Reasonable discussion about Northrend Leveling

[OzPhoenix]

I made the mistake of raising this in the Suggestions Forums of WoW, thinking that perhaps being outside of General would help. Alas, as much as I wrote in a constructive way, it turned into the usual wow forums flame wars.

The question I'd like to ask is, how is everyone else going with Northrend leveling and all the collection quests out there?

I must admit, I've been really disappointed with it myself, as it seems so strange that in an MMO, so many of the quests should penalise groups. The fix seems so obvious to, simply converting collection quests from player to group drops.

My Shamans have hit 80 now, so I'm not writing this post from a QQ-point-of-view since I'm over the hurdle. That said, I can't see myself ever leveling the other groups I go to 60-70 with using RAF, because I just can't see myself ever doing Northrend as a group level again (I'm solo leveling a pally to join my Shammies and enjoying it much more).

So, how'd you do? Did you skip collection quests (if so, just what quests did you do??), grind instances? Or like me, just sucked it up and plodded through it?

PS: I compared with a guildie of mine. He singled boxed a Hunter, 70 to 80 with roughly 60 hours play time. My Shamans took just over twice that.

[Bigfish]

At the moment, I'm plodding through it because I'm a story guy and I want to run all the quests I can. When I run my alts through though, instances, inctances, and more instances.

[OzPhoenix]

At the moment, I'm plodding through it because I'm a story guy and I want to run all the quests I can. When I run my alts through though, instances, inctances, and more instances.Problem I found with instances in Northrend was without a dedicated tank, the Shammies just weren't up to it, at least not the bosses anyway. Instancing would be good, as I'd like to someday level my other teams, but no way could I do it ever via questing again..lol

[hardcoded]

Questing was really painful. Next time I'll quest enough to unlock dailies, but that is it. I was dissapointed as well that my shammies couldn't handle the instances, but I largely chalked it up to my lousy gear :)

pirate bombing and the plane shooting quest initially then grizzly hills initially made for a lot of easy xp (enough to level to 77 f patient) and then instance till my eyes bleed if I want to level faster.

[OzPhoenix]

Questing was really painful. Next time I'll quest enough to unlock dailies, but that is it. I was dissapointed as well that my shammies couldn't handle the instances, but I largely chalked it up to my lousy gear :)

pirate bombing and the plane shooting quest initially then grizzly hills initially made for a lot of easy xp (enough to level to 77 f patient) and then instance till my eyes bleed if I want to level faster.I actually don't mind that 5 x Shamans was less than spectactularly successful in Northrend instances, the challenge of (finally getting off my butt to do it) leveling in the Paladin and using a proper tank has been fun. Hard = ok, but tedious and boring = not ok, which is what I found the Northrend group leveling to be. Solo it's been wayyyy more enjoyable.

[suprafro]

I only play ~2-3 hours a night so leveling up with the daily quests worked great for me, I probably gained 2-3 levels entirely from daily quest exp alone (ive already completed more daily quests then normal quests at 80) I was doing 7 of the grizzly hills dailies 73-80 (140k quest exp in 20 min) and then added hodir dailies to the mix after doing the huge questchain at 78. The hodir daily quests were mostly fail but you chain killed enough mobs to make it semi-decent..I never did aldor/scryer so i wanted the honored enchant for shoulders.oh and the 3x wintergrasp daily quests if i was online when it reset hehe (70k exp and great honor/marks) anyway really just did daily quests and then hit dungeons with the remaining time. i play a 5x shaman group so while the instances could be cleared very fast, some of the last bosses were just really hard for me or didnt feel worth wiping on to master, I was only able to full clear a few dungeons and the rest I just cleared to the last boss

[Redbeard]

I guess the problem with making collection quests quicker is that they have graphs and charts and spreadsheets and formulae about how much XP an hour they want people getting... theyd have to rework a lot of things (probably make the quests worth less reward / XP ? ) if they made them quicker like this. The other alternative would be to make the drops 100% (for each group member) but increase the drops required for quest completion. This has its own level of annoyance, as then you have to wait for things to respawn etc.

I dont know what the solution is =\ I havent had too bad of a time but im only 75 and have not boxed northrend yet.

[Bigfish]

Well, a change from collection to bounty status on these quests wouldn't affect the solo player, as they still have to kill X mobs to get their drops. What it would do is penalize group questing a little less, which would be nice for those of us with a 100% grouping percentage, but isn't particularly vital in the grand scheme of things, outside of those of us collecting 150 piles of Bat Guano for the chance at awesome story elements.

[Hachoo]

Doing large collection quests does suck but look at it this way. In the grand scheme of things its going to add what, 8 hours total to your leveling time to 80, and after that you won't have to worry about it again. Once you hit 80 you can just burn through any quests you want to do to make money and then most of what you do after that will have nothing to do with collecting things.

All in all I do find most of the northrend collection quests to be easier/more fun than the BC collection quests. The drop rates are generally higher and northrend seems to be a bit more fun.

[Xinxo]

I've been getting alts to 70 with my shaman team of 4. Running them through chain Instances actually is not a bad way a leveling up. SL and SH gave about 1500-1650 exp per kill on the 70's. I got a 5th shaman to 70 this week and doing so I got two levels on my other 4 ( now 72 ) I plan only to level them when they have rested. Leveling one to 80 ( my warlock ) was bad enough with collection quests, 5x would just turn me off to wow completely.

[hibiki]

At the moment, I'm still working on my first group and they're between 74-75. I'm picking up all the quests that show up on the mini-map and doing them, collection quests or not. I'm treating this group as my achievement group and I'm going to try to get every quest in every zone done. The days that I don't feel like questing, I spent the day in UK (I've killed the first boss in UK 27 times). My next two groups consist of 5 shamans, a mage, a druid, another pally, and two open slots. These next 2 groups will be leveled together. I'm only going to do the quests that give my guys/gals quests rewards that are worth picking up. These two groups are basically going to level in instances. If I ever get back to the group in my sig, I'll have to quest on them again.

So group one = try to do everything in game, group two/three = powerlevel to 80, group 4 = quests until felguards can tank bosses.

[Caspian]

Disclaimer, I have not boxed NR yet but I did group level to 80 with my kids - so 3 of us at all times, I have done drop quests in a group in NR and have boxed drop quests in all other areas. I leveled my pally first with the kids and will go back and instance boost my RAF teams to 70 and into NR to quest. I will be leveling multiple groups through NR and questing the whole way (until I just plain get tired of questing in general like I am with TBC content).

I don't think drop quests are that bad in general. The drop rate has been very reasonable on almost every quest, better then many TBC quests for sure. There were some in Grizzly Hills that sucked but most have been 60% or higher. Also, most teams should be able to AOE grind their quest mobs on most quests making it go even faster.

Blizzard has also stated (long ago pre TBC it was in a blue post) that the point of drop quests was to break up the type of quest. Their example was basically, at the time, if a quest wants you to get 10 items and has a 33.333(repeating of course)% drop rate they want you to kill roughly 30 mobs, or gain 30 mobs worth of XP. So instead of only Kill X mobs quests they had drop quests, it added varrity to the early game. In vanillla wow these were the two main types of quests along with a few escort quests and FedEx quests. That was all there really was. As mentioned above, to change the drop rates will change a number of things on the charts and graphs for levelling. If you level a toon or toons through content that has had the XP increased or amount needed to level reduced you will see this effect (even with out RAF). They should increase drop rates for items in old wow and TBC to keep people in the zones longer and make the zone curve better match the new levelling curve. I don't think this is needed for WotLK content yet.

Another thing to consider is when you are grouped you share XP because you kill things faster and/or have less down time then a solo player. LIke stated before when doing a drop quest the expect you to have to kill a certain number of mobs or gain a certain amount of XP. If groups all got a drop from current 1 per kill drop quests you wuold actually end up levelling too SLOWLY. Because it is designed for you to have to gain a certain amount of XP and reach a certain level before moving to the next zone.

I think i explained that suffeciently. If I made it too confusing or rambled too much to make it useful , say so, and I will make another effort.

The fact that the OP levelled 5 toons in only twice the amount of time as a single boxed hunter (one of the fastest solo leveling toons - all speed levelers use hunters) is amazing. If the collection quests were that much of a hinderence it would have taken more then 5 times as long to level as their friend. If you think about it, this is amazing.

The quests I find more problematic are the vehicle and flying quests where you can not follow. There is no easy way I have found to complete these as a group. You have to do them one toon at a time if you haev to travel any amount of distance. If someone has a good way to do these I am all ears.

I will also post again what I do for collections quests when I am boxing.
Loot Type - group Loot or master looter if you want to distribute blues and/or greens.
Main Loots
ALL Alts select pass on loot YES - they do not loot.

The main gets all their drops first. The mobs that have drops for the alts will glitter. One alt at a time, after every mob or group of mobs, check that Alt's window. If it glitters he gets his drop, loot it. If it doesn't glitter for him, move on and kill more. reapeat until all dudes have their loot. You can also, if your set up allows for it, simply change leader one at a time and rotate through. You can use macro's to change the party leader and set loot types easily. When one is finished, move another to your 'main' screen or window, rinse & repeat.

When they introduced the Pass on Loot option Free For All became obsolete for boxers IMO.

[Hachoo]

Why did FFA become obsolete? From what I see in your post FFA is still faster and easier than using pass on loot.

I always have FFA on and I just loot EVERYTHING on my main, always. When I'm doing a quest for collections, I go until my main has all items, then once hes done I start chain pulling mobs and looting them on my main. Once I have 3-5 mobs dead and looted, I switch to one of my alt windows, do a quick glance for sparkles, loot anything that sparkles for quest items, then switch back to my main.

In instances, I loot everything on my main. All greens ALWAYS go to my main, I simply mass-trade them to my enchanter character every now and then (which requires no window switching). For bosses, I loot on my main, look at all the items, decide who will get them, cancel the loot window and then loot the item(s) on whichever character needs them (usually my enchanter since I have bad luck ever getting a BoP drop that i actually need).

Not sure how "pass on loot" would be any better than this method and if anything I'd say its a bit worse...

[TheBigBB]

For a MMO which relies on monthly subscriptions, the leveling times in WoW are short and easy, and you get useful rewards - even if it's just disenchant fodder. A collection quest still gives you a reward for each character, so it's not more of a waste to 5 box it than it would be to solobox it for someone else. The issue here is fun-factor and how this all affects the game at large, and from my experience, 90% of players will solo everything and only group when they need to. It'd be better for the game to offer huge advantages in all ways to those who group for everything, thus promoting guild bonding and closer ties when the time comes to raid. But the quests aren't fun to group for because you spend too much time killing the same thing in the same area without any significant challenge. It's okay to have easy content for the extremely causal, but by dragging this content out it's not adding to the fun factor of the game for anyone. I don't know of anyone who actually derives joy from collection quests.

Anyway, the bottom line for me is that it's okay to level more slowly if I can actually have the content completed and get materials and loot while I'm at it, which I usually can. Skin corpses, mine nodes, gather herbs, kill enemies, loot quest items. It can get boring, but when you get a long chain of awesome follow-ups, it's still worth it in the end. It'd just be more fun without those arduous quests to have to do to get to that point.

[Xar]

Disclaimer: Northrend is amazing in artwork and immersion in a new world, I really love it but...

The collection quest model is really insane, there's already a large xp cut when grouped to normalize the xp per time on kills. What the single drops do (even more so when they are not 100% per kill drops) is penalize grouping even further. Some areas are small zones with particular mobs that become scarce when so many are questing in them prolonging groups even fruther and promoting mob stealing by greedy little solo bastards who are in a rush to 80. I try to always be mindful if other people are in the area doing the same quest and only take single kills. The big point here is that there should actually be a small benefit to grouping while questing even if that means slightly faster xp gain by all group members. That's the whole point of end game stuff no matter if you're raiding or pvp'ing (even while multiboxing you're still a group), there's no 1v1 arena nor end-game solo dungeons. Why not reward grouping early on? The way it is now it greatly rewards solo levelling by faster levelling which is a big mistake IMO.

My big problem is hopefully getting fixed in 3.1. I read that Vehicles will become regular mounts so hopefully /follow will work properly. Some quests had to be painfully done one at a time by each of my 5 shamans. While in a vehicle you cannot follow someone else. Some vehicle daily quests are doable by having the other 4 mount up and just follow the lead in the vehicle. This technique doesn't work for every quest though. Seems people are exploiting vehicles in arenas and LWG. LOL, finally a good nerf brought about because of arenas.

Phasing, another issue that I *hope* will get addressed in the future. Yes it's a neat feature but not at the expense of breaking something which worked rock solid in the past. Seems like a pre-phase zone could be developed so that when the phase on master starts it kicks in for all in the group all at once if they are in the same phase. Flying around in Outlands recently was like being in heaven, not once did my team lose follow.

Shaman Elementals need fixing imo. It's kinda dumb that I can easily clear all trash and sub-bosses but not the final boss because the earth ele's get 1 or 2 shotted before I can even heal them.

It's also sad to see the Outlands and QD Isle dailies nerfed in payout like they are, those were much more fun than some of the creepy ones I'm doing in NR. Sorry just don't like the undead/scourge theme much (not an original WC player). I can understand yeah it might be easier to kill stuff but bombing? Why is that nerfed? Was there any danger in bombing in the scar on QD? Will it take any less time to do at 80 than 70? No. Just boggles my mind on some of the decisions that are made.

[Caspian]

Not sure how "pass on loot" would be any better than this method and if anything I'd say its a bit worse...I suppose it depends on how your widows or monitors are set up. If you software box and your windows are too small to see the loot glitter then you would have to switch to see and loot anyway. So it depends on what you really mean by "switch" and what that entails. For me, why using pass on loot is better then FFA is that, with only the main looting and all alts passing I need just a quick glance to the alt window to see if it is glittering. If it is, I just mouse into their window and loot and mouse back. I don't need to flip PiP or anything. I can do this little glance very quickly, it can be done while the main is actually looting, or while he is moving from mob to mob - for me I can usually do both basically at once. I software box 5 toons with Keyclone and PiP all on 1x 24" monitor. I would think it would be even easier if you had multiple monitors because your alt windows would be even bigger. With FFA you have to loot first, then look and in your case switch. If you would have to switch anyways, going to Pass on loot might not make any difference to you. Again that depends on what switch really means for you and if you really need to switch to check for loot glitter.

You are correct, in some cases it sounds like it might not be an improvement at all. So I will rephrase my statement - When the Pass on Loot option was introduced, depending on your setup and group, it may have made FFA looting obsolete.

As far as using master looter I agree with you. I normally only use ML on bosses and do what you do, just trade greens off to the enchanter occasionally. Easy to switch to ML with the mouse or a macro. Kill boss, assign loot, no switching back and forth to actually loot the items. I tried ML for questing and the whole time in instances and it did slow me down, not much but some. If you like the idea and don't mind the little extra time, go for it. If not, oh well.


Adding something else in for the post above me that got in while I was typing :)


there's already a large xp cut when grouped to normalize the xp per
time on kills. What the single drops do (even more so when they are not
100% per kill drops) is penalize grouping even further. This is simply not true.

The "xp cut" when grouped is not a penalty it is simply XP/members ...With a bonus when in a group of 3-5 read wowwiki ('http://www.wowwiki.com/Formulas:Mob_XP#Group_Experience')

Basiclly if you have a group of 5 you get a total of 140% of what a solo player got killing the same mob. You killed it faster, there is less time between now and when you kill the next one, you have to spend less time eating/drinking before the next one (and use fewer resources) and there is a pretty good chance you killed more then one at a time. These all sounds like positives to me.

While in a group you get the benefit of faster kills, less down time, less time between kills and the ability to EASILY kill more then 1 mob at a time (with any group composition) AND your group gets more total XP then a single person does. How is this a penalty?

And I will go back to my previous statement. The zones were designed for you to get n amount of XP before moving to the next zone. If each group member got full solo XP per mob kill they would level too fast. If every drop quest was 100% or when there was a drop it dropped for each member groups would actually level to SLOW, if all they did was quest. There is obviously a lot of flexibility built into leveling in WoW so if you don't like drop quests or vehicle quests you can make up the Xp from skipping them by running an instance a couple of times or doing a few daily quests instead. Also the fact that there are 2 starting 68-72ish zones mitigates the overall effect from this even further in WotLK - there are even more options if you want to skip quests.

[pinotnoir]

Leveling was very painful with the collections. The collections opened more quest and unlocked different phases. So you are forced to do a majority of them. One thing they can fix to make grouping better is allow everyone in the group to loot the item. I still have not figured out why some collection quest allow this and some dont. A solo player can kill a mob just as fast as a group can. Its not like anyone spends more than a hand full of seconds on each kill. I am about to finish my last group to 80 and I dread it. Having to do those collection quest again will suck total balls. The only thing that may help some is not having to fight for mobs because everyone is mostly 80 now. Nothing pisses me off more than having a collection quest x 5 and the mobs taken up by tons of players. There was one quest I needed to gather 5 bones each and it took me almost 1 hour to complete it. Thats just silly.

[TheBigBB]

Caspian, it's not designed that rigidly at all. There are so many quests that you can do nothing but quest your way up and still have hundreds of quests leftover that you didn't even touch. I did only 7 instance runs to 80 (all because I had quests for them) and the rest was ALL questing, and I have the equivalent of two zones worth of quests left to do before I can get the questing achievements. I don't see that the game as it's currently designed would be harmed by changing collection quests. I believe strongly that the collection quests are a big deterrent for people to play as a team when they quest, and that's a much larger issue.

[SilverSlice]

i discovered that i cant do woltk without a tank,
so i am leveling my dk at th moment it is gooing way smoother at the moment
i am not the rigth person to ask about 5 shammys in woltk, but 4 shammys and one dk loosk like it is going smoothly enough

Silver

[Caspian]

Caspian, it's not designed that rigidly at all. There are so many quests that you can do nothing but quest your way up and still have hundreds of quests leftover that you didn't even touch. I did only 7 instance runs to 80 (all because I had quests for them) and the rest was ALL questing, and I have the equivalent of two zones worth of quests left to do before I can get the questing achievements. I don't see that the game as it's currently designed would be harmed by changing collection quests. I believe strongly that the collection quests are a big deterrent for people to play as a team when they quest, and that's a much larger issue.You are 100% right, there is a lot more flexibility in WotLK then old wow and even TBC. The fact that you can just any quest you don't want to do and make up the XP doing something else, other then grinding, is awesome and one of the best features of this expansion.

But (there always is a but :) ) for example, one of my kids only did like 2 or 3 instance runs, did both starting zones did around 3-6 dailies probably 5 times a week and was rested the whole way. She went from Dragonblight to The Basin then back to Grizzly Hills. She hit 80 two dailies after finishing GH. She has not touched ZD, SP or IC. If she had done zero instances, zero dailies, only 1 of the two starting zones and was not rested the whole time she probably would have hit 77 in ZD or Storm Peaks and then 80 finishing SP or getting into ice crown. Which is, in my opnion (which means little), where the leveling curve would have you be. Which is my point. If you were to ONLY quest to level, with little or no rest and only do one starting zone instead of both you would finish most of the quests in WotLK by level 80, leaving only quests designed to be done at 80 left to do. If you were to change how collection quests work (or even worse how XP is allocated to a goup kill) you would have to adjust the leveling curve to compensate for this change.

I know collection quests with stupid low drop rates are annoying as hell. The frustrate me as well and make me yell at my kids. But, fortunately for my kids, I have only seen 2 quests where the drop rate was total suck (two meat gathering quests in GH). Everything else I have done has been 60% or better. I am not a game designer but I would imagine that a lot of thought and planning goes into the amount of XP and number of quests and XP per quest, both from the quest and completing the objectives.

As far as solo players killing as fast as a group, I strongly disagree. I have a solo rogue. He was my raiding toon, at 70 he was the best geared of all my toons. He kills crap fast. I also have a prot pally, she can kill a large number of mobs at one time, but it takes a while. She was in mostly S2 healing gear with the Sporregar shield. They probably even out in the end or are pretty close in total kills per hour. I levelled the pally with my 1 or both of my kids, one has been boomkin since 60 and just recently hit 70. The other was a feral raid tank and just switched to boomkin and had little spell power. Both boomkins killed much slower then the rogue and the pally. Then put the pally with the boomkins (or even just 1 of 'em) and the kills per hour goes through the roof, it is not uncommon for that group to kill 30 mobs at a time if we can get them grouped. Now that was obviously the best combo we could put together but even any other mix of 2 or 3 killed faster and had less down time then any one of them solo. Unless everyone hit NR with the best gear available for their class at 70 there is no way that solo players should be killing as fast as even a 2 man team, and should not be close to a 5 man team.

and got busy at work and sidetracked and lost my train of thought. and now am too tired to edit - hope it makes sense and I didn't leave any incomplete sentences.

[heffner]

First off, I have only done quests in Howling Fjord..so I don't know if things change later on, but this is my experience.

I truly wonder if there are really that many more collection quests. It's been quite some time since they changed the amount of XP required to level in the old world and BC. These changes gave us the luxury of bypassing collection quests. I won't even mention RAF.

Personally, I don't find them fun. Not on one toon or five. However, it seems to me that the respawn and drop rates are much better in WoTLK than in BC/old world.

You must also admit one advantage is that we can do many quest "events" (I don't know what you would call them, but things like freeing or dismembering a corpse) once and get credit on all five toons.

I find the terrain more annoying than the collection quests. I get stuck on trees and poles all the time; and have to go up small towers or other structures....gah...so annoying.

[accretion]

My team is currently 75 and I've done about half of my leveling in The Nexus and UK. As far as xp/hour, I find it to be as good or better than quests (~220K) with better tradeskill mats. I've started to skip drop quests entirely, since so few of them will upgrade my gear. I just don't find them fun anymore. Instances aren't as much fun either, but I feel like I make overall progress. That said, I'll prolly open up the GH dailies and focus on those for the 75-80 grind.

[Stealthy]

My advice - do the collection quests that:

1. Open up more quests in a chain (easy to check with WoWhead, WoWDB or Thottbot).

2. Rewards with or leads to a gear upgrade.

3. Rewards with faction rep.

Also worth noting - some collection quests have items that can be looted by everyone in the party (e.g. Retest Now in Icecrown), or that can be traded bewteen players (the mojo for the Drakuru quests in the Grizzly Hills).

Also you should be doing dailies as well - huge exp gains & cash cow!

At lvl 69, 1 boxing friendly daily becomes available in Borean Tundra (Drake Hunt - also gives 250 Wyrmrest rep)

At lvl 71, 1 more boxing friendly daily becomse available in Dragonblight (Defending Wyrmrest Temple - also gives 250 Wyrmrest rep)

At lvl 73, 8 boxing friendly dailies become available in Grizzly Hills - (Blackriver Brawl, Crush Captain Brightwater!, Keep Them at Bay, Smoke 'Em Out, Shred the Alliance, Overwhelmed!, Keep 'Em on Their Heels & Seared Scourge - completing these will also net 1000 Horde Expidition rep)

At level 76, 1 boxing friendly daily becomes available in Sholazar Basin (Will of the Titans - must be aligned with The Oracles, also gives 700 rep).

At level 77, a truck load of dailies open up in The Storm Peaks & Icecrown. More dailies also open up in Sholazar Basin depending on whether you are aligned with The Oracles or Frenzyheart.

Hope this helps...

Cheers,

S.

[Perrigrin]

At lvl 71, 1 more boxing friendly daily becomse available in Dragonblight (Defending Wyrmrest Temple - also gives 250 Wyrmrest rep)

How do you box this one? Does follow work on the dragons?

[OzPhoenix]

You know why I love these forums? Lots of following posts and all of them intelligently put, even the ones I sort of diagree with....just wouldn't happen on the WoW Forums.

Ok, so the bits I disagreed with:

Kill Speed(1) - a number of posts argued that as groups we kill substantially faster. I concede that we do kill faster of course, but not often 5 times faster. I found very often that 5xLightning Bolt would leave the mob still standing (albeit with only a few % health left) forcing a 2nd cast of Frost Shock to finish them off. Having played Hunters quite a bit, I don't think the Shamans kill five times faster, maybe three times, but I admit that's pure supposition on my part.

Kill Speed(2) - the really big constraint on our kill speed isn't the mobs survivability but the mobs availability. I found that in many of these collection quests (excluding those that are "pick items off ground" types) it simply wasn't possible to make the most effecient use of the Shamans grouped power for lack of mobs. By this I mean, either the mobs were too dispersed to collect together (without going into Evade), or they were casters who'd refused to move anyway, or there just simply weren't enough of them to mow them down with great gusto. More often than not, I found that collection quests, those involving mob drops, meant long pauses in my leveling while I hunted down and fought a large number of small battles, often with only 1 or 2 target mobs involved in each.

Mob XP - My Shamans would typically get almost all their XP gain in a session from quests. Out in Northrend, I'd make brely 250xp per kill (rested!). My Paladin meantime is knocking up 1500xp. Where's the bonus? I mean admittedly the Shamans started outlevelling their zones so were also taking a hit due to lower mob levels, but it really felt like mob XP in a group was almost pointless. 250xp for a kill would require me to kill well over five THOUSAND mobs for ONE level. Ouch.......so much of non-instanced grinding. Even at double this rate (which I was almost able to achieve in higher zones), we're still taking just over 3,000 mobs per level. Very much most of my XP going to 80 came from the quest rewards.

Party Penalty - This is my biggest gripe I guess, because I think it's the one most fundamentally at odds with what MMO's should be. I got into Blizzards games from the Diablo series (and plan on going back there on D3). The philosphy of that game to group was perfect: always encouraged, always rewarded, never required. WoW seems to suffer a little indecision in its design. For end-game WoW's philosophy can be summed up as: always encouraged, always rewarded, always required. I don't have any problem with that. However, for leveling, it changes into: sometimes encouraged, sometimes rewarded, often penalised. In a game designed around bringing large numbers of players into a persistent virtual world, grouping should never be penalised. I just can't see how it ever should be.

[Caspian]

At lvl 71, 1 more boxing friendly daily becomse available in Dragonblight (Defending Wyrmrest Temple - also gives 250 Wyrmrest rep)

How do you box this one? Does follow work on the dragons?As long as all in group have the quest and stay near the quet dude on one person has to get a dragon and bring it back. That one will count for all in group, just turn in. My daughter always makes me go fetch the dragon. Of course she is fetching my RL beverage during that time so I guess it is fair :).

[Caspian]

You know why I love these forums? Lots of following posts and all of them intelligently put, even the ones I sort of diagree with....just wouldn't happen on the WoW Forums.
This is one of the things that makes this community great.

On to the discussion.

Kill Speed #1 - it is not just kill time you have to take into account, it is also down time. Hunters probably have the best kills per hour rate solo, though I hear DKs can get close. But one hunter vs your 5 shaman isn't the best comparison. How fast would each of your 5 shaman kill individually? I would be willing to wager that the gourp is more then 5x overall. Even if it was only 3x faster the total XP/hour your group earns is still 300% more then a solo toon. You have to remember at the end you will have 5 level 80 toons, not just 1.

Kill Speed #2 - This is a very valid point. I certainly had these issues as well but I think that the times where I had nice big clumps of melee mobs wander around together made up for the really bad lone caster quests (both kill and loot). All in all I did have more times where I wish there more mobs grouped closer together. Kill yellow mobs also sucks, having to dismount to get mobs to dislike me is annoying.

Mob XP/party penality - I agree, if you are questing most of your XP will come from the quests themselves, in a group or solo. AS far as XP though the XP/hour for the group is what counts and, in a 5 man group, you do get a 40%
bonus over a solo kill of the same mob. Solo player gets 1000XP your group get 1400XP/5. Your mob that nets 1500XP for a solo kill should give 420XP per person in the group, assuming same rested state and levels. So it should only be about 4000 kills vs 1100 for the solo player (1.7 million XP/level, hey we are ball parking here :) ) if you were grinding. Going back to the kills per hour comparison, who would ding first? All things being equal, mob availabilty, play time gear level etc. I think the MB group would come out ahead. The MB group would cast fewer spells overall per kill and the solo shaman wouId have to eat/drink every 5-10 mobs or so while chain killing and the MB box group could go much longer before that down time. I still assert that there is not a party penality, especially for multiboxers who end up with 5 max level toons in less time then it takes to get 2 toons levelled solo, in almost all cases.

[heffner]

I think the worst timesink is looting on five different toons. This adds up and is why many people don't loot when they are leveling up. For me, I have to switch mice and fumble around with my view on my second monitor to loot. I always have to get around my big-arse Tauren druid or some other toon in the way...move them etc.. Not to mention having to track who has what completed and to make sure everyone is done before I move on - typically this isn't an issue, but I have on occasion missed 1 item or a click and had to go back. These things annoy me the most. Drop rates, having to kill a lot of mobs or waiting for respawns (usually can kill other things in the meantime) doesn't really bother me. Of course, if I had to collect 50+ of an item I probably wouldn't do the quest.

The respawn and drop rates in WoTLK are pretty decent IMO [so far]. Of course, I only just got to Northrend last Sunday so it's pretty empty in Howling Fjord so this may not have been the case for many of you.

Mob availability can be an issue for sure. Obviously all those people solo questing will result in this. However, this is highly dependent on the current state of the game play. When the expansion was first out, this was probably insane. Now, that many people are 75+ it is less of an issue. The exception probably being dailies. Of course, the advantage we have is that we can take on multiple mobs at a time, while the solo player may not always have that option. Now, as you stated if they are all spread out, well..guess we are SOL on that.

I definitely could not agree more that grouping should not be penalized. However, I would assume that how they design the game [esp. expansions] is dependent on how people play the game. People don't group for leveling, so I don't see why they would design it to be as such. It's counter-intuitive for an MMO, but look at us....we are the prime example of solo play. Also, keep in mind I don't think it would be a good business decision to make leveling up efficient by any means. Why would they want to do that? It has to be balanced or the game will fail. Never disconnect the business from the gameplay. It will always be a business first.

[blast3r]

My advice - do the collection quests that:

1. Open up more quests in a chain (easy to check with WoWhead, WoWDB or Thottbot).

2. Rewards with or leads to a gear upgrade.

3. Rewards with faction rep.

Also worth noting - some collection quests have items that can be looted by everyone in the party (e.g. Retest Now in Icecrown), or that can be traded bewteen players (the mojo for the Drakuru quests in the Grizzly Hills).

Also you should be doing dailies as well - huge exp gains & cash cow!

At lvl 69, 1 boxing friendly daily becomes available in Borean Tundra (Drake Hunt - also gives 250 Wyrmrest rep)

At lvl 71, 1 more boxing friendly daily becomse available in Dragonblight (Defending Wyrmrest Temple - also gives 250 Wyrmrest rep)

At lvl 73, 8 boxing friendly dailies become available in Grizzly Hills - (Blackriver Brawl, Crush Captain Brightwater!, Keep Them at Bay, Smoke 'Em Out, Shred the Alliance, Overwhelmed!, Keep 'Em on Their Heels & Seared Scourge - completing these will also net 1000 Horde Expidition rep)

At level 76, 1 boxing friendly daily becomes available in Sholazar Basin (Will of the Titans - must be aligned with The Oracles, also gives 700 rep).

At level 77, a truck load of dailies open up in The Storm Peaks & Icecrown. More dailies also open up in Sholazar Basin depending on whether you are aligned with The Oracles or Frenzyheart.

Hope this helps...

Cheers,

S.

I have just one more level to go. Think I am just going to do dailies and grind rep for Wyrmrest rep.

[Duese]

As sad as it sounds, I honestly wish that you needed MORE xp to level. I mean, I will ding max level with 2+ ZONES worth of quests left to do. I really don't want the only reward for these quests to be gold and a crappy green item that I had better gear than 5 levels prior.

This same thing happened in BC. I followed the standard progression of zones and I ended up in BEM on all FOUR of my solo toons dinging 70, leaving 2+ full zones worth of quests that essentially gain me nothing except some gold. I've earned over 17k+ gold from just quest rewards over 4-5 toons plus all the drops. I don't need the gold.

If you go through the majority of the quests in any zone, do that zones instance, and then move on to the next zone, you will probably end with at least 1-2 full zones worth of quests left to do. I dinged 80 in Sholazar Basin, about 3/4's the way through on my 2box pally/warrior. That was without even doing a bunch of the 5 mans like Gun'drak, HoL, HoS, CoS, Occulus, etc. I hadn't even completed a single quest in Icecrown or Storm Peaks.

I dunno, maybe I like the fact that I got a chance to see an xp bar on my main's again. 2 weeks of bliss until the next xpack comes out that raises the level cap. Leveling alts just doesn't give me the same feeling as leveling my mains, even when I spoil the crap outta my alts. This is why I miss games like Asheron's Call and even FFXI. Never stop getting xp.

And yes, I do realize that my views won't be shared by many others, but I'm a sad panda not seeing my xp bar anymore. I took so many screenshots this time around.

[5fingersofdoom]

I was annoyed and frustratd with Northrend MB lvling until I dinged 80 looked at my total played time and realised at about 10 days played divide by 5 isn't so bad ,2days per char)considering what I have at the end of it.
Now i'll hit dailies and farm that gold like a fat goblin.
You tell me what a single player really has at the end of it?
I didn't enjoy the process TBH it was hard,but i'll be doing it again sure,im back in OL now and its strange but I kind of miss Northrend already,the old world seems a bit bland.
I say give it a little time enjoy your gold and instance farming/pvp,and come back to it in a month or so. :)

[Multibocks]

I played at home as a Multiboxer and at work as a solo player(no computer can handle it here.) I think my perspective is unique in that I did both routes and let me tell you something. Solo in northrend is EXTREMELY fast leveling. I got rewarded the same for each quest however that mob xp adds up to a lot of xp after playing a full night. Also the dreaded collection quests weren't so bad, one in particular that I just HATED was the collection quests in Grizzly Hills.
They went something like this: Hmm collection quest.. ugh it's a series that I need to do to get the pit quests to open up. Ok I'll do it. Hey I only need 6 bear pelts, sweet! Ride to area listed by wowhead.... OMFG THERE ARE ONLY 8 SPAWNS?!! JFC! Ya, that quest went much faster on one character. That quest ALONE took me 50 mins with my group. So lets add up what my group won. Let's say it was a 50% drop rate(yeah right) so 20 mobs per collect times 500ish xp, 10k xp for mobs 20k for turnin = 30k exp for 50 mins of questing. Wow color me underwhelmed.

Paladin by himself: Quest took about 10mins, 1500 per kill with 20 kills and 20k xp turn in... = 50k xp for 10mins work... SWEET. While a few of these numbers are guesstimates I did actually stop and look at my clock after doing it with my full group. This is just dumb. Blizzard is clearly penalizing you for grouping on collection quests.

When I do my 3 other groups to 80, I won't touch collect quests and I will do as much instance leveling as I can stomach.

[daviddoran]

What I decided to do, after leveling from 68-71 on my main team in northrend, is to do all of the Outland stuff I didn't get a chance to do. I am having a blast going through some of the nice quest chains and instances, and getting exp the whole time (albeit not as much as i would be in northrend) I also assume that having slightly better outland gear on my team before I really dig into northrend can't hurt. I need to get some flying mounts on my team, and then I can finish the Karazhan key quest, which I then plan on trying to 6 man Kara. If I get really crazy, I will reactivate some old accounts, xfer some toons, and try and 10 box kara, just for kicks.

I really like a lot of the outland content, and am very happy to be experiencing it. I will get to northrend eventually, and when I get on to team 3 and 4, I will be more inclined to level faster, as I will have already experienced a lot of the content, but for now, Slow and steady is fun for me. I think I will be 73-74 before I really dig into northrend on my main team. That leaves team 2, which I might do the same, and team 3, I will hit up northrend the moment I ding 68.

[OzPhoenix]

I played at home as a Multiboxer and at work as a solo player(no computer can handle it here.) I think my perspective is unique in that I did both routes and let me tell you something. Solo in northrend is EXTREMELY fast leveling. I got rewarded the same for each quest however that mob xp adds up to a lot of xp after playing a full night. Also the dreaded collection quests weren't so bad, one in particular that I just HATED was the collection quests in Grizzly Hills.
They went something like this: Hmm collection quest.. ugh it's a series that I need to do to get the pit quests to open up. Ok I'll do it. Hey I only need 6 bear pelts, sweet! Ride to area listed by wowhead.... OMFG THERE ARE ONLY 8 SPAWNS?!! JFC! Ya, that quest went much faster on one character. That quest ALONE took me 50 mins with my group. So lets add up what my group won. Let's say it was a 50% drop rate(yeah right) so 20 mobs per collect times 500ish xp, 10k xp for mobs 20k for turnin = 30k exp for 50 mins of questing. Wow color me underwhelmed.

Paladin by himself: Quest took about 10mins, 1500 per kill with 20 kills and 20k xp turn in... = 50k xp for 10mins work... SWEET. While a few of these numbers are guesstimates I did actually stop and look at my clock after doing it with my full group. This is just dumb. Blizzard is clearly penalizing you for grouping on collection quests.

When I do my 3 other groups to 80, I won't touch collect quests and I will do as much instance leveling as I can stomach.
This mirrors my experiences exactly, as I've levelled the 5 x Shamans, but I'm also solo-leveling a Paladin (currently 72) to join them at 80 as a dedicated tank that Wrath seems to need (and I'm happy to do it). The leveling speed of the Paladin - Prot-Speced! no less - is incredibly faster than my Shamans could make. Very often I would struggle to keep my xp/hr over 100k with the Shaman group - as I use Titans Panel, it's there with me the whole time. The Paladin is typically over 300kxp/hr - over three-hundred thousand XP per hour - and often topping 400kxp/hr or more!

The Paladin scores close to 2k per mob kill (it's all rested). So let's compare with a recent example.

The quest is Motes of the Engaged (http://www.wowhead.com/?quest=11649). A particularly unfun for Shammies given the mobs lightning immunity, but I'll admit, not a massive problem when you've got 5 x Shocks to fall back on.

The Shamans needed 25 Motes, at a drop rate of roughly 50%. At 400xp per kill, killing 50 mobs, they get 20,000 XP plus 20,100 XP for handing the quest in, totaling a rough 40kxp.

The Paladin needs 5 Motes, at a drop rate of roughly 50%. At 1500xp per kill, killing 10 mobs, she got 15,000 XP plus 20,100 XP for handing the quest in, totaling roughly 35kxp.

Now, there's not an unlimited supply of these mobs, so it's not like the Shammies can ride around, gather 50 up, and fire away as I roll my face across the keyboard. In fact, there's not nearly enough of them to support the Shamans theoretical kill rate. For the Pally, it's much less of a problem, as always I try and fight the mobs 3 at a time if I can (since she kills 3 mobs about as quickly as she kills 1). About half the time I was able to gather together multiple mobs on either the Shamans or the Paladin, the rest of the time being single mob kills. Given (and I admit here I'm really stretching the detail of my recording of this event) a rough time of around 15 seconds in between fights, this means that both the Shamans and the Paladin kill around, on average, 5 mobs a minute.

At 5 mobs a minute, the Shamans complete the quest in 10 minutes.

The Pally does it in 2.

So, for this particular quest, the Shamans XP/HR rate stands at (40kxp/10)*60 a grand total of 240kxp/hr.

The Paladin runs it in at (35kxp/2)*60, or a staggering 1,050kxp/hr!

In other words, she's 4 and 3/8th's times faster than the 5 Shamans. For this quest, I would have been very nearly no worse off just doing it 5 times over with one Shaman after another.

I'll admit, I've taken an extreme example here - it encompasses the worst of possible quests for 5xShamans, lightning immune mobs, low density and refresh of mobs and a less than stellar drop rate. About the only way to have made it worse would have been to put it underwater. While this is an extreme example to highlight the point I'm trying to make, the figures would be worse for the other primary type of collection quest, the sort where you pick items up off the ground, since you'll have little to no mob XP accumulating at the same time

The point to all this, is that WoW is an MMO, a game that should always, always reward grouping. I have no problem with certain quests not working well for multiboxers, I accept flat out that there will be bosses and some quests that are just impossible for me to do, or so difficult for me to do that it's not worth it for me to do them. I don't ask that WoW be re-designed to cater for us multiboxers specifically either.

What I am so amazed to see however, is how an MMO of all possible games goes so anti-group in it's leveling strategy. I see this time and time again with the rest of my guildmates, most of whom do not multibox, they level alone, for the simple reason that it's faster and less tedious to do so. They group only for group quests (and then only when they need to, as many can be solo'd) or for dungeons.

I really wish Blizzard would wake up to this fact, that as an MMO, WoW should always reward it's players for grouping together at all times, even when grouping together often is specifically required.

[Stealthy]

Ok, you can't take an extreme case of a bad quest and base your argument around that. There are plenty of multiboxing friendly quests as well where a significant advantage is given to multiboxers. Hell, I max out my daily quest limit every day on boxing friendly quests.

Any by the way, I have done the quest you mentioned - the respawn rate on the elementals was fast enough so that I never ran out of them to kill. I just ran a big circuit around the quest area. The previos quest in this chain, where you killed 2 named mobs is boxing friendly, and I guarantee you'll blast through that quest much quicker with your boxing team than you would going solo.

The point I'm trying to make is that yes - there are some collection quests that really suck for a boxer, but the flip side is you'll rip through the boxing friendly quests in a fraction of the time taken compared to soloing.

Let me give you an extreme example on the other side of the fence. In Icecrown, there is a daily quest called Leave Our Mark ('http://www.wowhead.com/?quest=12995'). The quest requires you to kill 15 vykrul and plant a banner in each corpse. Now if you 5 box, you can kill one of the mobs, and macro to use the banner on each toon and you get get an update for each toon. In other words you only need to kill 3 mobs to complete the quest, as you can effectively plant 5 banners in each corpse. 66g15s for less than a minute's work....oh yeah, I'm lovin' that!

Cheers,

S.

[OzPhoenix]

Stealthy,

I completely agree there are some very multiboxing friendly quests around and in fact in my later experience having dinged 80 and started working my way through the Basin and Storm Peaks, I've found those zones to be much less focused on collection quests than the earlier zones.

And I freely admit I picked an extreme example to prove the point I was trying to make which at it's simplest comes down to these two things:

1) Player-Only Drop/Collection quests are anti-group.
2) An MMO should never be anti-group.

Things crunching down on multiboxers I can understand since while it's an allowed form of play, the game is not designed with it in mind. Things hitting groups however just does not make sense. The solution is simple to for the drop ones: change them to be group-based drops.

PS: Thanks for the tip on the Icecrown quest. I'll be sure to put it into practice. :D

[Gadzooks]

As someone who soled most of vanilla and BC, I would say Wrath is....pretty balanced.

Yeah, some of the quests are a pain, but *nothing* like Nagrand - the Basin starts to seem to recreate the Crater and Nagrand, then it redeems itself.

Grizzly Hills was pretty fun - despite the bear flanks quest. Havent had any problems, so far - I was irked by the "chased by the wolven" one, but it turned out to be so much fun, I did'nt mind doing it 3 times - and I'm running into that a LOT - the quest is so much fun, I have a blast doing it 3 times. Others, like the one in Dragonblight where you ride the dragon, irked me at first, until I found out the other two could grab the scythe after one killed the elite and then the boss - and I cheated, I parked two on the road below, headed in on a dragon on the main and killed the elite, and then in the time the boss spawned, ran in the other two and nuked him down.

Oh, wait. The dragon bones in Dragonblight...worst one so far, worse than the zeppelin parts in Hellfire. *shudder*. That one hurt. But, I got a small fortune in worm meat, and got a ton of levels making meat feasts, so it was'nt a complete loss.

I've just developed this method: followers on pass on loot, main is looting and is master looter. When I get a collection quest, I first grab one on the main to see if the item is "quest object", or just a white. If it's just a white, the main loots and distributes. If it's a quest item, then the main scouts for sparklies, and then the followers loot - one at a time. When they're done, the main loots. Yeah, it's a pain, but I just think about the extra cloth and leather and exp from having to kill extra mobs. The only one that caused me problems was the bear flanks in GH, because they were being camped by what seemed like a 100 DKs, and the dragon bones, because they were so few and far between.

The pain in the neck quests are short though, for the most part, and over soon, if you do them, and then it's on to fun ones - or good ones, like the herb gathering for Silverbrook in GH, where all of the party members get credit for picking the roots.

The only thing I don't like, so far, is the forced PvP in Grizzly Hills. Interesting idea, but I havent been paying any attention to PvP gear, and I don't PvP my team, so stepping into the zones on my server is insta-death, and I'm seeing a lot of Horde types loitering waiting for players like me to come along. I was gonna try Wintergrasp when I was 80, and could craft the PvP sets (leather and cloth), but I'm irked a questline requires going into PvP to complete. I'll probably grin and bear it, and sneak in some early morning when nobody is on...I wanna finish up GH, so I have to do it. (Plus, okay, I admit it, I havent put one ounce into thinking *how* to PvP my team...don't know if my builds are even any good for it)


Each zone so far has had a seeming balance of traditional gather quests, a few escort quests, morethan a few info-gathering quests, and then some new types, like the harpoon one in HF, or the "throw the lamp oil at the wolven" one in GH. Or the baby murlocks. Funniest. Quests. Ever. It seems too, that there's more rational reasons *why* you're getting a lot of the gathered stuff this time around. I love the opening quest in SB, where you help *build* the flightpoint! More of that! Or the mule quest in HF. Or the DEHTA quests.

Come to think of it, Wrath has been a blast so far! :)

[OzPhoenix]

Gadzooks,

I'm glad you enjoyed it. Certainly I'm posting from my own personal viewpoint here, and completely respect that others may have differing opinions.

I guess you're Alliance right? The reason I ask is that how you described the zones and quests sounds very different to what I went through, especially Grizzly Hills, which seemed to me to be (outside of the pit) one uninteresting collection quest after another.

As to all party members getting credit, I've found so far, exactly one quest that did that, it was in Borean Tundra, and I can't remember the name. I seriously wonder if the quest is just bugged, since it stands out (on Horde side anyway) singularly for it's group-reward method.

[Gadzooks]

Gadzooks,

I'm glad you enjoyed it. Certainly I'm posting from my own personal viewpoint here, and completely respect that others may have differing opinions.

I guess you're Alliance right? The reason I ask is that how you described the zones and quests sounds very different to what I went through, especially Grizzly Hills, which seemed to me to be (outside of the pit) one uninteresting collection quest after another.

As to all party members getting credit, I've found so far, exactly one quest that did that, it was in Borean Tundra, and I can't remember the name. I seriously wonder if the quest is just bugged, since it stands out (on Horde side anyway) singularly for it's group-reward method.Yup - I have this wierd attraction to Alliance toons. I start Horde toons, but lose interest pretty quickly, dunno why. I'm not one of those "I hate the Horde!" jerks, either. I'm thinking of making a 3-DK team, and this time, go Horde, though, I like the look of DK Blood Elves. :)

I understand where you're coming from, though - I experienced the pain of collection quests in vanilla and BC, leveling.

I think the key is, Blizzard allows us to multi-box, and supports us doing it when attacked, but I don't think they consider us at all when designing quests and instances and abilities/buffs. Like it's been discussed, the leveling mechanics are designed primarily for solo players (or so it seems), with some regard for groups, but the issues have been there since release of vanilla - I distinctly remember grouping with friends in my old guild, and the "Are you done yet?" comments in vent on collection quests - but they were more bearable then, because we'd entertain each other while doing them. :)

Some things, you have to grin and bear it, I guess. And you are absolutely entitled to an opinion - I would'nt bother writing here if people's opinions were'nt respected - this community is a shiny gem of equality in a morass of snob forums and the insanity and uselessness of the WoW forums. :) There are some genuinely talented and intelligent people here, I may not post much, but this forum makes the difference between sucking it up and trying again when I fail at something, and hitting "cancel" when the jerks in the game and the WoW forums get to me.

My New Year's Resolution this year is to stop going to the WoW forums completely, and hang out here more. :)

[Owltoid]

I modified my macros/script and am now using a leaderless setup. Collection quests are about 1/10 of the pain in the butt they were before. Now I just collect with Owltoid until done, hit F1 which switches my main screen to another druid and then collect with that druid until done. Since I'm only 3 boxing I do it one more time and the quest is complete.

Although I have to collect three times the amount of items than a solo player, the fact that I almost never die, can AoE the whole area down with treants and starfall, and cruise through kill quests extraordinarly quick, all in all my questing time is less than a solo. Between level 70 to 71.5 I have earned 2.5k gold through questing (quest rewards, selling unusable items, vendoring everything else).

It does get boring to constantly quest, but using a leaderless setup makes it much, much easier.

[bhec7715]

I farmed trash to use my rested, did grizzly dailies, and skipped collection quests. The grizzly dailies are invaluable as 7 of them can be done in moments. 70-75 pretty much killed me, but now that I do the grizzly dailies I am sailing along nicely.

[pinotnoir]

Ok, you can't take an extreme case of a bad quest and base your argument around that. There are plenty of multiboxing friendly quests as well where a significant advantage is given to multiboxers. Hell, I max out my daily quest limit every day on boxing friendly quests.

Any by the way, I have done the quest you mentioned - the respawn rate on the elementals was fast enough so that I never ran out of them to kill. I just ran a big circuit around the quest area. The previos quest in this chain, where you killed 2 named mobs is boxing friendly, and I guarantee you'll blast through that quest much quicker with your boxing team than you would going solo.

The point I'm trying to make is that yes - there are some collection quests that really suck for a boxer, but the flip side is you'll rip through the boxing friendly quests in a fraction of the time taken compared to soloing.

Let me give you an extreme example on the other side of the fence. In Icecrown, there is a daily quest called Leave Our Mark ('http://www.wowhead.com/?quest=12995'). The quest requires you to kill 15 vykrul and plant a banner in each corpse. Now if you 5 box, you can kill one of the mobs, and macro to use the banner on each toon and you get get an update for each toon. In other words you only need to kill 3 mobs to complete the quest, as you can effectively plant 5 banners in each corpse. 66g15s for less than a minute's work....oh yeah, I'm lovin' that!

Cheers,

S.

I dont even bother doing that steathy. What I do is just fly into that area where all the mobs are dueling and gather up a ton on my mount. Once I have a bunch I just 5x thunderstorm then start planting banners and looting. It usually kills 15 or more so I dont have to make sure all my toons target the dead mob for the banners. One guy just puts banners down first then I loot. After that I move to shoot em up. For that I just put all 5 of my guys in a gun and spam the button when dragons fly by. I have not done my quest in awhile been too busy. Those ebon faction dailys are very nice. I am half way to exalted just doing that stuff.

[Catamer]

I have 17 level 70's and enjoyed leveling all of them. But to be honest, I dread leveling another team to 80.
I literally have no desire to do all of those collections and the anti-team quests ever again.

I call them anti-team quests because only one person at a time can mount so you HAVE to do it 5x.
I've even saw a kill quest that required me to kill 5x. ( throwing snow balls or killing on the battle field )
I've hated every one of the anti-team mounts.
How about that flying carpet.... I was so excited until I got on it. I was yelling **** like a sailor. I can't believe I bothered getting the mats for it.
then how about flying or riding around anywhere... you loose your team all the time.

I can see how a solo player wouldn't have noticed the difference and maybe if I was a solo player I might have thought they were kind of cool.
WoLK has broken my spirit for the game... I'm trying my best to enjoy my main team only because I doubt I'll bring up the rest unless they fix about 80% of this junk.

[BGuru]

I had to quit WoW I'm playing LOTRO now it is a shame really since I looked forward to WoTLK so much. Maybe I'll come back to WoW in 3-6 months after I forget how much leveling sucked for me, I only got to 74.

[Lyonheart]

I LOVE WOTLK !!!!!!!