Leveling Too Fast?

From my last post you know I have rolled a baby gnome lock and am slowly questing my way through to (eventually) level 85. I have no desire to really raid on this toon he is mainly a vehicle to experience the new worlds quests and to try something different.
However you just seem to zoom through levels and out level zones too fast now. For example I am now leveling in the Loch Mordan area which has seen a lot of changes due to the Stonewrought Dam being nuked by Deathwing. Some of the quests here are now awesome and have taken it from what I remember being a disjointed leveling experience (with trips to places like Westfall being needed to bolster experience) to a smooth and exiting area with lots of quests being seamlessly woven together.

The problem is with enhanced experience gain you now just blitz through the area and if I had moved on to Wetlands when I was supposed to I would have missed 50% of the quests in the area (including a great one with Bingles the Gnome). This is with me deliberately taking off my heirloom gear that provides experience boost to a least try and put a brake on my leveling. There is I suppose the option to pay to freeze my level for a bit as I do zones but this is a bit of a pain to switch it on and off all the time.

I know the reason experience gain was enhanced was to allow people to get to top level in a reasonable amount of time especially considering the big level climb required. But I do think that for the sake of expediency the experience of leveling and all the stories that have been crafted to go along with it are getting missed in the stampede to level 85.
For new players to the game it does seem a bit of a shame that they will miss a lot of the effort that has been put in to making questing more in depth and quests more than "kill 5 bears" type.

Has anyone else who has started a new alt found this?



Zetter

Having a Homer Moment or D'oh

Well the shattering has hit Azeroth and zone have been nuked badly so like I most of the blogging community I rolled an alt and set forth to experience the new quest content.
Podling the Gnome Warlock was born (cliched I know)

I had fun in the gnome starting zone which is sooo much better than the old zone and is nicely worked in with the retaking of Gnomer.

While questing though I suddenly remembered it was the last day of the Thanksgiving event and a brilliant chance to level my cooking rapidly on my little Gnome rather than doing it the hard way. So I pottered between Ironforge and Stormwind merrily cooking the festival fair until it came time to head to Darnassus for potatoes.

(Now at this point remember I have not leveled an alt from new for over three years and spent all of Wrath doing high level stuff like raiding)

So I thought "Darnassus eh have to run it". Off little Podling set full of hope, after all his guide had done this before on a hunter and a druid at similar level back in BC days.
Boy things have changed a bit!

I got to Kalimdor ok via the usual route of the Wetlands and then onto Dustwallow Marsh which was a bit nastier than I remembered, however Jaina and all the crew at Theramore helped a bit by putting a bloody great road through the middle of the marsh. I had a few crocodile related deaths but made it through eventually and thought the worst was behind me.

Then I hit southern barrens and the wheels came off badly. Creature levels appear to have changed a bit so my aggro radius was huge, also blizz appear to have increased mob speed a lot so you cant out run them. I got eaten quite a bit.

But still I persevered and made it to the great rift. However the Alliance and Horde are now going at it big style in this area and this proved to be too much. There are really high level Horde (well compared to my level 5 Gnome) like fleas on a dog and I could go no further. Tail between legs I ported back to Ironforge and decided I would have to get a portal if one of the Guild Mages was on as I could not think of any other way to reach Darnassus.

I relayed my tale of woe on Guild Chat (bearing in mind I had been mucking about at this for 2 hours) and wondered if one of the Mages would be on in time when our DK tank Nightmare piped up with "lol mate why don't you just take a boat from Stormwind". "Boat from Stormwind when did that make it in the game?" I asked. "Only about two years mate" was the response.

As Homer would say D'oh!

Zetter