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There is a special breed of player who's not content to level from 1 to 70 in the ordinary manner. Instead, they choose to place hindrances on themselves to create a more challenging experience. Gutrot of the European Aerie Peak realm is one example. He finally attained level 70 a few weeks ago after months of questing and killing creatures naked, with no weapons or visible armor aside from his trusty loincloth. His feat has made him a minor Wow celebrity and there was a huge party when he finally hit the level cap. Other players have placed different limitations on themselves, seemingly inspired by Gutrot. For instance, Gweryc and Kakita are both melee-only hunters while Noor is a pacifist, trying to reach the level cap without killing anything.I've always been intrigued by this sort of idea, and have even made a character or two myself that had such limitations placed upon them. Recently, during the long dark night between patches, I got bored with my mindless and aimless farming and decided to create a new alt. I decided that this character would be a Draenei warrior, but that he would only fight unarmed, with a staff or with a throwing weapon. I also decided that he could only wear cloth or leather items. I suppose my idea was based somewhat on a sketchy notion of some kind of fighting monk.
I've always found the idea of a staff-wielding warrior kind of humorous, at least in WoW, and I even had Slavedriver's Cane on my warrior alt for awhile. As you might imagine, making another warrior that exclusively uses staves was appealing to me. The real draw of this type of gameplay, of course, is that it makes you rethink the entire way you approach leveling up. In essence, it's like creating your own character class. You need to think about what type of gear, professions and talents you choose in order to be as successful as possible given the new limitations you've imposed on yourself. For people that have been playing this game for several years now and have alts of every class, it's this type of thing that can keep one interested in WoW while waiting for the next patch (even if we don't have much longer to wait for the next one).
Have you ever done anything like this? Do you have any ideas for other interesting self-imposed limitations?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
11-10-2007 @ 9:44PM
Jon Niola said...
Wow some people have WAY too much free time on their hands. I can't even imagine that that would be fun.
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11-10-2007 @ 10:05PM
Jeff Sturges said...
Having played this game for a long time with countless alts, I find these ideas very appealing. Especially the World of Peacecraft idea.
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11-10-2007 @ 10:05PM
apoxic said...
With the risk of sounding very negative, these people should really play the elder scrolls games instead, or anything similar.
The only accomplishment the first guy really does is endurance of very boring game-play for a very long time. I'm also pretty sure that 9/10 people he tells "Hey I leveled a character in World of Warcraft from 1 to 70 without any gear at all!" will be a lot like "lol why the ยค%&/ did you do that for?" rather than any positive response :p, probably because they won't believe anyone would do such a stupid thing to begin with.
I will admit that when I first heard of the idea of some maniac wanted to level his char that way I thought hey thats cool, but really in the end it just feels that he wasted his time. But then again, aren't we all just wasting our time in different ways here.
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11-10-2007 @ 10:06PM
Lanth said...
I had an idea for a Melee Warlock. No directly offensive spells can be cast (that means I can cast Fear, Health/Soul/Fire stones, Demon/Fel Armour, Shadow Ward, etc). I could summon demons, but purely for buffs. The only offensive spell I'm allowed to cast is Drain Soul for soul shard.
It's interesting to see the playstyle for a melee 'lock. I would go into Demonology for all the buffs, go Jewelcrafting for the melee rings, necklaces and trinkets, get sword/dagger and offhand, or when I could, a feral staff. And, of course, firestone at all times.
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11-10-2007 @ 10:35PM
icer said...
how can u lvl without killing??
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11-10-2007 @ 10:42PM
Auden Korelor said...
@Apoxic...
Actually, the reaction to Gutrot has been overwhelmingly positive. I created a European trial account just so that I could go to his dinging-70 party... and there were so many naked trolls in Sen'jin Village to celebrate that we crashed the server repeatedly. Guilds were formed... and filled... just to offer him praise, and we followed him wherever on the server that he led.
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11-10-2007 @ 10:59PM
Taylor said...
@icer it is very easy to level without killing, just play a healer. Do instances all day, or groups all day. Have other people kill the things you need. That way technically you didnt kill the thing, and you still get the XP for the kill, and quest turn in.
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11-10-2007 @ 11:17PM
Zhalseran said...
I know a guy who has something like 6 accounts, and he has some crazy alts. Top 2 I know of are the cloth/staff arms warrior and the level 7 discovery experience only toon.
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11-10-2007 @ 11:33PM
BartmanDK said...
Getting things in your own way.. thats just stupid!!...
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11-10-2007 @ 11:40PM
roguedubb said...
I've been playing with a few limited concepts lately, when I hit upon one I hadn't tried: single class skill.
Take a class, like the Warrior, who starts with a single ability in the Arms category and never learn any Fury or Protection skills and never take anything but Arms talents. It makes your key bindings rather easy.
Also possible with a Holy Priest and a Holy Paladin.
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11-11-2007 @ 12:14AM
tiamazzo said...
How about a melee only mage? Stack sloth gear with Str, Agi, and Stam. =P
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11-11-2007 @ 12:22AM
Krick said...
Here's one... Try to see how high you can level a toon without ever leaving the continent you start on.
If you're Horde, it's probably a LOT easier to pick one of the races that start on Kalimdor, at least until you near 60 since most of the high end instances are on Eastern Kingdoms.
Since you're in danger of running out of quests, I'd probably complete every quest in every zone before moving to the next, though you might run into problems with outleveling some quests int he next zone.
Obviously, you'll eventually hit a point in the mid 60s where mobs on Kalimdor are grey to you but there still might be some XP to be had from instances or repeatable turnin quests.
...
Krick
http://www.tankadin.com
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11-11-2007 @ 2:04AM
Schreck said...
I was doing an interview for an applicant to my guild one day (pre-bc) and we interviewed a lock that never did the quests to have a fel-hunter or a succubus. Unfortunately, this was because of stupidity and not for any "real" reason. Funny thing was, the quests were somehow level based and there was no way for him to go back and get them, he'd even submitted GM tickets and they were aware of the problem, but at that point there was nothing they could do. Needless to say, the guy didn't get into the guild.
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11-11-2007 @ 2:16AM
FelDork said...
Congrats to anyone that manages to stick it out with some kind of endeavor like that but I have neither the free time to or patience to even consider something like that. Especially something like the pacifist angle...having to rely on low level groups and instances to do all of your killing??? Holy god...for a dude without a guild I dont even want to consider how long that would take.
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11-11-2007 @ 2:55AM
Lanth said...
@12: I know some guy levelled to 70 without setting foot in the Outland. He did it by levelling in EPL/Silithus until they were grey to him, then ran CoT instances until about 67/68, then grinded on the level 70 mobs outside Karazhan.
I reckon off-talent-specs would be fun without being too difficult. For example, most Warlocks level as Affliction/Demonology. A Destruction 'lock would be fun, as would a Protection Warrior, Balance Druid or Holy Priest.
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11-11-2007 @ 4:22AM
kunukia said...
I leveled a holy priest to 60, but not for reasons mentioned. I wanted her available as holy for when I did instances, and did not mind that my solo questing was rather slow.
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11-11-2007 @ 4:30AM
vlad said...
@5
group and let others kill and run instances.
my priest leveled in instances and prolly only killed 25-50 creatures or mobs from 1-70
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11-11-2007 @ 7:10AM
Gustav said...
Gutrot is king!
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11-11-2007 @ 8:09AM
monkeyhouse said...
one of my friends came up with an idea for re-rolling alts. he plays each new character with 'character' up to lvl 10 for added spice.
for example, for a new orc. only wearing a loin cloth - all quests up to lvl 1 must be done with bare hands, 2-3 only with a dagger, adding more equipment as he levels - this gives a feeling of acheivment and builds the character. a rite of passage sort of thing.
then he adds a trait - fear of water (refuses to get wet), kills all owls on sight (great for a NElf), etc
its not that big a deal but gets you involved a bit more with your character from the start on quests and mobs you've seen a thousand times!
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11-11-2007 @ 8:19AM
Snailking said...
A long time ago I made a tauren druid who refused to kill any animals.
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