The power of choice

I used to be all about efficiency in leveling, and I still try to be as much as I can, but now I'm going about it in a different way and I'm not sure if I like it better or not.

For a while I was using some free online leveling guides to help me level more quickly. They tell you which quests to get and what order to do them in so that you spend the least time running back and forth. It was pretty convenient for a while, but it got to the point where I wasn't really playing anymore, just going through the motions and alt+tabbing out of the game to check the next step.

When I first started playing I had no add-ons, no guides, just me and the quest log, and while my progress was pretty slow, it was also really fun exploring and figuring out where to go to accomplish each quests. Sure there were those few quests along the way that really didn't make sense unless I looked them up, but for the most part the explanation the game gave was plenty for me.

The main reason I started reading guides was because I was lost as to what zones to visit later in the game. My rogue had the hardest time leveling, and after he got to 60 I found that there were multiple zones he could have leveled in that I had never gone to, mainly because I didn't even know they were worth going to.

So after much searching I finally found a guide that didn't require you to pay for it. At first I was just using it as a reference for where to go next, but not much more than that. As time went on I started following the guide more closely, doing the quests in the same order, until eventually I was going step by step and it started to feel more like a chore than a game.

At that point I realized I had found a great resource, but was using it in a way that pretty much was ruining the game for me. I found that what I really wanted was a way to map out the quests and then I could choose how to do them. After some research I came across some quest add-ons that would display where objectives are on your map and keep track of your quest progress.

This may seem very similar to just reading a guide, but going from a step by step guide to just having marks on your map is not the same at all. Now I choose which quests to do, and how to do them. Sure the exploration part may not be the same as going with no help at all, but I'm a little past the point where the exploration part is what makes the game fun. Plus, I still have to figure out how to do the quests, I just don't have to figure out where to go for them.

The biggest benefit for me is that I can look at the map, see where the objectives for multiple quests are, and decide the best way to go about doing them. Maybe somewhere down the line I'll have to go back to the same place a few more times, and maybe it won't be the most efficient way and the guide would have told me that, but that's what keeps things interesting.

As I make my way through the game with multiple characters I'm finding that while the exploration part has lost its novelty, I don't miss the wandering aimlessly part at all. Or when the drop rate for a quest item is so bad that you're not sure you're even killing the right mob. The benefits the quest add-on provides far outweigh what it may take away from the game, and after you've been playing long enough you won't miss those annoying parts at all.

As always, the point of a game is that it is fun, so anything that would take away from that fun isn't worth using. In this case, reading a leveling guide was more like work than having fun playing WoW, but using a quest add-on that still left the choices up to me has brought back that fun.

Add-ons and guides are great references, but relying on them too much can sometimes make the game monotonous and boring, and if that starts to be the case you may want to give up on efficiency and make the game fun again, otherwise you might burn out.