Zone level flow

[janana323]

As many times as I level throughout WoW I always get in that weird "wait which zone should I go to now" thing.

So I figured I'd share a nice resource to alleviate this. It's sort of sequential zone level list from wowwiki before cata.

It's the best I can find, but if anyone knows of like a map with the levels superimposed or color coded or something a bit more pretty then feel free to link it below! I'm not huge into the "level as fast as you can" thing, as I prefer to stop and smell the roses, but if anyone else has good resources out there then feel free to share!

Also I'm pretty sure there's a map addon that does something like this, like adds 20-25 on mouseover of zones on the map, can't remember the name though, or if it is compatible with 1.12.1

 

[Zzuk]

There is a map addon for 1.12.1 which display a levelrange inside the tooltip while you hover over the area. Not sure if it was metamap or cartographer.

 

[Struckd]

I know cartographer definitely does. Not sure about metamap.

By the time you are level 25/30+ you will be questing in a few zones simultaneously since any one zone will not have enough quests to completely level you to the next range. One example is 1k needles (H), by the time you are level 30 you can very well have all the quests completed, except the ones on the simmering flats which require you to be level 34+, so you will have to move one and come back later.

 

[Xarias]

To achieve the best possible xp (so you don't have to grind later) I believe you need to visit same zones more times. Starting at level 20 (or so) and up imo. Leveling wasn't too balanced back then. Although horde does have more quests.

Anyway, that wiki link is informative but is rather vague and doesn't go into too much detail. It also varies by faction quite a bit. But like I said, if you want to level efficiently (meaning only doing yellow quests and not having to grind), you will find yourself visiting different zones more times than once.

Example 1: Desolace for alliance - it's 30 - 40. Few quests (like 4 or 5 I think) in the beginning are 30 - 31 and then it scales up to 34 - 35 suddenly. Then after completing these, its 37 - 39. Although the xp you get from the previous quests (along with xp for kills) may hardly get you like two levels. So, in between you need to do some quests in STV maybe, hillsbrad foothills, arathi highlands or possibly some instance runs.

Example 2: Ashenvale for alliance - there's hardly any quests for one at lvl 18. I wouldn't advise going to ashenvale as alliance until level 21 or better even 23.

I remember leveling my first character on retail (which took 18 days played ). I mainly used the map blizzard used to have on the old wow-europe.com website, which displayed zones by preferable levels. I would do some red quests here and there, abandon some green ones. In the end, even though I had done tons of instance runs, I still had to grind after level 50.

If you want to avoid grind, you need to make a plan. But it will require lot of travelling. You can't just basically stay in one zone, finish all the quests in it and move to some other zone. Unfortunately.

 

[jorim]

http://vanilla-wow.wikia.com/wiki/Zones_by_level

Looks better without the expansions

 

[zerozen]

A bit offtopic but in Vanilla WoW I always felt there was a huge bottleneck leveling from 30 to 40, it is there when things suddenly went uphill and you had to travel a lot to find and complete quests of your level at a time when you are still not ready to travel worldwide and lack all kind of resources... that is if you chose to level through questing that is imho the way to go specially since Ive never been a fan of grinding.

Once you ding 40 you suddenly start getting zones full of quests for your level until 60 and its already a nonstop rocket race from there... but from 30 to 40 I still remember after many years it was actually harder to do than the other 50 single levels.

 

[janana323]

Ooooh lovely thanks jorim I'll edit that into the main thingy

 

[acedpositive]

@zerozen
I remember going to dustwallow marsh every time after i got lvl 35 but it was in TBC when i found out about this godlike zone (tons of great quests) while playing horde. Dunno if it was as good in 1.21 since the zone was introduced as a viable leveling option a little bit later into the game. 30 - 35 for me was always a bit harder.