As a new player how long does it take to reach max level from beginning to end?
Looking for a rough idea of number of hours or if easier, how long it would roughly take if one played an hour or two a day.
Can you recommend a “how to level” guide and/or video?
Lastly, is there anything I should do along the way while leveling that will be of importance once I reach max level?
Thanks in advance
Search you tube for “WoW leveling guide” “WoW new player” “WoW tips”. There are plenty of good guides. same with google written guides. I would definitely read the icy veins paladin class guides. I would also watch the paladin class guides on you tube for each spec, protection, holy, and retribution.
There is no way to know how many hours it will take you. A player running there 5th alt can probably do it 2X faster than you. I would take your time and enjoy the ride. If i had to guess, I think it would be like 120-150 hours or more the first time. This would depend how you leveled too. If you spammed dungeons non stop on a tank or healer spec it would be faster.
I would start mixing in dungeons with questing at level 15. Learn to play all three specs on your class. As a holy healer or protection tank, you will have near instant dugeon queues and never wait longer than a minute.
There are so many ways to level questing, dungeons, pvp battlegrounds. you can also go through different zones on alt characters. There is nothing important that you need to do before getting to BFA 110-120. Just enjoy your ride.
Keep in mind the game gets better as you go with better graphics, sound, flying, etc. Also more skills. Your currently playing in 15 year old zones. BFA is highly populated in the 110-120 zones.
Lastly, if your not on Stormrage or Sargeras, the two largest highest pop Alliance servers, I would start over now. Its a long life, and these servers have more guilds, more chat, more people in town and zones, faster leveling, etc.
I would definitely download and install the popular ELVUI add on, the most important game changer IMO. It’s highly customizable and replaces the default UI. google ELVUI download, the Tukai site. Copy the folders to your wow/retail/interface/addons folder. It will activate the addon next time you log in.
Dalaran’s fine, it’s another high-pop realm and you’ll find just as many guilds, but it’s also developed a community that’s more catered to new players. A couple of the forum regulars have characters there and can offer more insight.
The default UI is also fine while you’re learning the game. If you want to change it later you can, but there’s no need to do it immediately. Get used to the game first, then you’ll have a better idea of how you want to modify it.
Something that’s strongly recommended is to not queue as tank or healer unless you want and intend to do that role. Using them just for faster queues is bad dungeon etiquette and doesn’t help anyone. Normally questing while queued for a dungeon works well enough, just make sure when the queue pops that you move your character to a safe spot before joining the group, because you’ll return to that spot when you leave the dungeon and you don’t want it to be right in the middle of a bunch of enemies.
The Darkmoon Faire runs the first full week of each month starting on the first Sunday. You can head there on a regular basis to ride the carousel, which grants a 10% EXP buff for an hour. First time you go, you can also do a “go to the fair” quest that rewards some prize tickets you can use to buy a 16-slot bag.
As a brand new player with no external xp boosts (heirlooms or xp potions), combining quests and dungeons after reaching level 16, and assuming that every logout is done in a “rested” area (inn or major city)?
Probably about 60-80 hours /played to reach max level? For a first playthrough of the game, I really don’t recommend any guide - just follow the quest chains as you get them.
If you really want a guide, however, I would recommend the addons “Wholly” and “Grail” (two separate addons which function together, so you’ll need both).
There’s not really anything that you do while leveling that will have relevance at max level, and anything you skip, you can always go back and do later.
I do not recommend downloading a UI addon (such as ElvUI) unless you really dislike the default UI. There is nothing wrong with the base UI for a new player, and if you decide later on that you want something different, then you can make a change at that point.
Also, for any addon downloads, I strongly recommend picking up the Twitch desktop client if you don’t already have it. It makes the entire process much easier (and safer) than downloading from random internet links.
The ELVUI default with no customizing is 10X better than the WoW default, and it would make him a much better player. Wow UI player and target frames in the upper left corner? terrrible! Tiny circle minimap? terrible! Hot bars stuck at the bottom edge of the screen? terrrible!
It takes literally 1 minute to put ELVUI in the folders, log in and check it out. He could always disable the addon or remove the folders anytime, and it would revert back to WoW UI. Telling a new player to avoid the best UI add on the game is sad. I would never play on the default UI again, and I would quit if i had to.
Nok mentioned dont queue as a tank or healer if you dont want to play those roles. If you only want to dps, I would not play a paladin because you will be stuck with ONE spec for your entire life. The more specs you play, the more variety, the more nerf protection, the less chance of bordom.
The pure dps classes with three dps specs each are hunter, mage, lock, and rogue. There are also a bunch of classes with two dps specs like warrior, death knight, shaman, druid, and maybe others
This is literally your personal opinion.
I’ll reiterate: there is nothing wrong with the default UI. Everything you mentioned is a personal preference issue. The minimap size is fine and out of the way. Likewise the hotbars are in a perfectly reasonable location (and if you have an issue with them being out of the way like that, you’ve got bigger problems than the UI). Player and target frames can be unlocked and moved without an addon.
Honestly with these specific complaints, I can’t even imagine how you even play the game, since you seem to want everything huge and in the middle of your screen.
Changing any of these things will not make anyone a “better player”. Your UI does not have that much of an impact on whether you are a “good” or “bad” player.
There are like a hundred other things you can customize and add on ELVUI that you cant on the default. Its obvious you never tried it., one of the most popular UI addons in the game.
The ELVUI mini map is also in the upper right, but you can make it as big as you want and its square so it fits in the corner. Mine is like 3x bigger than the default WoW mini map and it helps with evertything.
Tried it once. Hated it. Went back to the default and never looked back.
How many years ago? lol. The WoW default UI sucks and thats not personal preference it’s common knowledge. Go make a thread in the General discussion asking if you use the default WoW UI with no addons. you won’t get hardly any that say they do.
Back in… MoP, I think? It’s been awhile, and I’ve had no good reason to reconsider because there is nothing wrong with the default.
The WoW default UI does not “suck”. That is still your personal opinion. The default UI is perfectly functional. General Discussion is hardly a litmus test for mass opinions. If that’s where you’re getting your data, I’m afraid it’s hugely skewed.
That said, we’re derailing this thread with this conversation, so we should probably leave it alone.
A follow up question or two re leveling.
The suggestion was made to simply follow the quest chains. I noticed that areas seem to have quests marked by question marks (I assume those are main quests) and some with exclamation marks (side quests?)
Do you recommend doing all quests in an area or just the “question mark” quests?
Also, I come from LOTRO. In that game multiple areas cover the same levels in a number of spots. Is WOW the same? Will the quest chains take me to the best areas to level?
Lastly, the suggestion was to mix in dungeons around level 15-16 (and I’ve noted the suggestion to only que for class roles I have practice with).
How are dungeons located/entered? Is that somewhere in my character UI?
The question marks are guys you turn in quests for rewards after you finish them. Exclamation are quests you didn’t pick up yet.
Hit the “I” key and it brings up the instance finder. Click on dungeon finder and queue for a random dungeon so you get the bonus. You will be matched with other random players.
An NPC marked with a ? over their head (and on the map) indicates a quest that is ready to turn in. Yellow and orange quests can only be completed once per character, but blue quests are “repeatable” quests which can be completed multiple times on the same character.
I usually clear each quest hub before moving on to the next, but that’s personal preference. You can choose whether you want to do all quests for a single hub or not.
WoW is similar, but in a different way. In WoW, zones will scale (within a range) to your current level. The ranges are:
Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor zones (except Mount Hyjal, Twilight Highlands, and Uldum) - scale between 1-60.
Outlands and Northrend zones - scale between 60-80
Cataclysm and Pandaria zones (including Mount Hyjal, Twilight Highlands, and Uldum on the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor continents) - scale from 80-90
Draenor zones - scale from 90-100
Legion zones - scale from 100-110
Battle for Azeroth zones - scale from 110-120
The quest chains will lead you from hub to hub and zone to zone within each of these ranges. When you reach a level appropriate to advance to the next expansion-worth of content, there will be a quest that pops up, either upon reaching that level, or the next time you go to Stormwind City.
Upon reaching level 16, you will unlock the dungeon finder. This will appear as a green eyeball on your UI, or can be opened using the default keybind “i”. Through this, you can choose either to queue for a random dungeon, or select a specific dungeon you wish to attempt.
re Realm selection.
Two suggestions were made. One to move to one of the highest population realms and a second to stay on Dalaran as a high population server which has a reputation of being friendly to new players such as myself.
Any additional thoughts, I am not sure how to look at this?
If the Worldofwargraph numbers have relevance than my current realm is ranked #31 overall (I set this account up a few years back and have no recollection how I ended up on this realm).
How does WOW handle mobs that multiple players hit. Do all players receive XP and loot or is it more of a competition?
Thanks again.
Realm population is only really important if you want to find a guild or are interested in world PvP. All instanced content (dungeons, raids, arenas, and battlegrounds) is 100% cross-server within your region. Dalaran is a fine server to be on while you’re leveling, and if you find at a later point in time that you want to join a guild on a different server, you can always either make a new character on that server, or transfer an existing one there (for $25).
WoW has a “multi-tag” system. Normal mobs can be tagged by up to 5 unique players of the same faction not in a party, or by all players in a party. If you are solo and tag a mob that someone else in the same faction has also tagged, you will receive xp based on your level, and a personal loot table drop from that tag. If you are in a party, the xp you gain will only be negatively affected if someone in your party is 10(?) or more levels higher than you.
If someone of the opposite faction tags a normal mob before you do, the mob’s target frame health bar will turn gray, meaning you will get no xp or loot from it, even if you assist with the kill.
Mobs with a silver dragon around their target frame, however, have special rules. These are “rare” mobs, which have unique loot tables and give higher amounts of xp. Rare mobs like this have no tag cap, and are not restricted by faction.
Mobs with a gold dragon around their target frame are “elite” mobs. While they have no tag cap, they are still restricted by faction. Killing them does not give unique loot or more xp.
So first you tell him realm population is only important for instances and world pvp. What about the number of players on the zone’s snd cities so it feels more like an mmo? What about city, trade, and zone chat? What about questing speed? Stormrage has almost twice as many alliance players compared to Dalaran so it would be objectively faster for world quests. Dalaran is pretty big though so it’s not bad or anything.
There are hundreds of thousands of players and it’s not possible to identify a “noobie friendly” server. It’s just an average of thousands of people some are nice and some not just like in the real world.
Then you tell him that up to 5 people can tag a mob and get credit. This is one of the reasons why I mentioned leveling speed when I said to pick stormrage or sargeras. The more people attacking mobs the faster you level and world quest. You can just hit each mob once and get credit.
In the end game, you spend most of your time in the zone’s doing world quests and the more people the faster you get them done. You can also easily kill elites and world bosses if there is more people around.
CRZ and sharding makes these completely irrelevant. Even on my server (Sargeras), while hubs tend to have a good number of people simply standing around, out in the world I rarely see anyone - and that’s mostly in current content zones where you’d expect to see more people.
What about questing speed? I’m not encouraging him to rush through the game, I’m giving him the information he needs to play the game at a low level. He’s a brand new player under level 20. World quests aren’t even a thing until level 110, and honestly even those don’t take that long to complete solo, for the most part. Regardless, he’s at a point in the game where the majority of his play is going to be solo, and he’s not going to see a lot of other people doing the same quests as him, even on a higher population realm.
I also never suggest Stormrage for new players, as it has a long history of very toxic behavior and poor treatment of new players, and honestly Sargeras is only slightly better.
This is just terrible etiquette. If you tag a mob, you had better be helping to kill it, not running off and letting whoever else attacked it do the majority of the work.
False, false, and false.
Some people spend the majority of their end game time doing WQs. Others, such as myself, target specific WQs, solo them in just a few minutes, and ignore the rest. I also have no trouble killing most elites solo or with the assistance of whatever random players show up to also complete the same quest as me. World bosses, it’s always quite simple to open the group finder and get into a raid party for - again, not something you need a high population server to do.
My main point was that whether or not you’re doing it for shorter queue times, if you’re going to queue as tank or healer, do it because you’ll be tanking or healing.
Definitely try any class that looks interesting, and if you want to tank or heal, try that out too, you might like how it’s done with one class more than another. Low levels are a good time to jump in since the dungeons are easier. You can browse the Dungeon Journal (shift+J) beforehand to get some basic boss info.
Regarding Dalaran, it was designated as a “New Player” server a while back in order to attract more players and increase the population. However, they didn’t change the designation even when the server became one of the largest, so it continued gaining new players, and that’s why it’s had a higher concentration of individuals and guilds who are more welcoming to newcomers, including for endgame activities like raiding.
That site shows how many players have killed at least one boss in the current raid on Mythic difficulty. For perspective, that’s 3000-5000 players out of over half a million. Every server has guilds that push the hardest content, and if that’s what you want to do eventually, you’ll have no trouble finding people to do it with.
You can also look at realmpop.com to see a rough overall population and faction balance.
Unless you are on an RP realm, realm only really matters for Mythic raiding. (As Mythic raids are locked to realm-only groups until 100 guilds on both Alliance and Horde have cleared the raid.)
For all other content, you can do it in cross realm groups. For stuff out in the world, the game already mixes people together from different realms, so individual realm population (and faction balance) don’t really matter. (On RP servers, non-current content is not automatically cross-realm, so older zones on those realms are a lot quieter. Players on RP realms can still cross-realm group with players on normal realms.)
Larger realms will have more guilds to choose from as they have more players, but you don’t need the biggest to have lots of options. Looking at the data from realmpom.com, Dalaran has the 4ths largest alliance population, so should have lots and lots of options.
As a matter of perspective, even on one of the lowest pop realms (Earthen Ring) I have no issues finding others around me to do stuff with in current content. (It’s an RP server, so a lot of the older zones are ghost towns.) The Alliance pop of Dalaran is like 3x that of both Horde and Alliance combined on Earthen Ring.
Thank you for the realm info and the realmpro link.
One item I don’t understand after looking at the realmpro info is how does the choice of an alliance vs horde race effect your experience.
Most of the more populated servers are heavily weighted towards alliance or horde.
Why is this so? Does this affect any type of game play such as world PVP - is it realm vs realm?
Do both alliance and realm level in the same regions or are they kept separate?
Thanks again.