I think this is true. You had to group up for a lot of vanilla quests because the mobs were elite so what the rush to 60 crowd did, not having anyone to group with, was to find a bunch of mobs their level and grind them. And I wouldn't be surprised if Blizz increased the amount of xp you get from quests at some point too.
Well, now what?
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Aaron
Goonsquad Officer
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Back in vanilla many people ground (grinded?) to 60, but as time passed and people analized the fastest way people learned that the a mix of questing and grinding was best. I remember leveling my second char from 1-60 via a guide, and most levels had some grinding built in to the plan, although usually not a lot. The good thing about Vanilla was that there were not a lot of linear, branching quests so when you got to a quest hub you could pick and choose. The guides would tell you which ones to take and which to skip (cos they took too long, etc). This remained basically the same through to Wrath, although they did lower the XP required to complete old parts of the game a few times.
With Cata they revamped the whole thing with the exception of BC and Wrath content (although XP required to complete those lvls was reduced). Questing was the fastest path, and 1-60 can be done very quickly now compared to vanilla. I don't have any stats, but I'd say leveling my Pala in Cata to 60 probably took me less than half the time it took my second char during vanilla (a hunter). The big problem with Cata was that the quests became linear and branched out. For example, it's not uncommon to come to a quest hub and have one quest giver with one quest. When you hand this in you get 3-4 quests from multiple quest givers, you complete these all at the same time and continue to the next tier. As usually the quests all are done in the same place (q1: kill this mob; q2 collect these items that drop from q1's mob; q3 pick up shit on the ground where q1's mob roams). This can be good, but it means if there is a hard or boring quest it almost can't be skipped, or else you can't do a whole shit ton of other quests further down the branch.
Yeah. He has a PhD in psychology. Dude was always dropping nuggets of insight.
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The eye candy only matters for the first 5 minutes. It can be the best-looking game in the world, but if the gaming part of the game sucks, the graphics won't redeem it for long.
Caliane
Avatar of War Slayer
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I was mostly just commenting on it. seems what people say, and what people want are two different things.
Remember, back during early GW2 bwe, I was commenting how I felt the hearts, and 100% completion was a bad idea?
People kept saying over and over they "completed a zone" specifically queensdale and were only level 15 or something. I don't think I've ever left queensdale under level 19. But thats it, many dynamic events are not marked. Or if you don't know where to be, when and where. there is no heart or poi near many of them. The ghost in the Queensdale graveyard, that spawns at night. the windmill entrance to the bandit mine. The bandit waterfall, by the dam? The wolves cave chest? The troll /threaten door? The beast in the lake? the slime tunnel.
GW2 I think the map complete was a terrible idea. having this false checklist of completion, when 60%(or more) of the content is not on that checklist was a huge mistake.
I mean everyone knows about the etten stew skill point because its marked. but the ghost, or baby moa? less so.
the lack of maps in a game is about improving pacing and creating a more effective fantasy world. trying to convince someone of its value is like trying to explain the point of character development in a movie.
I liked how old rpg's would have in game maps that were poorly drawn, had missing information, or were flat out incorrect.
Nothing like running into a dungeon all happy like "aha, I got the map!!11!" then 20 minutes later figuring out that the map is complete bull shit and you're lost.
I guess we remember vanilla WoW differently, because most of the people I know quested/dungeonpwned for it back in the day. Me especially because being a hunter ussually paired up with another hunter we could do the tougher elite quests easy.
Convo
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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I think you do b/c I remember vividly solo grinding to 60 and I know a bunch of others who did the same. Looking back, that was a mistake on my part but it's not like WoW offered a ton of group content either IRC.
For what its worth I am talking like the first 2 weeks to a month or so after it went live. I have no idea what went on after that. I would believe as time went on grouping / questing got better.
kitsune
Golden Knight of the Realm
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Don't forget that a lot of the quests at higher levels were quite damn grind intensive. Remember Tirion Fordrings questline? First 3 quests:
Kill 30 Bats
Collect 15 worm asses
Kill 20-30 dogs
and then it just progressed in the same sense. I'm fairly sure that no one strictly grinded, there were a lot of quests that were worth doing, but overall you didn't quest ONLY. I know for a fact that the best way to level 35-43 or so was by grinding rock elementals in badlands (especially for shadow priests) - unless you take into accord that doing it as alliance on a pvp server sucked ass (didn't stop me from doing it, though)
Other good grind spots were the shimmering flats from maybe 28-33 or so, especially for horde. Tons of shit to just continously kill and quests that worked well in concjunction.
To those of you who say that dungeons were great, I don't think you remember how all those dungeon quests had you moving all over the world to get them. For example:
Wailing caverns - quests from ratchet, a pre-quest that took you to thunder bluff
Scarlet Monastery - why not go to desolace first? Horde had it better, just holla at varimathras
Razorfen kraul - main quest from thunder bluff
Zul'Farrak - The mallet to summon Gahz'rilla required a lot of traveltime in Hinterlands
Sunken temple - hakkar quest had you first go to feralas, then zul'farrak, then hinterlands to finally be able to do this boss. All quests for this place sucked
Uldaman - why not go in and out and in and out 3 times to do the main quest? Or for horde, take a trip to say hi to Thrall
Blackrock depths - Main quest gad you going in and out a lot. Still tons of quests, by far my favorite dungeon to date as well
Good dungeons:
Shadowfang keep - quick, 3 quests. One had to be delivered in UC, though.
Blackrock Depths - even though most quests sucked (I like the one that made you die, though), it was still fairly effective
Stratholme - tons of quests, fairly hard though. Nothing you did while leveling, except maybe 59 if you had a good group
Convo
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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Rezz
Mr. Poopybutthole
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For the melee classes and especially warriors, bear mobs and Ogres had effectively no AC for at least a week or so after release. Myself and all the other Mortal Strikers out there basically skipped early/mid 40s levels by just running around the Ogre mountains in Burning Steppes obliterating the shit out of everything. It took longer to have MS off cooldown than it did for shit to die. Was basically run up and MS, autoattack swing kills mob. Run to next mob, auto attack swing, MS kills mob. Repeat ad infinitum.
Group Grinding > Group Instance Running > Solo Grinding > Solo questing when it comes to xp. But of course, there was the max level players within what, 48 hours of the expansion releases? Getting guild PL'd > *. I'm not 100% certain, but the mainstream mmo doesn't currently exist where it really is faster to do stuff solo, and that includes solo leveling. Anyway!
EQ:N is supposedly a sandbox, Titan is... whatever Titan is, while FFXIV is being re-released in hopefully whatever form isn't like the first version. Otherwise the mainstream mmo horizon isn't exactly littered with triple A talent for the near/not so near future. Maybe some stuff will surprise that comes out of the smaller studios, but if you're looking for good graphics and (theoretically) good gameplay combined with something resembling polish... that looks to be just about all that is "Now what."
That of course isn't including current releases or expansions.
Group Grinding > Group Instance Running > Solo Grinding > Solo questing when it comes to xp. But of course, there was the max level players within what, 48 hours of the expansion releases? Getting guild PL'd > *. I'm not 100% certain, but the mainstream mmo doesn't currently exist where it really is faster to do stuff solo, and that includes solo leveling. Anyway!
EQ:N is supposedly a sandbox, Titan is... whatever Titan is, while FFXIV is being re-released in hopefully whatever form isn't like the first version. Otherwise the mainstream mmo horizon isn't exactly littered with triple A talent for the near/not so near future. Maybe some stuff will surprise that comes out of the smaller studios, but if you're looking for good graphics and (theoretically) good gameplay combined with something resembling polish... that looks to be just about all that is "Now what."
That of course isn't including current releases or expansions.
In other words the "Just wait for the Next Big Thing" crowd arefinallyshit out of luck, and about bloody time too.
Tuco
I got Tuco'd!
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Maybe the first few 60s got there by grinding (and by grinding I mean finding really juicy spots to grind that devs didn't intend, ex mortal striking ogres or AEing mobs, which happens every game) but most of the first 1000 60s played the game as intended. It's also possible that it was easier to create a flawless grinding plan than create a flawless questing plan.
The leveling guides released for vanilla (months later) all used the quest chains.
I think Sean was one of the first hunters to 60 and could probably recall how he got there.
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They could do user-created content like City of Heroes, where it was small mission-based stuff with limited allowances. It wasn't the most ideal thing, but people did manage to get pretty creative and some of the handmade quest lines were well done. They had a rating system and you could report it too.
A lot of people I knew banged out most of their last levels in dungeons and raids. You were able to be useful even at 58 and 59, plus the gear was equippable. We'd raid places like Scholomance, Stratholme, and the Blackrock dungeons.
Yeah. Most of those used the "grind" type quests, too. Basically skip the "go here and find this" nonsense unless you were picking something up in the same area as "kill 30 demons".
A lot of people I knew banged out most of their last levels in dungeons and raids. You were able to be useful even at 58 and 59, plus the gear was equippable. We'd raid places like Scholomance, Stratholme, and the Blackrock dungeons.