Hi! A COMPLETELY new player here who is enjoying retail WoW when I came across the “Adventure Calls” quest. My question is this: if I want to experience the story of WoW to the fullest, should I:
Choose Outland
Choose Northrend
Follow the rest of the questline without doing neither above
My preference is that I do not really care about completing all quests, so I prefer doing thing where I can fully experience the story throughout my leveling process. My consideration is that since lvl 60 was the level cap of classic WoW anyway, should I just go to Outland to repeat the experience of veteran players when TBC came out, or should I just do all quest available around Kalimdor, then heads to Outland/Northrend when I have finished all of the quests in Kalimdor?
I personally feel that the zone storylines are more cohesive and complete in Northrend over Outland, but it’s entirely personal preference. Unfortunately, (…actually about the only time i’ll say this about speed leveling is in the context of a completely new player) with the current XP buff, either one that you choose will have you outleveling the content before you can even come close to experiencing the entire package.
The way leveling works right now is:
1-60: Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor
60-80: Outland or Northrend (Burning Crusade or Wrath of the Lich King)
80-90: Cataclysm or Pandaria (Cataclysm or Mists of Pandaria)
90-100: Draenor (Warlords of Draenor)
100-110: Broken Isles (Legion)
110-120: Kul Tiras and Zandalar (Battle for Azeroth)
If you want to keep leveling, you are required to pick one of the new zones every time it is available to you, otherwise you’ll outlevel the areas and start to see diminishing returns on your experience gains. This can lead to a broken overall picture for a new player, but it’s what we have right now. Shadowlands will remedy this in a large way by allowing you to experience one expansion’s content completely while leveling if you choose to. But for now, if you want to see the leveling story of a zone to completion there is no harm in doing so, just know that your xp rates will be drastically reduced after a certain amount of time.
It’s almost impossible to do all the zones associated with a particular expansion on one character without halting XP on that character. Particularly at this time with the 100% xp buff.
Even without the buff, you will soon massively outlevel the expansion and your enjoyment will diminish as the content becomes trivial.
It’s not a matter of the vanilla breadcrumb quest not supplying a story experience, they do, but if you are 10-15 levels above the content, the story becomes trivial.
Personally, I would go to Outland at 60 and do 2-3 zones there until I hit 65 and then head for WotLK for level 66-70. On the next toon I level, I would do different zones in those two expansions.
About these “outlevel” thingy, I thought every zone has “rescaling” method since Legion? So whenever I go, the level will follow me regardless?
I am planning to do both TBC and WOTLK for the story, because I heard the story in the Cataclysm expansion and afterwards is not notable enough. I do not really care for experience gains that become trivial as I outlevel, because I really want to experience WoW lore. I guess that is possible?
Finally, say I activate the “Adventure Calls” and choose to go to Outland, can I start the questline in the Northrend afterwards? If so, is it through the “Adventure Calls” too?
Thanks in advance and sorry for all these questions. I am a complete newb and this game is HUGE (in terms of both size AND depth)
Mob scaling only goes to a certain point, it’s not absolute. Mobs will only scale to the max level for that content, so EK/Kalimdor non-Cataclysm zones the mobs scale up to 60. Outlands and Northrend mobs scale to 80, and so forth. Once you’ve passed the “maximum” level for the content, mobs will not continue to scale with you.
Yes and no. You’ll need to interact with a Warchief’s Command board in Orgrimmar in order to pick up the breadcrumb quest “Warchief’s Command: Borean Tundra”. You may have to flip through several available quests in order to locate it.
Just be aware that questing in zones that are lower than your play level, you will receive exponentially less xp for completion the more your level exceeds the quest level.
After such consideration, I will do Northrend, then maybe Outland, then I will see what I will do next after that. If any of you still have any tips for me, feel free to give me some! Don’t want to be discouraged to play either, afterall.
Each expansion has an overarching story line that is more or less supported by the story lines found in individual zones.
Raids at the end of an expansion tend to complete the story line for the expansion however, older expansions just don’t have the numbers of raiding players that the most recent expansion will have.
Most players wait until they are about 10 levels above an old expansion and then return to it just to solo the raids they may not have done yet.
The WoW world is huge and the game is not something you finish and “win”. There’s always something else to do or some other facet of the game you may want to try out like PvP, mount/pet collecting, etc.
IMHO, concentrate on doing things you enjoy first and don’t worry too much about seeing all the zone content on one toon.
Agreed, I also just saw about Shadowlands level squishing. Might just enjoy the content later after it rolled out, since pretty sure all people repeat some expansions, such as WotLK and TBC. Thanks!
IMO the best option is level multiple characters so you can see all the zones without losing any exp. You can level them simultaneously as well rotating for rested exp. This 100% exp buff until 4/20 is too good. Almost everyone has multiple characters. I’ll have all classes at 120 in two days.
I found pet classes, like Warlock or BM hunter to be good alt classes to play if I was going to be subject to interrupted game sessions.
Could either tab out or kill the game without needing to get to a particularly safe place as the pet could cover my back against some random mob coming along and killing me while inactive.