Revenge of the Jiyas: WoW-Pro Speed Testing

From Jiyambi’s blog, the Journal of J.

I was reading through some of my old posts and I cam across my Adventures of Mokrana series from back in 2009. In case you weren’t reading the blog back then, this was a series of articles where I documented speed and efficiency testing runs for the WoW-Pro Leveling addon. I remembered how fun that was, and how interesting it was to see how the different chapters of the guide matched up.

So I’ve decided to start a new series: The Revenge of the Jiyas. In this series I’ll be running a small army of alts (all with various versions of “Jiya” as their names) through every guide in the WoW-Pro addon. I’ve decided to do this test using all warriors, since it will be the best way to compare between guides – every race can be a warrior, after all! Warriors aren’t ridiculously good at soloing, like hunters are, but they aren’t too shabby at it either, having a lot of health, good defenses, and the ability to move quickly via charging. Overall I think it will be a good average experience.

The Rules

• NO rested XP! I’ll be logging out OUTSIDE of inns and major cities.
• NO heirlooms! I’ll only wear what gear I find, get from questing, or can legitimately afford on the auction house.
• NO help from high level characters, in money or runs! I’m starting on a brand new server where I don’t know anyone, and since I’m speed leveling, I won’t be socializing. So I’m on my own!
• NO dungeons, PvP, etc. This is a test of the questing guides, specifically.

Caveats

• NO professions. I’m already handicapping myself enough, and I’m also documenting my progress via notes and screenshots as I go, which will slow me a small amount. I won’t be taking extra time out for professions, even gathering ones.
• YES – I have an auctioneer. I’ll be mailing all my marketable items to her, and she’ll sell them. I won’t be playing the auction house in any other way, though.

The Process

I will be recording how long each quest circuit takes and measuring that in hr/lvl. That means, how many hours it would take to gain one level at that experience rate. I think measuring this way will make more sense than levels/hr, as most people want to know how long it takes to get to the next level, NOT how much of a level an hour’s play will get them.

I’ll be covering one zone at a time, starting with ALL of the starter zones. Doing it in this way will allow us to get a clear idea of how similar zones compare in speed.

Along the way I’ll be making notes of things that worked well and things that didn’t, both in terms of the actual quests from Blizzard, as well as the guide. In my write up, I’ll include these notes, as well as an updated version of the guide with these issues fixed. These updates will be available in the next version of the WoW-Pro addon, but you can get them early from my blog!

My final write up will have a spreadsheet showing the quest circuits, start and end times and levels, and the hr/lvl rate for each. I’ll have a write up in prose accompanying this, as well as screenshots. I’ll compare the guide and zone to the others in that bracket which I’ve completed so far. Finally, I’ll include a download link for the updated guide.

When I complete a “bracket” of zones (all zones of a particular level range), I’ll write up a summary comparing all the zones and recommending the best for leveling.

I’ve already completed the Durotar guide, and you should expect to see it posted here sometime tomorrow!

Jiyambi is an avid gamer, and also develops games as a hobby. For articles about other games and the game development process, check out her blog, the Journal of J.