Explaining how to unlock Chromie-time, and a few other stuff about it.
A lot of new or returning players just wander off questing wherever and then wonder why they’re not getting XP. It’s because they are questing in old zones without Chromie Time.
Chromie-time is a new feature (added in the Shadowlans pre-expansion patch) that allows players to level from 10 to 50 in a single expansion content (such as Wrath of the Lich King or Warlords of Draenor) and get full XP all the way through. BUT that feature has to be unlocked.
To unlock it, this is what you need on your ACCOUNT.
Finish the Exile’s Reach questline.
Have ONE toon at level 50 or higher
and
You must complete the introductory Battle for Azeroth questline up through “A Nation Divided” for Alliance or “Speaker of the Horde” for Horde.
You can’t use it once your character is 50 BUT your alts who are lower, can, once you meet the prerequisites on one character.
Technically, you CAN quest where you want on your brand new toon, but unless you know what you are doing, you can run into quests that give less and less XP. That’s because, without Chromie Time, zones only scale up to a certain level. Right now, Battle for Azeroth is the only one (the default that Blizzard pushes newcomers into) that will allow you to get FULL XP from 10 to 50 without Chromie Time.
Also, if you do NOT choose Chromie-time, the default dungeons you see on your Group Finder will be BfA dungeons while leveling from 10 to 50. If you are using Chromie-time, you will see the dungeons of your chosen expansion in the Group Finder dungeon section.
The scaling WITHOUT Chromie time is
- Vanilla / Cata zones (Eastern Kingdom and Kalimdor) - 10 to 35 (10 to 30 for the redone Vanilla zones and 30 to 35 for NEW zones added during Cataclysm).
- The Burning Crusade (Outland) 10 to 30
- Wrath of the Lich King (Northrend) 10 to 30
- Mists of Pandaria (Pandaria) 10 to 35
- Warlords of Draenor (Alternate Draenor) 10 to 40
- Legion (Broken Isles) 10 to 46.
If you absolutely hate BfA and don’t care about Chromie-time there are certainly ways you can do what you want, moving around, going to dungeons and finding groups using Premade → Custom, maybe working with guildies to get things done.