After recently leveling a fresh undead warlock I noticed how fast it was to level now in World of Warcraft. After researching the WoW forums along with some general internet scouring I found that a lot of people found the leveling to have gotten to a point where it is so fast that popping into a dungeon or a battleground and coming out again resulted in the skipping of entire zones and story-line content.
Here are some advantages and disadvantages regarding the high speed of leveling:
Advantages
- You get to endgame quicker
- You can skip zones you don't want to see or do by popping into a dungeon or doing a bit of PvP
- Experience all aspects of the game faster (PvP, Dungeons, Raids, Talents, Abilities, Mounts, Pets...)
Disadvantages
- Outleveling zones prior to completion - immersion and lore breaker
- Outleveling professions - hindered leveling progress due to returning to lower level zones to level professions (mainly Herbalism, Mining and Skinning)
- A lack of time to properly use and understand newly learned abilities
- Daunting task at level 90 to be good at your class due to the above point
Another thought of mine is that fast leveling is almost forced upon you if you want to be part of a guild: 10% XP guild perk at the low guild level of 6.
Also should there be an option to slow down leveling for those who want true immersion in the lore that is expressed as you level? At this point after researching this topic I found that quite a few players found the leveling to be too fast with no XP boosts whatsoever.
Thoughts?