Like a Hamster on a Wheel
By: Thurston “Ratboy” Hillman

To many players the long-grind of level one to level sixty is over and they want to center on the high end content of the game and have forgotten about levels and the art of leveling up. Will these players be prepared for the upcoming expansion; where they will be forced to gain another ten levels? Leveling up in WoW has a certain rhythm to it; killing enemies, doing quests, finding new zones, increasing weapon skills, and increasing trade skills. While it is all sounds very interesting, when it comes down to it; leveling up in World of Warcraft can become quite monotonous.

With sixty levels worth of leveling to do in-game, as well as various different raid content that can be done at high levels, WoW does offer a large gap to fill for people who have lots of spare time on their hands. After almost a year of being up and running, World of Warcraft players no longer view the point of the game as “leveling up” but more so as the playing of the endgame content. So how much time has been spent leveling?

To give a personal example, my most advanced character is rated at 23 days worth of full playtime. Out of those 23 days of playtime, only 8 of them are time spent at level sixty. To me the time I have spent at level sixty seems far longer then the time I have spent on the other levels, but when I actually think about it, it’s quite understandable that I devoted so much more time to the other fifty-nine levels of character progression. I can honestly remember many times where I lost sleep I should have gotten because I just needed “one more experience bar” to get to the next level.

What do characters need to do to get to level sixty? The primary goal of WoW is to participate in the quest system that has been setup in-game. While you can kill ten enemies for a couple thousand experience, it is far more lucrative to kill ten enemies for a couple thousand experience as well as even more quest experience. The quest system is very important for characters involved in leveling up, and for the most part is the most direct way for characters to advance. Since there are a large number of quests that require parties to complete (mainly dungeon and elite quests), it is actually faster to level up in WoW with a group of people helping you (even with the division of experience from killing enemies).

While the quest system is important in WoW, it should be realized that it will only assist in character levels, and won’t directly contribute too much to trade profession leveling and weapon skill (unless the quests involve killing). To give you an example of how “leveling” in WoW is not 100% dependant on character levels, let me give you an example of what someone in my guild did…

One of the members of my guild decided he wanted to “power level” a character of a specific class all the way up to 60 (mainly because at the time our guild was low on the specific class he wanted to level). This character enlists the assistance of a glorified “farmer” on our server to assist. The “farmer” (who despite us trying to avoid stereotypes “spoke bad engrish”) was more then willing to assist in power leveling as long as our guild mages provided him with conjured food and water whenever he went to town. So for a few weeks, my guildie would have his new character set to follow the “farmer” who went around killing high level mobs. Sure enough after a couple of weeks of this, we had a new level 60 in our guild. The problem with the above example, and why “breaking the system” like that brings problems, is because this new level 60 had completely horrible equipment and no levels in trade skills. It took the player involved; another three weeks just to get decent enough gear for us to take him on normal Instance runs, not even Raids. At the time I am writing this, the player is still looking for items from the guild to disenchant for his enchanting skill.

So there is a “treadmill” style of leveling up in WoW… of course there is. One of the things with WoW is that the first sixty levels are really just a chance for characters to explore and get used to all the areas to adventure in and quest in. Currently I have four level sixty characters, and am still intent on making a character to quest in Dustwallow Marsh, because I have never quested for Alliance or Horde in the area! Quests in WoW provide gear or lead the players to Instances where better gear will drop, and also force the players to go around the world which will eventually lead them to any trade goods they need for trade professions. Can you not do quests and still hit level 60, sure… you won’t have the best gear, or the highest trade skill levels, but it can be done.

A big syndrome that has hit the WoW community lately has been the loss of high level players who seem to drop off the face of the Earth. Reaching level sixty is no small task, and upon completion there is only endgame content left for the player to really explore to the best potential. Right now the endgame content of WoW is geared towards well organized groups of plays numbering 15 to 40. If you are not interested in large commitments of time for high end raids, then there really should be no rush to get to level sixty. The loss of a many high level players has been attributed to them either not wanting to commit to guild raids, or wanting to start new characters because they can’t handle being restricted to the small amount of endgame content currently available.

Yes the leveling system of WoW can be broken, and you can get a character up to level 60 with fairly minimal effort through the efforts of yourself or other people (power leveling markets are doing quite well with WoW). Yes there is a steady monotony to leveling up and questing in WoW that kind of plays like a broken record (for those of us who remember records). No it is not advisable to skip through the content that Blizzard has placed in-game for our enjoyment. The quest system is the core of WoW and forces advances in all aspects of character development, so if you don’t enjoy it, WoW might not be the right game for you.

Either way keep on leveling!