Reasonable discussion about Northrend Leveling

[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]

[quote='Hachoo',index.php?page=Thread&postID=159529 #post159529]Not sure how "pass on loot" would be any better than this method and if anything I'd say its a bit worse...[/quote]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

[quote]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. [/quote]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 [url='http://www.wowwiki.com/Formulas:Mob_XP#Group_Experience']wowwiki[/url]

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.