Frosstbyte

The expansion is really beautiful and really cool to look at, but the levels, for the first time ever, feel too large to me. I mean, obviously crazy people in my guild were 80 in like 2 days, so it's probably a function of how I'm playing that I'm not higher up, but I don't remember quite feeling like TBC leveling was as much of a grind as WotLK. I did quite a bit of instancing right at first, but I've only really leveled in Howling Fjord and I'm 20% to 73. That's a shit ton of content up front in one zone. 150-ish quests and 2 levels and change to show for it? Seems kind of crazy.

When I'm not on my hunter, I've been having quite the time getting my deathknight started. They really did a wonderful job with that class. I think he'll be quite the interesting alt.!

Edit: So I was bored, and I'm in my countdown week for bar results, so I can't sleep. I decided to do some research to see if I was just crazy about it feeling like there was a shitton more to do for less progress (numerically speaking) than there was in TBC and here's what I've discovered:

Note, I assume what I've been told is true that the Loremaster achievements for each zone in TBC and WotLK give you a very slight margin for error. About 5 quests at most is what I'm hearing. If that's wrong, this post is pretty much moot.

In TBC for alliance, the total number of quests required for Loremaster of Outland is 568. For horde, the total number is 595. Dunno about horde people, but speaking personally doing instances at level 1-2 times for quests/with friends, I dinged in BEM or Netherstorm every time without touching Shadowmoon Valley (90 quests for both factions). So, when I hit 70, I'd done at MOST 430 or so quests. In all likelihood, many fewer, since I did a lot more quests in Netherstorm for gold after hitting 70. For simplicity, let's say I did 400, plus about 10 instance runs.

In WotLK for alliance, the Loremaster of Northrend achievement is 875. For horde, it's also 875.

I kind of think those numbers speak for themselves, but I'll put it in perspective. Currently, I have done somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 instance runs (AK/AN/UK/Nexus) and about 150 total quests in Northrend. As I mentioned, this has put me at 73.2, with one zone cleared. After I'd done 150 quests in TBC, I would've been done with HFP, Zangarmarsh and gotten a good start into Terrokar. I leveled three toons to 70 pre xp nerf, and by that time they were all pushing 65. Additionally, I didn't really run any of them through SP/UB/BF and ramps more than once or twice total.

So compared to BC, I've seen 2 fewer zones, spent way more time in instances and am over a level behind where I was. I think that does a pretty solid job of accounting for why I'm feeling like Northrend is taking so much longer than Outlands did.

I certainly applaud blizzard for the scope of Northrend. It's beautifully designed and far more cohesive as a continent than anything else they've done by a long shot, but I don't know why they decided to make the levels as big as they did. That's a shit ton of quests and content to get through, just to level, saying nothing for all of the instances and instance-based achievements to work on at 80! For me personally, it's building up wealth, gear and achievements at 80 that I find to be more compelling, so having to do so much more leveling to get there seems a little harsh and unnecessary.

Anyone else felt the leveling grind a bit harder this time around, too?