan]

Not only that, everyone has been saying to wait until cata and the guide will be obsolete in a week or two (which OP doesn't want to do)

[Tajin]

I could use a guide to know which quest hubs are open to start the road to 85, I recall reading somewhere there would be breadcrumbs starting in the cities (im assuming 1 for IF and 1 for SW). I did Hjowling Fjord first at wotlk launch because it was the less popular of the two starting zones.

[Lexa]

From WoWInsider

gboyd asked:

What is the zone leveling order come Cataclysm?

This question gets asked so much that we should probably turn it into its own post just so we have something to link to people when they ask. I'll answer it here, but don't be shocked if it shows up on the site on its own before launch. The zone order is:

• Hyjal/Vashj'ir: 80-82
• Deepholm: 82-83
• Uldum: 83-84
• Twilight Highlands: 84-85

Breadcrumbs start in the cities for Vashj'ir, probably for Hyjal as well (though I couldn't give you an exact location for that questgiver because when I first got into the beta, I just flew straight to Hyjal from Darnassus, and was able to start questing like that). Definitely for Deepholm.

It's... really really really easy, the streamlined way you get into the new zones. Once there, you have a few options for quest hubs/quest lines to follow.

[Tajin]

Sweet, thanks a lot.

[jonahlinn]

ok ,l know ,but l want to know more about it !

[Burningthought]

Eh?


Anyway, most issues you mentioned come from the lack of experience. Moving to another mmo always require an effort because you go from knowing everything to knowing nothing. Spending 1 hour on a quest? It's not something that should ever happen while leveling (not quite sure what quests you're talking about). If you know how to duck from a party in FFXI, you should be reasonable enough to know when to drop a quest in WoW.

As for the pace, it's pretty constant throughout the game normally. 45-60 are kinda boring quest wise, but no level take insanely long. You're rarely looking at more than 2hours/level on your way to 60.

What I meant by those two things was that in XI if you have an awesome group you could level faster than you normally could, and i'm really talking about pre-abyssea. Say a normal group was like 10k an hour and a awesome group would be 15k an hour I guess.

In wow most people bolted after a successful dungeon so even if you had an awesome group it didn't mean much leveling wise, while the horrid groups were generally a waste of time.

In XI even the shittiest groups at least got you somewhere.

Side note: I just got done working the Harry Potter midnight release and i'm super tired so i'll explain myself better later if none of this make sense because i'm not going to read over it at this point.

[Khelek]

1-60 is stupidly fast now. decided to make a 60 twink. took me like 3 days to get it up (not playing all the time). mainly did random dungeons until 40something (turns out you can solo Uldaman as paladin at the levels it gives it to you as a random btw.), since one dungeon pretty much gave you half a level (sometimes more) just from the killing. at 51+ I added random battlegrounds to the questing I was doing, since winning one gives a ton of exp + in my case helped me with some honor. that option doesn't become available until 51+ though.

[Vandole]

got this message this morning.

(8:00:07 AM) Sono: XP lowered from 71 to 80 by 20%


fuck yeah cataclysm. my mage juts hit 68 haha

[Correction]

That means with heirlooms you'll hit 80 and be questing Vashj'ir in ilvl 146 greens at best. Madness.

[Vandole]

...and then jump from ilvl146 to ilvl264+ in one leap. fucking woooooosh of a jump

[Correction]

iirc the vashj'ir quest greens are ilvl 300+

I didn't even double the ilvl on my gear going from BRD blues to outland greens on my latest alt to reach that threshold.

[Moosey]

The few pieces of quest gear I got while doing vashj'ir and hyjal were 271 ish I believe. Still a big jump.

[vrumpt]

its also gonna be really hard to go quest in cata in wotlk greens. There was some guy who did it on beta and he said the jump was really taxing on him because of the enemy HP buff. I had to restrict myself to 1 mob at a time while i was leveling my icc geared druid through beta. Granted it wasn't tuned perfectly then, but i have no idea if it was undertuned or overtuned. So yeah the ilvl of equip difference is huge, but so will the difficulty of mobs because you have bad gear, which is the primary thing to worry about when leveling new chars through northrend.