Efficient leveling in World of Warcraft

Yesterday's post was about how a badly designed reward system ends up with players pursueing wrong goals, and playing in a way which isn't the most fun. This weekend I leveled my mage from 44 to 47, doing quests over a wide level range. And it struck me that the way World of Warcraft hands out xp for quests and killing mobs isn't necessarily promoting fun, because it doesn't encourage players to challenge themselves. The most efficient way to level in WoW isn't the most fun one.

Doing quests and leveling up has one inherent feature which is very good: Adjustable difficulty. You can choose between quests that are below your level, at your level, or above your level. The lowest level quest you can get (still green, not grey) is generally trivially easy, while the hardest red quest you can accept will be very, very difficult to solo. Ideally the game should be designed in a way that challenges players to try difficult stuff, thus the rewards for doing quests and killing mobs higher than you should be better, or at least equal, to doing the easy stuff. Unfortunately that isn't the case in WoW. Rewards per kill or per quest go up with the level of quest. But the difficulty and time needed goes up or down exponentially with the level difference, while the xp rewards go up linearly. Thus if you want to maximize xp per hour, you best do trivially easy quests of 3 to 5 levels below yours.

This is true for all classes, but playing a mage makes it very easy to see. As I mentioned before my mage is exclusively equipped with gear and consumables that increase spell damage (+276 to frost spells at the moment). With this setup, if I attack a mob 3 levels below my level at maximum range with a frostbolt and just keep spamming frost bolts as fast as possible, the mob usually dies before even reaching me. That is because I just need about 3 frost bolts to kill such a mob, the first that attracts it's attention and two more that hit the mob while it is moving towards me, slowed by the first frostbolt. 3 frostbolts don't cost much mana, so I can target the next mob right away, and kill quite a number of mobs before running out of mana and having to drink.

A mob of about my level is less trivial, because it won't be dead after 3 frostbolts. I might get lucky and get criticals, or proc a frostbite rooting the mob in place. But generally the mob will reach me, so I have to do something else but frostbolts. I can use Ice Barrier, a damage absorption shield, and just keep firing frostbolts while standing still. Or I can freeze the mob in place with frost nova, take a step back, and then hit him with frostbolts again, which now have a much increased crit chance due to talents. The increased number of frostbolts I need, and the other spells I need to avoid getting damaged too much, cost more mana, so I can kill only two or three mobs before running out of mana and having to rest to recover it. If I attack a mob 3 levels higher than me, I need even more evasive action, like blinking around. And I need even more frostbolts or other damage spells to kill him. Which means that after one fight, I'm either already out of mana, or at least don't have enough left to start a second fight like that.

Now look at the xp table for WoW. At my level, 47, I get 280 xp for killing a mob of my level. I get 20 xp less per level difference for lower level mobs, and 14 xp more per level difference for higher level mobs. Thus a level 49 mobs brings 308 xp, while a level 45 mob brings 240 xp. But given the huge difference in difficulty between killing a mob two levels above me and killing a mob two levels below me, I can easily kill two level 45 mobs in the time it would take me to kill one level 49 mob. And as the two level 45 mobs are worth 480 xp, that is much better than killing one level 49 mob for 308 xp. I'm over 50% more efficient when killing the lower level mobs.

Talking of killing two mobs brings me to another obvious flaw in the xp reward system: Killing two mobs at once is much more difficult than killing them one after the other, but gives exactly the same amount of xp. Fortunately in WoW you usually follow quests, thus sometimes you're forced to take on several mobs at once. But if you were just xp grinding, the most efficient way would usually be choosing enemies that you can kill one by one. The possible exception is mages, who due to the fact that low level mobs still give decent xp if killed en masse and their possibilities to use AoE spells can do AoE xp farming.

Of course most players don't do math, calculating the maximum xp per hour they could gain. But if you look at the various leveling guides, whether the excellent free guides or the dubious ones where people try to get money from you for exactly the same information you could have gotten for free, you will see that they all advise doing quests a few levels below your level. Between the players who follow guides, and players who figured the advantage of farming lower level mobs out themselves, the xp reward system influences general player behavior. And unfortunately it encourages players to go for the safer option, as it is more profitable. I would claim that playing it safe isn't the most fun thing to do in a virtual world (although probably advisable in the real world). A reward structure that would encourage players to kill the highest level mobs they possibly can would be better, as it would get people to think more, and develop the best tactics. Not that WoW is likely to do a major revamp of their xp table. But developers should be more aware how simple things like the xp table end up determining the behavior of large numbers of players.
- posted by Tobold @ 8:14 AM Permanent Link