I need some suggestions to get back into the groove here. I stopped really playing at the end of WotLK. I bought every expansion on both my EU and US accounts and kind of dabbled in them a bit here and there but never really got into it again. Now the fever has got me again somewhat I know I won’t chase Mythic raids or progress raiding anymore. so i’m just interested in playing questing maybe battle pets and achievement hunting. But there is just a ton of new content and I don’t even know where to start. it seems impossible to catch up with garrison, class hall, whatever the new shadowlands thing is called and what not. where to start and what to do? any suggestions
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if you are in no particular rush, just do you as you see fit.
there really isn’t any need for me to tell you what to do if you do not really plan to push anything and just take it casually.
just do whatever you enjoy at the time.
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Theres no real imperative to “catch up”.
Just do what feels fun for you at the time. Thats actually one of the joys of wow, if you aren’t on the treadmill of grinding the latest and greatest thing theres actually quite a lot of things you can dip into and out of as the mood takes you.
Also, don’t feel compelled to look at all the resources like wowhead with their streamlined guides to every bit of content. I started PoE recently and made a conscious decision not to look at any outside resources and figure stuff out as I went along. Sure its not optimal and I’m probably making hilarious rookie mistakes but its satisfying to figure stuff out as I go along.
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You don’t need to ‘catch up’.
You have a wealth of content at your disposal. So just play it; in chronological order.
If you’re enjoying what you’re doing then it’s all fine, isn’t it? Just take your time… And maybe if you take it easy and just enjoy all that stuff that’s new for you, you’ll be done in time for 10.0.
Don’t worry about catching up; WoW is not in a great state at the moment. So don’t rush it. Enjoy the content of the past for now.
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This guy gets it.
Just do what you enjoy. Play 5 mans, raid, quest. Whatever. It’s literally ALL available and you can start at the lowest difficulty on each.
Play whatever class you like most are evenly balanced.
Play Mage. Shun Warlocks. Enjoy yourself.
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thank you all that actually helps quite a bit.
Loremaster might be good, take your time doing each of the expansions you didn’t really play and do the battle pets and achievements in that.
SL table is absolutely god awful, I don’t bother with it whatsoever. In fact SL end game is god awful tbh.
Welcome back, Ashrah!
Everything everybody said is right. Also lotsa stuff they didn’t say.
Let me throw in some assorted points.
- Designed path
What Blizzard expects you to do is
- level quickly to level 50,
- then level through the long, linear quest chain in Shadowlands to 60
- then gear up through World Quests (like dailies but different) and Daily Quests in the new zone Korthia
- progress in dungeons, raids, PvP to taste.
At 60, you will not need anything from a previous expansion, so none of the previous expansion is required.
The advantage of this path is that you will then be up with all the other players, doing what everyone else is doing.
The bad news is that
- You’re gonna feel like Franz Kafka designed the opening quest paths at 60
- Shadowlands end game is unusually shallow for questing and world content
- Completer - Your other choices
There is a vast amount of content in Cataclysm, Mists, Warlords, Legion and Battle for Azeroth content you have never seen.
Alts are VASTLY faster and easier to level than you remember. You can level an alt from 10 to 50 very neatly by questing through an expansion. So, for example, pick Mists, quest through its zones. You will get through nearly all of it at the time you hit 50.
If you really want to see lots of the content you have missed, the ideal way is to make one alt for each of the previous expansions. And, of course, at the end you will have a stable of 50s from which you can choose to go forward to level 60.
You can hop between them, levelling each a bit at a time. However, you then get into feeling that nobody is making progress. So, if doing this, it’s probably best to play one for a chunk of levels at a time, enough to feel you have made progress, before switching.
The advantage of this path is that you can tour the whole game at your own pace (and make huge progress on your Safari pet collection achievements (and btw the Snowy Owl has just come into season in Winterspring, so be sure to capture one before Winter ends.)
Or, ofc, you can send one character on to 60 while leisurely levelling alts throug the expansions. All up to how you feel.
- Resources
Websites to rely on:
Wowhead for information about quests, items, all that.
Icy Veins for information about how to play your class and spec
Curseforge for addons. And if you are doing addons, check out WowUp as an addon updater.
Pets are well covered, Warcraft Pets for general information, and, later, when you are battling level 25s, Xu-Fu’s has all the strategies.
And of course, if it’s in WoW, it’s on YouTube somewhere!
- Battle Pets
I see you have actually gathered a significant collection of wild pets already as you have levelled. Good work, there!
I have a five-part guide to making progress in pets in the Pet Battles forum starting here. It may be a bit too focused on progress for your current intentions, but there is lots of help and information available in general, and I’m always happy to help out a new battler. There’s a very friendly Discord, where we’re all willing - and maybe too eager 
- to dish out advice and spare tradable pets.
Do please ask again about anything you might think of!
6 Likes
Best advice anyone could give. Personally I do the current content “as much as possible” and then pick one or two old world things to do aside, atm that is the argent tournament and wotlk and cata cooking.
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So the majority of your gametime will probably rely on your spec and thats quite hard to choose, since its nothing like WOTLK. Also, you probably have new races locked. Finally, you must have missed the majority of expansions.
This is how I would tackle it:
Because your chromie time is locked, you can’t do the fastest and most important exp to level through, which is WOD.
So you do the beginner island, get breadcrumbed to BFA preferably as ally and focus on unlocking island expeditions and other numerous futures of the expansion (war campaign, visions, war fronts etc), which give you choice in terms of how to level. If you want BFA allied races, you grab those. Also BFA mounts are arguably the best in the game.
Soon you will hit 50 and hopefully have some allied races unlocked and now chromie time available. Must take circa 30 hours, depending on chosen activities.
At this point you have reached sufficient level to do Shadowlands, but there is no point what so ever. Instead, if you want to level your current character I suggest doing leftover activities from BFA, in-game events or just choice achievements in wait of 10.0.
If you are thinking of having a more comprehensive experience than BFA, though, its time to start making new characters.
A good strategy to choose an alt is to test-drive him via legion class order hall campaign accessed via chromie time. First of all, the order hall quest line is good. Secondly, you will get teleportation options (e.g. dalaran hs). Getting the latter is advisable on your 1st char as well and is really quick.
Having found a spec you like, you can consider playing an expansion, that fits your character thematically. However, I would advice finishing legion preferably on hordy to unlock the last of allied races.
That being said, in terms of effectiveness, before grabbing a garrison for the old chars, i advice first to make a seperate new character for WOD not to loose the gigantic and extremely fascinating WOD intro quest. Besides, after BFA WOD has the most levelling options. Also, you may by this point have a lightbound draenei or a maghar orc. Finally, WOD arguably has the best mount options after BFA.
So you focus on unlocking all of the levelling options as you did BFA or, if you are feeling lazy, just level up via garrison buildings (e.g. mine) and mobile companion app.
Then get a garrison on your two old chars.
In conclusion, you have done 3 expansions, you have 3 high-level chars, that have a garrison(your production hub) and at least two more hs (dalaran and garrison), you have new allied races.
At this point you are best positioned to either grind collectibles or do achievements.
More importantly, at this point you are best positioned to do older expansions (panda and cata), which are more about story/lore and can not be covered in one alt, like the newer ones can.
TLDR: PROGRESS BACKWARDS EXCLUDE SHADOWLANDS
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Mage Tower
I came back like a month or two and had the same questions as you. Just started to do each xpac on different chars.
By the end of that, you’re mostly back in the game. Feeling wise.
But what struck me, was how different the game felt like. Questing, dungeons. All felt like a cheap version of how I knew the game was.
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