Tobold's Blog
Friday, January 19, 2007
 
Burning Crusade Levels

Trick question: how many additional levels does the Burning Crusade add to World of Warcraft? Nominally the answer is 10, from 60 to 70. But looking at it a bit closer the expansion levels behave differently than the previous levels. A Burning Crusade level is a curious hybrid between one and two old levels, so in practice the expansion adds between 10 and 20 effective levels to the game. Lets have this closer look:

The first thing you probably notice before you even make it to level 61 is that the leveling curve is much steeper. Getting from level 60 to level 61 takes more than twice the xp that you needed from level 59 to 60. The “length” of each BC level, measured in the number of quests you need to do and monsters you need to kill is more than twice that of the pre-60 WoW levels, This is not just the fact that the higher the level, the longer it is, there is an added factor of about 2 in the xp and time to level.

Once you level up it becomes clear that in the Burning Crusade new spells and abilities become available at every level, while in the pre-60 levels you only got new spells and abilities every 2 levels. But in total from level 60 to 70 you don’t gain as many new spells and abilities as in 20 levels pre-60.

Some effects of levels are linked strictly to the numerical level. From level 60 to 70 you only gain 10 talent points. And your stats only go up 10 times. But your talents and level-based stats are only one part of your total power; another big part is based on your equipment. And with the Burning Crusade gear being significantly better to that what you can gain with the same effort at level 60 in the old zones, your total power to 70 goes up by more than 10 levels.

The final result is that both from a view of effort to get there, and from a view of gain in power and abilities, the Burning Crusade gives more than 10 effective levels. In effect the number is closer to, but lower than, 20. That is good news, because it means that the Burning Crusade adds more than 16% to the World of Warcraft. Blizzard stated that the expansion would add 25% to the game, and looking at the effective levels that number sounds believable.
- posted by Tobold @ 12:01 AM Permanent Link
Comments:
Hey wow, I never actually read anywhere that you got new spells EVERY level! That's pretty good, espcially if the level-per-xp is steeper.

Anyways, just wanted to shamelessly tell you that we have created our site (follow the link) for the expans and we're looking for some feedback on the first podcast we made aswell, so if you're interested, drop by, download it and let us know what you think :D
# posted by Anonymous Anonymous : 19/1/07 00:03
 
XP required per level may have doubled, but so has the XP given per mob kill/quest (approx). I don't consider myself a hardcore leveller by any means, yet it took me about 8 hours in total to reach level 61, without any rested XP.

The XP required increases slightly each level, but the proportionate increase is actually a downward curve, up to level 64 at least. Unless there's a significant change post-64, I really can't see 60-70 taking any longer than 50-60 (server crashes allowing of course).
# posted by Anonymous Anonymous : 19/1/07 09:29
 
I never got 10,000 xp for completing a quest pre-BC. Now that seems to be a standard reward, irrespective of how hard a quest is.
A lot of my Guild are already Lv 62 - 63. I can imagine in a fortnight they will all be Lv 70.
I think the XP rewards as well as the item rewards now available are way over the top.
As a Warlock it took me ages to complete my Robe of the Void in Azeroth. Now in BC, I have already been rewarded with two Robes that probably are as good as, if not better than RoV, and I have only done a handful of quests.
BC is the easiest of Easy Modes yet.
Silithus and Eastern Plaguelands? No reason for people Lv 58 +, to ever go there.
# posted by Anonymous Anonymous : 19/1/07 12:17
 
Yeah, I have to agree that the xp given out for Outland quests so far have been in the 8k to 10k range. Doing a quick look-up of EPL, most of the quest xp there is 4-6k, with The Battle of Darrowshire being a whopping 8.3k.

In other words, while the xp needed to level has increased by 100%, the xp gained from quests has been increased by 80% (rough numbers).

If that holds (Anon #1 says it doesn't), and the wind is blowing SSE, shady math tells me I'm looking at 2-3 game days to hit 70.

There's a post here* that indicates it took someone 28hrs to reach level 70. Granted they used a ton of people to help them, but I think it's interesting.

*http://www.worldofraids.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3441
# posted by Anonymous Anonymous : 19/1/07 17:58
 
Anonymous, shush! The Dev's will read this and before you know it they'll nerf everything just like they did to the new BG Honor system. Suddenly we'll be getting 1,000xp per quest and the rewards offered will depend on your class. Everyone but Warriors and Pallys will only see Plate Armor as quest rewards, while the Warriors and Pallys will have a lovely selection of Wands to choose from.

Yes, some of the quests are ridiculously easy, and the rewards are great, but I explored Zangarmarsh last night and every quest I found there rewarded me with nothing but gold. Chain-quests will probably provide items as you complete them, but all initial quests just offered gold as a reward. This seems to indicate that the Noob quests in Hellfire Pensinsula exist to equip the 60s (those with less than T1 gear) so they can better survive the Outlands. I only ugpraded two of my Armor pieces (my last 2 Beaststalker pieces) because everything else is ZG or better. The rest of the noob quests I just picked the item with the highest vendor price and made around 50g in two hours.

During my ride around Zangarmarsh and into the mid 60s area I earned approx. 12,000xp, without killing a single Mob or turning in any quests. Cartography FTW ;) I also passed a 67 Warrior and a /who 67 revealed three 67s online, no 68s though. The Hardcore Guilds will probably have enough 70s to begin 25-man Raids within a week or so. Good for them. I plan to ding 61 tonight but I'll take my sweet time grinding to 70. This expansion has been a long time coming and I'm going to savor it.
# posted by Blogger Cap'n John : 19/1/07 18:10
 
I was going to chime in that I found leveling to 61 to felt natural to me. It wasn't arduously slow nor was it too fast. I hit 61 by spending the first night exploring and getting fly points; the second night questing in Zangarmarsh and doing one instance (the 2nd one in HP); and the third night questing in Zangarmarsh. I still have quests (lots, actually) left in Zangarmarsh, not to mention the ones I skipped in Hellfire Peninsula (HP). All in all, I'm pretty happy so far.

(Although I'm a little annoyed that I won't see any big improvements over my 7/8 T2 gear until I hit +66.)
# posted by Anonymous Anonymous : 19/1/07 19:07
 
@Capn John:

I hope you're wrong. If they let the hardcores get to 70 then nerf the xp, similar to what they did with BG rewards, I might just quit. That kind of elitism isn't appreciated by those of us who play 10-20 hours a week and expect to see character progress.
# posted by Anonymous Anonymous : 19/1/07 19:41
 
chill out about the xp

all it is doing is reducing relevance of non bc content

there was a lot of discussion about aoe grinding non elites in wpl and so on for xp without even bothering to go to outlands

so just increase xp required and gained means you dont need to rebalance every single old xp farming spot since you just shifted the marginal cost of farming a lot

(ie since the outlands servers are less stable than the old servers)
# posted by Anonymous Anonymous : 20/1/07 06:39
 
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