Exploring Without FightingFollow

Get killed and travel as a ghost

Not really, you're bound to draw aggro from higher level mobs. So, it's either lots of corpse running, fighting or then just running around as a ghost.

I have heard tales of people who level doing nothing but exploration and gathering. If you take mining and herbalism as professions, you can gain exp by gathering herbs and ore. It'll take a lot longer to level that way, but it is possible.

It's not that I don't like combat, I just hate the quests that all just boil down to "kill x of y." They get awfully tedious. Sitting around leveling up by mining seems even worse.

What's this about a druid? How do they avoid this issue?

Try actually reading the quests so you know why you're killing x of y. Makes it a bit more entertaining for me at least.

GIGO. If you give more precise information, you'll probably get better answers. I'm not sure anyone really likes "kill x of y" but those quests are there to soften the old problem of hitting a zone and needing to just grind mobs; they give extra experience and quest rewards for something you would have had to do anyway. For what it is worth, they used to be worse (I'm looking at you Hemet Nesingwary)and they're still better than "kill/loot x until that ******* item drops and then realize you need y more of them to finish" quests.

One reason to do those quests is that there are quest chains that cannot be completed without going through all the stages. The kill or gather quests are part of the story telling, sometimes setting the stage for a more complicated story to come.



They can change forms to meet different situations. They have stealth to slip by things, tanking and dps forms for when they have to brute force something, casting to help with pulls and healing for when they've been beaten on. Shifting form breaks many effects that might prevent a different toon from escaping and dash lets them get distance. They also have travel and flight forms.



If you hate "kill x of y", you're going to love rep grinds and dailies. It sounds like you may be playing solo, finding a good guild might help. Pigtails also makes a good point, part of the game experience is quest text, sometimes supplemented by books you can click on for a bit of lore. If you want to experience the game world, you're shorting yourself if you miss parts of the story.

You don't need to wait until level 5 anymore. I'm almost positive you can take up gathering skills at level 1 now.

That misses the point.

So in other words you want to level without having to work at it.

Sorry kid but no such thing in this game.

Ways to level -

1) Exploring - This is kind of a limited way of leveling as you only get so much XP for exploring and its not nearly enough to level you up to get into more dangerous zones to do more exploring - dangers of a level 10 wandering into a level 80 zone already explained.

2) Mining/Herbalism - You're still going to have to kill mobs as they'll attack you while doing these things. If you do nothing but both of those then you'll want to make sure to periodically buy gear from the AH. As a plus point you'll have plenty of cash due to selling the stuff you gather. Come level 60 this process gets easier as you'll be able to purchase flying.

3) Quests - Fastest and easiest way to level - kill/gather 10 of mob X/item Y, FedEx and the occasional "listen to Bob's long story about something" quests - that's what they boil down to in every game in existence.

4) Battlegrounds - You get XP from participating in battlegrounds (organized PvP) - XP is awarded for achieving BG objectives and upon the end of the BG (higher XP for winning of course).

5) Instances - aka a dungeon - You get bonus XP for being in an instance and they're quite good for getting gear and meeting other people. This does involve LOTS of killing of mobs and usually at a very frantic pace.

6) Grinding - Go out, find a mob that's green or yellow to you and kill it, rinse and repeat - it's like questing except no reward for killing 10 of mob X.

That's about it - WoW is a sword and sorcery based MMO, which means that the overwhelming majority of XP opportunities come from killing something. If you want to level from just walking around looking at stuff and exchanging blocks of text with NPCs this is definitely not the game for you.

Sorry.

One of these days, so help me god, I'm going to break down and try that game.

If boring is your issue in combat, you're hanging around a quest zone for too long before moving on. Eventually, you become the meanest SOB in that little neighborhood and the mobs become tasty little snacks.

Some ideas based on my limited experience:

1) Solo. Any class works, but if you want a challenge, stay way from hunters and warlocks. their built-in parties (pets and minions) make life a lot easier. I kind of like the rogue I'm playing with now for keeping alert. If you ***** up your first attack, or you aren't careful about making sure the "victim" has no close-by friends, you die a lot.

2) move on! Don't play out all the quests in one area. Not only do they get to easy, but the next area starts too easy when you finally get there. I like to make frequent vivits to the recruiting boards in the cpitols to see where to go next.