[WoW, Blacksky Company] The Great Depression (AKA, Levels 50-58)

[J. R. Henderson]

I started playing World of Warcraft two or three months ago, and I've had a lot of fun since then. Fishing, Skinning, Cooking, Mining, and First Aid, while not the most entertaining of professional skills, have nevertheless been interesting to work on and develop. Every five to ten levels or so, a couple of new instances would open up for exploration; those were always fun and interesting, as well as challenging and rewarding. Exploring new, dangerous areas and taking on the quests there every five to ten levels helped to keep things interesting. Getting a mount was satisfying, and I've never been strapped for money the whole time I've been playing, thanks in large part to my two gathering professional skills and the booming ore industry.

In short, I've never felt that playing World of Warcraft was a chore . . .

Until now, that is.

I'm now a level 53 Priest (Shadow spec), and the fun seems to have fled from World of Warcraft for the time being. I guess there's a huge dead zone between level 50 and level 60, possibly exacerbated by the release of the expansion. It's very difficult to find people inside the guild to do instances with, and the last eight PUGs I tried were all comedies of error. Quests are few and far between, and the XP/money/item rewards are no longer anywhere near commensurate with the effort required to complete them. I'm having a very difficult time finding equipment upgrades, too. It's not a huge problem, since I have very good equipment, but some of what I have, while it may be rare or even epic, is starting to get outdated. Finding and equipping new gear is one of the fun things about the game, and it's been nearly ten levels since I've found any upgrades whatsoever. I've had Illusionary Staff for nearly twenty levels now.

As a level 53 Priest, when I complete a level 53 quest, I get about 5,300 XP. It takes me all of eight minutes to get that much XP killing enemies. To do quests at this level, I have to go cross-country looking for questgivers, finding quest items, searching for where the quest mobs are located, and then riding all the way back to the questgiver, which, on average, takes at least fifteen extra minutes. That means it's at least twice as efficient to simply kill enemies, and you get more money and items, too.

Not only that, but there simply aren't enough quests for me to do now from level to level to level. It takes 167,100 XP to go from level 53 to level 54, right? Well, if I get half of that XP from killing mobs and the other half from turning in quests, I'd need to turn in fifteen or sixteen quests on the way to level 54, and there simply aren't that many quests available.

I know some people would protest that I should enjoy the roleplaying aspect of the quests, and not just focus on getting to the next level, but the quests are pretty boring at this point. Their plots are very thin, and almost all of them simply require collecting parts from monsters.

So now, I roam the same area for two to three hours at a stretch, killing the same enemies over and over and getting XP much faster than I would by questing (not to mention more money, and a whole lot more items -- this morning, after two hours, I came away from Felwood with 10 gold from dropped currency, six pieces of green gear, eight grays that sold very well to the vendor, six pieces of Felcloth, and four stacks of Runecloth, as well as a few scrolls and miscellaneous things).

It's a chore, and it's very boring. I think Blizzard really needs to ramp up the number of quests available at each level, and assign larger experience point rewards for them. I mean, I've never had this problem before, not for fifty levels as a Priest -- why is it suddenly cropping up now? I've never felt compelled to grind before, but now I feel as though questing has become a waste of time.

[Njorhg]

You just want to level?
Use a guide, you'll always have somethin to do and the process will be smother
http://www.wow-pro.com/node/908

Recently, I was in pretty the same situation as you
Lvl 51 undead priest, quite bored with wow... so I cancelled.
Now, a couple of weeks later, I have been talked into starting up again so I got on and did a maraudon run. That sparked my interest again :cool:

[Ikselam]

50-58 is just a bad stretch. There's not a whole hell of a lot to do, besides Blackrock Depths. Well, I guess you could do Sunken Temple or even Maraudon, too, if you're at the low end of that range.

Most of the high-level quests (and general interesting-things-to-do) are in instances. Unfortunately, most people who've levelled a character up to 60+ have done those instances so many times they're completely sick of them, so unless you find someone else who's levelling their main for the first time, your chances of getting guild assistance are low. Now that the expansion is out, I wouldn't expect to find anyone doing the old level 60 instances, which is kind of a shame because a couple of them are pretty neat.

[Sixten]

What zones have you done?

I didn't really find there was much trouble getting those last few levels (even though a chunk of my time was wasted grinding AD rep). With Felwood, Winterspring, the Plaguelands, Un'goro, Silithus, the Blasted Lands, and the Burning Steppes, 50-60 seemed like a pretty quest-rich stretch.

But, yeah, you probably aren't gonna find many people running those instances. Especially Blackrock Depths, which is the only one really around 50-53. Long, complicated, and ultimately worthless if you can buy 58 greens.

[GremFarlim]

Check out the wow-pro site mentioned. To be honest, there are a ton of quests. You are correct that the expansions making 50-60worse. There's very little reason to go into BRD, UBRS etc... so they are kind of a wasteland.

[IceShadow]

These leveling guides are really nice to show you what quests clump together well...I'd definitely give them a read.

Also, if you want to play an alt for a bit, you can accumulate some rest experience on your main, which is always nice to have. :)

[brooksd01]

I feel your pain having just taken my hunter from 48-60 while taking a bit of a break from my other characters. Traditionally instancing was a big part of 51-60, and now is mostly gone. ST, Mara, and BRD are pretty well ghost towns.

A couple of quick tips:

Grab all the Alterac Valley quests and knock them out. Pretty easy if you read up on them a bit ahead of time and a nice blast of experience.

Do all the cauldron quests in WPL, then all the +Argent Dawn rep quests you can find. Push yourself to friendly with AD and a group of turn in quests at Light's Hope will open up. The tokens you get from them are pretty well worthless now, but that has made the items you need (savage fronds, bone fragments, etc) are pretty cheap on the AH. If you finish off ungoro and WPL you will probably have the Fronds and fragments, and might have enough Elemental Cores. Each quest is worth about 5-7k exp as soon as you hit friendly and there are something like 5 of them.

[AusJeb]

I didn't really find there was much trouble getting those last few levels (even though a chunk of my time was wasted grinding AD rep). With Felwood, Winterspring, the Plaguelands, Un'goro, Silithus, the Blasted Lands, and the Burning Steppes, 50-60 seemed like a pretty quest-rich stretch.

Seconded. I had only just gotten to the Sunken Temple when the expansion came out. While it can be hard finding groups, there are a ton of quests and areas you can explore. Also, I had good luck using the LFG system for Sunken Temple and BRD quests. Zul Farak is also in your level range. Since the expansion and the increased difficulty in finding groups, I've noticed that many people from 50-58 are less picky about who they group with.

Also, if you want to play an alt for a bit, you can accumulate some rest experience on your main, which is always nice to have.

Wow, alt-playing advice from IceShadow. We'll get you into the P&W yet. :)

[Dorchadas]

At 53, there's the quests from the blood elves in the Blasted Lands, if you haven't done those. They involve running in tight circles and killing everything, then turning in body parts, so you have all the advantages of grinding and questing. :p

Wow, alt-playing advice from IceShadow. We'll get you into the P&W yet. :)

I have a blood elf shadow priest. It's only fair. ;)

[IceShadow]

Wow, alt-playing advice from IceShadow. We'll get you into the P&W yet. :)

Sure. As soon as I can afford a third account, or Blizz puts in a guild bank system. :p

[Pyranose the gnome]

Just did 50 to 59 without running an instance once and it was fairly quick just doing quests.

50-54 was Un'goro, Felwood, Searing Gorge (green quests mostly, got there late), a bit of easy quests in the Western Plaguelands (there's 2 or 3 of them before it gets tougher) and some in Azhara.

54-56 was Blasted Lands, Winterspring and Silithus mostly

57 was all Winterspring for me but I wanted to grind furbolg faction.

58-59 is Hellfire Penninsula.


Not the most efficient I'm sure, but fairly fun...

[Shawn]

See I found 40-49 far more of a grind than 50-60.

You have Felwood, the Plaguelands, The Burning Steppes, Winterspring. I guess you could even go to Silithus too, if you really wanted. ;)

[EndlessChase]

See I found 40-49 far more of a grind than 50-60.

You have Felwood, the Plaguelands, The Burning Steppes, Winterspring. I guess you could even go to Silithus too, if you really wanted. ;)

Now that I'm working on an alt I'm really looking into where I'm going to be leveling. I'm trying to figure out where to go to avoid STV. I HATE STRANGLETHORN...

But after that is the high thirties-50 taken care of in better spots. I think after that I'm delving straight into WPL and grinding up with cauldron quests, so I can knock out rep at the same time. Once you hit 52 as a shadow priest you should be good to start in WPL with no trouble.

[J. R. Henderson]

Now that I'm working on an alt I'm really looking into where I'm going to be leveling. I'm trying to figure out where to go to avoid STV. I HATE STRANGLETHORN...

But after that is the high thirties-50 taken care of in better spots. I think after that I'm delving straight into WPL and grinding up with cauldron quests, so I can knock out rep at the same time. Once you hit 52 as a shadow priest you should be good to start in WPL with no trouble.

I kind of gave up on the Plaguelands when I used Thottbot to locate a questgiver named Chromie, ventured to the NPC's location -- who, apparently, is located inside of a house -- and was subsequently killed by the mob of undead inside said house (I got turned around and couldn't find the door, which is understandable since I was surrounded by undead, and of course Psychic Scream doesn't work on undead).

I almost never die in PvE (I've died far more often as a result of accidental falls than in combat), so I've been understandably pissed off about the incident ever since. It doesn't help that all the other WPL questgivers seem to be scattered all across Creation ("Termite Barrel" way out in the middle of the map, anyone?), or that a lot of the quests I browsed on WoWhead's database for EPL and WPL seemed to be level 50 or 51 when I moused over the questgivers.

In short, I tried to organize a Plaguelands questing plan for myself the way I've done in many other zones since I started playing the game, and I just got fed up with it. In the three hours I might spend browsing guides, maps, and WoW Web sites trying to find quests to do, I could already have advanced another level through grinding and gotten a ton of cash, ore, cloth, and items to pawn or put up on the AH.

Yes, I'm impatient at this point; I know it, and I realize I'm indulging in childish bitching. I know that I'm the only one who can see myself through to level 58 and then on to Outlands. I'm not really willing to mosey along, getting a bar or two of experience each day and doing quests here and there, meaning I'll be level 70 by this time next year. I want to be able to level relatively quickly, and still be entertained.

I've been able to do that just fine, up until this very moment! Now it takes frickin' forever to gain a level, and quests barely give you any more experience now than they did at level 40, when you only needed 1/3 as much to advance. What's more, getting these higher-level quests is more annoying and time-consuming than before, and completing them takes longer and longer.

I guess I'm impatient to earn a riding talbuk, to do Arena at level 70, to explore Outlands, and to just get the hell out of the WASTELAND that is the 50s tier. I never seem to get any good new equipment, the quests are boring and the rewards no longer commensurate with the effort needed to do the quests, no one does the instances anymore... it's a nightmare.

I will try to take everyone's advice, and see if I can find a few quests in some of the areas you mentioned. I'm just tired of what's been happening this past week: I browse Web sites and ride around two or three zones looking for quests for a couple of hours, and I end up being extremely annoyed that so much time has gone by and my XP meter is on the same damn bar it was when I started.

I'll get through it, though. If I have to grind my way to level 58, or 60, or 70, then so be it. Anger is a good motivator.

The anger comes from disappointment, disappointment that WoW has been so much fun and hadn't been a chore to do until now. Someone failed at some point -- maybe it was the devs, maybe it's me being a crazy, obsessed asshole... I really don't know.

[IceShadow]

The anger comes from disappointment, disappointment that WoW has been so much fun and hadn't been a chore to do until now. Someone failed at some point -- maybe it was the devs, maybe it's me being a crazy, obsessed asshole... I really don't know.

I believe it was unplanned fallout from advancing the level cap in the expansion. Going back to help people ten levels under you isn't so bad, since you'll still get some use out of the rep/cloth/whatever...but 20 levels? That's a bit much to swallow to really help people. So suddenly you have this area where not many people are, it's hard to get groups for, and guildies feel more reluctance to help guildies through than the original guildie feels to just grinding it out.

Hopefully they'll address it, but that doesn't help you much right now. :(

[JustJo]

Don't forget that you can shackle undead (just saying because you don't get much use for that ability until you get to the plaguelands, if I remember right).

52-55 have always been tough, actually, unless you had a friend around.

After that, you can probably get higher level guys to take you through some of the level 60 instances ... enchanters will do it to get shards anyway (at least, the guys in my guild do), and there are often paladins and warlocks around who want to do their epic mount quests which need those instance runs too.

That wow-pro quest guide link is really good though. Should at least give you some solid ideas where the quests are.

And yes, Chromie is the second most annoyingly located NPC in the game. I would ignore her quests.

[Erik Sieurin]

And yes, Chromie is the second most annoyingly located NPC in the game. I would ignore her quests.

Gotta ask: Who's the first?

Erik

[IceShadow]

Presumably the Artisian Enchanting trainer, who's inside an instance.

[JustJo]

That's annoying but the only alt I had who was an enchanter got whisked along there painlessly by some guildies.

My #1 most annoyingly located NPC is Duke Hydraxis, who you will have become quite familiar with if you ran Molten Core. Because not only did he give some quests for there, he also provided some quest potions that your raid needed 8 of to summon Ragnaros every week. And before they made that potion reusable, that meant at least 8 people had to trek out to the wilds of Azhara to get their potions every week or else you couldn't finish the raid. It took about 40 mins to get there from Ironforge.

[BethDragon]

On the question of staffs, have you thought about the Vexing Cane from ZF? Or the Spire of Hakkar from The Temple of Atal'Hakkar?

Beth

[J. R. Henderson]

So suddenly you have this area where not many people are, it's hard to get groups for, and guildies feel more reluctance to help guildies through than the original guildie feels to just grinding it out.

I would like to say here that I hope no one feels any personal guilt or sense of responsibility toward me because of the rough spot I'm having at this level range. I may be upset with the game, but it's my issue, and it's my own responsibility to grind, do quests, organize groups, or whatever it takes to get me where I want to be in a month or two.

High-level guild members should keep on doing exactly what they want to do -- they have their own personal goals, and limited time in which to meet them each week. I'm absolutely okay with that. This thread is less of a cry for help, and more of a venting thing.

So if you read this and feel as though you wish there were something you could do to help, a paragraph of advice here on the forum is more than enough. :)