Couple of WoW Questions

[Sunbury]

1) Are there any servers with very sparse population, esp. at low levels?   I hated always running across other people wherever I went, I want a world to myself like AC1!

2) What is the best Class that can solo, has little need for items, does not have to craft, and has no pets?  I'm thinking feral Druid.

I'm thinking of restarting WoW from scratch playing with a personal set of rules and seeing how it goes, but it depends on the above.   I don't care about PvP, instances, raiding, etc, just the base game and seeing most of the world.

[Azaroth]

About a third of the servers are pretty much completely empty.

[Rasix]

1) Are there any servers with very sparse population, esp. at low levels?   I hated always running across other people wherever I went, I want a world to myself like AC1!

2) What is the best Class that can solo, has little need for items, does not have to craft, and has no pets?  I'm thinking feral Druid.

I'm thinking of restarting WoW from scratch playing with a personal set of rules and seeing how it goes, but it depends on the above.   I don't care about PvP, instances, raiding, etc, just the base game and seeing most of the world.

1.  Yes, take my server for instance.  Hell, I'm barely running into people in Outland leveling my DK.

2.  That's a good call.  A feral druid can get pretty sick stats in pretty crappy gear.  Or at least they could, been a while since I've played one.

[Lantyssa]

Feral druids are really good soloers, especially if you learn to shift on the fly for casting utility spells.  Getting the healing talent which reduces knockback helps with survivability, and one of the glyphs lets you cut the casting time of your big heal in half.

Being able to choose to play like a warrior, rouge, or priest at any given time gives a lot of flexibility and lets you get a lot of places others can't.  Usually I would prowl around as a cat, switch to bear if I ended up with adds, shift out long enough to cast a couple of heal over times if I was getting beat up, then switch back to cat or bear.  I easily survived encounters none of my other characters could at that level.

Now there were times leveling felt a little slower, but with the huge increase in leveling speed I doubt it would be much of an issue.

[Gobbeldygook]

1. Go to one of the pvp servers or rp-pvp servers.  Post-death knight, the entire old world is a ghost town.

2. No class fits your description.  Every class and spec is item dependent.  If we're already throwing your requirements out the window, level BM hunter or affliction warlock.

[Venkman]

1. Any server with "Low" pop is going to do you good in the early levels.

2. Mage. No need to craft, can summon their own food and drink, and as long as you go deep Fire or Frost, you'll be able to solo just about any normal quest and probably a few 2-person suggested ones. They've long since been fotm too so they won't get radically nerfed anytime soon. They're not uber, and you do have the downtime of mana. But they're also pretty self-sufficient. If you do want crafting, tack on Alchemy for potion love or Engineering to increase the places you can teleport yourself (I'm pretty much five minutes from every corner of the map atm).

Feral Druid is a good idea too though, and has some more flexibility if you want anything other than Fireball>Fireball>Scorch>Scorch>FireBlast/Frostnova-Fireball. That you will do pretty much from 20 to, er, well, I'm still doing it at 74   

[Montague]

1) Are there any servers with very sparse population, esp. at low levels?   I hated always running across other people wherever I went, I want a world to myself like AC1!

2) What is the best Class that can solo, has little need for items, does not have to craft, and has no pets?  I'm thinking feral Druid.

I'm thinking of restarting WoW from scratch playing with a personal set of rules and seeing how it goes, but it depends on the above.   I don't care about PvP, instances, raiding, etc, just the base game and seeing most of the world.

You guys might laugh but... Holy Priest. Seriously. Since Blizzard got rid of the healing/spell damage concept my holy priest has been a joy to level. He hardly ever drinks, never dies, and is not very gear dependent at all. The plus side is that when you occasionally need help its usually very easy as a healer. And obviously getting in dungeon groups is a lot easier, if thats your thing.

[Draegan]

Roll a hunter.  Beastmaster spec.  The pet does the bulk of your damage, and scales with your stats as you level.  Also don't roll a holy priest.

Finding a server is easy, just find one thats says LOW next to it.

[Fordel]

Feral Druid is a good call, if you don't like it, you can always go Balance or Resto. Druid's have the widest spread of roles and abilities.


But yea, Feral's don't need anything fancy gear wise, and only use a hand full of stats compared to other classes.

[Ingmar]

I would add that picking a server with Low population can really backfire on you in the long run. There will be jack shit for sale on the AH, and groups and/or guilds will be really hard to find.

If you're not sure what you want to do in the game druid is a good choice, because one respec and you can cover any role in the game - tanking, melee dps, ranged dps, healing.

[Sunbury]

Thanks for all the advice.   I played for 6 months when WoW came out, got to L60 as Rogue, did the guild thing, alt thing (one of each to 20s), craft thing, some raids.

I'm thinking of starting from scratch pretending its a single player, single character game.   So my 'house ruleset' is something like:

No groups, no guilds, no buying/selling on the AH, no alts, no reading anything about the game online (no looking up quest info, maps, hints etc).  I also did a lot of gathering / crafting / fishing / bandage making etc, in the past, and want to try it without any of that.

The only 'cheat' is picking a class and server that will be successful in that rule set.

I'm just finishing up playing with roughly those rules in AC1 and I liked it.  I can only play small, very odd hours (5am Sundays?) so the guild / group thing is hard anyway.  Also in AC1 I randomly chose Verdantine which is pretty much empty.

[Oz]

some play on shadow council.  its pretty barren pre expansion pack areas. 

as far as a good solo class i'd recomend (based on my experience):

feral druid
affliction lock (great with some sta gear, its all you need to draintank)
ret pally (till 40, then prot pally-i love me some aoe killing)
mage

[ajax34i]

Gear-dependency is different from class to class, unfortunately, and the effects of "good gear" (whatever the heck that is) can be subtle.  Easy to figure out, for example, for mages or priests:  more mana = better.  I'm not very good at playing a druid, but when I was levelling up (long ago), I always seemed to be weak, and it turned out that I needed more attack power on my gear, rather than stamina / defense.  So as soon as I got into some appropriate blues, it was a LOT easier.

Warlocks and hunters always felt like easy-mode soloing for me, but I always seemed to die easily if I tried to bite more than I could chew, with the pulls, and that annoyed me.

Mages... my keyboard setup is bad for playing a mage - I can't move and cast easily, and the mage requires a lot of positioning and switching targets as you cast.  Didn't have fun, even though it's probably an easy class to level up.

But anyway, all classes are gear-dependent, and in different ways.  You always need something:  mana, defense, attack power, something, and the only way to get it enough for your class to function decently is through gear.

[Special J]

I would add that picking a server with Low population can really backfire on you in the long run. There will be jack shit for sale on the AH, and groups and/or guilds will be really hard to find.

If you're not sure what you want to do in the game druid is a good choice, because one respec and you can cover any role in the game - tanking, melee dps, ranged dps, healing.

Sure, but if your main concern is the old world and 1-60, you don't need gear from the auction house.  If you're just going in to explore zones and do solo quests then your quest gear and drops can do the job.

[Pot Pol]

Feral druid all the way especially as you can use most quest rewards for one of your talent trees. One recommendation is to get an addon called Outfitter ( google it ) which means when you switch forms you also switch gear ie feral gear - caster gear. It's easily been my fastest levelling character, and the most fun. You will get bored staring at the back of a sodding lion for months tho.

[Kail]

I would add that picking a server with Low population can really backfire on you in the long run. There will be jack shit for sale on the AH, and groups and/or guilds will be really hard to find.

Sure, but if your main concern is the old world and 1-60, you don't need gear from the auction house.  If you're just going in to explore zones and do solo quests then your quest gear and drops can do the job.

I dunno, the itemization in the old world is really, really horrible.  My shaman got mail armor skill at 40, and never found a mail chestpiece; bought a level 30 piece off the AH and wore it until he walked in to Outland.  My rogue just went through the portal a few days ago, still carrying a pair of level 42 weapons, and armor from (I think) the high thirties. 

As for what classes solo well, I'd put pet classes at the top (Hunter, Warlock).  Which classes are least gear dependant, I'd say casters (Priest, Mage, Warlock, some specs of Shaman).  Druid is kind of in the middle.  I found feral druids to be really fun once you get cat form, but until then (level 20, I think), it was pretty slow going for me.  After that, though, yeah, they tear along.

[Raging Turtle]

Well fuck this thread is making me want to resub and start over   

[Selby]

I dunno, the itemization in the old world is really, really horrible.

It seriously is.  Some of those old quest rewards were either really difficult quests for very strangely thought out rewards (Mage-class Sunken Temple quest chain) or were just completely worthless for most playstyles (who wants +15 spirit only on mail or plate? among other things...).  BC has a better balance and quite a stunning difference in numbers, which is why so many people head straight for Outlands at 58 even though the experience to 60 is much easier to get and finish up in the Old World.

[Jack9]

the experience to 60 is much easier to get and finish up in the Old World.

The experience gain in Outland from 58+ was better than Azeroth, at least until July when I quit. This was due to multiple factors that were immediately recognized, in Hellfire Peninsula
1. More exp per monster hp
2. Faster, Safer pulls (mobs with no or few specials, lower hp, compared to Blasted or EP). This is most easily demonstrated by aoe grinding the sentinel Ghosts near Expedition Armory or animals out of Spinebreaker Post or orcs at Zeth'Gor, to name a few locations.
3. Shorter quests, counting time to travel to town or betwen quest locations
4. Better gear scaling from purchaseables, drops, and quest rewards; commensurate monetary increase
5. Opportunity to instance (which was almost always better exp, esp with experienced geared/twinked ppl farming faction)

People jump to Outland because it's the path of least resistance.

[DraconianOne]

I believe they've upped the xp from quests in WPL/EPL to be more in line with quests of a comparable level in HFP.  Personally I go to HFP at 58 and do a couple of quests to upgrade bits of gear and then go back to old world to get up to 60.  HFP is possible at 58 but so much easier at 60.

[Selby]

I believe they've upped the xp from quests in WPL/EPL to be more in line with quests of a comparable level in HFP.  Personally I go to HFP at 58 and do a couple of quests to upgrade bits of gear and then go back to old world to get up to 60.  HFP is possible at 58 but so much easier at 60.

Exactly.  Up to the first bombing mission of HFP is pretty simple and the rewards a nice bonus, but the difficulty of questing starts to ramp up after that when you go after the demon camps.  It basically comes down to fighting greens gives almost identical experience as a yellow or orange and they have the added bonus of dying quicker.  But to each their own.  I've always had issues going into HFP straight at 58, so I tend to finish up WPL\EPL and make 60 relatively quickly.

And I've never been able to find good groups running any of the instances in HFP except as Heroic, which kind of defeats the purpose.

[ClydeJr]

I know some people in my guild will hit the Outlands at 58, do the first sets of quests to upgrade their gear with the superior Outland gear, then will head back to the old world and finish up to 60 using the BC gear.