Tobold's Blog
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
 
Triple 60

Last weekend my multi-boxing experiment ended, when with the help of my wife, who ran my two characters through some dungeons like Scholomance and Stratholme, the duo reached level 60. Now the purpose of the experiment, besides getting the rocket, was to boost my druid to level 60 fast, which I achieved in less than 100 hours. Compared to my very first level 60, who took 500 hours for that, this is quite an acceleration, although even without multiboxing you can get to level 60 easily in under 200 hours. But then of course the rogue on the "recruited" account gained the ability to grant levels to characters with less levels than him, which enabled me to boost a level 40ish bank alt shaman to level 60. And then I just couldn't just delete the rogue, but paid 20 bucks to get him transfered to my main account. So there I am, with three new level 60 characters on that account.

At least the druid has a plan where to go from there: He's healing his way through random Burning Crusade dungeons, because I just can't stand questing in Hellfire Peninsula any more. With a healing spec getting into random groups is fast enough, for the dps characters using the Dungeon Finder as sole method of xp gain would be significantly lower.

Once again I'm slightly cursing a minor design flaw in the Dungeon Finder: From level 15 to level 70 the first dungeon of the day hands out a satchel of helpful goods, which contains a blue item with an iLevel corresponding to the dungeon's level. That is actually helpful in the old Azeroth dungeons, because the item is always of a type you can wear, albeit not necessarily for your talent spec. But in Burning Crusade the item levels got a significant boost. So the blue items of lets say iLevel 62 you'll find in the satchel of helpful goods are much worse than the green iLevel 87 items the trash drops. So basically the extra reward is guaranteed vendor trash, which in my opinion isn't optimal design.
Comments:
Reading your post makes me think that Blizzard expanded WoW horizontally by adding paid features like recruit-a-friend and server transfer. Perfect for casual players to collect a full set of high-level characters rather than raid/arena repeatedly with one.
 
I Shouldn't worry about losing the satchel if I were you. If you're leveling solely through dungeons you should pick up more than enough blue loot to keep you up to date.

Plus as a healer druid the only players you'll be competing for clothes with will be boomkins.
 
Are you only supposed to get the Satchel for the first random dungeon?
I get a Satchel on every random dungeon I do with my level 40 paladin.
 
What took so long to level your Druid? I got my Shaman to 70 in 4d 0h /played (96 hours) with only heirlooms - not even weapons, as they had not yet implemented the heirloom maces yet...Oh, I also had practically no rested xp as I played her nonstop outside of work and raiding 3 nights/week.

If you had triple xp instead of 1.21x, how is leveling to 60 in 100 hours "fast"? Where did your extra time go? Did you waste time doing tradeskills that could be done much more quickly and efficiently at 80? Do you just not know the best places to quest and get xp? There's an addon called Tourguide that speeds up leveling phenomenally particularly through the old world, where questing can get confusing if you don't know where to go next.

I really don't understand people (my guildies included) who say "I want to level fast" and then take 1-2 days for each level while spending a lot of time in-game. I just finished leveling a warrior and each level through the 70's took about 4 hours, non-rested.
 
@AndruX: Just curious, but do you always sound so angry? I mean, you weren't even aiming the flames at me, and I felt the burn from it.

Also, you are complaining that he took an extra 4 hours? I mean.... I hope that the comment is a sort of joke, because otherwise you're not playing with a full deck of cards.

I mean, in that case, I could say, "Hey AndruX! It took you 4 days /played to get to level 70, when there are people getting to 60 in less than 24 hours /played? What's wrong with you! I can't believe you waste so much time in game when you said you were leveling fast!"
 
I think Andrux is saying the leveling was slow because he (Andrux) did it with just heirlooms, and leveled much faster with 1/3 of the extra experience.

If Tobold ran quests, then it doesn't surprise me that it took as "long" as it did, because dual-boxing quests generally sucks badly. Even with macros and addons, there is still a lot of "dead time", compared to power-leveling through dungeons.

For example, I did RAF a while ago, and because I had access to a third account, I was able to level 2 characters from 1-60 with about 25 hours played time, TOTAL, because I power-leveled them in dungeons.

1-20 I quested. Took a couple of hours...getting them together, doing class quests, etc.

20-35 in SM took about 4-6 hours (breaks thrown in)

35-50 in ZF took about 4-6 hours (with breaks).

50-60 in Scholo took about 4-6 hours (with breaks).

Questing from 1-60, even with RAF would take substantially longer than that, as you are still spending significant amounts of time travelling, looting, etc.

I don't think Andrux is "flaming", because 100 hours play time with RAF isn't that fast, really...if you are trying to maximize the leveling speed (through dungeons).
 
I still find the notion of maximizing leveling speed to be alien. It does make sense when you're paying for time as in a sub model, but still... racing through the game to get to the endgame treadmills quicker is just... odd... to me.

Seems to me that Blizzard should sell level-capped characters if that's where the real action is.
 
@Pangoria: The people who make it to 60 in 24 hours /played only play with full rested xp at all times. You'll notice I specifically addressed this concern in my post. I could definitely level at this speed if I chose to, but since you don't get a prize for leveling in low /played time and I wanted to actually play the character I was leveling, I went with leveling straight through.

I was merely pointing out that Tobold claims he "wanted to level his Druid fast" and yet took quite a bit longer with triple xp than I did (or anyone can) with 1.21x xp. Remember that 60-70 is another 12+ hours onto his 100 hour journey to end up where I was at 96 hours. I also suggested an addon that helps leveling go faster, while I suppose it's a little late for that now for Tobold's already-leveled character, maybe it could help with future characters.

The discrepancy comes with wondering where the extra time went. Tradeskills, afk time, etc? n1ck sheds a lot of light on the subject suggesting that the logistics of playing 2 characters at once might be more work than it's worth.

Playing defense on Tobold's behalf is kinda weird, fanboi much? If I "sound angry", it's because you're reading my post as angry. It's pretty hard to convey blunt statements without "sounding angry" when I can't use tone of voice to affect the reader.
 
Grats on triple 60; but minor note, you get a satchel of vendor trash every random you do, not just the first. Sad thing is that the loot item will be for one of two or three slots depending on level so its impossible to gear out your character from this drop alone. That said, doing that many random dungeons will result in a decent gear set, or at least good enough to do randoms.

Leveling characters through randoms is only "fun" for tanks and healers as you get instant queues most of the time.
-VG
 
@tishtoshtesh: I personally like to maximize leveling time because I find it easier to be able to do things consistently with friends if I'm max level. I've tried "leveling with friends" and it always ends up that with different playtimes, we either make no progress (i.e. "let's only play when we can all play") or someone outlevels the rest by a wide margin (not me usually, as much as I might be "trying to sound like a pro at leveling" or something)

I enjoy the leveling game as much as the next guy, and am not an "endgame nazi" - I can appreciate playing around at low levels. But if I really want to play with my friends, I have to get to a place where we can't out-pace each other.
 
Yes, the extra time used came from tradeskills. I have both enchanting and engineering at 375 (need level 65 for 450) now.

Also, as I said earlier, when the multiboxing experiment started, the druid was already at level 29, so I only did the second half of the way at triple xp. And while I wanted to "speed up" his leveling, I never said I wanted to maximize it.

And please don't start a flamewar over AndruX. He always sounds angry. Probably a basic lack of communication skills, nothing more. Makes me wonder whether we are heading towards a generation who learned communication on internet forums. There are some funny YouTube videos of "business meetings" held using forum type communication.
 
@Tobold: I appreciate you answering my questions, which I don't feel were asked "angrily" as you and Pangoria both apparently have had your feelings hurt by me on multiple occasions now?

I could have phrased my questions better maybe, but you boldly claim in the OP that you have leveled "fast" and that "it could be done in 200 hours by someone without RAF" which is technically true, but it can also be done MUCH faster by someone who has leveling quickly as a goal. If you can mince words and claim that you didn't want to level your druid fast even though you said you did, then let's not argue about how nicely I've posed my questions, hmm?

I didn't realize that I need to refrain from being direct, but I appreciate you taking pity on me, it means a lot to my soulless black heart. For the record, I have pretty good communication skills, when the situation calls for it. Suggesting I should waste time thinking about how to pose questions so as not to offend people the question was not directed at on a blog comment thread that will be outdated by tomorrow morning, seems pretty ridiculous to me.
 
For the record, I have pretty good communication skills, when the situation calls for it. Suggesting I should waste time thinking about how to pose questions so as not to offend people the question was not directed at on a blog comment thread that will be outdated by tomorrow morning, seems pretty ridiculous to me.

That is very much a philosophical question: Should we express ourselves in ways so as to not offend people all the time, or is it enough to only do it when offending people could have negative consequences to us? Kant would say that we should always communicate in the way we want to be communicated to (even Andru doesn't like when somebody responds in kind to his remarks), while John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory states that given anonymity, regular people turn nasty in their communication.

Apart from the philosophical aspect, I'd claim that going for being nice all the time has the added advantage that you don't need to correctly identify the situation before choosing your style of response. Too many people made impolite remarks when feeling safe, and then those remarks leaked out and came to bite them.
 
How about just answering the asked question and not needing to have a politeness contest? I would ask the question as directly without "internet anonymity" as I just want to know the answer.

I think you're being a bit extreme in your over-analysis of my character here. Are you really the type of person who rejects honest questions because they weren't posed as politely as possible? Doesn't that make you a "fuckwad" for being stubborn just because you can hide behind internet anonymity and you aren't obliged to answer my question as we are not speaking directly?
 
If you're a plate tank you will find that the only gear with defense on it comes from the bag ("... of the Champion" if I remember right). There are like no drops in Vanilla and early BC that have defense on them (some have resil tho). Also the itemization for classes that changed with BC and/or WotLK (druids, paladins) is better on those than on the dungeon-drops.
As far as speed goes ... my protpaladin took 5 days and 17 hours /played from 0 - 80 with heirloom-items - one month of real time. The only time outside of dungeons was used to catch up with mining. But I now know that doing quests once you hit 68 levels you way faster than dungeons. Unless you are a weak healer ;)
 
Andru, I answered your question why I was leveling not at the fastest possible speed several comments ago.

What several people in this thread reacted to was not the question, or it being asked "directly", but the rest of your comment coming over as overly aggressive, a bit like the typical internet epeen pissing contest, e.g. "you n00b took 200 hours to level??? *I* can do it in half the time!!!"

You might not even have meant it like that, but without the additional clue of tone in spoken language, the written language often sounds a lot harsher than intended.
 
This comment has been removed by the author.
 
@ AndruX
"But if I really want to play with my friends, I have to get to a place where we can't out-pace each other."

Oh, yes, I can see that, and I'm not complaining about that. Rather, I'm suggesting that Blizzard should cater to that by selling level capped characters.
 
The end reward might be only mediocre but you get a lot better gear through instancing than through questing anyway.

And your lvl 60 rogue can just start in Zangarmarsh if you dislike the Hellfire zone.
 
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