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How to keep leveling when you're just tired of the same old quests
By now, most of us have leveled alts, and probably a lot of them. And while the leveling game was probably fun the first time and even the second, by the third, fourth, fifth and beyond, you're probably painfully bored of doing the same quests again. And again. And again. Sure, there are all sorts of tricks you can use to speed up your leveling, but what do you do when you just can't stand to quest through the same zone again? That's when you turn to alternative leveling methods. These aren't the fastest or the most efficient ways to get to max level, but they do all have the advantage of not being the same old quest grind. So whether you're leveling a character up for the first time or the hundredth, here are our 6 favorite alternative ways to get the XP you need.
Drowning in Timeless Coins
I've been happily completing the daily over on the Timeless Isle every day -- it's an easy 50 valor points, after all. And while farming the 20 elite mobs needed for the quest, of course I've been hopping from rare mob to rare mob in search of pets or interesting toys. In the meantime, I've piled up a lot of Timeless Coins. I mean, a ridiculous number. I'd noticed people complaining that they had all these Timeless Coins, but I didn't really understand the problem. I mean, they aren't sitting in your bags taking up space in your inventory, they're just ... there. Incorporeal currency. But it's slowly begun to sink in that there's a legitimate problem with the Timeless Isle and its bizarre form of currency -- namely that the only place you can spend that currency is on the Timeless Isle itself. Now don't get me wrong, I do enjoy buying trinkets and unusual things, but at the same time, if all those Timeless Coins pictured above were actually gold in my bank, I'd be ecstatic. Instead, I'm slightly nonplussed and wondering what the heck to do with all these incorporeal things I've gathered.
Breakfast Topic: Gearing up your alts
Gearing up new alts -- or even just alt specs -- can be a huge nuisance requiring countless dungeon runs that you've already done plenty of times to gear up your main. Blizzard is, perhaps, working to make this a bit easier with the Timeless Isle, which offers a number of bind on account epics that could be just the thing for making gearing a lot less of a headache. But can our alts wait for 5.4? In my case, yes, they can, because I'm too easily distracted to have gotten any of them to max level lately. But your alts could be a different story -- and certainly plenty of people (even me!) have had max level alts in the past. So tell us, readers: how have you gone about gearing up your alts? (Or do you even bother with the hassle?) Is the Timeless loot on Timeless Isle going to help get your alts or alt specs into gear?
Breakfast Topic: Your favorite alt(s)
Sure, we all have our main character on whom we lavish both time and attention. We take the utmost care to gear them up: reforging, enchanting, gemming, and transmogrifing every piece of equipment to perfection. We read forums and class blogs and make sure we're up to date on the latest gameplay techniques and boss strategies to make the most of our beloved main when we're playing. But sometimes? Sometimes you just want a break from all of that. Sometimes you want to play an alt, running through uncharted territory with an unfamiliar class. This, of course, is the draw of the alt. And for some of us, one isn't even enough. So tell us, readers: what's your favorite alt getaway? A specific character, faction, or class? Or is it just anything different, for a change of pace?
Breakfast Topic: Your alt woes
While some prefer focusing on one character at a time, others thrive on the variety of alts, which can make for a nice change of pace to grinding away for experience or gear on a main character. But some players have raised the playing of an alt to something of an art: altaholics who play for both the alliance and the horde and have characters of all races across all level ranges. But even if you love them, alts are not without their problems. My biggest hurdle is my strange inability to remember which character I've logged on to, and automatically using the hotkeys for my monk when I'm playing my hunter. (I try to arrange my hotkeys so they're not foreign to me whatever I'm playing, but I always stumble nevertheless.) But what about you, readers? Do you have any alt problems you're always running into? Or, better yet, alt solutions? Share!
Breakfast Topic: What do you do while you play?
A lot of us here at WoW Insider have been playing WoW for a long time -- and we suspect most of you have, too. A long enough time that parts of the game are, dare we say, boring. So while doing our dailies (again) or grinding an alt through a zone we've done half a dozen times before we admit, we're usually multitasking. Sometimes we'll have a movie or television show on, and others we might be reading email or catching up on RSS feeds in another window. It's not that we don't still love the game -- it's just how we stay sane while leveling our dozenth alt. So, fellow WoW players, we pose this question: what else are you doing while you play WoW? Do you have a favorite television show to put on? A much-loved playlist? Twitter or Facebook in another window?
Breakfast Topic: How do you level?
Leveling in World of Warcraft is a rite of passage that we all must go through in order to reach max level where we can play with our friends. Though for alt-a-holics -- and I'm starting to think I may be one of them -- leveling is the whole point of the game. But whether you're leveling for the first time or the hundredth, whether you're speeding through or taking time to enjoy the scenery, chances are you have your own way of going about things. So when you're on the leveling treadmill, what's your choice? For my part, I tend to quest through zones -- especially if they're zones I haven't been through before. But if I'm stuck in zones that I've been through before, perhaps many times before, things get awfully tedious, thus ending my life potential alt-a-holism. But do you quest, dungeon, subsist on dailies and rested XP, or something else entirely? Let us know, so we may commiserate about the leveling treadmill together!
