WoW Journal - 14-February-2006

I have Telo's InfoBar running as addon. Among other useful information this tells me how much experience points I gained per session or per hour. Yesterday I played a bit over 3 hours, and made 80,000 xp, at a rate of nearly 25,000 xp per hour. That was a bit more than the usual 15k per hour, but I was grouped for a while with a level 59 warlock guildmate and we were doing quests in Silithus together. Doing a level 59 elite quest as level 54 gives a lot of xp.

But even without help from the guild my rate of leveling to 54 with Kyroc was a lot faster than with Raslebol, I only have 10 "days" played up to now. Of course a part of that is due to knowledge. I did most of the Horde side quests already, which helps me avoiding the few bad ones, and speeds up the ones where you need to find something. But I guess a major factor is twinking. At level 54, before ever having set a foot into Scholomance or Stratholme, I'm already wearing 2 pieces of Dreadmist and 1 piece of Devout blue armor. These pieces have either been found by Raslebol, or bought on the auction house, but both ways are methods of twinking. Raslebol doesn't have an epic mount, but the money was spend on alts, and Kyroc is quite well equipped because of it.

The most important twink item for Kyroc is that he is always wielding the best wand money can buy. Soloing priests only have one viable strategy for speedy leveling: Shield yourself, pull with Mind Blast, put a Shadow Word Pain on the advancing mob, and finish him off with the wand. The wand does half the damage, and is thus very important. And ideally you don't have to recast a shield, or a second shadow word, thus you don't cast at all during the longer part of combat, thus you regenerate mana, and end the combat with full mana, ready for the next fight. That works because I usually try to go for quests that are slightly below my level. I *can* kill mobs of 2 or 3 levels above me, but then I need much more downtime between fights, and the xp per hour are not as good.

Of course in a way this efficient leveling is less fun than learning the game with Raslebol was. Which confirms Raph Koster's Theory of Fun. :) The fact that in the 50-60 level range there are lots of quests that I never did with Raslebol, and am now doing with Kyroc is certainly one of the fun "learning experiences" which explain my current high interest in this character. But the other source of fun is social, doing 5-man groups, especially with guild mates. If I am looking forward towards doing Scholomance or Stratholme with my guild, it is more because that is so much fun, with the loot just being a secondary consideration. My only fear being that I don't get to go to these sort of places often, due to my guild being too busy with MC / ZG raids, which would be a shame.

The mix between learning experience and guild social life makes me wonder how I am going to do if I want to play the next character after Kyroc. For the learning experience it would be much better if I played Alliance, and for the low-level grouping it would be good if I played on a new server. But on another server I couldn't twink myself, and if I play Alliance, I can't play with my guild. Even if Kyroc is playing less with the guild than I'd wish to, at least I'm always in guild chat, and can switch to Raslebol when somebody needs a tank for his group. I think SOE games have cross-server chat, where you can play on one server and still be in the guild chat of another server, but WoW doesn't offer that.

Classes I'd like to play in the future include paladin and mage. The paladin obviously forces me to go Alliance, but I could either play on Runetotem and twink him by transfering money via the neutral AH, or play him on a new server where it is easier to find low-level people to play with. That worked reasonably well when I tested this strategy out by playing a hunter on Bronzebeard, so I'm tending towards the latter. For the mage I wondered if I'll wait for the expansion, and then play the mage as blood elf on Runetotem, with all the twink and guild advantages, plus the learning experience of the new race and zones. Of course the paladin could also play after the expansion, and if possible be created with the new race. If that race doesn't offer paladins as possible class, I can still make a pally of another class and just travel to the new zones and play there. Of course when the expansion comes out I might be terribly busy leveling Raslebol and Kyroc to 70. And then there is this level 30 shaman I could level as well. Decisions, decisions.

It is great to have so many options and so many plans for the future. It really makes me think that I might be playing World of Warcraft for many more months, if not years. I guess the people that claimed WoW would be a short-lived game, and not a world experience that could hold players for a long time, were wrong.
- posted by Tobold @ 2:40 PM Permanent Link