60-70 will not take anywhere near as long as 1-60. Based on my current experience, 61 was literally about 4 hours, with 1/3 of a bar of rested XP. 62 is looking, even with the absolutely *camped* status of Razorsaw yesterday evening, like maybe 6 hours with minimal rested. I'm guessing around 4 days /played to hit 70.

It's no more a barrier to entry than the 1-60 grind is right now. We all know people who've brought friends into the game, or rerolled fresh, and were raiding relatively quickly; why would it be any different for 1-70?

I would double or triple rest gains from 1-40 at the least. It wouldn't allow someone powercatassing to level a char any faster, but it would probably help casual players leveling a lot.

Well, one thing is that yes, it's a lot of time spent, but does anyone else here remember how fun it was to level to 60 for the first time? It's not like it's going to be dreadful and boring grinding all the way to 60, the leveling process is very enjoyable and the quest system so polished that I don't see this as a barrier. Rather, the real barrier is once you get to 60 and you don't get into a raiding guild, so you sort of sit around doing nothing all day.

That being said, it's entirely possible that if you want to help a friend level quickly, you just run around tap leveling for him. If you're at 70, tap leveling will be ridiculously faster than it is right now. Instead of 1-60 in less than a week of real time, it'd probably be four days, depending on what class you're using anyhow.

Actually, I would say simply adding more quests with more good rewards would go a long way towards making the leveling experience more enjoyable.

Granted, increasing rested xp would be easier, but the former would be more enjoyable.

Just a note, if you know what you are doing 5 days /played to get to 60 is easy.

I agree, since the expansion is a start over since everyone gets new gear (unless you have Tier 3), a new player doesn't have that much of a gap to bridge (just 5 days of playing).

I'm saying 4 days without powerleveling, playing the game "as it was meant to be played". The 1-60 equivalent would be 12-18 days, I think.

New players tend to not know what they are doing on account of them being - new. I agree with the OP that this will be an issue going forward, especially when the level cap goes up again. Right now I would estimate that it takes the average gamer 15+ days to get their first character to 60. Even if 60-70 is somewhat faster than 1-60, we are still looking at 25 days /played. Thats quite a bit of time.

Futher, time investment is only part of the deal. Being able to get people for the mid level content is another big factor. How popular will BRM be come expansion time?

I do not know how many people have not hit the level cap yet but I would guess a good portion of the casual gamers (aka the good customers since they play less and pay the same) is still below 60. With expansions mostly adding content at the top end, will this game become stale for newcomers, undercutting its long-term popularity?

Frankly, there is an absolute tonne of content that everyone will be able to level off of very quickly if current XP rewardrates stay true.

I hit 70 on my warrior in Netherstorm, with doing maybe 5 instance runs along the way, and zero grinding for XP. I still have an absolute load to do in Netherstorm, and I haven't even explored Shadowmoon valley yet.

I understand Blades Edge is also now more populated, with an additional quest hub so my 66 Druid (who is maybe 50% through Nagrand) will likely hit 70 without needing to go to either Netherstorm or Shadowmoon.

From what I've experienced, the leveling curve from 60-70 is very well paced and you never feel like you need to grind anything, nor (now) run out of content.

The people who read these forums are a small minority of players - the hardcore who theorycraft, min/max, and try to get the best possible gear and enchants for every single slot. Most of the 7 million WoW players are like my wife - logon a few hours a week, chit chat, quest a bit, and think more about how all your equipment color-coordinates rather than how powerful it is.

For them the expansion is wonderful - lots of new places to visit, stuff to do, and items to bedazzled by. Plus the winged instance design is absolutely fantastic for quick WoW sessions, compared to the slog-fests of todays instances and raids.

I know people who took 6+ months to hit level 60, and they will take the same amount of time to hit 70. No rush.

I leveled to 70 within 2 weeks of realtime on beta by the way, my leveling was accelerated somewhat but I think it'll take people a good 2-3 weeks. I think its reasonable to assume the first week or so is going to be miserable, with constant server hangs, crashes, and reboots.

By the way, this is also one of the reasons why Blizzard constantly pushes out new servers. People who roll on older servers feel left "out" of the community and raiding/PVP/instance cliques. Fresh servers provide a great way for everyone to start at ground zero. Many people level to 60 and then reroll on newer servers to experience the fun of creating a community from scratch.

Both my brothers play WoW, one having started with me at release and the other only just started a month or two ago.

Rather than try to catch up to us at 60, he has been having so much fun in the lower level WSGs and places like WC that he is still in the high 20's where if he had tried to level he would be near 60 by now.

The 1-60 game is fantastic as I'm sure the 61-70 game will be too. There is no reason to want to bypass it just to hit max level if you are new to the game.

Issues like lack of content, lack of gear upgrades and mind-numbing repetitive content for non-raiders once you hit the level cap are retention issues. Having 70 levels of pure fun in front of you aren't.

One thing I found pretty interesting, that one of our re-rolls *just* missed out on - is the PvP gear available to someone who decided to re-roll a new class, but of an existing race. With a co-ordinated PvP group that newbie 60 could have gotten HWL weapons and at least 4 of the R13 set in the first couple days of 2.0.

As far as I can tell, the only twinking for the paladin/shaman re-rolls is going to be via the re-roll jewelcrafters/blacksmiths/etc. Admittedly I don't know how motivated I'm going to be to help run LBRS/Scholo/BRD when I'm level 65 and have been grinding straight for a weekend.

Fortunately, speaking as horde, the paladin re-rolls we're expecting are all exceptional players, and paladins stack disproportionately well when grouped - so it should be easier for those guys to powerlevel themselves. Regardless, I'd expect to be hitting 70 prior to them hitting 60, which means I guess I could level my shaman alt from 60+ along w/ those guys X_x.

Going back a paragraph or two, is anyone setting aside resources for re-rolls, whether it be blues, mats, crafted gear, etc? I just leveled mining to 300, w/out buying mats for smelting - my initial goal was to save all the ore to sell to jewelcrafters, but I'm thinking it might not be a bad idea to donate some mats for twinking the re-rolls. I obviously haven't given a lot of thought to this, but does anyone else have plans along the same lines?