Leveling chronologically

Community General Discussion
1

I’m gonna do it.
To get the full breadth of the story you’ve gotta go Draenei or Blood elf - storywise they start before the cataclysm. Once I’m done with their zones, going straight to BC Chromie time and completing every quest and rep intro. Gonna keep doing them for exalted, and basically kit myself out in whatever gear I can acquire from the expac.

Is this silly? Yes. Do I want to go on an adventure? Also yes.
Basically I’m gonna do that for each expansion until I’m caught up, now that I’ve gotten through Embers of Neltharion.

3 Likes
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Sounds painful. Good luck and have fun.

6 Likes
3

You might have to lock xp at 60, otherwise you’ll find that stuff becomes too easy.

4

If you try to lock XP at 60 you’ll get pulled out of Chromie Time and forced into DF. I believe you get the breadcrumb quest at 58 so you’ll have to lock before then. Otherwise you’ll get pulled out of Chromie Time when you go back to Orgrimmar/Stormwind.

5

Sounds fun, enjoy!

6

You misspelled T R O L L.
wiggles toes

7

Sounds fun.

If you want the full story you can even level to 60 and do all the quests in classic era first then go to TBC.

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8

Do it!!! It’s honestly incredibly fun, and - if you take your time with it - very relaxing, I’ve found. My SV hunter is actually a retail mirror from the semi-HC hunter I made on Classic era (who has since been downgraded to softcore), and I decided on him that I’d go through every expansion story and quest as chronologically as possible, to get the full experience of Warcraft’s story across the years. I’m also still leveling him off and on in Classic, so I have that experience as well and have simply started him in Cata on retail. I’ve got different tiers of level lock I do per expansion, to try and mostly keep some level of ‘difficulty’ to the open world (because SV hunter is way too fun to just one-shot everything).

Disagree, but that’s okay! Honestly, just play what would make the most sense from that period of time and go forward with it. I picked Night Elf, personally.

I don’t know how you feel about Classic (I personally love it, very chill experience), but if you truly want the full breadth of the experience without all the wonky-ness that Cata era introduced in terms of timewalking and environmental change, I’d really recommend rolling an alt on Classic or WotLK Classic era, then move to retail once you’ve finished there.

Not silly at all, imo. It’s genuinely been one of my favorite ways to enjoy Warcraft; I just have too many alts I like to play, and my hunter is kind of my “relax and vibe” character. I like to log on him when I’m in a very specific mood to read story stuff while still being “chilled out” and brain off, if that makes sense!

But the idea isn’t silly at all, and I genuinely think you’ll have the most fun with Warcraft that way!

It is the adventure of a lifetime.

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9

I did that on this character a couple years ago.

I did all the EK and Kalimdor zones first (including racial starting zones).

Then BC, then Northrend, Cata, etc, all the way to SL.

Was a lot of fun. I even tried to level professions while doing it (though I had mixed results there). Good luck, and bonus points for doing it all in Chromie time.

2 Likes
10

The removal of the MoP cloak and WoD ring questlines makes this impossible to do decently and is yet another reason those storylines should be placed back into the game.

In addition, I would love to see a classic phase placed in the game for the pre-Cataclysm Azeroth zones.

It’s impossible to go back and truly start from scratch to experience the whole story. It’s a shame. I hope Blizzard considers fixing that.

2 Likes
11

To do this right, you need to do it twice: once for each faction.

That’s how I did things when I started playing, back in Wrath. I had a “main” for each faction, and would level them up a couple of zones on one, switch over, do a couple of zones, rinse and repeat.

That way you get the whole story from BOTH perspectives!

It takes way, way longer, of course, but if you are going to do something like this, bite the bullet and do it right.

Good luck and have fun!

/moo :cow:

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12

you can’t lock xp at 60.

It is not possible to turn off experience gains for characters that are level 60 or above.

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13

Hmm then 59. I knew about chromie time, didn’t know lock xp also had that restriction.

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14

This is only until the patch on tuesday. in 10.1.5 it changes to 61 so you can park your character at 60 if you turn off xp.

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15

Totally fair! I may have misphrased that - if you wanna get everything you have to play everything - I just feel like going from Bloodmyst or the Ghostlands to Hellfire Peninsula is as about as cohesive as retail can get right now. I’m aiming to start as far back as I can and move forward from there, and BC is unfortunately the earliest content retail has.

2 Likes
16

Huh, well maybe it isn’t working on the PTR then. I just dinged 60 and was immediately pulled out of Chromie Time. I didn’t get the breadcrumb quest until 60 so I suppose I could have locked XP at 59 instead of 57.

I just went back to Orgrimmar and found that you have to talk to Chromie again to be put back into Chromie Time. However you can’t lock experience anymore. The NPC does not give you the option at level 60. Experience gains appear to be trivial now so it will take longer to level, but unless it’s not working on the PTR you can’t stay at 60 in Chromie Time forever.

1 Like