leveling-speed
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Are low-level dungeons too easy?
Taepsilum went on today a little bit about an assertion that low level dungeons are too easy. This position is one that many experienced players can likely sympathize with, particularly those who have alts climbing through the levels with full heirlooms and considerable player knowledge behind them. For players in that position, yes, low-level dungeons are too easy. But, as Taepsilum points out, players with years of WoW under their belts ought to turn back the clock, to let the Ghost of Azeroth Past take them on a journey through time to their first ever dungeon. Hopefully they weren't as foolish as your writer, and didn't select tank without really realizing what it meant. The low-level dungeons have, at least to some extent, to cater to players who have never been in a dungeon before. And, of course, for the lower levels, dungeon leveling has to contribute an equivalent amount of XP per hour to questing, or nobody would ever go into dungeons at all. But, as another poster in the same thread commented, perhaps it would be possible to open up heroic difficulties of dungeons at lower level to players who wanted a challenge?
Wings Over Atreia: Snips and snails and Asmo tales
That's what this week's column is made of! Back when I first decided I wanted to venture to the dark side of Aion and compare the leveling experiences of the two realms, I didn't really fathom that there would be so much content added that it would be hard to break away from sampling all of the goodies on my home server. Besides that, with all of the changes, comparing the leveling is just impossible. I knew that it would be easier with the introduction of repeatable quests, but it's just plain stupid-easy to level now as opposed to way back pre-Balaurea. Even with the leveling comparison effectively nixed, I still can report on the differences in the feel of the two worlds as well as just run through and reflect on my impressions of the Asmodian life to give some screen time to the glowy-eyes. Did I mention I love the glowy eyes? With that in mind, Wings Over Atreia devotes this week to the furbacks (said with love!). Glide past the cut for a look at Daevic life in Asmodae from Ascension to the Abyss.%Gallery-137905%
Final Fantasy XIV's patch 1.18a due for Monday
Final Fantasy XIV's last major update wasn't so long ago, but another patch is set to go live on Monday. 1.18a contains nothing as large as the mechanical revisions found it its predecessor, but there are still some pretty big improvements, starting with an improvement to skill point rewards for levequests across the board. The biggest improvements will come for the rank 20-30 leves, but all players leveling Disciplines of War and Magic should notice an improvement. The leves will also reward points for shield skill when players have a shield equipped, something that has thus far been lacking. In quality of life improvements, the visibility of several frames has been adjusted, a supplementary log window is being added for players to use, and the process of setting a crystal as the destination for Return has been changed. There's also a new emote being added to the system and the beginnings of the new tool-hiding functionality that will be finished in 1.19. 1.18a won't be the game-changer that 1.18 proved to be, but it looks to still be a solid update in its own right.
The Mog Log: Patching holes
Due to a general case of it's-the-blasted-holiday-season, I didn't get nearly as much playtime with Final Fantasy XIV following the November patch as I would have liked. I had to wait a couple days to really sit down and engage in a nice play session to really get a feel for all of the changes that had been wrought on the game by the update. And in a way, I'm glad I knew that I would need some time and thus focused on the community piece last Saturday, because it's meant more time to really appreciate the improvements. The short version, if you're allergic to page breaks, is that this patch solves a huge number of issues, to the point that I imagine many players who couldn't see past those issues to the core game will be better able to see what's at the root. But there's a lot of unpacking to do, so I'd still recommend hopping past the cut for a breakdown of the patch as a whole as well as a brief look for what the December update still has to do for Final Fantasy XIV.
Spiritual Guidance: Levels 80 to 85 as a priest, plus recent beta changes
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers healing for discipline and holy priests and makes the occasional StarCraft 2 reference. If you ask her, she'll tell you disc priests are like sentries and holy priests are medevacs. There is a lot to cover in Spiritual Guidance this week, so I'll be diving right in to the content. I was going to outsource my creative introduction to Mr. Fox Van Allen, but he wanted to be paid entirely in red M&Ms, so we'll just have to do without. We'll be covering two topics today. The first will be to cover the latest build released on the Cataclysm beta earlier this week. There were some large changes made to AoE healing that affect both holy and discipline priests in different ways. Second, I've written up my advice on leveling from 80 to 85 as a healing priest.
Final Fantasy XIV explains the ins and outs of party play
Final Fantasy XI's development team was notorious for being silent on every aspect of the game, no matter how much players begged for an explanation of systems. It's a tradition that has most certainly not been carried over to Final Fantasy XIV, where the developers have taken the time to answer a number of questions and explain several parts of game systems left unclear elsewhere. The most recent development team dispatch covers the MMO staples of parties and quests, explaining everything from the exchanging of guildleves to the effects of scaled difficulty. Party bonuses are among the bigger elements in this particular dispatch, with an explanation of the necessary level range to receive bonus skill points and experience. The short version is that while players are not penalized in any fashion while solo, as long as all the class ranks of the party are within a five-level band, all members will gain the party bonus. Since linking leves also increases the chance of a gil-laden treasure chest appearing, it's another step in the game rewarding party play without punishing solo players. Final Fantasy XIV players should take a look at the full dispatch, as well as glancing at the patch notes for the most recent version update.
Addon Spotlight: Leveling your pre-Cataclysm alt
Addon Spotlight focuses on the backbone of the WoW gameplay experience: the user interface. Everything from bags to bars, buttons to DPS meters and beyond -- your addons folder will never be the same. This week, level those alts quickly! It's been a heavy past couple of days in Azeroth. First, we've got heroics on the beta. Second, the public test realms are lighting the world up pretty good. Third, the clock is ticking faster and faster down to Cataclysm, so time is running out for getting those pre-Cataclysm alt characters ready. This week, Addon Spotlight focuses on a few of your old favorites -- addons to help you level up that pre-Cataclysm alt faster, hopefully ready in time for the big shakeup. From reputation trackers to quest helpers, these addons will make leveling a breeze. Let's roll!
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Places to go, questions to answer
It's hard to believe that in just two weeks, all of the debates about whether or not Going Rogue will revitalize City of Heroes will be out of the land of theory and into the realm of practice. And while we've still got another week in the land of theory, right now we're taking a trip... well, still into the land of theory, but into the land of theories you asked for. Which is different, in a way! I have a hard time writing these introductions. Haggs asked: "...now that you're getting new lower-level content, why would you want to go through it as fast as you're going through the old content?" It's not always a question of "want." Levels 1-20 in City of Heroes are not nearly as slow as the later levels -- they don't start to really feel long until you reach the 30s, but it's much faster to go from 1-20 than from 20-30 even if you're just playing casually. The flow of leveling appears to be tuned so that players will be able to hit a level of moderate competence fairly quickly, spend a bit of time fleshing out their powers, and then spend quite some time filing off any rough edges via the 40+ powers.
Upcoming level and zone changes in Cataclysm
Nethaera (Blizzard community representative) has posted some new, interesting information about the leveling experience in Cataclysm. Mount Hyjal and Vashj'ir, the two opening zones of the expansion, will now require level 80 to enter and begin questing in. Betas go through a lot of balance and experience tweaking, and this new change hints at some issues with the previous leveling curve. In addition, creatures' health pools have been increased with the new level restrictions, and level 80 is required to use the dungeon finder for the opening 5-man instances of the expansion, Throne of the Tides and Blackrock Caverns. Nethaera -- Upcoming Level and Zone Changes In the next beta build the minimum level for entering and questing in Mount Hyjal and Vashj'ir will change from level 78 to level 80. All associated creature will have their levels increased to match the new flow. Additionally, after careful review and consideration we've decided to increase the hit point values of level 80+ Cataclysm creatures. The new hit point values are roughly double their previous values. Level 80 (OLD) 16400 Level 80 (NEW) 31000 Players will also now need to be level 80 in order to use the Dungeon Finder System for Throne of Tides and Blackrock Caverns. source
60-70 XP changes coming in 3.0.2
Patch 3.0.2 is going to bring us much of Wrath, without the new content. Specifically, we'll be getting the new spells and talents, which come out to a total class revamp for many classes. We'll also be getting a couple other fixes, like learnable mounts and mini-pets. And Tigole just confirmed today that among these will be a reduction in the amount of experience required to level between 60 and 70. Levels 20–60 were sped up dramatically a little while ago, which I have been very much enjoying on my various alts. But the Outland levels have remained at the same rate as always. This isn't so much of an issue now, when 70 is the endgame, but of course we're getting another ten levels in LK, and trudging through Outland then will feel a lot like dragging yet another toon through Plaguelands now. (I know some of you like Plaguelands, but I just don't understand it.) So I'm glad this is coming a little sooner, so that hopefully I can have at least three 70s poised to go into Northrend instead of the two I have now. What kind of a speed increase are we looking at? Well, the only hard numbers I've seen so far are 30% less XP required per level, and possibly 20% more XP given per mob, with no changes on quests. This is fairly substantial; I would be pleased.
When the going gets tough
A few friends and I have begun leveling alts in the interests of having a few more 70's around for Wrath, and I got a comment on my Warrior after she dinged 29. "We'll need to get you some good blues," said a buddy, a 70-Paladin-turned-10-Shaman (in hindsight, probably cringing over said toon's Armory profile). "Warrior 30-40 is kinda tough."It didn't mean much to me at the time, but I started thinking about it while contemplating the possibility of starting a Hordeside Hunter. A 1-10 Hunter without a pet is a fairly unpleasant (if mercifully quick) experience, but that one is pretty obvious while others seem less so. There's a strange alchemy of level, quest drops, scaling, gear, dungeons, and skills that seem to combine to make life tougher in certain level ranges.A 2005 guide to classes' relative leveling speed insisted that classes alternately sped and slowed as they aged and that the difference could be tracked statistically, and while I'm not sure I trust all of their math (and the information's outdated anyway), you can't fault the amount of work that went into it. Moreover, as the commenters point out, someone who picks a Rogue as a main is not necessarily playing the game with the same goals in mind as someone who picked, say, a Priest. A less scientific, but more detailed, look at leveling speed and class difficulties was written by Breanni of WarcraftPets.com, and her experiences seem to gel a bit more with conventional wisdom, particularly with respect to the speed of Hunter and Warlock leveling. That being said, Druid 1-20 was pretty ugly, Shaman late-30's is a parade of mana inefficiency, and I'm not looking forward to getting another Hunter to 10.
