f13.net

How long would it take a noob to go from 1-39?  Just curious, do not read too much into my question.

5 days of played time.

define 'played time'

edit: I'm playing WoW for the first time, and in a week or so, I've only gotten to level 10.  :(  But I'm only playing 30 minutes to 1 hr a time, so that's more my fault than anything else.

It took my shaman about 3 1/2 weeks to get to 40. That's with a large amount of screwing around and a couple of days leveling my warrior in Kun...errr, Outlands.

Very little instancing and a lot of quest soloing.

I actually challenged my guild to level to 60 in a month about a year ago. At the same time, I started a level 1 character and participated in the challenge.

It takes about an hour a level to level 10.

From 10 to 30, it's 3 hours a level.

From 30-53 (current level of my challenge character), it's 6 hours a level. I anticipate this will hold true to level 60.

From what I have seen so far, just questing, no grinding, it's taken 12 hours a level on my main from 60 to 65.

These times are based on questing only, no instances, no grinding except for quest mobs, and no tradeskilling. I get the time by looking at /played right before I level up. Also, I didn't do any group quests unless when I got to the quest I could fnd a group for it within 10-15 minutes. Even then, I was doing other quests while I looked for a group.

These numbers go down if you either AoE grind with a mage or instance grind with a guild/group.

I just hit lv 37
/played says 2 d 14 h 37 m

3-4 days /played total.  Dependent on class and it can be faster (my druid was under 3 at 40).  I usually tradeskill and do a low level instance or two.

1-20 is easily doable in a day played. Maybe a little longer. 

20-30 could be done in a day played or less.

30-39 slows down a bit. 

My experience is ~about~ the same as what Devil outlined.  However, it's always taken me more than an hour to get to 10 in a new newbie zone.  (My Draeni Shaman has about 2-3 hours /played and is at level 8, same for my BE priest.)  Not knowing the most efficient order to do quests, or simply straight-grinding on mobs drags those first few levels out.

The real slowdown is 40-50, because the zones just aren't as 'efficient' and you're usually hitting multiple zones rather than one zone for the level range.  It picks-up again in the early 50s and the 60+ stuff was ~10 hours a level for me on the hunter.   I haven't checked /played on the priest yet, because I haven't hit 61 so I don't have a baseline to work from, having hit 60 on it about 16 months ago.

It matters how determined the 'noob' is to learn the system and level.  I took forever with my first character, because any shiny object distracted me and I am not much of a power gamer.

Subsequent characters have gone much faster as I know my way around, have see all but the most well-hidden nooks, and I know roughly which quests I want to do.  Even with me wandering off to do gods know what in the woods frequently.

/agree with this.  With my first character it took me forever and I had about zero money at any given time.  With my most recent one, I'm 26 after about 13 chronological days playing 2-4 hrs per night.

edit: oh, and I'm rich.

Are there any good leveling guides telling you do which quest and where as you level?

Horde: http://wow-pro.com/node/754

Alliance: http://wow-pro.com/node/599

Haven't used either but they seem to have pretty good feedback.  Guy uses some decent visual aides.

Those look really great thanks, I have next week off and was thinking of resubscribing.

I have loosely followed Jame's Horde Guide for a couple of levels; it seems to work pretty well so far.

There's also some race questions -- I found my night elf leveled far more slowly in Darkshore. Things sped up when I moved to Westfall -- it might be because I know the Westfall quests better, but I suspect it has to do with the crap zone design in Darkshore.

Played time = the time displayed when you type /played, which is the hours and minutes that you're online put back to back.  So, 5 days played time = 5 x 24 hrs = 120 hrs = 30 days if you play 4 hrs a day.

Darkshore is too spread out, so it is a lot slower to level there.  The first time it was fine, but after that even I had to pick and choose then move elsewhere.

For Alliance, Darkshore is by far the worst starting zone.  You spend all your time running back and forth and can't combine quests together very well at all.  I stay away from that place as much as possible.

Damn, you guys are slow levelers.

Maybe you havent done it in a while. There are a lot of new quests along the way. I am leveling up a paladin, one of the slowest leveling classes, and I found that at level 30+ its between 3 and 4.5 hours a level. At 50+ its about 4-4.5 a level.

You either optomize quests a lot or I fuck around a lot more than I think. There is a hell of a lot of running around in the 30s & 40s as Alliance, tho.  A fucking lot.

I do know that focused nothing-but-leveling was taking between 9-11 hours at 61+ when the wife and I were duoing it.

I have found that you level the quickest if you do the following:

1.  Always use rested exp to get your best hours played number up.  Of cousre, this mean real time loss as you have to log out and not use that character for awhile.  Thus, I rotate between many alts.  This is not for some.

2.  Always be working on a quest.  The amount of rep and added quest exp is nice.  Plus, the rep in Outlands is necessary to open up more quests to you.  Thus keeping you in quests longer.  The more quests you have accepted the better chance you are actually killing/collecting for multiple quests at the same time.

3.  Hunt solo.  Unlesss you find a group quest, do everything by yourself.  When you duo or more, you are handicapping yourself in that the amount of exp gain you were going to get on kill quests will suffer and you'll be done with the quest too quickly.  If you do this too much, you'll find yourself out of quests that are yellow or green and find it difficult to go on without grinding out kills.  Unless you do the crazy guild supported instance grinding that 28 hour dude did, you're going to level slower.

I hate that last part, but it seems to be true.  I love to group for quests, but have always regretted it afterward.  I end up with a sparse offering of quests at my level and have to do boring grinding to catch back up.  I think they have done a better job on Outland for this as I have had a very difficult time running out of quests to do.  I've had too many quests all in the same area in a few occasions.  That NEVER happened before.  Certainly I would run out of room by putting too many quests from multiple areas together, but never in just one area.

However, if I were to have a permanent group/duo going for the game, I'd give up fast lvl'ing.  Who cares about leveling if you're having fun?

Yeah, it's mainly about soloing everything, taking care of multiple quests at the same time or sequentially before returning to town to report, and not wasting time on crap quests that send you too far or are a waste of time.

Quests are the way to go unless they are quests that make you do to much running through zones… …one of the advantages of alt playing is that the alts level so much faster as after once, you know how to bundle the quests to minimize running through zones. Also, some of the quests really suck, both in terms of XP returned and the time sink lost that could have been better spent.

I try to time return to towns at every 2 levels, though as you go up it gets tougher to do sometimes. Having that WoW Econ add on is great because I can gauge instantly if loot is worth picking up, and keep the backpacks free for longer (dungeon trips are an exception here, as you'll be filled with stuff for the bank/AH)…

And professions seem to be a leveling distraction, taking valuable time away from leveling… …I do them, but wonder if I would just be better off gaining levels and loot with the time spent there…

Having a level 70 uber shaman run you and your lowbie friends through a couple of instances is great for both XP and goodies to wear and sell.

I just tried his lvl 52/53 Un'goro circuit on my druid and it worked great. Made sure I didn't miss anything as a made a route along the outside of Un'Goro.  I had to modify it just a bit and actually ran it in reverse due to some quests already being finished.

Couple things he could improve upon (such as slime drops coming off any slime, might be best to kill any you see), but solid and efficient.  Great if you're just trying to get a character to 60.  TBC's content is just soo much better.  Quest rewards pre 60 do nothing really for a feral druid.  (Amazing how many pre-TBC quest have NO loot)

Edit: for reference, 52-53 took me sub 4 hours. 

Gave up on yer Shammy too?

My Wizard is L56 now, almost there!

Shammy's 68 now.   :-D Been duo'ing him with another enhancement shaman to take down group quests with ease.  Group [3] quests are a cake walk and [2] are a laugh.  Only one that was kinda close was that giant elephant; sucker hits like a truck.  Hard to pull myself away from that, it's a lot of fun.

Sometimes I just like to take a break from TBC and make sure the shaman is always operating on 100% rest EXP.  It's like 3-4 nights shammy time for every one for the druid.  Once the shaman hits 70, I'll be grinding out druid to 60. 

That feral gear from the expansion just makes me salivate.  But yah, eventually I'm going to "give up" on the shaman.  Druid is just going to be better for what I want it to be. Shaman has some foreseeable glaring weaknesses for both PVP and PVE.

I'm switching over to using the Horde one from a strict grinding strategy.

So far it is working out pretty well.  There is some transition time if you come into it in the middle.  I find that for many of the quests, he has you pick them up a few levels back, so if you were not following the guide at that point, you won't have them.  There are also a lot of chains where it's not really economical (xp-wise) to go back and do them from the beginning.

Otherwise, great guide IMO.


Edit: btw Hat, I'm in the guild with you and Morphiend... in case you hadn't been paying attention  8-)

I haven't. lol.

My shammie is 67 near 68 as well Rasix, and I came to same conclusion as you, he's hella fun leveling up, and has some use in 5 mans, but 0 use as enhancement in pvp.  Hence my mage.