Difference between two Winterspring guides in leveling section

[littlewierdo]

Alrighty, this is mostly a curiosity thing more than anything.

Im currently leveling a monk and this is the first time I have gone through any of the older content since Vanilla (so this is the first time Im seeing all the changes brought in by Cataclysm).

One of the things I have enjoyed about the experience is that instead of jumping back and forth between two continents to get to zones appropriate for your level, you now can do it all from one continent, in this case, Eastern Kingdoms (FOR THE ALLIANCE!!).

So, I followed the Zygor guide progression, starting in Elwynn Forest moving south to Stranglethorn, then jumped all the way to the north most area (plaguelands) and starting moving south from there until I ended up in Swamp of Sorrows, finished Swamp of Sorrows, and then was directed to...Winterspring to run a small group of quests, then was sent BACK to the Badlands before entering the Dark Portal.

Pay careful attention here to this, if someone answers 'loremaster', you didnt read the explanation in the next two paragraphs.

If you open a new guide, open the LEVELING folder, then open Eastern Kingdoms (so Leveling->Eastern Kingdoms->Winterspring), you'll see Winterspring (54-58) listed as an option.

Now, if you go BACK one level and this time select Kalimdor, (so Leveling->Kalimdor->Winterspring) you will see Winterspring (51-55), select it and you see TWO Winterspring guides, listed as (51-52 & 52-55).

Again, note that at NO TIME did we go into the LOREMASTER category, we stayed in 'leveling'.

a. Why is Winterspring even listed in the Eastern Kingdoms guide when its location is Kalimdor?

b. Why is the level range different between the Eastern Kingdoms guide vs the Kalimdor guide?

c. Why are there TWO Kalimdor guides for Winterspring?

d. What is the difference between the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor guides?

e. Why are you directed to Winterspring on a TOTALLY DIFFERENT CONTINENT in the leveling process? Seems to me you get enough exp doing the guide as it is MINUS the exp... Just as an fyi, I finished the Badlands at level 60 and a half, no heirlooms or guild xp bonus.

[cabby]

If you are following the full leveling path in EK alone you will only reach about level 58-59. Since it's a 1-60 guide section we needed to find a way to get some more experience for everyone so they could hit 60 before starting the Outlands guides. Yes, we know you can go to Outlands at 58 but we still recommend 60 since the guides are created for all classes and play styles and not everyone would be able to handle Outlands at 58. Our solution for getting players those extra 2 levels is to send them to Winterspring for a short time. The two versions of the guides are identical but the one for Kalimdor is split up because when you're in there following the Kalimdor path we wanted to have a separate section for people to skip to the next questing hub faster while leveling. Since you're only there for extra XP following the EK path we just put it all into one guide so that you can just go thru it fast until you've gotten enough XP to hit 60 when you move back to EK.

I know you hit 60 nice and early, but did you kill everything in your path while you were traveling thru the zones? A rogue or druid might easily decide to avoid as much fighting as possible in order to get the quests done as quickly as possible and that would make a dramatic difference in when you hit 60.

[littlewierdo]

I avoided as much as combat as possible, the only thing that might have made a difference is rested xp, of which I used. Being a monk, I dont have stealth abilities...

If you were to say dump a few lower level zones in, would that be enough to help? I mean, there is Hillsbrad, Arathi, and Hinterlands that arent even touched, the other zones in EK I didnt touch I think are more starter zones, along the same line as Elwynn Forest is.

Again, this is more a curiosity thing than anything else, the jump to Winterspring seemed a bit strange especially considering that it seems that Blizzard intended in the Cata redesign to be able to do 1-60 without going to any other continent.

The other thing is, I have noticed that since the implementation of the pre-MOP patch that introduced the new talent system, all of the already existing content is super easy (basically everything pre-MOP). Its almost as if Blizzard didnt retune the older content, they just have Pandaria tuned and as such, everything is super easy. Basically, what Im getting at is, Id be willing to bet that BC, while in the past prior to the pre-MOP patch would have been tough for a level 58-59 toon, I wonder if that is still the case.

A couple of things I forgot to mention, I hit 60 and a half without heirlooms, no guild bonus xp, I did NOT utilize the monk dailies (so basically, I didnt use any xp boosting options, there are also the blizzard anniversary items I did not use), and I skipped Winterspring (I decided to double check this, I couldnt remember whether I did or did not do this zone). Everything else I did to the letter guide wise.

I decided to go back to Winterspring, cause even at 60 and a half, Winterspring used to be one of my favorite zones and Im happy to see Blizzard didnt change a whole lot about it, at least so far, although Ive only been there for a small while, Ill go ahead and finish the zone this weekend (the more of BC I can avoid, the better, after all, the primary reason for this toon is to see as much of Cata as possible, not to level as quickly as possible).

[cabby]

Hillsbrad, Arathi, and Hinterlands are all used in the guides but it depends on where you are starting out from. But the point of the guides is not to have you waste all that time playing in every zone while you're leveling, but to get you there as quickly as possible. The routing we use is what we feel is the best routing to accomplish this. Of course these are guides, and that inherently means (by definition) that they are not the 'end all be all' absolute right way to do everything in the game.

You yourself said you did 1-60 using the guides without leaving EK. You made use of the guides how you felt it should be done and didn't blindly follow them to the very end. This is one way a guide is used and normally when used this way is when you'll get the maximum out of a guide. For those brand new to the game or just don't want to think about it we have a route that can be followed that will get them leveled up quickly. This is another way that a guide can be used.

If you did everything in a zone guide and didn't skip to the next guide when prompted you would definitely reach 60 early, and I'm guessing this is what you did since you wanted to see the old world zones more than level. If you would have gone thru with the intent to level fast and moved to the new guides as soon as they were available then you probably would not have hit 60 if you skipped Winterspring. Everything in the game is a little bit of give and take and we have to work around that to provide one guide that works for thousands of different players and play-styles. A lot of players will move to Outlands at 58 or 59, but there are still some that will have problems when they do that so we have to accommodate for that as well.

[Cartman]

The leveling depends on how you skip ahead.
If you follow the guide and never skip ahead when outleveling a section you will be able to skip entire zones.
But if you skip directly advance to the next zone when the guide suggests you to you'll most likely need to go to Winterspring as otherwise you would end up at a lower level.

With my Monk I used the XP bonus as son as I could get it and had 10% guild and 5% (later 10%) from guild heirlooms.
I skipped ahead to avoid some zones I did not want to do (Badlands, Burning Steppes).
I hit 56 in Swamp Of Sorrows and after that zone went directly to Blasted Lands (hitting 57 not far into the zone) until level 58 where I left for Outlands.
As an experienced player this is no problem. But a beginner may run into trouble. I even know people that were raiding in Cata and somehow lost their playing skills, they even have difficulties doing the Shieldwall dailies (with LFR capable chars).
It is better to give people like that some more guidance than advanced players would need.

A similar topic is Northrend at 68 or 70. There may still be people around having trouble there at 68, this also depends on the class and spec you play. When I think back how slow I was with my Mage in Pandaria compared to the Monk.

[littlewierdo]

The major issue with going into expansions early is the gear jump in quality (more on this in a second). Good use of the AH at 59ish & 69ish will eliminate alot of the problems, unless you are playing a toon that is specd completely incorrectly for dps (if you are leveling, you should be specd for dps for questing, healing / tank specs should be used for those using instances as the primary leveling method).

Blizzard has already admitted that they were a bit over crazy on tuning in the Outlands and Northrend, both zones were tuned for leveling with characters that were in what I call 'starter epics', ie. Molten Core quality gear for example when stepping into the Outlands. The problem is, characters are not touching raid content (obviously) from anything in vanilla or Outlands and as such are somewhat under geared when stepping into the Outlands, being geared in primarily greens (when as I stated a moment ago, the zones were tuned for MC quality gear).

This is why, my preference, strange as it is because it is diametrically opposed to what everyone else likes to do, is to always be 2 or more levels above a zone (when I was leveling my monk, I was usually 5-6 levels above a recommended zone level). I dont think it affects how long it takes to level by that much (if any) and results in a much less stressful experience. Being ganked by 2 or 3 green level mobs is much easier to deal with than if they are yellow or orange (and being ganked is a common experience that regardless of level difference will happen so I figure, why not make it easier to deal with). It also helps with aggro range, the 'pick up x number of items off the ground quests' often have a mob protecting every single item you need to pick up but if the mobs levels are green, the aggro range is alot less, allowing you to pick up items without fighting the guarding mob (this I believe greatly offsets the slightly reduced xp from green mobs and green quests).

In my entire leveling experience on my monk, levels 1 to 62 currently, I had 1 death when I ran off a cliff by mistake.

In addition, one other item worth noting is by being 61 or 71 before going into the next expansion content, you can purchase level 61 / 71 gear (do NOT purchase level 60 or 70, it should be 61+ or 71+), you can purchase and utilize gear from that expansion which is dramatically better than gear found from the previous expansion. A level 60 green from vanilla is complete crap compared to a level 61 green from BC (to put this into perspective, my priest was in all tier 3 gear from Naax back in the day (this was the top of the line cream of the crop best gear in the game from vanilla, you couldnt get any better prior to BC), by the time I finished everything in Hellfire Penn., I had replaced all but a trinket and a ring with greens from BC).

This is why 58-59 toons likely are having difficulty, they are WAY undergeared and instead of being able to endure the difficulty curve for a handful of quests in order to get some BC gear (as I stated is likely miles above what they might have had from vanilla), they end up with upgrades they cant equip until they hit 60 and it makes the BC content super difficult until they hit 60 and can equip that gear.

I dont really like speed runs, Im not really interested in how 'fast' I can level, I enjoy the experience, the lore, etc. My logic is, once Ive level capped, all thats left is dailies (yay!!), professions, raiding, and pvp. Eventually, you finish dailies (exalted with a faction) and max out professions with every recipe so the only reason left to log in with said toon is to farm raid / pvp materials, raid, or pvp which is all primarily a scheduled thing (ie. something you do when the clock says its raid / arena night). There are of course pet battles as well but thats a whole game in itself.

[Cartman]

Blizzard has already admitted that they were a bit over crazy on tuning in the Outlands and Northrend, both zones were tuned for leveling with characters that were in what I call 'starter epics', ie. Molten Core quality gear for example when stepping into the Outlands.

This has been a problem in the past but with all the changes of the game mechanic shouldn't happen anymore.
Also the guide design eliminates some problems you run into when questing yourself. For example the Zeth'Gor quests can be nasty when you normally stumble across them. Or the quests against the Legion in the north. I have some very bad memories about my first characters doing those quests without guides in the BC times. But now, with guide, increased leveling speed, maybe some heirlooms, changed classes, at least with level 60 you should rush through the BC zones.

Despite the fact I'm racing through the game I still enjoy questing. Normally if I start a zone I complete it, no matter which level I reach. I think with my Monk I only skipped ahead once in the middle of the zone and that was in Blasted Lands. All previous zones I completed and afterwards I also did Hellfire Peninsula, Zangarmarsh and Nagrand completely, even with the group and arena quests. Those 3 zones were sufficient to reach level 68 to move on to Northrend.