The Grind Curve
Those of you who may have given up before even reaching the top will be happy to know that, as a result of feedback (read: people complaining like complainers love to), the middle chunk of WoW has been squashed to make the trawl from levels 20 to 60 a lot more pleasant. Blizzard quotes a spurious percentage to show how much easier it is, but we’ve been leveling new characters to try it out.
Not only has quest experience been increased between levels 30-60, the entire curve is noticeably easier on you - you’ll spend less time hanging around zones, and get a lot more bang for your buck on some of the tougher quests. Drop rates have been increased noticeably on some quests, and Dustwallow Marsh is now a great deal better. The addition of Mudsprocket and some additional goblin quests within adds depth to the zone - and gives you an extra flight path; useful considering the size of it all. Dungeons have also been tweaked to be more rewarding, and overall patch 2.3 has made the lower levels a joy - so if you’re hoping to start anew, not only is there still time to level up, but it’s going to be a lot of fun.
Fr’instance
Naxxramas and Zul’Aman are the newest instances - one released before The Burning Crusade, one released after. Naxxramas operates as a high-level raid dungeon, built for those able to compete in the higher level guilds, but Zul’Aman is an easily-accessible dungeon released recently for players burned out on Karazhan runs looking for a new challenge. Full of angry, tribal Forest Trolls, Zul’Aman should prepare you for the Trolls of Zul’Drak - and dealing with the icy instanced content of Drak’Tharon Keep.
Blizzard's 2024 stats expose your 480 million deaths, 1.7 trillion murdered demons, 8.34 billion hours played, and how allergic Americans are to the metric system
WoW veteran says the MMO's devs had to make "ten times the amount of quests" as originally planned to sate playtesters, and now the game has 38,000 of them
