I am playing through WOW for the first time and really enjoying it. Got a SO to play with me and we’ve been at it for about two months or so. We’re early on in Burning Crusade content, but I am, uh, already close to leveling out of it. Currently Level 78 and I am just in Nagrand.
I am enjoying the crafting and reputation-getting and the stories and the quests and all that. I kind of don’t want to miss out on dungeons (I’m guessing you can’t get in the random dungeon queue once you get past 80). Should I go ahead and pause leveling until I finish Outland? Or is that weird? Will I fall behind and regret it later?
I mean, if you want to complete the content at that level, go for it and halt your XP. But you can always finish up leveling your toon and head back when you’re max level, to finish the story there.
You won’t fall behind if you freeze XP. The way things are currently set up , you’re expected to be at level 80 when you leave Outland and go to one of the 80-90 expansions (either Cataclysm or Pandaria). So I’d go ahead & level up to 80 and then freeze XP until you’re done with Outlands.
I’ve been doing this in pursuit of the loremaster and 100 rep achievements. Just seems silly to me to go back to lvl 80 content at max level and 1 shot everything. Some people prefer that, to me it just seems dull.
If you and your group wish to stick in the same LFD bracket (which for Burning Crusade / Wrath of the Lich King stops at 80), you would want to stop your XP @ 80.
You won’t earn new XP from content you do at that point, but you’ll still be able to work with your group in dungeons/questing until they’ve caught up and all are ready to move onto the next bracket (Cataclysm / Mists of Pandaria, 80-90).
You can of course always choose to do them later at a higher level, the only thing you’ll miss will be having the ability to queue for the dungeons (or raids @ 85 and 90) and will have to run to those on foot.
Grouping with others would be the main reason or experiencing content at a level it was intended for.
No shame in turning off XP for a few to achieve those goals then toggle it back on when moving onto the next bracket.
Also worth noting at level 80 is the Herald of the Titans achievement, which requires defeating Algalon the Observer in the Ulduar raid while using specific gear (currently nothing above ilevel 100). There’s usually someone setting up groups for it, and they tend to expect group members to be raid-ready with suitable gear, gems, enchants, and consumables. If you ever decide to get that achievement, you’ll have to freeze your EXP at 80 and farm some gear – it’s Wrath content though rather than BC, so you might consider doing so with a character you took through Northrend instead of Outland.
Lots of players stop their EXP at the old level caps to explore that content before moving on. It’s not weird at all. Main thing to keep in mind is that endgame content is meant to keep people occupied for a while and you can easily spend several weeks with it, so you’ll need to decide how important is it to you to get to 120 with that particular character.
Some people just get to the level cap and go back to see what they skipped when they’re bored of the current stuff, which makes it easier to solo the older dungeons and raids at your own pace and makes the grinds a bit less tedious, albeit trivialized.
Some people aren’t in any hurry to do the current endgame content, and they’re okay with taking however long it’ll take to see everything the first time, or at least figuring out what they want to do at that level and what they’d rather save for soloing later. Group content still requires finding a group to join or a high level player to follow.
And some people use one or more characters for current endgame, and other characters for exploring older content. There’s so much to see that it’s perfectly reasonable to make multiple characters.