Tobold's Blog
Saturday, November 15, 2008
 
WotLK experience points

Just two short observation on gaining experience points in Wrath of the Lich King. The first one is probably not new, but I simply didn't have the opportunity yet to observe it. It turned out that my newly improved protection warrior at level 70 can solo level 77 mobs, I once even fought a 77 and a 76 at the same time and survived. Barely, and with the use of potions and everything, but I survived. And then I was sorely disappointed by the lousy xp I got. It turns out that the WoW xp formula gives you a certain amount of xp for killing a mob of your level, and only adds 5% per level difference to that for higher levels. Thus the level 77 mob soloed with my level 70 warrior only got me 35% more xp than a level 70 mob would have done. But of course farming lower level mobs is a lot faster, so for fastest xp the lower level mobs are much better. I like the WAR system better, where you get little xp for lower level mobs, and a lot of xp for higher level mobs.

The second observation appears to be new: Dungeons seem to give a lot more xp now. Clearing out two dungeons with my warrior, and doing nothing else, gave me over a quarter of a level from 70 to 71, and only part of that was with rest bonus. Elite trash mobs give 2k xp per group member, which is far more than the "double xp plus group bonus" they used to give. So while grinding dungeons for reputation is out, grinding dungeons for xp is totally feasible. Not that I want to grind anything, but I happen to like dungeons, so I like this.
Comments:
Actually as the normal mobs of the same level as you give ~900 exp ~2000 exp per trash mob is double + group bonus.
 
Its the bosses in the instances that give the insane xp.

Other than that, questing seems by far the faster way.
 
On my server one group of players does nothing but instance runs. Yesterday they were already 78, so I guess doing that is pretty effective.

They must be getting pretty sick of the new instances by now.
 
It's interesting to see that the mother of the solo quest grind MMO does not follow the trend to punish grouping and dungeon runs but instead sticks to what I would call traditional and proven design principles (I'm looking at you EQ2 since RoK and WAR).
 
If that gets more people grouping, that's good. I got bored of WoW since no one seemed to group more than the five seconds it took to achieve their goals and then they ran off. EQ2 in the new expansion pack is shifting its emphasis back to grouping as well, which I'm looking forward to. I hated the WOW-style solo quest arcs in ROK.
 
Sorry, but it's always been that way. The most efficient way to grind exp on mobs, was to pick equal or one level below you and get a fast spawning pack and chain pull. I remember in vanilla wow grindding in arathi on mobs 2-3 levels above me and getting about 1-2% more than I would if it were equal level but was allot more challenging, so therefore pointless.

I think it was more to stop power leveling (that happened in EQ) by chain pulling higher level mobs for lower level characters. And yes Instance grinding is by and far the easiest way to do it.
 
The Howling Fjord has packs of tusked animals wondering around. The stag will aggro but the others won't aggro unless you attack them. I decided to level my prot pally. I was able to pull 3 packs of these mobs and solo them all w/ my pally. It took me a while to get all the packs together with having them deaggro and evade, that was the only hard part. I solo'd about 15 mobs, thats pretty freakin crazy. Then again I'm new to being protection specced on my paladin so maybe this is a common occurance. Dungeons seem easier then at level 60. I've cleared the nexus and utgard keep around 20 times and not once have I had the group fall apart due to wipes. Most of one utgard keep run was 4 man'd until our 5th showed up.
 
There's a lovely "epic" feel to really being able to fight and survive a big crowd. I've almost always gone for monsters a bit above my level since I enjoy the challenge. Grinding efficiently is good if you're feeling daunted or burnt out, but the real entertainment value for me has always been in going somewhere I shouldn't be able to -- in surviving something tougher than I'm supposed to.
 
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