I made an earlier post detailing my project to level using only the LFD system. Its gone well up to this week. However, I’m now concerned that I won’t have the persistence to finish.
What changed? Two things, and I’m not sure if they are related.
- I hit level 70 and am now queueing in Wrath instances
- Queue times have spiked up to 30-40 minutes
Now that I’ve reached current content in Wrath, the amount of XP it takes to level has jumped. To get from level 69-70 took a little over 700k XP. To get from level 70-71 takes over 1.5 million. Twice as much XP means twice as many instance runs needed to level.
Yesterday I did a clear of UK, and it earned me 12% of a level. At that rate I would need around 8-9 instance runs to gain a level, compared to 3-4 runs per level previously.
This was not unexpected, as the XP needed to level is not a secret. However, in the past few days I have seen the queue time go from 15-20 minutes up to 30-40 minutes. Why has this happened? Are there fewer players in the 70-72 range? Or has this happened across all levels? I’m hearing from people that queue times are high all over.
If I need 8 instance runs to level, and each run involves waiting 30 minutes in queue, that is four hours of downtime sitting in Stormwind doing nothing just to get one level. Whew… what a great way to make use of my $15 per month.
The obvious solution is that I should go out and quest during the downtime. That’s not the point of this project, though. If I give in and quest to fill the time, then I will consider this project a failure.
For the moment I’m sticking with it. I’m going to make sure that I only play when I’ve got a lot of rested bonus built up. That means a couple of days off in between each attempt at running instances. Also, I’m going to try and latch onto a level 72 tank in my guild and see if I can queue with him for faster times. Still, at this rate I cannot imagine how long it will take for me to get to 80. I think it may take as long to get from 70-80 as it took to get from 25-70.
