Sell Me On WoW!

[Dinkeldog]

They may have rebalanced after you left? I don't know. One human character did the gnoll quests alone (hogger with one other), one human character did princess alone and skipped hogger, but did Darkshore quests alone. You have to be careful, and there are a few trips from the graveyard. Nothing required a 4 or 5-character party except for the Night Elf barrow den.

 

[myrdden]

Well, that's not my experience. At around level 10 I was needing to group to finish the low level human quests, since they were in areas with many enemies, or camps with enemies that would require you to be 4-5 levels higher than they to take them alone.

Wow...talk about completely different experiences. I have a 32 lvl human warlock which has pretty much done nothing but solo. Once and a while I'll casually group when I need to or if someone needs help (and I have nothing else to do), otherwise I have mostly soloed with very little "grinding".

 

[Chun-tzu]

I primarily solo'd my human warlock to around level 40 or so, only occasionally grouping and skipping most elite quests. Around then, I was finding it harder to find non-elite quests, so when I was invited to join a guild, I tried it out (and have had a pretty good experience). Now that I know the world a lot better, I'm pretty sure I could solo a character well into high levels without needing to grind.

For a solo character, I highly recommend herbalism and alchemy as professions. Alchemy gives you access to a lot of buffs, and the healing potions are a life saver. Developing secondary professions is also worth it, in my experience. Between first aid, cooking, healing potions, and my warlock healthstones, I've never been highly dependent on a healer.

 

[Thanee]

I play a human rogue, currently level 32, and have done a lot of solo play. Grouping for elite quests and instance dungeons is usually necessary, tho, and quite rewarding, too, unless you group with a bunch of idiots.

Hunter and Paladin are good classes for solo play, I think. Druid, too, and Shaman probably (don't know much about them).

BTW, is there a european EN World Guild, too? I don't think the european versions allow to play on the US servers.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Raloc]

They may have rebalanced after you left? I don't know. One human character did the gnoll quests alone (hogger with one other), one human character did princess alone and skipped hogger, but did Darkshore quests alone. You have to be careful, and there are a few trips from the graveyard. Nothing required a 4 or 5-character party except for the Night Elf barrow den.

They must have changed it. I think I was level 12 when I completed the Hogger quest, and we had a level 15 Druid with two more level 12s. I was the only one that lived when we took on Hogger himself. I had it on authority that named spawns = fear.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I played in the open beta. One thing that I've noticed (and this holds true for basically all MMOGs) is that you shouldn't bother playing unless you have a group. Get into a guild if you can, and make sure they're all similar levels, and that you have enough time to keep up with at least 3-4 of them. Otherwise, you're in for a world of frustration/boredom. Soloing is basically non-existant past level 7 or so. WoW is slightly better about this, but it's still not good enough. So it basically boils down to: do you have a group/guild? Can you stay at similar levels as most of them? Do you have enough time to play (at least 3-5 hours a day)? If you answered "no" to any of these questions, the game's probably not for you.

I gotta say, it doesn't sound like you played WoW at all. I've played the game for over a year now (I got in almost at the beginning of alpha) and if you skip elite quests, you can indeed solo to 60. My hunter solos more than 3/4 of the time and I'm 57 now. Some quests might be harder than others -- I just picked my way through all red (higher relative level) owlbears in Winterspring to do a quest, but it was certainly doable.

And WoW also is rewarding in 30 minute bursts, whether it's logging on to do non-combat quests (of which there are a lot, at all levels), knocking out a relatively short outdoor combat quest, crafting something or fooling around in the Auction House.

It's hard to imagine an MMORPG more casual-friendly than WoW.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

They must have changed it. I think I was level 12 when I completed the Hogger quest, and we had a level 15 Druid with two more level 12s. I was the only one that lived when we took on Hogger himself. I had it on authority that named spawns = fear.

The draft of the instruction manual wasn't widely disseminated in open beta, but Hogger is labelled as an elite quest, and elite = group. You could have easily skipped Hogger and gone soloing in Westfall or Loch Modan quite easily.

 

[Bloosquig]

I played throughout the Beta testing and I and my wife both loved the game, though we currently are short on funds to play it we plan on getting it again when we get some cash. Its definately a ton of fun and very easy to play and learn. I pretty much solo'd my main character (a troll shaman) to level 26 and had no problems with anything. The Shaman totem quests involve a LOT of travelling looking for the elemental shrines, but it definately added a certain RPG type dimension to the quest. I still remember the goosebumps I got at the first shrine lol. The experience bonus allows more casual players (or just alternate characters to your main one) to help stay close to your more hard core friends. Though if you start playing you'll probably find yourself sucked into it more then you thought originally. My sister (and consequently her fiance) and my dad both switched from EQ2 to WoW at my urging and now play it for several hours a day. Anyway if your interested in the game its definately worth a look.