Everything you need to know about WoW Forever leveling

World of Warcraft: Forever welcomes everyone to Azeroth for the first time for, well, the third time. And anyone who’s built a career out of creating alts throughout Retail and in Classic would want to just go through the motions and get to Level 60 ASAP to enjoy all the new endgame features WoW: Forever has to offer.

But with Level 60 as the capstone, it’s not going to be as quick a ride compared to other WoW expansions. And if this is your first time dipping your toes into an intense MMO like WoW, here’s a quick lesson in leveling in Forever.

Table of contents

• Is the journey to Level 60 going to be a boring ride?
• Always an upward progression
• But first, learn about tagging
• Tackle leveling by quest area
• Rested XP literally rewards you for taking a breather
• Dungeon quests give more XP, dungeon mobs give less
• Level 40 is still the biggest (most frustrating) part of the grind
• Strictly Level 60 is a first for Blizzard

Is the journey to Level 60 going to be a boring ride?

For an MMO that lets characters experience the highs of being Level 120 (back in Battle for Azeroth, at least), Level 60 for Forever feels awfully fast. Or the worse alternative, the mid-point grind will probably be horrifyingly slow.

“We did not change the experience curve,” Kris Zierhut, WoW: Forever‘s principal designer told Sean Keach of The Sun. “So what we’ve really done is just created a different path. The experience curve remains the same.”

Blizzard devs also highlighted this with similar metrics from the WoW: Forever Beta. The average leveling time from Level 1 to 20 in Classic is 20.4 hours, compared to 20.5 in the Forever Beta.

“The big intent is to get you into the world and keep you in it,” Josh Greenfield, WoW: Forever senior game designer, said in the WoW: Forever podcast. “Part of the game is to protect and nurture social experiences. We want to keep you in the world as much as possible.”

But what does this mean for the rest of the leveling experience?

Always an upward progression

Leveling in WoW: Forever is standard-fare RPG mechanics. You get XP by turning in quests, killing mobs, and discovering new areas. For monsters specifically, you get more XP by fighting higher-level mobs compared to lower-level ones.

From your starting zone, expect that quests will eventually get you to a nearby zone with mobs scaled to your general level.

Expect to encounter more lower-level mobs in starting zones to help get you up to speed. Then they get less and less the more you level up. Blizzard said they’ll squeeze in extra spawn rates during launch and will balance things out eventually.

But first, learn about tagging

Leveling can get confusing when other people get involved. If you’re in a high-population area, chances are there are a lot more people also farming the same mobs. This is where tagging comes in.

Basically, if you tag or attack the monster first, you get first dibs on the XP. The monster’s name turns gray for them, which means someone else is already actively engaging the monster.

Even if they kill the monster, you get the XP. The same works if you kill a mob someone already tagged; this time they get the XP instead of you.

If this seems too confusing, you can always just buddy up.

When grouping, go for quests

No adventurer is an island, and one of the M’s in MMORPG does stand for “multiplayer,” so WoW: Forever does incentivize group play. When you party up with other players, you share any XP you get from killing mobs.

At first glance, this seems counterintuitive since you can just earn more if you kill them solo. But the idea is that you can theoretically tackle more powerful mobs and earn even more XP just because you’re in a team.

Plus, you don’t share Quest XP, so it helps to tackle zones together as a unit.

Alternatively, instead of buddying up, just take turns getting first tag on a monster. Everyone else helps, but the tagger gets the XP. Then rotate.

But take note that the higher-level the “helper,” the less XP the tagger will get.

What about leveling up Professions?

Professions are leveled separately. Basically, things you do that actively involve the Profession will earn XP for it. After reaching a certain level, you have to rank up your Profession via the Trainer in order to access more benefits and potential craftable items.

Tackle leveling by quest area

One of the fastest ways to tackle quests in WoW: Forever is the ages-old strategy of doing it zone by zone. Blizzard built Azeroth in such a way that quests will have you naturally go from one area to the next until such a point that you can choose whichever common-leveled zones you want to spend time in.

With an add-on like Questie, you can have a rough estimate of the claimable quests in the zone you’re in and gauge your plan from there. The usual strategy is to accept all quests in one zone, do everything in the vicinity, then turn in everything at once. By the time a quest sends you to the next zone, that’s the sign it’s time to move on.

Rested XP literally rewards you for taking a breather

When you stay in a safe location like an inn, a city, or even with the Cozy Sleeping Bag, you’ll end up in something called a rested state. In here, you start to accumulate something called Rested XP.

This is a concept taken straight from Classic. You know you’re there when your XP bar becomes blue instead of purple. As long as you’re eligible for Rested XP, you gain double the XP from monster kills. This eligibility depends on a “stockpile” of XP you accumulate as you stay rested. Here are other things to consider:

• You stockpile 5% of your level for every 8 hours you spend rested, up to 150% of your current level
• When you kill a monster while rested, the XP earned will be reduced from whatever stockpile you earned
• If you’re not killing mobs, you’re not using Rested XP (quest turn-ins, Profession progress, exploration XP)

Always set your Hearthstone in an inn. If you have to log out at any point, you’ll have accumulated some Rested XP by the time you come back.

Dungeon quests give more XP, dungeon mobs give less

Since Forever is in part a reimagining of the vanilla WoW launch, it’s no surprise vets will have a specific leveling approach in mind. It’s a ritual at that point, especially for those who have an alt for just about any situation.

But take note that part of Blizzard’s plan is to focus less on farming mobs and doing more quests.

“Moving a lot of that experience (leveling) off of just the kills and onto the quests really incentivizes you to do that (the quests) at least once,” Greenfield said on the WoW: Forever podcast.

This also goes for dungeons, where dungeon quests now give more XP while dungeon mobs give less. Prioritize clearing dungeon quests for the first time, as this is where the most XP gain happens.

Level 40 is still the biggest (most frustrating) part of the grind

Anyone who’s ever tried leveling a character in Classic will be intimately familiar with the dreaded Level 40 grind. It’s just a point in anyone’s adventuring career where quests are scarce, and there’s really no “logical” point of zoning progression.

Back in the day, your choices beyond the questlines would be bouncing to and from your preferred farming zones. Forever wants to solve this by adding a couple more regions (and theoretically, quests) to help with that grind:

• Riverglades: Imagine Stranglethorn Vale, hopefully with enough quests and fodder to satisfy the mid-30s to mid-40s grind
• Shen’Dralas: Mid-to-high-level bracket situated between Desolace, Feralas, and Mulgore

These zones will be new additions to staple zones of this level, such as:

• Early 40s: Feralas, Tanaris
• Mid 40s: Searing Gorge, The Hinterlands
• Late 40s: Badlands, Blasted Lands, Un’Goro Crater

Strictly Level 60 is a first for Blizzard

Logging into World of Warcraft: Forever to see a Level 60 cap might make it feel… lacking for some reason. Level 60 always felt like the midpoint to something else, not really a capstone digit.

It could have been the history. WoW: Forever is pegged as a reimagining of the 2004 Vanilla launch, which did have the Level 60 cap.

But then again, it only took two years before The Burning Crusade raised that to Level 70. Come 11 years later, Battle for Azeroth gave us a monumental peak of Level 120, then Shadowlands squished everything back to Level 60. Then Blizzard just couldn’t get its hands off the max level, so here we are at Midnight, a couple more expansions later, with a Level 90 cap.

Basically, it felt un-Blizzard for them to declare WoW: Forever to be strictly until Level 60. If they keep the promise, leveling will be more interesting if they follow through by introducing more routes for that midpoint grind. And if they somehow start pushing the meter again, none of us would be really surprised.

World of Warcraft: Forever is out right now for PC and macOS.

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