Hi guys,

I have been playing wow with my wife for the last two years. Everytime
that I am on my wife is on. We quest beside each other but do not team
up unless the quest requires us to kill a special mob. Would it be
faster leveling if we joined party and helped each other to kill mobs
or are we best of to just quest without a party??

Any thoughts or ideas would be appreciated........

Thanks

On 2008-09-25 17:00:07 -0700, Darkner <info@a1batterypro.com.au> said:

> Hi guys,
>
> I have been playing wow with my wife for the last two years. Everytime
> that I am on my wife is on. We quest beside each other but do not team
> up unless the quest requires us to kill a special mob. Would it be
> faster leveling if we joined party and helped each other to kill mobs
> or are we best of to just quest without a party??
>
> Any thoughts or ideas would be appreciated........
>
> Thanks

From what I understand, it depends on the type of quest. Gathering
quests where you have to accumulate 10 gizmos dropped from mobs are
best done solo. Otherwise you are going to spend all night killing
enough mobs to get 10 gizmos for each of you, especially if the gizmo
drops rarely.

"Kill the boss" type quests go faster with a group. If you are supposed
to get Maz'Gorth's head, for example, he usually has enough heads that
everyone in the group can have one. (One could do his anthropological
thesis on headhunting in Azeroth.) Such mobs are usually heavily
protected and very difficult for a solo player to kill.

Quests such as the Mystery of Kurzen where you have to run around
reading four different tablets also go faster with a group. If you are
doing "Stone of the Tides" (if you can actually get this quest to work
-- it is buggy) it helps to have someone watching your back at the very
least.

Quests inside instances would hardly ever be worth doing solo.

Some quests, such as the bombing runs at the beginning of Outlands, can
only be done solo. A quest such as Triage, the First Aid profession
quest, can be difficult to do solo, but you get to keep leftover
bandages from previous attempts. You might fail the first couple of
times, but then if you give the bandages to someone else they can
bandage people for you and help you complete the quest.

--
Waddling Eagle
World Famous Flight Instructor

On Thu, 25 Sep 2008 23:31:55 -0700, C J Campbell wrote:
> On 2008-09-25 17:00:07 -0700, Darkner <info@a1batterypro.com.au> said:
>
> > Hi guys,
> >
> > I have been playing wow with my wife for the last two years. Everytime
> > that I am on my wife is on. We quest beside each other but do not team
> > up unless the quest requires us to kill a special mob. Would it be
> > faster leveling if we joined party and helped each other to kill mobs
> > or are we best of to just quest without a party??
> >
> > Any thoughts or ideas would be appreciated........
> >
> > Thanks
>
> From what I understand, it depends on the type of quest. Gathering
> quests where you have to accumulate 10 gizmos dropped from mobs are
> best done solo. Otherwise you are going to spend all night killing
> enough mobs to get 10 gizmos for each of you, especially if the gizmo
> drops rarely.

Well, of course, if you are both questing for those 10 gizmos at the same
time, in the same area and therefore competing for mobs, it doesn't really
make much difference. In effect, teaming up would probably still be faster,
as you will kill the mobs faster, therefore having a higher rate of
potentially seeing a gizmo drop.

> "Kill the boss" type quests go faster with a group.

True.

> Quests such as the Mystery of Kurzen where you have to run around
> reading four different tablets also go faster with a group.

True.


However, while the quests might be done sooner, I am not sure whether you
will level faster.

Yesterday I mopped up my 3 or 4 last quests in Un'goro with my then 52 mage.
During the first one a level 51 druid asked me what quests I was doing and
we teamed up. It turned out that it was a new player on his first char and
he was glad to get some tips and help from me and we actually had a good
time questing together as the mobs died really fast.

However, I noticed that I was getting ~230 XP per mob (110 base XP, +110
rested, +14 group bonus).

While killing mobs of the same level solo gave me between 400 and 600 XP per
kill.

So we might have killed mobs a little faster and finished quests a little
faster but certainly not 2 or 3 times as fast to make up for the lost XP
from killing mobs.

Cheers
Urbin

--
Dun Morogh-EU (PvE)
Urbin (70), Dwarven Hunter | Surana (54), Draenei Mage
Mymule (70), Gnomish Warlock | Juran (33), Nightelven Druid
Sunh (70), Nightelven Priest | Gera (26), Human Paladin

C J Campbell <christophercampbell@hotmail.com> wrote:
> On 2008-09-25 17:00:07 -0700, Darkner <info@a1batterypro.com.au> said:
>
> > Hi guys,
> >
> > I have been playing wow with my wife for the last two years. Everytime
> > that I am on my wife is on. We quest beside each other but do not team
> > up unless the quest requires us to kill a special mob. Would it be
> > faster leveling if we joined party and helped each other to kill mobs
> > or are we best of to just quest without a party??
> >
> > Any thoughts or ideas would be appreciated........
> >
> > Thanks
>
> From what I understand, it depends on the type of quest. Gathering
> quests where you have to accumulate 10 gizmos dropped from mobs are
> best done solo. Otherwise you are going to spend all night killing
> enough mobs to get 10 gizmos for each of you, especially if the gizmo
> drops rarely.

I have to disagree with that advice, given that the OP says they quest
beside each other. If you are going to be hanging round killing mobs
when you've got all your drops until your wife has all her drops
too then you're much better off being grouped.

The reason being that when you've got your 10 gizmos, if you're
grouped, any further mobs you kill may still drop gizmos for your
wife to collect.

Also, if mobs reward any sort of reputation gains, you will
effectively double your rep gains by being grouped, since you'll be
gaining rep for both mobs killed by you AND those killed by your wife.

In fact I see little advantage to NOT being grouped. Sure, if you're
not grouped then you get twice the XP per kill, but you're only
getting credit for half the kills, so XP gains are equal, grouped
or not.

--
Zil, Level 70 NE Priest, Aman Shan're, Stormrage Europe

Zil wrote:
[...]
> In fact I see little advantage to NOT being grouped. Sure, if you're
> not grouped then you get twice the XP per kill, but you're only
> getting credit for half the kills, so XP gains are equal, grouped
> or not.

Also many quests don't require drop collection; instead you must kill a
certain number of mobs. A group can finish such quests much faster than
a solo player, or two players playing solo.

--
Peter Knutsen
sagatafl.org

On 2008-09-26 04:56:19 -0700, Peter Knutsen <peter@sagatafl.invalid> said:

> Zil wrote:
> [...]
>> In fact I see little advantage to NOT being grouped. Sure, if you're
>> not grouped then you get twice the XP per kill, but you're only
>> getting credit for half the kills, so XP gains are equal, grouped
>> or not.
>
> Also many quests don't require drop collection; instead you must kill a
> certain number of mobs. A group can finish such quests much faster than
> a solo player, or two players playing solo.

I think I see what you are saying.

These particular quests are often a problem for me. Right now on our
server you cannot find Shadowmaw Panthers at all. They have been hunted
practically to extinction. They frequently re-spawn as Stranglethorn
Tigresses and that is all that there is in the area now. So really,
perhaps the best approach would be to get a group together and
slaughter every Tigress we find and then get the Panthers we actually
need.

It can be frustrating, though, when some big group has just moved
through the area where you are questing and they have killed everything
in sight. Some mobs are not really all that common and so it gets to be
a waiting game where you hope the mob spawns closer to than somebody
else. It is really tough for casters who usually take a little time to
get their first shot in. :-)

--
Waddling Eagle
World Famous Flight Instructor

Many more cases where *being grouped in a party* will benefit the two
of you, than not.

In fact the only time I stay outside a group is on my healer when I
don't want to take a cut of the other players' experience points
(which is very rare). Even in that case, it's harder to do the job
since some spells (like Prayers) only work IN the group.

Good points made by ppl here already. To elaborate on one for the
OP's benefit, if you find that the two of you are collecting something
but only ONE of you needs more, you can always change the LOOT options
to Free for All (by right clicking on your portrait in the upper
left). Even then, it's rare to need to do it since (as Zil already
said) after you loot the body, the quest-specific gizmo will still be
available for the other party member whom is still collecting.

BLMX <junkbin5-02@comcast.net> wrote:
> Many more cases where *being grouped in a party* will benefit the two
> of you, than not.

A bit tangential, but if you happen to have a 'tank' class and a 'healer'
class group, then the added benefit is that you'd most likely get easy
groups for leveling instances too, and their mobs and quests reward a
lot of experience. Some time ago I and 2 of my friends leveled new alts
together, and if the players know the game mechanics well most of the
instances up to Uldaman can really be 3-manned of 4-manned around their
intended level. (I think the summoning for the last boss in Uldaman
required 5 people to summon.) And unless your realm is very quiet, you'd
most likely found at least few dps classes to come with you if needed.

--
"Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on
society." -Mark Twain

Miikka <nope@nowhere.invalid> wrote:
> BLMX <junkbin5-02@comcast.net> wrote:
>> Many more cases where *being grouped in a party* will benefit the two
>> of you, than not.
>
> A bit tangential, but if you happen to have a 'tank' class and a 'healer'
> class group, then the added benefit is that you'd most likely get easy
> groups for leveling instances too, and their mobs and quests reward a
> lot of experience. Some time ago I and 2 of my friends leveled new alts
> together, and if the players know the game mechanics well most of the
> instances up to Uldaman can really be 3-manned of 4-manned around their
> intended level. (I think the summoning for the last boss in Uldaman
> required 5 people to summon.) And unless your realm is very quiet, you'd
> most likely found at least few dps classes to come with you if needed.
>

Having the tank and healer locked up goes a LONG way towards getting a
group together.

For the record, you only need 3 to summon the last boss in Uldaman.

--
Rob Wynne / The Autographed Cat / doc@america.net
http://www.autographedcat.com/ / http://autographedcat.livejournal.com/
Gafilk 2009: Jan 9-11, 2009 - Atlanta, GA - http://www.gafilk.org/
Aphelion - Original SF&F since 1997 - http://www.aphelion-webzine.com/