Jame's Game Guides

And that's how the rest of the Dragonblight guide went for my hunter:



Total Time Played at level 75: 117 days 22 hours 20 minutes 0 seconds
Total Time Played at level 76: 118 days 2 hours 11 minutes 33 seconds

Time needed from 75 to 76: 3h 51m 33 s

That's pretty good isn't it? Well guess what, I'm actually dissapointed with it. Because I know the lower part of my Dragonblight Guide can do much better.

But let me explain why I didn't pull some crazy numbers this time:

• I did all the group quests of Dragonblight. I don't know why, but I just wanted to do them all and was hoping some special quest would become unlocked ^^ You never know, right? :P Anyway, this slowed me down quite a bit as you can imagine, as looking for a group and waiting on members to gather can take a while sometimes.
• As always, overcrowding slowed me down, especially in the New Hearthglen circuits, this was horrible.
• I dinged 76 right before I was about to get to the juicy part of my guide, which is at the end when you turn in a bunch of quests at the same time and then move on to the wrath gate cinematic for another couple of easy 30K xp turn ins. Just to give you an idea, look how much XP I already had just 12 minutes after I dinged 76:

216,000 xp in 12min, which means about 1,000,000 XP/hour ^^.

Of course, this was once again done without rested bonus and without consumables. So you'll agree that these are pretty good numbers, and it's very promising for the future.

So at that point I ran out of leveling guides to follow, just like you guys, and that meant back to guide writing for me.

But before let's have an overview at how level 70 to 76 went for me:

Total Time Played at level 70: 117 days 3 hours 23 minutes 53 seconds
Total Time Played at level 76: 118 days 2 hours 11 minutes 33 seconds

Time needed from level 70 to level 76: 22h 47m 40s

That means it took me 3h48 on average per level from 70 to 76.

And that was all done during the crazy release week. So there you have it, proof that my guide can level you extremely fast while playing at a rather casual pace.

Alright, I wouldn't call 3h48min a day casual, but I wouldn't call it hardcore either, I think anyone can agree with me on that.

Now of course, first time users of my guides probably won't do it as fast as I did, but the second time you go through my guide for your alt, and without having to deal with overcrowding, you'll probably come close to those numbers ;)

Or even better, next time you follow my guide, it will be with my in-game addon format, which I will be working on as soon as I'm done with the paper version for all the Northrend zones. And with that, nobody will come close to your leveling speed, no matter what!

So stay tuned.

Here's the latest update about my Hunter on Horde Side.

If you followed the previous blog article about it, you saw that we dinged Level 72 at exactly 117 days 11 hours 14 minutes 38 seconds /played.

Time to get from Level 72 to Level 73: 4h 6min 49s

This is a good score, but I'm sure we can lower it down to 3h once there's no more overcrowding in Borean Tundra.

I was about halfway through my Borean Tundra guide when this happened by the way.

Of course, this was done with no rested bonus, I log the hunter outside of an inn on purpose. So it's quite a competitive xp rate right there :)

After a food break I went on with the guide until I hit level 74:



Total Time Played: 117days 18h 47min 3s

Time from Level 73 to Level 74: 3h 25min 36s


Ok, you're probably thinking 3h25min for 73 to 74 is quite good, and it is. But it could have been so much better, at least 30 min shorter. See this was sunday noon and it was starting to get really crowded, especially the murloc quest hub.
The murloc quest hub was simply hell. There was probably more players than murlocs over there, and I couldn't even do the escort out of the cave, the quest NPC simply was always busy and a bunch of people were waiting for him to respawn, so I just moved on.

This is just to say that the lower part of my Borean Tundra leveling guide is actually extremely competitive, and that once the overcrowding problems are gone, I expect people to pull some crazy numbers while following it. 2h30 per level seems definitely possible.

And finally today I went to Dragonblight and followed the guide until I hit level 75. Sadly I messed up the screenshot, but here is how it was about 15 minutes before I dinged 75:


I took me exactly 3hours 30minutes to do 74 to 75.

It's quite good, there was a lot of overcrowding of course on this monday afternoon, but it wasn't as bad as Borean Tundra and Howling Fjord.

The good part is that I wasn't even done with the first half of my Dragonblight Guide. So I might very well ding 76 towards the end of it. Also, the lower part of my Dragonblight Guide is actually the best part, xp rate wise, so stay tuned and tomorrow we'll find out how much it took me to do level 75-76 ;)

So I went to the midnight opening of my city and got my two Wrath of the Lich King boxes, and then I... slept!

Yes, sadly I couldn't pull the allnighter every serious gamer would like to pull, because I simply had work to do the next morning and needed to be reasonable :P

I only started playing the next day close to noon. I started with one of my horde characters first, a hunter specced Beast Mastery. And off I went to Howling Fjord to follow my horde guide.

I'm sure most of you experienced the overcrowding and how much it can affect your XP rate. Well it sure did affect mine, as the hunter I played is on a very high pop server, we had some very long queues later that day and some areas had more players than mobs for sure.

However, the results were still very good, not nearly as good as what I got on beta, but still, I caught up very quickly with several guildmates who pulled the allnighter and were already well into level 71 when I started to play (obviously, they weren't following my guide, or I wouldn't have caught up like that :P)

I took screenshots at every important step, to check how fast I was leveling.

This screenshot was taken when I logged in, before I went to Howling Fjord:



Total time played: 117 days 3 hours 23 minutes 53 seconds

This screenshot was taken right when I hit Level 71:



Total time played: 117 days 6 hours 53 minutes 46 seconds

If you do the math, that means it took me exactly 3h 29min 53s to ding. This is a pretty good score, considering the whole level was done:

1. Without any rested bonus
2. With a lot of people fighting for quest mobs, I estimate that this slowed me down at least by a good 20 minutes
3. Without any consumables

So yes, it's actually great and says alot about how fast one could level with my guide once the release rush is over.

And then more problems started as I was on my way to level 72:

1. Captain Ellis was nowhere to be found. That means the quest chain including [71] The Lost Shield of the Aesirites was broken. I spent 15 minutes looking for Captain Ellis, checking wowhead and various boards to find out where he was, and then I gave up and moved on. This was really annoying because the follow ups of that chain are really quick and give about 100K xp in total. That was a big setback. But anyway, I finished the rest of Howling Fjord and then moved on to Borean Tundra.
2. As the day went on, the overcrowding became worse :P Mid afternoon it was already crazy, at least on my server, especially for all the quests close to Warsong Hold in Borean Tundra. I wasted a lot of time waiting on respawns, I estimate I lost another 20 minutes there.

In any case, this is the screenshot of when I dinged Level 72:



Total time played: 117 days 11 hours 14 minutes 38 seconds

That means it took me 4h 20 min 51s to go from 71 to 72.

That's dissapointing compared to what I know I'm supposed to get, but this was release day crazyness and it can't be helped. It's still pretty decent considering that whole level was done with:

1. No rested bonus
2. No consumables
3. A broken quest chain
4. A transition from Howling Fjord to Borean Tundra (that damn turtle really took a while to come to Kamagua)
5. Very heavy overcrowding

Then after that I took a break and I logged out outside of an inn, because I don't want any rested bonus while testing my guides. I'll resume leveling tomorrow and hit 74 and then I'll report my findings to you guys.

Overall, besides the broken quest chain, I'm quite happy with the release of WotLK and with how my guides performed so far. The overcrowding was really a factor, but it was predictable.
I was still able to progress fast through most quests and I know for sure that once the dust clears, people who follow my guide will come up with some really amazing /played from 70 to 80. I guarantee you that :)

Meanwhile here's a very simple tip which might help you perform better in crowded areas:

Tip: When you get to an area where you have to kill a rare mob or anything which might make you lose time if you have to wait on respawns, immediately offer other players in the area to group with you. There's nothing worse than fighting with 3 other players over the same spawns when you could all be completing the quests together 3 times faster. I recommend making a macro with this simple line "Hey, want to group up for this quest?" and use it whenever the situation warrants it. Because trust me, sometimes, while you're typing that line, the mob you need spawns and the other player kills it in front of your eyes before you even get the chance to ask him if he wants to group with you ^^.

I know this must sound really obvious, but trust me, the macro helps, and you won't have to type that same line a hundred times that way ;)