Hate to say it...

[KSboxers]

but no more instances for me till 60. I love to instance but with RAF it takes sooo much longer to hit 60 in instances than questing (I'm at 32 with almost 2 days played). Even with running every one between RFC and SM GY, i still only have a couple pieces of gear on each toon that are up to date. At least with quests you can target the ones that have decent rewards. And as much as i enjoy doing 5 man stuff solo, i would rather get a ton of toons to 60 before my 3 months is up. Want to have alot of options once WotlK comes out. Will be nice to have at least 4 toons on each account (remeber bonus xp+gifting) waiting at 60+ for me to do whatever with. What's cool is by then they will be at least 60 and fully rested (and mostly likely flat broke). So goodbye SM, Uld, Mara, ST, and all the 60 instances. Most likely will not see you again for a very very long time. I figure i'll get all the instancing i could ever want trying to gear grind. hehe.

[merujo]

even with the ajustment before RAF, it was better to do Quests than instances. Imagine now with RAF, plus being a multiboxer.

[KSboxers]

The difference Pre-RAF was there was time to instance for all your gear and still quest. My last 5-box run to 70 i rolled 5 clothies and had time to hit Cath enough to get the hat on each one and i was only 41 when i got out. When i did RFK this time i ran it till i got my tank helm. That was 1 full run and 3 partials. By the time i was done i was 32 and all the mobs were green to me. Even just running each instance once, there's no time for questing. Not that i'm complaining!! It's great leveling so quick.

[TheBigBB]

I was 60 last night with 2 days played without doing any instances at all. Many hours of my playtime was also spent messing around with and writing macros because it was my first proper multibox team. And summoning gifted characters to flight locations. I've always been a big believer in doing quests, since it's killing plus bonus exp at the end. With instances you get maybe 20% more exp per kill due to elite mobs, and probably make a lot more money from drops, but 30k exp jumps every quest turn-in are impossible to compete with, and I know getting to 70 quickly is better money these days so you can do dailies.

[KSboxers]

TheBigBB, are you rolling the moonkin to eventually tank? That seems like a cool idea to me. They have armor bonus of moonkin, plus casting. Could work out.



edit-Some of the realms are coming up btw. Not that i can play for now. I've got some work to do. >.<

[TheBigBB]

I got them all to 60 now, even the Moonkin with gift levels, and at this time my team is trying to get everything set up for WOTLK, like professions and mounts. The point of the Moonkin is to give the crit aura and nature dmg buff (WOTLK talent) amongst other things which I feel would be more utility than another shaman after TOW stops stacking. I'm not 100% convinced that it will be a more viable tank than my shaman if it's stacking spell-dmg leather, but we'll see. I do have a pally at 60 in case I need it down the line.

[Crayonbox]

Mandatory "I HATE RAF" post

Brag more Jerks!

/seething in jealousy

[TheBigBB]

Mandatory "I HATE RAF" post

Brag more Jerks!

/seething in jealousyI soloed the 1-60 and 60-70 grind many times, and all before they nerfed the exp needed to level, so don't be jealous of me! I must have done 1-60 seven times in the old days. Ouch.

[Stabface]

even with the ajustment before RAF, it was better to do Quests than instances. Imagine now with RAF, plus being a multiboxer.

Actually it goes like:
instance boosting > quest boosting > normal questing > normal instances > chatting on /trade

With or without RAF bonus, for the fastest to slowest leveling.

[Dominian]

I would say that one of the reasons why Questing with RAF and boxing is so insane is because it completley removes the need to do collect quests at all. You dont have to do any of thoose boring quests wich is a REALY big pluss and the only reason i will manage to level another boxing team.

[TheBigBB]

even with the ajustment before RAF, it was better to do Quests than instances. Imagine now with RAF, plus being a multiboxer.

Actually it goes like:
instance boosting > quest boosting > normal questing > normal instances > chatting on /trade

With or without RAF bonus, for the fastest to slowest leveling.This is completely false, because with RAF you get so much questing exp that you can outlevel entire zones sometimes from only doing the quickest hand-in quests. You never have to put up with slow quests. For example, as people have pointed out, buying cloth and EPL turn-in materials alone can net you 3 or 4 levels on all 5 toons at once. I did every quick kill quest in Hinterlands in about an hour and got the equivalent of 24 quest turn ins for two full levels. Triple quest experience scales in a really overpowered way, seriously.

[Stabface]

even with the ajustment before RAF, it was better to do Quests than instances. Imagine now with RAF, plus being a multiboxer.

Actually it goes like:
instance boosting > quest boosting > normal questing > normal instances > chatting on /trade

With or without RAF bonus, for the fastest to slowest leveling.This is completely false, because with RAF you get so much questing exp that you can outlevel entire zones sometimes from only doing the quickest hand-in quests. You never have to put up with slow quests. For example, as people have pointed out, buying cloth and EPL turn-in materials alone can net you 3 or 4 levels on all 5 toons at once. I did every quick kill quest in Hinterlands in about an hour and got the equivalent of 24 quest turn ins for two full levels. Triple quest experience scales in a really overpowered way, seriously.

/sigh
If boosting was faster than questing without triple XP, which it was, care to explain how this is suddenly reversed?

Hinterlands quests are low-mid 40's, I boosted from 40-45 in ZF in 2H 20M /played. And my total /played at L45 was 7H 55M... what is your level and /played from questing?

[TheBigBB]

Lemme redo this post :-P

[TheBigBB]

even with the ajustment before RAF, it was better to do Quests than instances. Imagine now with RAF, plus being a multiboxer.

Actually it goes like:
instance boosting > quest boosting > normal questing > normal instances > chatting on /trade

With or without RAF bonus, for the fastest to slowest leveling.This is completely false, because with RAF you get so much questing exp that you can outlevel entire zones sometimes from only doing the quickest hand-in quests. You never have to put up with slow quests. For example, as people have pointed out, buying cloth and EPL turn-in materials alone can net you 3 or 4 levels on all 5 toons at once. I did every quick kill quest in Hinterlands in about an hour and got the equivalent of 24 quest turn ins for two full levels. Triple quest experience scales in a really overpowered way, seriously.

/sigh
If boosting was faster than questing without triple XP, which it was, care to explain how this is suddenly reversed?

Hinterlands quests are low-mid 40's, I boosted from 40-45 in ZF in 2H 20M /played. And my total /played at L45 was 7H 55M... what is your level and /played from questing?I replied to this before, but it turned out to be a mess of a response to let me take another stab at it.

The main things that slow down the traditional quester are travel times and slow inefficient quests. Traditionally you had to do 80% of the quests to level out of your target zones. Now you only need to do 25% or so. No more going all around the globe.

Quest exp scales better as well because of all the easy free-exp quests. They used to be a nice little bonus, but not enough to matter. Now, delivering supplies to X town gives you way too much exp for simply walking to a new place. Turns out that you can level to 60 just as quickly because you never have to stop, same reason an instance was good. You're never waiting for a mob spawn or anything. You also get 3x discovery exp. I got 5k experience just from walking across Winterspring to do a simple turn-in. When you add up all the triple exp from freebies I am sure it's faster. My play times were very comparable to yours although I spent time getting flight paths so I'm not 100% sure. At the very least, it's less effort.

[Stabface]

Well, interesting thoughts. I'd really like to see a quest guide for 1-40 though... or a screenshot of /played... after personally boosting in ~5 hours for L40, I don't think it's possible to match that through questing. I do believe questing is more efficient past a certain point, I think 50+ for sure - knocking out the WPL quests would be better XP than boosting in Strat/Scholo, turning in undead bits at EPL at L55 is an instant 2 levels pretty much. I don't know about 40-50, maybe cherry-picking kill quests in Tanaris and Hinterlands is faster than boosting in ZF but I'm not convinced. But from 10 -> 40 I don't believe there's any possible way that questing can beat it out. There's simply too much time spent running about even if you do cherry pick the quests.

BUT, I'd love to see otherwise as I have some more alts to level up yet and would like to do so in the most time-efficient way possible. :)



I will however respectfully disagree that questing is less effort than boosting. While boosting I do nothing but zone in and kill stuff. When you quest even if you're doing only select quests and moving in the most efficient route possible, you have to move around and click on NPCs with your alts to turn in quests and so forth. Some instances I don't even have to move my alts from the zone-in, it's just go through and kill with my Paladin then zone out and reset and repeat. EZ mode.

[Crayonbox]

considering that you get 3x the xp per turn in of quests, quest turn ins are the way to go for leveling. boosting provides a nice amount of xp per time, about 3x that of normal boosting without any rested, however it still does not give better xp than 15000 xp per turn in for quest at level 40.

and again. i hate raf.

[puppychow]

It all heavily depends on gear, how much gold you have, and how knowledgable you are about the quests. It really boils down to xp/hour over a number of hours - instance boosting is the same flat XP/hr, you can pretty much predict exactly how long it will take you to go 1-55 (58, 60). It also tends to be a lot easier if you have a geared paladin, since they can do things like pull all of SFK or all of SM in one pull and basically watch TV while stuff dies.

Questing is faster in spurts - you do a bunch of kill quests, turn them in, BLAM you get 100k xp in 5 minutes, crazy! But you have to factor in the time it took to get to that zone, travel around the zone, get flight paths, and travel to the next zone. And on PVP servers you have to worry about ganking and such in STV/Tanaris/etc.

If you can do it the best is a mix - 1-10 quest, 10-20 SFK, 20-35/38 SM-cath, and then quest after that. You can hit 35 in 4-5 hours /played, which is quite a bit faster than if you tried just questing.

After 60 instance boosting is nice too for faction rep - I am honored with thrallmar on my 62 shamans and I have done only 2 thrallar quests, I will finish them up and be 6-7k into revered.

[noir]

Instances have always been and will always be wastes of time in regards to leveling -- outside of level 70 OP PLing.

[Xten]

TheBigBB, are you rolling the moonkin to eventually tank? That seems like a cool idea to me. They have armor bonus of moonkin, plus casting. Could work out.



edit-Some of the realms are coming up btw. Not that i can play for now. I've got some work to do. >.<So are you planing on re rolling or xfer to a diff server possibly? Your actually the 2nd MB ive seen now on uldaman. Thought i was the only one for awhile till i met a 4 box shammy this past weekend.

[Janix]

TheBigBB, are you rolling the moonkin to eventually tank? That seems like a cool idea to me. They have armor bonus of moonkin, plus casting. Could work out.



edit-Some of the realms are coming up btw. Not that i can play for now. I've got some work to do. >.<So are you planing on re rolling or xfer to a diff server possibly? Your actually the 2nd MB ive seen now on uldaman. Thought i was the only one for awhile till i met a 4 box shammy this past weekend.
Hehe that might of been me with the shamans. Actually I have 5 but no biggie. So 4 MB on Uldaman? Nice! My main shaman is named Antic. =)

[Jaws5]

I have to say it.

ON a PVP server it is always best to lvl in an instance. Questing is a a grave yard walk. :)

[Xten]

TheBigBB, are you rolling the moonkin to eventually tank? That seems like a cool idea to me. They have armor bonus of moonkin, plus casting. Could work out.



edit-Some of the realms are coming up btw. Not that i can play for now. I've got some work to do. >.<So are you planing on re rolling or xfer to a diff server possibly? Your actually the 2nd MB ive seen now on uldaman. Thought i was the only one for awhile till i met a 4 box shammy this past weekend.
Hehe that might of been me with the shamans. Actually I have 5 but no biggie. So 4 MB on Uldaman? Nice! My main shaman is named Antic. =)Yeah my Main on Uldaman is Spaded if u want to hit me up. Shams are still work in progress. You A or H ?

[Fef]

ON a PVP server it is always best to lvl in an instance. Questing is a a grave yard walk. :)

True.

Also, running twice Blackfathom Deeps with my five Shamans (there are just not enough mobs in there to finish all the quests for every character with a single run), I learned more about the class than in the previous 25 levels.
But yes, it took time to travel around to collect and turn the quests in. Two runs still got me all the way from 25 to 30 (including quests).

[Naysayer]

even with the ajustment before RAF, it was better to do Quests than instances. Imagine now with RAF, plus being a multiboxer.

Actually it goes like:
instance boosting > quest boosting > normal questing > normal instances > chatting on /trade

With or without RAF bonus, for the fastest to slowest leveling.This is completely false, because with RAF you get so much questing exp that you can outlevel entire zones sometimes from only doing the quickest hand-in quests. You never have to put up with slow quests. For example, as people have pointed out, buying cloth and EPL turn-in materials alone can net you 3 or 4 levels on all 5 toons at once. I did every quick kill quest in Hinterlands in about an hour and got the equivalent of 24 quest turn ins for two full levels. Triple quest experience scales in a really overpowered way, seriously.No, stabface was right. I've hit 60 in 21 hours with my third team by instance boosting. Not sure why you'd say he was blatenly wrong when you've never instanced boosted your RAF team before. Triple instance experience scales in a really overpowered way, seriously.

[Naysayer]

Instances have always been and will always be wastes of time in regards to leveling -- outside of level 70 OP PLing.Why do people go to SM at 20 and come out at 40 about 3-4 hours later? You quest from 20-40 in 3-4 hours?

What am I missing here? Where are you questing?

[Marious]

Instance runs without boosting are a bit rough if you are only running 3, only reason I have been doing SM is for some of the stuff that drops there and to finish some of the instance quest. I am 43 on my 3 man team, SP, Lock, Lock. And I have tried boosting and it does work well, just go in there with my 70 shaman and kill SM Cath in like 15-20 min Even though it might be easier with my hunter I must say I enjoy going in there with my shaman and kill everything with his Enh uberness even if he is not that geared it still 3-4 hits per mob to mow them down. At 40 when I went in there with my locks on follow they where getting crazy XP but what I do notice is that they dont get the RAF bonus unless I am on my priest and my friend is running us. Normally they will go through the rested xp real fast and spend it all. I guess I should of RAF my alt accounts to each other versus to my main account.

What I must say is that it is a lot of fun to 3 box, if I could I would 4 box but my friend uses my 4th account got a lock to 70 on it, so its like a present to him just so we can hang out in game since he lives in the opposite coast, and have not seen him for at least 4 years.