Leveling as an obsession

I power-leveled Claz to 60 in about seven days played. No, I don't have a life, girlfriend or any other responsibilities other than paying rent and bills. Shut up.

Now, seven days played to 60 is not a record but I'm pretty damn proud of it, especially when it probably took me 40 days played to get Amantara to 60. How did I do it? I'll explain after a bit of a disclaimer.

DISCLAIMER

Don't powerlevel if you're new to the game. I recommend this for a couple reasons. First, you will totally miss out on a lot of what makes this game fun (well, for me. More power to all you "twinks", PvP Gods and gankmasters, but that just isn't my cuppa). You'll miss out on a lot of the storylines that were put into the game. You'll find yourself running Scarlet Monastery and not know how these religious fanatics fit into the world, you'll find yourself wondering why Thrall is sending you on a quest to root out some evil warlocks (as opposed to the "good" warlocks?). I really feel that this turns the game into a more expensive-in-the-long-run Neverwinter Nights (and I like that game). You'll just be going through the motions and it will be easy to fall into becoming one of those outraged number-crunching bastards that no one likes but will run with because they can one-shot Ony.

Second, you won't learn your class correctly. This is an issue that I'm having with Claz and crowd controlling. I leveled this hunter so fast and mostly solo that I don't really have the nuances of traps down and it was an issue. You're going to learn how to work with a group only by working with a group. I think that PVPers don't have this problem to the extent that Raiders have it. In PVP, you need to know your class and be familiar enough wih the other classes so you know how to team up and how to take down. With raiding you need to know the player as much as you know the class.

Third, powerleveling is painful, at least for me. I wanted Claz to be level 60 so bad that I spent a lot of time working on him, doing quests that are annoying, ignoring the tradeskills and not chatting with the many cool people that play this game. It was a lonely, frustrating and exhausting experience. And god help me, I'm going to do it with a priest...
END DISCLAIMER

So, you've decided to powerlevel, how are you going to do it? If you dare to utter the words "pay", "Chinese levelers", or "I don't need to do it, I'll just buy a toon", kindly go away and please delete my blog from your links. Ok, don't. But just don't mention those words within my range of hearing. Here's what I recommend.

1. Find a leveling guide. I used Jame's guide. It is free, very coherent and he breaks things up in bite-size pieces that are completely solo-able and efficient. Live and breath this guide while you're working your character and follow to a "T" his suggestions on add-ons, gearing up, when to group and what quests are worth doing and which aren't. There are other leveling guides out there, but this one really clicked with me and it was free. I don't know about the pay guides and I really wasn't interested in finding pirated guides (and neither should you!). That is the mechanical side of things.

2. Because you're going to be spending a lot of time on things that aren't going to take your full concentration (I mean, how much attention do you need to pay when you're grinding those earth elementals in the badlands, amIright?) I recommend that you have the game's sound turned off. You're not going to need to listen to anything in the game at this point, so don't get burned out on the repetitious sound of that blunderbuss or your wolf howling every 10 minutes. You will have plenty of time to get burned out on those when you're raiding and having to split your attention between many things. Instead, have your favorite media player playing your favorite music (or podcasts. If you're over 18 Kevin Smith's SModcast is a source of much entertainment while you're grinding. Or, play a lot of DvDs. Notice I didn't say watch a lot of DvDs. You're going to be so braindead from running all over Azeroth that you need to feed your mind. I recommend getting DvDs of TV shows you like (House, Deadwood and Battlestar Galactica for me).

3. Get a comfortable chair! You will be wearing a butt-print into the bottom of your chair with all the sitting and shifting. I have a bad back and if I had an uncomfortable chair I would still be bed-ridden.

4. Tell the people in your life that you will be doing this. I am blessed with many people that love me and worry about me if they don't hear from me for a few days. Learn from my mistake- you don't want your friends and loved ones wondering why you fell off the face of the Earth or them showing up at your door with that worried/pissed off look on their face. You're friends know you play Warcraft, don't they?

5. Take a day off for every three days you're power leveling. No, not a day off from work, you need to make a paycheck to pay for internet and the monthly fees, don't you? Level for three days, then on the fourth go to a movie, take a walk with a friend, read a freaking book. Do something other than Warcraft. You don't want to have a spanking-brand-new level 60 that you can't stand to log into because this painful experience is still seared into your neurons.

6. If you have a boy/girlfriend, pay attention to them if they interrupt you. Always maintain your relationships outside of warcraft. Those 3,419 murlocs you need to kill to get the drop will be there in 20 minutes, your girlfriend may not after considering the priority you're placing her into. And give her a good night smooch when she leaves you for your night of powerleveling agony. Sure, this is a bit funny, but you've heard the stories of people getting divorced over one of the spouse's Warcraft habits, haven't you?

7. Remember this is a game! Yes, you're not having fun from 1 - 60, but you're setting yourself a goal and the fun will start when you get off from the leveling train and you stop to smell the felweed. If you're getting frustrated and annoyed, take a longer vacation from the game. Like I said, those 14,761,991 murlocs are still going to be there when you get back.

There, that is Claz's guide to powerleveling and managing the agony of playing a game in a way that isn't fun for the moment. But when you get to that first raid, you're going to see how it paid off.