In classic you ALWAYS need to do both questing and grinding, because even if you manage to do ALL the quests in a zone you can end up being short on XP for the next quest zone that your character level needs to survive it and/or take quests in it. Additionally in some cases you NEED to Quest for specific pieces of gear. This is even more true when you are playing 'solo self found' and in Hard Core (one life, delete if you die) game mechanics. Depending on random drops for gear can cost you and get you killed later down the progression.
This was made for 2019 classic obviously, but you are wrong about Hardcore. The best way to level there is actually grind the whole way. Its the safest way to level, and you make a ton of money, with which you can use to buy stuff from the heavily populated AH. The plus side of people dying is they tend to spend a lot of time in the lower levels, thus populating the AH with a LOT of stuff. At least last time I played. I'm sure its less true after SOD. SSF is not something I have messed with, but grinding is so safe that it really doesn't matter if you have much gear or not. Mix in a few underleveled quests for good upgrades, and grind away!
Super informitive video , thank you for this ! I was dead set on if you have a fast questing route its always faster than grinding but you have changed my mind . I know you wanna stay away from classic wow content but i really hope you make some more classic vids in the future !
I never fully got into questing, I had a dung group but, it fell apart so I have started grinding, and in an hour I find myself in a calming rhythm; I just gotta find more time 😆 I do hope to go back and do all the quests when I hit max level, and hopefully have a chance at endgame content before TBC
TEXT BASED SUMMARY BELOW Questing is often thought of as the only option, but before TBC, exp/hr from grinding can be looked at as a rival to questing in almost every way. The most common misconception people think of with grinding is that you will not get any gear, but you will actually have the potential to get much more as you will make considerably more gold per level than if you did quests alone, allowing you to buy high-value BOEs or other items that might help. Either way, grinding vs questing is a fine line to walk. *There are three main reasons you should GRIND instead of quest.* *1.* The difficulty of quests means you will level cautiously. People think "difficulty" only refers to in-game, but it can also mean personal difficulty, such as having to look up quest objectives frequently etc. *2.* The travel and down-time in between quests is poorly maximized. This can be circumvented many ways, but the most common misconception is that grinding to and from quests is the best way to solve it, essentially admitting that grinding is more valuable than questing! *3.* And most importantly, competition. If you are on a server all alone, the first two factors likely do not make up enough of an issue to make you think grinding is the best option, but if you ever run into situations where the mob or item you are looking for is gone or tags are lost, you start to see why that can add up to issues over the course of 50+ hours of play time. Even though all of these problems may be present from 1 to 60, there will be times when the curve balances itself out, and that is usually around level 42, at which time you should have a mount, considerably improved gear and spells, and the option of questing in many more zones and areas than you did early on. Hope this clears things up! If you are interested in finding good routes for grinding, check out my videos on the topic! 5-25 Horde - ruclips.net/video/-zFC0isqGfQ/видео.html 24-45 - ruclips.net/video/kI64xYJsOO4/видео.html
ABUSED your southern barrens and durnholde grind spots and loved doing it. Ended up out leveling quests that I chose to do, making them much faster. This was my first character ever, and I found that it was not always clear what you were supposed to do at certain times. Grinding ensured I was always in combat (the most exciting part!) I also smoked my friends who were veterans of the game and got into raiding weeks earlier. This is truly the way. Thank you! This is about the route I used, can't exactly remember the levels I personally ended up there, but I used your guides in addition to some lists I found online. 1-18 quest in barrens 19-25 grind in southern barrens 26-32 grind in arathi and lordamere lake 33-40 scarlet monastery spam 41-43 swamp of sorrows 44-45 whelps in Badlands 46-51 bears, wolves and bug cave in feralas 52-55 everything in fun'goro 56-60 blackrock dungeon spam
Nice 100% makes perfect sense and is to my way of thinking 100% correct as well. There are a few things that kind of sway me to exclusively quest. 1) Lore. As you know I am a total lore junkie and even though the lore in vanilla was not as dedicated or streamlined there some amazing stories being told throughout the zones in classic. (Most of the ones that come to mind off the top of my head relate back to WC 3 Mor'ladim, Darrowshire, Theramore, Mulgore, Durotar, Lorderon all tell really good stories.) 2) For me time/speed is a non-issue. I enjoy the atmosphere and world so much that travelling feels as good and fun for me as doing the quests. In fact, just from my own perspective, anytime I might need a little change of scenery is almost always around when it's better to switch zones because the quests are too/hard or i am too low a level to complete them. And since I enjoy exploring so much in Classic anyway it's a nice break for me to change from Loch Modan to Westfall for a bit. 3) Grinding just feels bad to me. I would much rather be doing something, anything that has significance than just kiling murlocs for 2 hours for no other reason than it gives good XP. It's the same reason why most of the time I avoid PvP in the game as it just has no real hook to it that makes it worth while. This is entirely a me issue, I get it, but it destroys my brain to have to grind. It feels like I am wasting an opportunity to experience the game by just killing mobs.This goes back to the fact that for me for Classic and even through to the beginning of Wrath the game was about leveling and questing, so when I go back to that version of the game it's what I want to experience the most. One last thing I will say that I found really interesting looking at your chart there, right about where questing starts to get better is about when a LOT of the best lore and story quests in the game kick in, the zones we both mentioned plus both the plaguelands, thousand needles ungoro blasted lands swamp of sorrows etc etc, all start to really "Git gud" as the kids say right around level 38-43 and up. So it's an interesting kind of synergy for sure, and at the end of the sday reinforces that if you can stand grinding your method really does work really well.
Ya frankly the game just gets playable around 40ish. That's when you start building towards end game lore as well. But ya I should have mentioned it, but obviously not everyone has the stomach for grinding. It takes a certain disposition for sure.
Hey man! Im new to wow and i was wondering,how do you mean that you play other games or watch streams while grinding? You still have to chase mobs,use spells etc,so you still gotta be in game and put thought into playing it.
@@zlobert9877 If you play a non-caster in classic you can literally just auto attack mobs to death, so I would just use one spell, set auto attack, and tab back to whatever else I was doing.
I have some classic stuff over on my second channel, and that's where it will stay. www.youtube.com/@MetrosLevelingChallenges Classic is a great game, but sadly Dragonflight and now The War Within are just better, so that's where my time goes.
Is that a thing? I'm all my years of grinding never really had competition outside of the first few hours of a server. What would want to do in that case is just camp the respawn of the enemy basically. Try to be between two.
This was made well before people developed highly optimized leveling guides that focus mostly on questing. If you compare standard grinding to that level of questing, grinding is absolutely slower. But those guides are efficient because they mitigate the travel by including ways to get experience and quests out of the mandatory travel such as training and turn ins. If you are the type to simply just go to a zone, do a few quests in and leave to find another zone with no plan for your hearth usage and travel, then ya grinding is likely going to be faster than that.
@@heythereguysitsMetro I did try those guides, but honestly, I played so much 15 years ago it was just like a reminder. There's still a lot of travel involved. It's good for people that haven't played before, or it's been a long time. The quest rewards and experience gain hasn't changed, so I still support your grinding thesis. The thing I would say about hardcore, though, is if you aren't using the auction house, you can't easily get the big bags early, so you probably won't get more money simply because you can't hold as much trash loot.
Ya, without AH grinding is bad. But with it, its amazing. I know a lot of people do like ssf challenges though so that makes grinding awful.@@kittydaddy2023
Yes, the verison of the game, the game was never intented to be. Don't get me wrong, hardcore aadds a neat change to how people interact with the game put thats where the fun ends, atleast for me.@@heythereguysitsMetro Grinding is a perception. To me doing quests isnt grinding, its very enjoyable. It's all relative, i focus on the moment to moment enjoyment of my all time favorite game; vanilla WoW. I dont use quesstie or anything and listen to my quests or read them everytime. My focus is world immersion.
Hey guess what! Remember that game that the whole RUclips media harassed blizzard to remake? Don't play the content. Just grind. And I have educational graphs....
I’m with you on turning your brain off for grinding, very satisfying. Never understood the “that’s boring” argument; questing is neither fun nor satisfying which is where modern WoW gets it right in my opinion; just turn your brain off and go to the spots on the map, the end game is where challenging gameplay occurs.
Great video. A follow up with your favorite grind spots by level would be great
Those have been made already. I added links to the pinned comment
Awesome, thank you!
In classic you ALWAYS need to do both questing and grinding, because even if you manage to do ALL the quests in a zone you can end up being short on XP for the next quest zone that your character level needs to survive it and/or take quests in it.
Additionally in some cases you NEED to Quest for specific pieces of gear. This is even more true when you are playing 'solo self found' and in Hard Core (one life, delete if you die) game mechanics. Depending on random drops for gear can cost you and get you killed later down the progression.
This was made for 2019 classic obviously, but you are wrong about Hardcore.
The best way to level there is actually grind the whole way. Its the safest way to level, and you make a ton of money, with which you can use to buy stuff from the heavily populated AH.
The plus side of people dying is they tend to spend a lot of time in the lower levels, thus populating the AH with a LOT of stuff. At least last time I played. I'm sure its less true after SOD.
SSF is not something I have messed with, but grinding is so safe that it really doesn't matter if you have much gear or not. Mix in a few underleveled quests for good upgrades, and grind away!
Super informitive video , thank you for this ! I was dead set on if you have a fast questing route its always faster than grinding but you have changed my mind . I know you wanna stay away from classic wow content but i really hope you make some more classic vids in the future !
Ya, I might make topic videos like this for sure. Done actually playing for the foreseeable future though.
I never fully got into questing, I had a dung group but, it fell apart so I have started grinding, and in an hour I find myself in a calming rhythm; I just gotta find more time 😆
I do hope to go back and do all the quests when I hit max level, and hopefully have a chance at endgame content before TBC
Don't rush through it. There is very little replayable end game in classic. I imagine most people find leveling to be the most engaging time.
I like to grind green to yellow mobs while watching a documentary
Its fun! Used to be my favorite way to level in Classic honestly.
TEXT BASED SUMMARY BELOW
Questing is often thought of as the only option, but before TBC, exp/hr from grinding can be looked at as a rival to questing in almost every way.
The most common misconception people think of with grinding is that you will not get any gear, but you will actually have the potential to get much more as you will make considerably more gold per level than if you did quests alone, allowing you to buy high-value BOEs or other items that might help.
Either way, grinding vs questing is a fine line to walk.
*There are three main reasons you should GRIND instead of quest.*
*1.* The difficulty of quests means you will level cautiously. People think "difficulty" only refers to in-game, but it can also mean personal difficulty, such as having to look up quest objectives frequently etc.
*2.* The travel and down-time in between quests is poorly maximized. This can be circumvented many ways, but the most common misconception is that grinding to and from quests is the best way to solve it, essentially admitting that grinding is more valuable than questing!
*3.* And most importantly, competition. If you are on a server all alone, the first two factors likely do not make up enough of an issue to make you think grinding is the best option, but if you ever run into situations where the mob or item you are looking for is gone or tags are lost, you start to see why that can add up to issues over the course of 50+ hours of play time.
Even though all of these problems may be present from 1 to 60, there will be times when the curve balances itself out, and that is usually around level 42, at which time you should have a mount, considerably improved gear and spells, and the option of questing in many more zones and areas than you did early on.
Hope this clears things up!
If you are interested in finding good routes for grinding, check out my videos on the topic!
5-25 Horde - ruclips.net/video/-zFC0isqGfQ/видео.html
24-45 - ruclips.net/video/kI64xYJsOO4/видео.html
ABUSED your southern barrens and durnholde grind spots and loved doing it. Ended up out leveling quests that I chose to do, making them much faster. This was my first character ever, and I found that it was not always clear what you were supposed to do at certain times. Grinding ensured I was always in combat (the most exciting part!) I also smoked my friends who were veterans of the game and got into raiding weeks earlier. This is truly the way. Thank you!
This is about the route I used, can't exactly remember the levels I personally ended up there, but I used your guides in addition to some lists I found online.
1-18 quest in barrens
19-25 grind in southern barrens
26-32 grind in arathi and lordamere lake
33-40 scarlet monastery spam
41-43 swamp of sorrows
44-45 whelps in Badlands
46-51 bears, wolves and bug cave in feralas
52-55 everything in fun'goro
56-60 blackrock dungeon spam
@@ximbabwe0228 Cool glad it helped! Especially as horde, there are a ton of good grinds early!
Nice 100% makes perfect sense and is to my way of thinking 100% correct as well. There are a few things that kind of sway me to exclusively quest.
1) Lore. As you know I am a total lore junkie and even though the lore in vanilla was not as dedicated or streamlined there some amazing stories being told throughout the zones in classic. (Most of the ones that come to mind off the top of my head relate back to WC 3 Mor'ladim, Darrowshire, Theramore, Mulgore, Durotar, Lorderon all tell really good stories.)
2) For me time/speed is a non-issue. I enjoy the atmosphere and world so much that travelling feels as good and fun for me as doing the quests. In fact, just from my own perspective, anytime I might need a little change of scenery is almost always around when it's better to switch zones because the quests are too/hard or i am too low a level to complete them. And since I enjoy exploring so much in Classic anyway it's a nice break for me to change from Loch Modan to Westfall for a bit.
3) Grinding just feels bad to me. I would much rather be doing something, anything that has significance than just kiling murlocs for 2 hours for no other reason than it gives good XP. It's the same reason why most of the time I avoid PvP in the game as it just has no real hook to it that makes it worth while. This is entirely a me issue, I get it, but it destroys my brain to have to grind. It feels like I am wasting an opportunity to experience the game by just killing mobs.This goes back to the fact that for me for Classic and even through to the beginning of Wrath the game was about leveling and questing, so when I go back to that version of the game it's what I want to experience the most.
One last thing I will say that I found really interesting looking at your chart there, right about where questing starts to get better is about when a LOT of the best lore and story quests in the game kick in, the zones we both mentioned plus both the plaguelands, thousand needles ungoro blasted lands swamp of sorrows etc etc, all start to really "Git gud" as the kids say right around level 38-43 and up. So it's an interesting kind of synergy for sure, and at the end of the sday reinforces that if you can stand grinding your method really does work really well.
Ya frankly the game just gets playable around 40ish. That's when you start building towards end game lore as well.
But ya I should have mentioned it, but obviously not everyone has the stomach for grinding. It takes a certain disposition for sure.
Hey man! Im new to wow and i was wondering,how do you mean that you play other games or watch streams while grinding? You still have to chase mobs,use spells etc,so you still gotta be in game and put thought into playing it.
Not in classic haha
@@heythereguysitsMetro how?
@@zlobert9877 If you play a non-caster in classic you can literally just auto attack mobs to death, so I would just use one spell, set auto attack, and tab back to whatever else I was doing.
would like to see dungeon grinding compared to the rest of these.
Would have been interesting for sure.
i was wondering how you could play pokemon at the same time as grinding but then you mentioned you play a paladin
Did it on druid and shaman as well. 90 percent of their damage will be auto attacks.
Quest for Reputation, get exalted.
Not needed.
Need some more classic content bro
I have some classic stuff over on my second channel, and that's where it will stay.
www.youtube.com/@MetrosLevelingChallenges
Classic is a great game, but sadly Dragonflight and now The War Within are just better, so that's where my time goes.
@@heythereguysitsMetro respect
what to do when it's also competition in grinding spots xD
Is that a thing? I'm all my years of grinding never really had competition outside of the first few hours of a server.
What would want to do in that case is just camp the respawn of the enemy basically. Try to be between two.
Grinding is probably faster TBH. I just think about all the travel time of turning quests in especially before getting amount. Ugh
This was made well before people developed highly optimized leveling guides that focus mostly on questing. If you compare standard grinding to that level of questing, grinding is absolutely slower.
But those guides are efficient because they mitigate the travel by including ways to get experience and quests out of the mandatory travel such as training and turn ins.
If you are the type to simply just go to a zone, do a few quests in and leave to find another zone with no plan for your hearth usage and travel, then ya grinding is likely going to be faster than that.
@@heythereguysitsMetro I did try those guides, but honestly, I played so much 15 years ago it was just like a reminder. There's still a lot of travel involved. It's good for people that haven't played before, or it's been a long time. The quest rewards and experience gain hasn't changed, so I still support your grinding thesis. The thing I would say about hardcore, though, is if you aren't using the auction house, you can't easily get the big bags early, so you probably won't get more money simply because you can't hold as much trash loot.
Ya, without AH grinding is bad. But with it, its amazing. I know a lot of people do like ssf challenges though so that makes grinding awful.@@kittydaddy2023
Not doing quests and just farming mobs and farming dungeons cuz all people care about is efficacy and adventure is secondary...
?
Ironically now that there are hardcore servers that is doubly true though. This shows a very safe way to get 60.
Yes, the verison of the game, the game was never intented to be. Don't get me wrong, hardcore aadds a neat change to how people interact with the game put thats where the fun ends, atleast for me.@@heythereguysitsMetro Grinding is a perception. To me doing quests isnt grinding, its very enjoyable. It's all relative, i focus on the moment to moment enjoyment of my all time favorite game; vanilla WoW. I dont use quesstie or anything and listen to my quests or read them everytime. My focus is world immersion.
Hey guess what! Remember that game that the whole RUclips media harassed blizzard to remake? Don't play the content. Just grind. And I have educational graphs....
This will be for people who have played the content dozens of times like myself, and are just interested in leveling efficiently.
I’m with you on turning your brain off for grinding, very satisfying. Never understood the “that’s boring” argument; questing is neither fun nor satisfying which is where modern WoW gets it right in my opinion; just turn your brain off and go to the spots on the map, the end game is where challenging gameplay occurs.
That's just your opinion. i find questing in vanilla very fun.
As a Resto Shammy, grinding is not mindless...
Regardless of your spec you should find it mindless. If you don't, grind a lower level range.
Picture on danger level is not even close to accurate
okay