November 6, 2007
That’s right! About a month ago I started up a warrior alt since our guild at the time was lacking a committed tank. However, pretty much all of my alts are around level 20, that’s point in the game where I just get bored. Levels start to feel like they are taking forever and I’ve been through the zones a few times now so its just doing the same old quests over and over again. This trick to leveling has been around forever but I never thought it would work as well as it did for me and my group. First off, you need to understand how the group experience in the game works. For a 5 player group, you get ~40% more experience per kill as a group bonus. For example, if your group kills something that gives you 300 experience, a full group (assuming they are all the same level) will split a total of 420 experience. It seems if you take a group of lower level players and put them with a 70 the xp is reduced by about half, which in most cases hurts the group pretty bad but keep in mind it does not affect the group bonus at all. So heres how we did it…
The first step is to get to level 20 as fast as possible, this should take an average player around 17-18 hours, or at least thats the average of my friends. Ideally you want a group of 4 between you and your friends to be right around level 20 at the same time. If you don’t have 4 people don’t worry, you can pick up people very easily when they see how fast you are leveling.
Next, you are going to need a high level mage, we used a friends level 70 mage in dungeon blues to do this with and it worked fine, if you can find a better one it will only make things faster.
Take your group to Scarlet Monastery at level 20 and group up with the 70 mage, all your friends are now officially loot machines, all they do the entire time is loot the mess that the mage makes out of the instances. Based on our experience it seems best to take the group through library and armory then reset and repeat until they are around level 28 or so. Once they are 28 you can start running library, armory, and cathedral until about 32 when it becomes inefficient to run library due to the level of the players in the group.
During the leveling process, if the group is full and the mage is killing stuff at a good pace, it will take about 30-40 minutes per level from 20-28. After that it goes up obviously as you are nearing the level of the stuff you are killing and it requires more and more experience each level. 28-35 is about 40-50 minutes a level and 35-40 can be up to an hour each level until it starts to go up drastically at level 40+ as everything becomes yellow/green to the group. Also, everyone in the group had enough cash to buy their mount right at 40, and that was before selling any of the blues that dropped (and there were a ton!) Had something like 19 bind on equip blue items after all the runs.
This is a screenshot of my warrior at 30 with only 23 hours of /played time. Unfortunately I didn’t snap one at level 40 as I didn’t plan on writing this up but I assure you its very easy to do this in 36 hours.
Tips to remember!
- Caster NPC’s in the library don’t usually follow you for more than 30 yards before the leash back. This can wipe your group and waste time if they are running back and killing the low level members of your group. Plan your pulls accordingly.
- Herod is a waste of time. Only kill him if you need his loot or if its just your friends in the group and they know to move away from the door. Each time we brought a new person into the group they would die to the spawns at the door when you engage Herod. We found it easier and faster to just skip him.
- Make sure group members are close but not too close! There is a range for the xp so members need to be close but not so close they are getting agro.
- It is easiest to run with the same people, your group will soon develop a routine and things will move faster. If you avoid picking up random and switching people out often it will save time in the end.
I may try this again in 2.3 with an even better geared mage. With less xp required for each level after 20 and faster killing, on top of knowing exactly what works best this time, I wouldn’t be surprised to do it in 30 hours.
If you have anything to add to this feel free to drop a comment or send an email with the contact form! Don’t forget to Digg this if you found it helpful!
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November 6, 2007
Looks like there is no patch again this week, based on blue posts recently it seems it might not be next week either. However it will be soon they say! As you may know if you were playing at all this last week the background download started picking up 2.3 files. Heres what Bornakk had to say on that
We have had a number of patches begin downloading the content before they are released, especially when they have a lot of new content like in this case the new dungeon Zul’Aman. This download doesn’t guarantee any specific release dates, just that it will be soon.
Source
Be sure to get that download started so you aren’t waiting 2 hours for the patch on release day. If for whatever reason it isn’t starting for you, or you want to download it without starting the game, go into your WoW folder and run the background downloader file from there.
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November 5, 2007
Long gone are the days where players can fit in as only casual or hardcore. What exactly qualifies someone as hardcore anyways? If you asked an MMO player 5 years ago to describe a hardcore player it would be something along the lines of how a casual gamer describes themself today. Ever since WoW came out it seems like people who consider themselves casual still spend 5 hours a day 4-5 days a week on the game running “casual” instances like Karazhan, heroics, and even some early 25 player raids. After observing MMO players for the last 7 years and going from one extreme to the other in the casual/hardcore ladder I have come up with the these 7 types of MMO players today.
MMO games aren’t for me (0-5 hours)
This is the type of player that bought the game 2 years ago, they still don’t have any characters at the cap. When they have their account active they usually play about 0-5 hours a week and most of that time is spent figuring out where they left off at. By the time they get on track they log off and repeat the same thing almost every time they log back on, which is about once a week.
Pre-Casual never going to raid (5-15 hours)
They have one character either capped out or very close to it, not many alts as most of their time playing is going into their main char. This type of player is logged in about 5-10 hours a week, either they just aren’t into the game very much or they are just too busy to sacrifice any more time for the game. In most cases they are too sketchy with their playing time that they don’t often make it into raiding guilds.
The true casual of today (15-25 hours)
These people will usually have one character at level cap and a few low level alts. This is the group of players that often run 5 player instances and even some early raids if they are in a decent enough guild. Some of these players are getting into picking the right gear setups to max their char as much as they can with whats available. With WoW, you can also be a well geared pvp type player if you spend most of your time online pvping.
End game dungeon goer/early raider (25-35 hours)
A large group of players from the end game of WoW fall into this category. They are aware of what items are in the game and how to max the stats with whats available to them. If for whatever reason they aren’t in a guild that raids at this point, they play many alts and keep gearing them up in regular and heroic dungeons or pvp. Many of these players also consider themselves casual, while others in the same group think they are hardcore.
Raids, raids, eat/sleep/work, more raids (Hardcore) (35-45 hours)
This is about as much as a person with a full time job can possibly fit in to play the game. They usually take it rather seriously at this point and if they are working all day they do not like to waste their limited free time. Playing this much means they are progressing nicely through raids with a decent guild. If they aren’t in a raiding guild then they have multiple characters at the level cap and spend most of their time leveling more alts or PvPing and running instances.
Hardcore raiding, farming, pvping (45-60 hours)
Playing this much means they are more than likely in one of the top raiding guilds by now. However, raiding all week isn’t enough for these people. When raids aren’t happening you will find them leveling one of their many alts to the cap, farming for consumables or money, and pvping. Even some of their alts will also have gear from higher end raid instances. They will be the ones with 100% raid attendance and in most cases have extensive knowledge of all the encounters and character classes in the game.
Help! I went outside and the graphics gave me a headache! (60+ hours)
This is the player that drops 60+ hours a week into the game, this is excusable when a new game comes out and you do that initial push for a week or 2. However, if you pull this shit for months at a time, even if it’s lineage 2, you should probably consider cutting back some. Most of these players do not work or have any time limits for whatever reason. They have many alts at the level cap and in some cases raid in different guilds with each character. Some of these players are so involved in the game they will neglect their real life pets, rename them to a raid boss, and then neglect them harder.
I’m sure everyone knows someone that fits into each of these categories and probably some between. As such, I don’t believe its possible to just qualify as a hardcore or casual mmo player anymore. The genre is growing so rapidly thanks to WoW and as a result there is a much larger scale for the types of players. Also, with it now being considered average to drop 20 hours a week into an MMO, where will that average be 5 years from now? 25 or even 30 hours a week? Or will we start to see something similar to china where our time becomes limited?
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November 1, 2007
In the latest Blizzard newsletter there was a hidden link to a Wrath of the Lich King page that isn’t linked to anywhere on the main WotLK website. On this page there is a bunch of new art and screenshots as well as an in depth interview with the designers about what went into creating the first dungeon Utgarde Keep.
We expect most players to battle through this dungeon at a brisk pace. You will find that you will probably be able to play through Utgarde Keep much more quickly than its high-level counterparts, similar to Burning Crusade equivalents such as Hellfire Ramparts and Blood Furnace. Accessibility is a high priority, especially with the early dungeons, both in terms of location — the entrance portal is extremely close to the outskirts of the town — and in terms of how much time players need to invest in the dungeon. Along these lines, the overall difficulty of the dungeon is comparable to a first attempt at Ramparts in
Outland.
A bit on what they learned from The burning Crusade:
We learned some important lessons from The Burning Crusade’s starting area and dungeons, in terms of both what worked and what didn’t, and these lessons are reflected in Northrend. For example, there are two starting areas, each with its own dungeon, as opposed to The Burning Crusade’s single Hellfire Peninsula / Hellfire Citadel combo. The reasoning behind this is to provide a choice to the player — the area you decide to start in is where you will spend your early levels in Northrend. You can also decide to travel to the other starting area at any time, thanks to a free travel system between the zones of Borean Tundra and Howling Fjord, but most players will likely gravitate toward one area in order to complete the various quests there. Having two starting areas also adds to Wrath of the Lich King’s replayability — when it’s time to pick a starting area for an alt, you can pick the one that you didn’t play through the first time around.
It’s a very interesting preview of the dungeon and some of the new art looks amazing. Be sure to check it out here!
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