On levelling.

As of last night's play, Wulfsblood is approximately halfway to level 70. The quoted line about it taking someone as long to get from 60-70 as it takes to get from 1-60 feels more and more like misrepresentation at best and an outright lie at worst. It's taken me a little under three weeks to get here, and I haven't exactly been steamrollering through content. There's only two zones where I can honestly say I've finished most of the questlines, and I've spent more time than is strictly productive (from a power-levelling perspective) either in dungeons with friends, grinding faction reputation or killing mobs for crafting materials.

Comparing my approach to levelling to a fellow CDer who started a Draenai Shaman at the same time I crossed into Outland for the first time. He's played the toon exclusively since the expansion launch and has logged more hours on it since that time than I have with Wulf. The result is he still has about ten levels to go to 60 whilst I'm sitting with half a bar until 70.

Where I think the idea of 60-70 taking as long as 1-60 arose is the fact that the total amount of Experience Points (XP) required is the same between lvl 1-60 and 60-70. If the monsters killed and quest XP were analogous with what I saw with Stormpaw in his last ten levels, then I can imagine it would have been harder work. As it is, the mobs give about 2-3 times the XP of a mob in the lvl 55+ bracket did to an equivalent level player. The quest XP rewards are as much as five times greater as well.

I'm not complaining though, because level 70 is really only the start of the content. Once I've got to 70, I've gotta get the gold together Flying Mount*; learn how all the remaining Dungeons work (and get Revered with the relevant factions) so I can master them on Heroic Mode; and complete the various attunement quests so I can visit the new Raid content when nessesary. And of course, there's still material farming so I can make the items I mentioned two days ago.

I honestly don't know how people manage to have the energy to play more than on character!

*Speaking of Flying Mounts, the 700-or-so Gold I'd saved for mine went the way of the silly person when I checked the Auction House and found the bow I mentioned at the end of yesterday's post. It was at a 600G bid or a 1134G Buyout. After much humming and hawing I decided to put a bid down on it, fully expecting some idiot to outbid me, but trying my chances. Suffice to say, no-one did and Wulf is now 600G poorer and in possession of quite possibly the best blue-quality bow currently in the game.

That said, I can't use it until lvl 70, and I'm tempted to put it back on the AH and see if I can get some gullible fool over the weekend to pay enough for it for me to afford my birdie. The other alternative to getting Mount money is to go back at level 70 and do all the zone quests that Wulf missed. At max level, the XP rewards from quests gets converted into Gold, so it could potentially be quite lucrative.