Alliance v Horde guide and grinding times.

[bastogne]

Hi there,

I consider myself somewhat of a casual speedrunner. Not hardcore but I find enjoyment in leveling and beating my times and decided to give Zygors a go. In classic I have an Alliance Hunter and Rogue, both level 40 and I am leveling a Horde Rogue, level 25. I just thought I would share my thoughts on my experience with the guides.

Pre-efficiency update, it was broken. So much so I unsubbed thinking it was trash. Post-update, I leveled my Hunter and Rogue to 40. If you are thinking of alliance and want a guide, I would highly recommend Zygors. My times to 40 were competitive and I found the balance of questing and grinding great. Every 4-5 levels, I was expected to maybe grind out 15-25% of a level...perfectly fine and efficient. Surprisingly my rogue beat by hunters time by about an hour.

Switching to horde, the experience has been vastly different. Post-18ish, I am finding I am being expected to grind almost every level and at times, for a considerable amount of the time. The balance is skewed towards grinding and even at one point, the guide almost apologises for the amount of grind and suggests I find a dungeon... Most times, it is expecting between 40%-50% of a level. I think it was level 22-23, it told me to grind the level out and I was only 20% in. This is without much change to my leveling behaviour and I grind a fair bit between quests. At 25, I am three hours behind my alliance toons.

I am suggesting this is looked at and I hope it balances out soon but I wanted to share my thoughts.


Update: Level 26->27.. 50% of the level left to grind :S

[jara]

I’m having exactly the same experience although only level 9 horde warlock the guide already told me to grind 3 times even after following every step

[bastogne]

Sorry to say, it gets worse in the barrens. I didn't have much of an issue before 18ish

[Jnqx]

I choosed to mark every grind on the horde side as complete before doing them (skip them)! And I got to say that my Horde leveling experience with Zygor has been good.

[bastogne]

Ill try it, thanks.

[Zygor]

Grinding is just part of Classic, it's not like retail where you can level easily with 100% quests and no grinding at all. In the old days, it seemed that they balanced the game more with the assumption that you will stop to do dungeons with friends along the way, whereas the modern game assumes you won't do dungeons at all until max level. That's just my opinion, though, can't say for sure why Classic was designed like that.

Additionally, the Alliance simply has more quests to do, especially in the lower levels. For example, they have 3 zones for levels 12-20 (Loch Modan, Darkshore, Westfall). We skip Westfall, for efficiency, but still have 2 full zones of quests to do. The Horde only has Silverpine Forest and The Barrens, and we skip Silverpine Forest for efficiency.

Beyond that, there are difficulty jumps in the game, specifically in the 30's and 40's, where you will suddenly be fighting enemies multiple levels higher level than you. You can skip the grind steps in the guide, and only grind/run dungeons if you start to feel like enemies are too hard for you, or you're finding quests you can't accept due to level. However, we put the grind steps in the guides to spread out the grind over many levels, so you don't suddenly have to grind 2-3 levels all at once. And all of this assumes you kill enemies as you walk around doing quests, instead of avoiding them. You will miss out on a lot of experience that adds up along the way, if you avoid enemies as you walk.

Classic is just kind of a grindy game, and leveling experiences will vary from player to player, also, due to RNG chances on quest item drop rates. For example, there is a quest in Swamp of Sorrows that someone mentioned on this forum the other day, and the quest item is a very low drop rate. During testing, I received the item after roughly 20 kills, or so, while the person was complaining that they still hadn't found it after something like 2 hours of grinding. Those types of things are going to greatly sway how much grinding the guide tells you to do later, and since it's all a matter of how lucky you are with quest drops, that's not something we can very accurately control or predict. We try our best, but it will vary.

Hope that helps.

[bastogne]

I understand all of that, i played vanilla. I am merely commenting that the difference between the two guides is vast in terms of expected grinding. TBH maybe its more of a comment on the quests available in game than the guides but the difference in #feelsbadman is a fair bit between your alliance and horde guides. I think the most i had to grind on alliance was 30% of a level. On horde i've now grinded 70-80% of a level twice with no change to how much i grind between quests.

Additionally maybe a suggestion, the harpies in 1k needles are amazing to grind and respawn quick. Maybe something to do around 32?