Surpising leveling time vs WoW

Just wasting time waiting for Mangler so I made a level 1 character on wow. I had all the heirlooms (+55% exp), flying in zones, +15% war mode bonus, addons to guide path, etc and it still took ~60 hours.

I believe thats longer than it will take on Mangler if I am not mistaken? Just thought that was kind of crazy, figured eq would take quite a bit longer.

Last time I played WoW I got my monk (newer class there, helps dial in the era) to level cap (which I can't even remember what it was) in a very short time doing battlegrounds and pet battles mixed in with some actual quest grinding.

It was silly easy. I'm sure I was not efficient. I had some heirlooms, or at least think I did. I'm sure I barely knew how to play my level capped monk.. in PVE I was almost unkillable unless I purposely got risky. I was continually outleveling my quest chains.

Have they made it harder since then?

In EQ I haven't been level cap in era since LDoN was new content. I think the games are very different. One holds my interest.

Yes they changed leveling a lot. Really made 1-90 a nightmare honestly lol.

WoW has always been an incredibly "on-rails" experience. You get the quest from the NPC, you follow the markers, you run back to the NPC for XP.

You can't really adventure in WoW, there's really no real group / CC / pull mechanic or challenging content that would make grinding fun, nor is grinding a good way to make XP in WoW. Even the WoW group dungeons are very monotonous.

I've always felt Blizzard simply made...bad games...I have never understood the appeal.

One of the thrills of EQ is the ability to adventure, this same thrill existed in Vanguard, but it doesn't exist in WoW.

Wasnt talking about it being fun lol, its a miserable tour of boredom. I just figured it would take less time than EQ, which I always felt was more fun SIMPLY because of the randomness of named spawns. To me every round of pops is like a lottery ticket even if the drops are meh.

They changed WoW recently so the xp is far far lower. Very lame move considering they sell level up services and the fact that practically everyone else for the most part has multiple maxxed toons that they leveled on the old much faster xp so getting leveled is meaningless. It's a lame cash grab with no other purpose.

It was ungodly boring that's for sure

FWIW I just checked. I got my latest char to 98 in WoW in just under 70 hours played. I was going very slow - I spent a lot of time in a zone I wanted to completed for the achievement despite it not giving much (if any) XP.

I have never been able to level like that in EQ. I seem to get to about 30 and not able to make it much further. Hoping to find a guild this time for groups or someone to show what I am missing. I needed Velious to get that far originally

Not really most of the Vanilla Dungeons weren't linear and most of the quest lines for solo stuff had you going all over the place. But that started to change in WotLK and it's definitely an on-rails experience since Cata(which is the last time i touched it)

Level a character solo to 110 on live to compare.

See you in a couple years!

As we've seen, it can be done efficiently in 2-box. If moloing or solo, you're pretty much beholdent upon groups or very specialized xp. Even then, as you hit the higher levels(talking >105), you likely need a third box, or to get social.

I haven't even bothered to go past 95, and at this point i'm running out of AA to buy and half tempted to buy endurance regen for the shaman, just to dump points, while the merc AA flies.

Come to think of it, running out of <=95 merc AA worth buying.

Leveling in EQ is mind-numbingly boring compared to WoW.

In EQ, within your typical group grind, you sit in the same spot and press 2 buttons over and over again for hours on end. At least in WoW, you constantly get a change of scenery and there are multiple ways you can level: questing, grinding XP, battlegrounds, arena, etc. . .

If you couldn't hit max level in EQ, the issue isn't EQ is hard, but rather you probably have some form of mental deficiency. The same goes for WoW, and any other MMO really.

The only aspects that makes EQ 'harder' than WoW is the fact that there are penalties for dying in EQ, and you have to actually sit in general chat spamming LFG; whereas in WOW the only penalty for dying is having to pay for gear repairs, and the looking for dungeon tool puts together a group to grind with for you.

When are you people going to stop confusing 'difficulty' with 'time consuming'?

As someone who has played WoW since launch, I would disagree and say playing EQ solo IS harder than WoW if for no other reason than pulling and the ability to handle multiple MoBs without a fear of dying.

In WoW as a Fury Warrior - there is an orc camp with 6 orcs - Heroic leap in, Whirlwind, hit another ability (since whirlwind makes that ability hit several other targets) repeat 4-5 times and everything is dead while I am at 95% health. On a tough pull, I use Impending Victory (healing you for 20% of your maximum health) with a 30 second cooldown.

I can pull a second GROUP of adds and still survive with most of my health. Everytime I come back to EQ, I have to remind myself that I need to have care when pulling a mob and do my best to only pull one maybe 2 at the most. I have to be careful where I pull to or an add will kill me.

WoW makes you feel like a superhero in comparison.

WoW was designed with a foreign mindset compared to EQ. The difficulty of mobs scales differently. Killing 5 (non-elite) mobs that are your level isn't difficult in WoW. It isn't intended to be. I don't find that a suitable benchmark to be used as a comparison.

You're really comparing apples to oranges with that example.

It's like saying, football is easier than soccer, because you get 6 points for scoring a touchdown in football; yet soccer only rewards you 1 point for scoring a goal. Yes, it doesn't really make sense to compare the two games in such a way, because you're comparing the rules and mechanics of two different games to eachother. You can apply that logic to EQ/WoW comparisons. WoW isn't necessarily easier because you can kill 5 mobs at once, then immediately kill another 5 right after.

In WoW, nobody (who knows what they're doing) levels via straight grinding mobs anyways. Though that is the norm in EQ, only somebody who doesn't know better would do it in WoW.

I would probably level substantially faster than most people in WoW, because I have full heirloom gear (and was a former Gladiator in arena/Hero of the Alliance in RBGs). Meaning, I can just spam battleground ques (with one of my friends) and absolutely destroy everyone else in PVP, almost ensuring I win every match. The xp one receives from winning a BG in WOW is substantial. Maybe the fastest way to level if you can win 90% of the time.

Point is, if I'm able to reach max level in WoW in 60 hours (with my BG spamming and winning); yet the average EQ player reaches max level in 75 hours. Does that make EQ harder? Well, no. As the correlation between those two examples is way off.

In the same way: I think most of the attitudes and opinions about wow on this forum fall into the same category: they are way off.

WoW was the first mmorpg I played after playing Everquest. I played it in 2007. It had the sense of adventure for me then. Not so much recently or on replays.

Still you leveled 1-90 on one game and are surprised you might be able to level 1-50 faster on another? What point is even trying to be made? Your not really comparing anything that makes sense.

I'm assuming from your post WoW leveling was solo. Soloing from 1-60 on EQ would take a lot more than 60 hours. That's the real difference between the two.

The reason I say what I do about the ease of leveling is this. In WoW I have level approx 34 different characters to max level over 4 accounts. No boxing - all one at a time. All the allied races opened the and earned all the heritage armors that have been added. I have all the heirlooms (including the brand new ones from Island Expeditions dubloons). I have leveled WoW toons every way imaginable. I am a WoW player trying to come back to EQ and become an EQ player again. I am not an EQ player thinking I will level by grinding mobs in WoW. You level by questing since with the latest experience changes, questing is the fastest path, even faster than queuing dungeons (even as a tank) or BGs.

In the open world, WoW is tremendously easier to complete quests. The only time I came close to dying on my latest toon was when I pushed time in Shadowmoon Valley wanting the achievement since the last time I did the whole zone was in BC before the achievements. I struggled with 5 man group content as a solo DPS and died. Switching to tank spec (with tank heirlooms) made it a LOT easier. 5 man group quest - solo. Completed at level. And BC is the area that has never been updated so its the 2006 version of the game which was more challenging that the current version.

In EQ, on both Agnarr and Coirnav, I struggled to get to level 30. I tried to find groups but had trouble. I tried to solo and died if I pulled 3. I tried buying a Krono and twinking myself out. Still died. I ended up using the old pull by the zone trick and learning to run if 3 mobs came. For me personally, EQ is more of a challenge and I can push progression in WoW with little issue.

Sure if you have a group they both are similar levels of difficulty. Finding a group in EQ is a lot harder than clicking a button and being put in a queue. Soloing is a lot harder. Open world is harder.

I will say that WoW raiding might be harder with its platform type mechanics in raids but that something I believe doesnt belong in an MMORPG anyway

[1] I'm curious, why would anyone need 4 accounts and 30+ max level toons in WoW?

[2] Bliz literally gives you a near max level toon if you just purchase the latest expansion. Leveling is such an irrelevant aspect of WoW that Bliz made it trivial. The difficulty begins at max level, in raiding and competitive PVP, and that's what the game is designed around.

[3] As a complete noob to EQ (never having played Everquest PC before), I started playing on the Coirnav server within the last few months. I was able to reach level 30 (and beyond) easily.

I never had problems finding groups because I just made them myself. Very quickly I learned that the key to leveling was joining an active guild/packing your friends list with other players who play often and are always enthusiastic to grind. I often would receive multiple tells each time I logged on, asking if I wanted XP.

I've found, the hardest aspect of EQ is learning how the 20 year old mechanics of this game work. According to modern standards, this game was designed extremely poorly (ie, swimming from water into land and having to look up). However considering EQ was the first game of it's kind—it still gets a medal for leading the way and leaving behind a foundation for which other games could build upon.

1) I have multiple accounts because I used to use one account to tank on in my own guilds raids while having my kids play the healer. If I found Pug tanks I only healed. I also did the whole, I just want to start over on a new account / new server with no perks like gold or heirlooms. Right now I have 12 max level Warriors both Horde and Alliance. I have played that game for 14 years. I like leveling characters more than I care about end game - especially since MoP.

2) The game is NOW designed around endgame. Check the YouTube videos from the original devs. There was going to be no PvP. Its why the only PvP pieces there at launch were PvP servers and the ability to toggle PvP on and off. No BGs. No PvP gear. No PvP perks. Raiding was so important that MC was developed in a week. 1 Week because despite having a several year development, they didnt allocate resourses to Raiding until the very end.

3) I have mainly solo'd as I am not an over social player. I became social enough in WoW to create a guild and get enough people to have a 10 man raiding guild in BC but its not me. I can force myself to be social but its not my personality by default. My time in EQ I never pushed leveling hard. I didnt have to push hard in WoW or go out of my way to get other people involved. I could log in and an hour later have a level or 2. I cant do that in EQ without others. Thats a level of difficulty for people who are not social by nature.

This time around, I actually applied for a guild for the first time since my first guild in WoW. Every other guild I have been in (other than my own or my guild merge) I had been poached.