Why you should not rush to the level cap

This is an issue that is close to my heart. When I first started playing, I rarely did quests since I didn't want to move around from area to area until I had leveled past the area I was in. Thus I did a lot of grinding, since vanilla WoW was not made for efficient leveling. Grinding gets boring when you do it that much, so I found leveling to be a chore. That was until I bought a leveling guide that showed me how to level quickly by moving between areas and always doing quests, and leveling became fun again, since the levels were coming in faster than they ever had before. I realize now, however, that I was really misguided in trying to level quickly, because once I got to 70, I had one of those horrible "What do I do now?" moments. I realize now it would have been more enjoyable if I had tried to see more while I was leveling, rather than rushing to the top.

Though Ghostcrawler (the lead system designer for WoW) has gone on the record as saying that the level cap is where it's at, I disagree. I have nothing against high end content per se, but I feel it's wrong to assume that end-game is better than leveling and that one should get there as fast as he can. There is a lot of joy to be found in leveling, and since it is a necessity anyways, you may as well savor it rather than viewing it as a necessary evil.

There are a few things in my mind that stand out as making leveling enjoyable. One is simply learning new moves and adjusting your playing habits to incorporate them into your gameplay. Though some of the abilities you will learn are somewhat useless, most of them add a unique facet to your combat, and this makes learning each new ability a unique joy.

More important, though, is the sheer amount of content to be found during the leveling process, especially in vanilla WoW. Once you reach the level cap, there are some more quests that you can do in Icecrown and Storm Peak, but everything after that is just running instances and raids while doing the same daily quests over and over and over again and waiting for Blizzard to add more content. While you are leveling, however, the content is already there for you, and there is plenty of it. Some of my best memories of leveling are quests I did in my trek from 1 to 60, including the Nesingwary series of quests in Stranglethorn.

Some of you may view questing just a way to speed up the leveling process, helping you gain more experience points and thus making leveling easier, but it is so much more than than. When you start the game, the intro cinematic gives you your general motivation. For me as a Night Elf, it was to defend Teldrassil. However, once you leave your starting zone, that initial motivation no longer applies. The question is, then, why do you fight? The answer can be found in your quests. From helping random civilians to doing a job for the King of Ironforge, quests keep you motivated to continue fighting, and thus continue playing.

More importantly, quests also provide a lot of back story for the game. If you never complete the Defias Brotherhood quest series, you'll never know what your motivation is for entering the Deadmines and killing Van Cleef, or why he rebelled against Stormwind in the first place. If you don't complete the quest that starts at the end of Uldaman, you'll never learn the origin of the Dwarves. And if you don't complete Big Game Hunter and the quests that lead up to it, you won't get the reference when you do their equivalent quests in Outland and Northrend.

What I'm trying to say is that questing is fun, and it's one of the main reasons to play that game. Once you reach end-game, you get one or two zones of level 80 quests, and then you are limited to the repeatable daily quests. The same ones. Over and over again. And while killing ten Defias thugs for one quest isn't that different from killing ten scourge zombies for another quest, doing it over and over again on the same enemies gets repetitive.

So when you do reach end-game, you have three choices of things to do: solo-ing, PvP, and raiding. Because Wrath of the Lich King homogenized the process of reputation gains and making money through dailies (more on this in another post; edit: this post can be found here), solo-ing in Wrath is pretty boring. Gone is the variety found in Vanilla and BC. All of your recipes for professions come from one or two sources; all of your reputations are increases through dailies and/or instance runs; all of your income comes from dailies now, since farming isn't as lucrative as it used to be. Along with their other forms of homogenization, Blizzard reduced the number of items used by high-level characters by a great deal, meaning there isn't much of a fortune to be made in farming. After all, with few items to farm, more people are farming the same items. High supply = low price.

Contrast end-game solo-ing with leveling and the choice of which is better is pretty clear. While leveling, you rarely do the same quest twice, and never over and over again, which keeps them interesting. And since not a lot of people are leveling characters these days, you'll find items which people still need, for leveling their professions and such, that aren't in constant supply. Admittedly, the demand isn't consistent either, but that's what keeps it interesting. You also always have a reason to fight, whereas solo-ers who reach end-game will finish their quests and have little reason left to keep fighting.

As for PvP, there is nothing to prevent you from PvP'ing as a low level character. You may not be in fair level brackets, but like I said, that's what keeps it interesting. Besides, those unfair deaths at level 21 fuel the anger which lets you kill lowbies at level 28. Good times, eh? I'll admit that I don't know much about PvP, but I know a lot of PvP'ers who says that resilience ruined PvP. Well, guess what? Up to level 60, you will find no resilience on your gear. There is arena, which you can't really do unless you are at the maximum level, but if you play WoW mainly for arena, you are better off rolling a character on an arena realm anyways.

The only remaining facet of end-game content that I have not touched upon is raiding. I will admit, this is the only case where end-game has leveling beat. Instances up to end-game (at least the ones worth doing) are limited to five people. If you seek more of a challenge and more of a social experience than that, then end-game is your only option. If you also raid in order to overcome the challenges of it, then you won't find much satisfaction in low level instances. "Progression" no longer exists anywhere other than level 80, so if you enjoy the progressively difficulty of raids, you will find little satisfaction is the dungeons of yore.

If, however, you run raids just for the phat loot, then I can't tell you that you will have more fun at 80 than on the way there. Instances are the best source of loot from PvE no matter what your level, and though you may use the argument "Oh, you'll just outgrow any instance gear you get while leveling," the same can be applied to the gear you get at level 80. Even if you deck yourself out in best-in-slot gear, another raid instance will be released a few months later, and your gear will become obsolete again. It's the same cycle either way:

run instances -> get good gear -> new content is released/becomse available -> gear becomes obsolete -> run new instances -> repeat ad infinitum

So what makes that cycle more enjoyable during leveling than raiding? Nothing really; it's just less work. You may think that you'll get less satisfaction out of your phat loot if it's easier to get, but really, how much satisfaction do you actually get out of your purples? In the end, gear itself is a bad reason to run instances. At least while you are leveling, you can use the excuse that it makes your leveling easier. Conversely, any gear you get while raiding only go towards making raiding easier; you are basically raiding so that you can raid more. The only excuse to do this is if you enjoy raids for themselves, and if you do, then gear is really a non-issue.

Thus concludes my thoughts on leveling. When you role your first character, take it slow, breath it all it, try some instances, and keep questing! That's how you keep the game interesting. If you already have a level 80 character and you steam-rolled your way there, try rolling an alt to see all the content you missed; there's a lot of it in this game, and it would be a shame to not see it; it was designed for you, after all.