Leveling is Faster, But is it Better?

I didn't really start seriously leveling alts until Wrath of the Lich King.  During Burning Crusade, I was mostly just leveling my warlock and playing around a little bit with a druid and an Alliance hunter.  I may have gotten the druid to max level by the time Wrath rolled around, but I'm not 100% sure on that.

The other thing that I noticed that was really interesting to me is that the first 5 characters that I got to max level in Wrath - my warlock, hunter, druid, paladin, and death knight, are the same 5 characters that I have leveled first in every expansion since.

Going back through old posts, just for nostalgia's sake, it really amazed me how long the leveling process used to take.  The aforementioned hunter, which was my 4th character to hit max level during Wrath, took 8 days and 10 hours of played time to get there.  It definitely highlights the changes that have been made, allowing you to do the same thing now in about 10 hours total.

See, back then, in order to get a character to max level, you had to level through all of the previous expansions.  I'm not entirely sure when that changed.  By Warlords of Draenor, that was still the general process, but the leveling speed had been improved to the point that stuff was generally only taking me around 2 1/2 days of played time.

It looks like in Legion, they gave you the ability to choose between Outland and Northrend for a portion of it, and then chose between Cataclysm and Pandaria for the 80-90 portion.  You then had to do Draenor for 90 to 100 before starting on the Legion content.  But it still looks like it was taking around 2 days played to level a character from the beginning.

In Battle for Azeroth, you still had to go back through most of the previous zones, although you still had the choices that you had in Legion.  I was leveling a bunch of Allied Race toons at the time, and there are definitely references to working them through the whole process.  I leveled a ton of characters to max level towards the end of Battle for Azeroth when there was an anniversary bonus active that included a one-time event in Alterac Valley called Korrak's Revenge, which let you level extremely quickly.   From the beginning of August 2019 until the end of December, I managed to get 20 characters to max level during that period.

The new characters were taking under two days at that point, but a lot of that could have been due to the anniversary event.

It's harder to tell what happened during Shadowlands because I stopped playing World of Warcraft a few months into that expansion.  I didn't even manage to get all 5 of my original toons to max level during the early part of that expansion.  I believe Shadowlands was when Chromie time was introduced, allowing you to pick just one zone to level in, up to the current expansions' content. 

I'm not sure it's been helpful for players new to the game to be able to skip all of that legacy content.  Of course, even back in the Mists of Pandaria days, you might have been able to say the same thing about being able to do the classic leveling experience in just a couple of zones in either Eastern Kingdoms or Kalimdor.  There's a ton of great content and storylines in both of those areas that I'm sure most players have never experienced.  To say nothing of Outland, Northrend, Cataclysm, etc.

I haven't leveled a character all the way to max level from scratch since Battle for Azeroth, but as I work through a few of my existing characters, I'm guessing that's not going to be the case much longer.  It will be exciting to see what the leveling times look like now.

Going Crazy With Timewalking

I've been using the timewalking event to level my alts for the most part for the last few weeks.  I finished up the Death Knight that I mentioned last week and have now moved over to the 2nd Hunter on my main Horde server.  

I came across the mount above while leveling my Death Knight.  I have no idea what it is or where I got it, but it looks pretty cool.  I use an addon called Livestock that just pulls a random mount for me every time I mount up, so I'm occasionally surprised with some that I have no memory of.  With well over 500 mounts, that's not as hard as you might think.

Anyway, I thought this one was interesting, so I figured I'd share.  After this hunter is done, I've got a Priest to do, then another Hunter, then a couple of Shaman.  

We've got a handyman at the house this week doing a whole bunch of projects that my wife wanted done before she'll be comfortable letting a real estate agent into the house to get it ready to sell sometime next spring.  This all assumes that the youngest Joarling actually ends up signing with and going to the college that he committed to last fall, otherwise, we may end up just staying where we are.  Things are so crazy in NCAA sports right now that it's really hard to say.

As a result, I'm working from home all week, so I have a little bit more play time than usual, but the dog isn't a fan of all this work being done, so that's not helping.  And getting interrupted constantly isn't great for timewalking spam.  

So that's the update for this week.

Cheers,

Joar

Good Leveling Progress and June in Review

I hit max level on my latest Horde Druid today.  That's my third Horde druid and my 5th overall, but I also don't think I have any more in queue, which makes it my 2nd most numerous class, after warlocks and hunters, which I have 6 of each.  That's also my 32nd max level character overall, leaving me with only 14 level 50s to go and 4 characters below that, which will finish up all my currently created characters.

I used Timewalking dungeons extensively on this one, so it progressed from 50 to 80 in just 5 hours and 23 minutes.  

I also used the one-button rotation feature extensively with this one to see how it would work.  In general, it seemed to work fine.  For leveling, it's not great at saving big cooldowns, like Convoke, for more challenging mobs, but it did end up ticking off Force of Nature more often than I probably would on my own, which I think definitely helped with the leveling speed.

In timewalking dungeons, however, it tended to try to do a full rotation on big packs of mobs, which didn't make a ton of sense.  And it tended to have the same issue of using big cooldowns whenever they were up, versus just saving them for bosses, but I think if you can manage around those types of problems, it's still a good thing to try.

Up next is another Horde Death Knight as the latest entry on my 2nd Horde realm.

I had a solid playtime block during June, aided by being out of town for a week while it was approximately 8,000 degrees outside.  I had just over 48 hours of total playtime for the month, which breaks down as follows: 8 hours in Elder Scrolls Online, focusing on the new content, 6 hours in Guild Wars 2, completing the Janthir content, and then 34 hours in World of Warcraft.

I'm still on a good pace to finish all 50 characters before the end of the year, but you never know when real life might intervene.

Happy 16th Blogoversary!

My 16th blogoversary was actually a week or so ago, and, like most years lately, I was busy with the kids and their summer sports, so I missed it.  Although I'm not sure I'm writing much more, I feel a bit more invigorated about the blog lately.  

In terms of gaming updates, I've been focused on leveling alts in World of Warcraft when I've had the time.  I finished up the Alliance mage that I mentioned in my last post, and also finished an Alliance Monk and another Horde Druid since the last update, bringing my grand total of max-level characters to 30.  The leveling times now seem to be running pretty consistently in the 8-10 hour range from level 50 to level 80.  

I'm now working on another Alliance Rogue.  Since rogues haven't been my favorite for quite a while, I'm using the new one-button rotation functionality to see if that helps.  I'm not yet in the 70 to 80 range, but at least in the early stages, it seems to be helping quite a bit.

For the Monk, I tried using Chromie time and running him through Warlords of Draenor because I'd heard that was faster than Dragonflight.  Maybe it's because I've been doing Dragonflight a lot so that I have a lot of muscle memory around it, but it didn't end up working out that way for me, so I've switched back to just doing Dragonflight with this rogue.

I've still been dipping into ESO and Guild Wars 2 periodically, but my play time definitely has a heavy World of Warcraft emphasis right now.

I also completed the new Arathi Highlands content that was released and really enjoyed it.  It was nice to revisit an older zone in a way that made some sense, especially now that the leveling process doesn't ever have you go back to any of those places.

After I finish up this rogue, I have another druid in queue, so I may level that one in bear form to see how that goes.  If I hate it, I can always switch back to something else.

Cheers,

Joar

Finishing Up Janthir in Guild Wars 2

Last week, I finished up the new Guild Wars 2 content on my Mechanist.  There wasn't a lot to the new zone, but it was a pretty satisfying way of wrapping up essentially the last two expansions' worth of content.  It wasn't a particularly challenging final fight either, but I was okay with that.  Overall, the connection with the story made it a decent finish for me.

I'll continue to putter around in Guild Wars 2 off and on until the new expansion releases.  I wouldn't mind working on gearing up my Ranger a bit, because I'm generally still too lazy to just move my Ascended gear between characters.  I also need to finish gathering berries for an Ascended back for my Reaper.  

I'm still also working on leveling my Alliance mage in World of Warcraft.  I think he's sitting around level 75 now, so getting fairly close.  Switching to Frost definitely helped with the speed of leveling in general.

I've also been dipping in and out of Elder Scrolls Online a little bit and have now moved on to the Clockwork City on my zone completion journey.  That's one is a small one, so won't be long before I move on again.

That's the update for now. 

Cheers,

Joar

New ESO content

Yesterday, I ran through pretty much all the new Elder Scrolls Online content related to the Worm Cult on the island of Solstice.  The new story, while typical ESO fare, was pretty engaging and well done.  I also ran through all the side quests and delves in the new zone, which I also enjoyed.  They held together well and also made sense in the context of the overall zone story.  The zone itself is truly beautiful, and I particularly enjoyed the new city of Sunport, although it feels somewhat similar to several other ESO cities in terms of overall layout.  The crafting center is almost identical to one of the other recent expansion cities.

I'm happy with this content cycle so far.  I also picked up something like 70 Champion points while running through the new zone, which felt pretty good, too.

From an overall gaming perspective, May was more balanced.  The bulk of my play time in May was still focused around World of Warcraft, at 22 hours, but ESO contributed quite a bit at 9 hours, and Guild Wars 2 came in at 4 hours total played.  I'm guessing that June will see even higher contributions from Guild Wars 2 and ESO with their new content releases.

I'm also running out of energy on the alt leveling front in Warcraft.  I'm currently working on character #28, who is sitting at level 72.  This one is an Alliance Mage that I've been leveling as Arcane so far, but it's not working very well now that I've moved on to the War Within zones, so I may switch him to Frost for the rest of the way to 80.

Yet another druid is up next after this mage, and I haven't really enjoyed leveling druids either this expansion, so that will likely keep my progress slow also.  But, there's lots of new content in both Guild Wars 2 and ESO to enjoy.

Cheers,

Joar

Slowing Progress in WoW

Because of some real-life happenings, my progress in WoW has slowed significantly since my last update 3 weeks ago.  Since the previous update, we have relocated the middle Joarling to an apartment in Nashua, New Hampshire, for an internship he's doing in Lowell, Massachusetts.  That involved approximately 28 hours of driving back and forth between Ohio and Massachusetts.  And of course, the youngest Joarling had an out-of-town swim meet that same weekend.  

Things have also been getting busy at work, and I've had to spend a lot more time in the office than usual.  

So now that you've heard all the excuses, here are the updates.  I did finish up the Enhancement Shaman, which, with those temporary leveling bonuses, was the fastest yet from 50-80, coming in at right around 6 1/2 hours total.  I've now started on character number 27, which is an Alliance Fury Warrior, and have him sitting at around level 75 right now, so not much farther to go.  He only completed a portion of the 50-70 pieces with the old leveling bonuses in place, so I think the 70-80 portion will take quite a bit longer.

I haven't played much at all in either Elder Scrolls Online or Guild Wars 2.  I will probably jump back into GW2 for a bit next week when the last portion of Janthir Wilds releases.  But beyond that, I will probably stay pretty focused on Warcraft, at least for a bit.  

The new ESO content is also supposed to be dropping at some point in June, so I'll be hopping into a bit of that as well.  Also coming in June will be the 16th anniversary of my blog, so it's probably good that there will be more content for me to write about.

That's it for now.

Cheers,

Joar

Halfway There in WoW

Yesterday, I managed to get my 25th character to max level, which officially puts me halfway there.  The last one was the rogue, which had a bad played time from 50 to 80, probably for two reasons.  First, I don't really enjoy playing rogues very much.  Honestly, I haven't since they got rid of the combat spec.  Second, my random decision to start out at level 50 playing in Blade's Edge Mountains was a bad one.  It's not tuned as well as some of the more recent zones and expansions, so the time to get from 50 to 70 was a LOT longer than usual.

With 25 characters to go, if my average played time to max for them is 9 hours and 30 minutes, it should theoretically be very doable to get the rest of these to max level before the end of the year, assuming I'm not playing much besides World of Warcraft.  Of course, that isn't likely the case, so it will likely slip into 2026, but that seems like that's probably fine as well, given the current game cycle.

I also haven't considered the recent leveling bonuses in these calculations, so my broader average may come in below that 9-hour and 30-minute level.  The thing I found with the rogue is that the mysterious satchels probably helped more than anything, keeping me much more caught up on gear than I otherwise would be, and by extension, making stuff die faster and the leveling process much smoother.

I'm now working on my Alliance Shaman, and am playing him as Enhancement.  That seems to be going smoothly enough so far.

In Elder Scrolls Online, I continue working my Templar through map completion.  I finished up Bangkorai and all the Blackreach cavern stuff, and have now moved on to Blackwood, which has a bit more to knock out, although I had quite a bit of it complete already. I think Clockwork City will be up after that.

Cheers,

Joar

Missed a Month: Updates on WoW and ESO

I missed posting on my blog for an entire month.  The sad thing is, it wasn't a particularly busy month for me personally; I just didn't feel like I had much to write about.  You have to go back to 2021 to find the last time that I missed a month of posting entirely, and I did it twice that year (September and December). That's the only other time in the soon-to-be 16-year history of this blog that I've missed a month.  Shame on me.

I did manage a trip down to visit the Grand Joarling last weekend, and other than some flight issues getting back home, it was a wonderful trip.  I really don't get down there enough, and it sucks having them 9 hours away.

From a play time perspective, I managed about 41 hours this past month - 30 of that was dedicated to World of Warcraft, 10 of that to Elder Scrolls Online (almost all of that in the last 3 days) and 1 hour on Guild Wars 2, finishing up the last bit of the latest content drop.

On the World of Warcraft front, I finished all of the original War Within renowns on my main, and I'm only two spots away from having the Undermine renown done, so likely only one or two more weeks for that.

I also managed to get two of my level 50s up to 80 and have the third one sitting at level 77.  After I finish this one, I think another druid is up next.  

I've also jumped back into playing Elder Scrolls Online.  My eldest had bought Oblivion Remastered, and I was playing a little bit of that with him during our visit, and it made me want to play ESO again.  I've still been working on map completion on my main.  I'm taking them alphabetically just for easy tracking, and I'm only on Bangkorai, so I have quite a way to go.  But it's fun.  I also picked up one of the new companions, Zerith-Var, and enjoy working on leveling him up as I go.  

Finally, I thought I'd go back and try Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood again on my Nightblade, but after an hour or two of messing around with that, I remembered that I don't like the stealth stuff all that much.  The lore, story, and idea of a Ninja criminal character sounds cool -  it's just not my playstyle.

That's it for now.  I will try to do a better job of posting during May than I did during April.

Cheers,

Joar

Moving On To the Giant Slug of Level 50s

I managed to get my level 60 druid to max level last week and now most of what remains is the huge batch of level 50 characters left over from Battle for Azeroth.  There are 26 of them in all.  As of this morning, the first of that group is relatively close to done, sitting at level 92.  With the xp bonuses from timewalking dungeons being a lot lower now, that is not as attractive a leveling path as it was during the early part of the year.  

The total leveling time for the druid ended up around 6 hours and 11 minutes.  We'll see what the time is for this first level 50.  In my 2025 gaming goals posted, I had assumed 9 hours each for this entire batch of level 50s, so we'll see how this initial one looks compared to that early forecast.

I did the 50 to 70 stretch of leveling on this character in Northrend.  Because he's a demon hunter, he hadn't done that zone before, so that was pretty enjoyable.  I never made it out of Howling Fjord before hitting 70, but it was still quite a bit of nostalgia.  Most of the rest will be stuck with either Shadowlands or Dragongflight, so I'll probably just alternate between those.

I'm also continuing to do quite a bit on my main each week, doing the big renown events in each zone, the weekly dungeon quest, and a few other things to knock out decent chunks of xp.  I'm progressing well on all that, including with the new Undermine renown.  

I'll be heading to a big swim meet with the youngest Joarling starting on Wednesday, hurting my play time for the week.  It's a prelims/finals meet, so only a short break during the afternoon.

That is the update for this week.

Cheers,

Joar

Thoughts on Undermine and Leveling Update

It has been longer than I would like since I last posted.  There has been a lot going on at work as I've changed roles yet again.  We also took a brief spring break trip to the Florida Keys for 5 days to get some sun and relaxation.

I got started on the Undermine content.  I haven't done any LFR yet, but I did the Gallywix fight in story mode to see all the cut scene stuff.  I'm not a big fan of the whole goblin motif in World of Warcraft, but despite that, I've enjoyed Undermine.  Running around in your car doing chores is a welcome break from the typical grind, so the regular quests in Undermine don't bother me that much.

I like the car, although I wish I could drive it with a bit more precision.  I haven't completed all the side quests in Undermine, but the chains I've done so far have been fun. All the new delves I've done and the new dungeon have also been great.

I've already gotten my two-piece set bonus with the new gear, so that's been helpful so far.  The demonology warlock set bonuses in this expansion haven't wowed me so far, and I don't like them having a weird goblin theme this time, but I'll get over it.

I've also been more focused on knocking out Renown on my main, so I've been taking a break from leveling alts to do more.

On the leveling front, I finished up both the paladin and the shadow priest, so all the characters I originally got to max level in Dragonflight are now done for War Within, WAY ahead of schedule.  Because we had a couple week break from Timewalking dungeons, it was back to regular questing for the shadow priest, so the leveling time for him was back to more in the 6-hour range compared to 3 hours or so.

I've now started on my sole level 60.  A free boosted character from the purchase of some expansion or another.  It's a Kul Tiran druid on my third server.  I've been wondering how much time this will take, especially once I get to the level 50s (there are 26 of them).  The time to get from 60-70 was only an hour, so I'm hoping that means that 50-70 won't be more than 2 hours, if that.  That will give me a pretty decent shot at getting a lot of these done before the end of the year while still staying caught up on things on my main.