Ask WoW Insider: Seeking motivation to level

Welcome to today's edition of Ask WoW Insider, in which we publish your questions for dissection by the peanut gallery -- now with extra snark and commentary by one of our writers. This week JJ writes in:

I was wondering if you could give any advice to those who struggle with leveling. I guess you could call me a very casual wow player as I hardly have any time for it.

Recently my friend let me look at his level 70 and once I saw those in action, I have a hard time committing to leveling. When I play WoW I generally hang out around cities chilling with the other players. I just can't seem to get myself to level. I get bored very easily and I don't have a very high-level character. My highest is a level 29 hunter on a PvE but i recently rolled a warlock (level 12 -.-).

Please explain how you go about leveling. Is there a state of mind that you use to continue?

Thanks in advance

JJ

In the tough-love portion of the program, I'm going to be blunt and say you most likely don't like WoW and are still in denial of it. While there's an inevitable wall people hit when leveling, usually it's later than 29.

That said, there's a part of me that kinda agrees with you. I've got a Paladin alt stuck at 20, and while it's not WoW-related, I've been having a hard time getting motivated to work on my Lord of the Rings Online character because I log on and just go "ugh" and log off -- and I even like that game.

I often equate leveling to the 160-odd games that make up the baseball season. While it's fun right out of Spring Training (the newbie areas), once you hit the August stretch you just want to be done with it and get to the playoffs. It just seems like a slog until you can do something with your friends if you're new to any game.

If you really do like the game and want to play it, the only thing you can do is run quests and grind it out. If your friend with the high-level character is on your server, ask him to help you out. Sure, it's power-leveling and it'll be a little too easy mode, but hanging out with your friend might be the spark you need. Otherwise, sometimes just setting a goal of getting so far through a level helps me. Also, if you work better with a map of sorts, I'm a big fan of James' Leveling Guides (they're free).

How about you folks? Got any advice for JJ?

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