Before I went on holidays for two months, I gave my mates an estimate on when I would be joining them at 80 and we could rock & roll the instances and raids together once more.
My estimate was April.
Of course my friends all challenged this, I think to some extent thinking this was some sort of “extended finger” towards them and an indication of my desire to play with them as a group.
The thing is, I think I may have grossly underestimated my level cap arrival date.
Two weeks down and I am 2/3. Of the way through 70. Now I admit freely that math is not my forte, but I calculate at this rate I will reach (just reach, not be raid ready, or profession capped etc) in about 28 weeks. Once again math and calendar challenged as I may be, I think that is more than 1/2 a year away.
There isn’t much I can do about it. I am both time limited and filled with the desire to do WoLK right.
By right I mean do the quests, all or at least most of them, following (ie. Reading quest text and enjoying the story line) the path laid down by Blizzard to get the most out of WoLK.
My mates have already boosted me through one instance, Nexus, and that left such a dirty taste in my mouth. I felt filthy, dirtier than the most filthy street I walked down in India (and I can assure you that I walked down some dirty streets).
So boosting is also out of the question. Which means pugs, and based on my experiences getting pugs in TBC, I am not holding my breath.
Unfortunately I think this places me in the position I was in with my 1st two toons… Which was basically raid free. Sure once I get close to 80 I will be more inclined to use the help of geared 80′s, and based on experiences where my friends power leveled toons late in TBC, I will have the pick of the gear and will rapidly come up to speed, but…
I enjoyed the trials of tackling content with my similarly undergeared and powered friends. The joy of winning that roll against 3 others, the praying for the upgrade in the hope that I can stay aligned in DPS with my team mates.
Nexus was such a downer. Four manned. No need to do trash strats, Pally tank runs in collects them while everyone takes them down, including the healer.
They left the boss fights unexplained so I would gain that sense of surprise and awe. But the only surprise was the lack of awe. No sooner than the boss appears, it’s life can be counted in seconds rather than minutes. The special abilities came and went so fast that I missed them while searching for my long forgotten fireball key.
Ohh well, head down, bum up. Churn through the quests and enjoy the long slow ride to 80. I guess I can pray for a LAN or two, where I can grind levels while my mates thrash out some other games.
Gnomer and Out!
I’m afraid it will boil down to a choice – either you’ll have to play alone longer – or you’ll have to speed up a little (making more out of the gaming time you have available), for instance by following Jame’s levelling guides or by using Questhelper. This makes it quicker, but you won’t savour it the way that you may want to.
But there is a choice you have to make. You can’t have both.
I would actually go for the social path, trying to catch up rather than slowly taking part of every little piece of content. You can catch up much of it afterwards. But that’s me.
Maybe there is an alternative, a third road after all, when I think about it closely. Persuade your friends to level their alts…
Really, does it matter which instance you tackle when you have your gaming nights? The important thing is that you can kill monsters together and have a laugh doing it. UK normal or HoL heroic, what’s the big deal?
I found it a very steady road and very enjoyable but i would not calculate 77/78/79 as the same speed to level as the rest.
At 77 you get your flying mount again and it pretty muched doubled the speed at what i was leveling.
Instead of half a level a day i done 78 and 79 a day a piece.
Without wishing to bring up the whole difficulty debate again (visit Tobolds blog if you want to participate in that again), your experience in Nexus is not only because you were being boosted. Trash is AOE tanked now regardless and dps classes just AOE them down. The only difference is you’ll use 5 players instead of 4 when not being boosted!
Granted I did it in two weeks because I spent 4-5 hours per day and 10-12 hours on the weekend leveling. I could have done it faster, but I read every line of text and got the quest achievement for each zone before heading to the next. Actually I hit 80 without ever setting foot in Icecrown or Storm Peaks and only doing about half of Zul’Drak. (btw quests afterwards gave me sooo much gold!
)
I did use QuestHelper and don’t think it took away from the experience since I was reading all the text. I did avoid most of the instances because questing was actually more fun.
My advice: Don’t give in! Experience it in all it’s glory! I haven’t regretted it one bit and find I’m appreciating the endgame more.
I don’t see the rush… the people that have been at 80 after a little over 2 months since wrath release are bored out of their skulls already or working on achievements.
Once you unlock a few dailies you’ll actually be able to get a chunk of extra xp for no real effort so you’ll speed up a little. Gearing will also help the speed overall so you’ll probably come to 80 quicker than you ‘mathed’.
Don’t worry about it… have fun while you’re climbing up the ladder and if your friends are nagging you tell them to start a new level 1 character and to catch up
@ Larisa:
said: either you’ll have to play alone longer – Probably, and I think I am resigned to this.
said: or you’ll have to speed up a little (using guides or mods) – already there and I will be posting about this in the near future.
- Social vs. Catch up – there’s the problem. This would be the 3rd incarnation (and toon) of WoW where I chose to speed level to keep up, rather than seeing the content. What I have found, is there is never time to go back.. Once I hit cap and are a part of the team, the team expects me to devote 100% of my gaming time to the group events… so no questing, exploring, rep grinds, dailies etc… just into the Instances.
- 3rd Route – Friends Alts: There is some potential in this. THD is suggesting he might kidnap his son’s toon once it gets close, and I noticed another friend’s toon was about my level… we shall see.
- The instance doesn’t matter, but being boosted (whether intentional or not) by geared 80′s just quite simply isn’t fun. My input could quite simply be click “Follow THD”, go watch TV.
@ Esdras:
Ahh yeah, I forgot about the difference flying mounts made to speed of questing, both reaching destination (while avioding unnecessary fights) and speed of hand in.
@Cassini:
Funny about the AoE thing… things were all fast… but I did experience Mage redundancy in a couple of forms.
1) We did use CC, the Shaman “frogged”
2) My food/water wasn’t good enough and was snubbed by all.
3) The Pally tank was probably doing more AoE damage than me just tanking.
@ kyrilean:
- Ahh see the problem is I have the equivalent of one of your weekdays per week.
- The other concern I have ( I know this is counter to my rush to 80) is that once I hit 80, the other questing areas will become “wastelands”. Sure the quests will all be there waiting, but I wont have the time to do them (Same thing happened in TBC)… but that is a different issue.
- I am happy to use Quest Helper or guides like James’, as I want to be as efficient as I can be, while still enjoying the ride. The leveling guides can remove a bit of the surprise from the quests, but at least you aren’t running in circles… but as I mentioned to Larisa above, I will get back to running in circles with the aid of “quest helpers”
@ Captain the first:
1) I’m sorry Captain, but this morning when I read your comment I got this Captain Sensible song (Wot!) in my head, and I just can’t get it out (The backing singers in particular)…
2) Back on topic.
- The only rush is to join back into the social aspect. Sure I can be on Vent (I always am, whether we are in the same space or not), but it isn’t the same as learning a new encounter together.
- Dailies… ahhh Weeklies… a topic for another post… Once again, playing one day per week means dailies are best described as weeklies, and while doing them, I am not doing the other things in the game (Which is one of the reason I am not exalted with SSO… I can do dailies, or I can do something different)
- I might start nagging my mates… well maybe not nagging, but suggesting if they are bored with endgame, and can’t move on until we are a full crew, then maybe it is time to revisit forgotten alts, or start a new one (or two).
PS: I can think of one way to increase my play time… but really divorce isn’t an option….
G&O!