Hate to say it...

[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. =)