World of Warcraft is the biggest MMO game out there, so why does it often feel like a really slow single-player game while you’re leveling? If your newbie character is not in a guild, or in a guild without many others at the same level, it can feel like just you against the world, killing hundreds and hundreds of liver-less boars. Not fun.
Blizzard has worked to make the game as social as possible. Nowhere is this more apparent than the LFG tool. Even at low levels you can queue up and be put into a group that Blizzard builds for you, ported into and out. Even so, if you’re not leveling a healer or tank, you may have long stretches of wait time in between those instances, or maybe you just don’t feel like instances. What’s the solution?
Well, a leveling buddy of course! Could be a spouse or significant other (which makes WoW into quality time! Yay!) or a sibling or a friend, but the idea is that you have a pair of characters that level together. If your buddy is new to WoW, you can do the recruit-a-friend system and the levels will go past so fast you can’t blink, but either way, it’s a good way to keep WoW social. If you’re rolling a pair of characters to level together, consider these points.
1. Complimentary Classes – two Holy priests may take a while to level. A Holy priest and a warrior, on the other hand, will kill lots of things and not die very often. A hunter and a mage is a good combo, if the hunter can use his pet to tank while the mage kills stuff. A Ret paladin (to level 40 or so, then spec Prot) and a druid with a hybrid balance/resto spec are unstoppable together.
2. Complimentary skills – One of you wants to be a jewelcrafter, one wants to be a blacksmith. Only one of you needs to learn mining to keep the duo supplied, so maybe the other can pick up engineering or something totally unrelated.
3. Have a Backup Plan – the key to “leveling duo” is the two characters need to stay close together in levels. If one can’t play for a few sessions, resist the urge to keep going on the other or all of a sudden you’ll be eight levels apart and have to either break up the duo or take time and level up the lagging member.
4. Communicate – If you’re in the same room, it’s easy. If you’re miles apart, a phonecall or voice chat makes playing together easier and more like actually spending time together.
5. Resist the urge to Cheat – Don’t pull out your level 80 character to kill a quest boss that’s just too tough for you and your bud, or run your partner through the Stockades. The point is to level a pair of characters together, not take turns power leveling. Instead find new solutions and learn something about your new class. Remember when Wrath hit and there were all these high-level death knights running around with no clue what their skills actually did? That happens when you get power leveled, too.
Other Ideas? Reversion and I are altaholics, we freely admit this. I think it’s made us better players on our mains, and it’s a nice break. If you’ve got suggestions for pair leveling, let me know – Cataclysm is coming and our goblins aren’t going to level themselves…
Great advice! (I do remember the DKs – I was leveling my tree then, and most groups were 3 bad DKs+me+random – ughhh.)
A sort of side-advice/question is: does your leveling buddy really wants to level with you? Are your leveling styles similar?
I had written a long story but that shouldn’t clutter your comments section :P In short, my boyfriend doesn’t like leveling, while I do, so our “leveling team” fell apart when he wanted to focus on his main and get boosted to 80 on his alt. Those first 30 levels were fun, but the good times didn’t last.
Oh, and multi-char leveling teams will probably fall apart at some point. Coordinating 2 people is hard, coordinating 3+ is nigh-impossible. I’ve done it once before, and we played together ended up splitting after 7-8 levels (priest decided she didn’t have enough time to catch up, pally decided he wanted to rush to 80). I’m doing it again now with the cows <
When my wife was lvling her Mage I hung out with her by using a series of old alts that were skattered through the level ranges. And old lvl 9 rouge here and a lvl 30 priest there, that sort of thing. Eventually she got close enouh to my main for it to not be slumming. But actually all that time soloing a Mage taught her a lot about the game. Things like having a fast set of casts so you can drop things before they kill you. A leveling pair can acually be a crutch sometimes.
With her recent pally I sacrificed and just rolled another Druids and levels it all the way up (76 so far).
As for how to make someone into an altaholic…. No idea. You can get some together time by asking him to power lvl you on ocasion though.
My boyfriend will never be an altoholic, unless I boost his chars to 70 (and maybe more). That’s not fun. BUT! the shammy he rolled with me hit 80 last weekend, so now I can tank for him on my pally \o/ Pally needs emblems for OS, shammy needs… everything, so we just need some time and we’re set :D It took a year, but oh well :P
We’re trying a leveling trio with my brother – he’s somewhere that doesn’t always have good internet and sometimes lower level stuff is do-able but heroics aren’t, so we’ll switch to the three draeni we’ve rolled. They’re only up to 12 and no idea whether it’ll work.