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The latest patch 5.4 newsDrama Mamas: The broken leveling pact
by Lisa Poisso 
Apr 23rd 2010 at 9:00AM
My husband and I make concept duos. Sometimes we make duos that our friends and guildies follow; an early Horde PvP project turned into an effective reforming of our guild, which wound through the battlegrounds and eventually morphed back into PvE raiding. Sometimes we change courses (a lot). A recent level 50-ish Horde shammy/pally combo turned into an Alliance reroll so we could revisit all the Alliance quests again pre-Cataclysm, which in turn became a reroll when I decided the new mage wasn't as fun as the old pally ... And that's been fun, but we've been feeling pangs about abandoning our rogue gank squad, which stalled out somewhere in Borean Tundra when the shaman/pally bug came calling.
Through all this, no matter how much we end up questing through the same old places, we've learned that it pays to stick together. We tradeskill separately, and we're cool about class-specific quests, but we try to stay neck in neck on quest progression. The whole point, after all, is to do all this crazy stuff (our current pre-Cataclysm Loremaster/Explorer quest-gasm) as a team. That's what makes it fun.
But we didn't always know that. We used to get impatient if one of us didn't feel like logging in that night. We used to oh-so-innocently run up "only three levels" ahead of one another. We used to get so swept away with the thrill of the XP hunt that we forgot that the point was to accomplish it together.
Dear Drama Mamas, Someone I thought was a good friend agreed to leveling a druid with me in preparation for the oncoming expansion. The plan was to get to 80 as quickly as possible, then realm transfer to a PvP server and do what we could in terms of PvP success. Then once Cataclysm was released and the feature became available, we would race change to Worgen, then work our way up the ladder again, our feral/resto combo hopefully unmatched.
The problem is that after this near month both of our druids are only level 26. Why? Because day after day, except about once a week and the first 10 levels, we would do no leveling. I would log on my druid to ask him if we were leveling and all I would usually get is "IDK." Rarely did I get a yes, in which case we would spend about an hour or two leveling, earning two levels maximum for that session. After which he would get tired and go back to his main, a priest, to do some BGs, arenas or whatever.
Today I basically asked him if he really cared about leveling his druid with me. I even told him I wouldn't mind leveling solo, I would rather do that then level only once every four days and for a little while. I know he has the time to level because I see him standing around in Dalaran for long periods of time and he plays much more than I do.
Receiving no definitive response from him I gave him until the end of the day to decide, and if I had no reply from him, I would assume a no and carry on solo. I regret to be so harsh on my long time and once very good friend but I felt it had to be done, especially considering what happened the last time we tried to level. I wanted to level a shaman and he wanted to play something else than his DK, so he decided on the priest that is now his main. After 62 levels of pure fun and speed (faster than I would have by myself), everything changed. My laptop's hard drive broke and my old computer was just too laggy to play on. After telling him the situation I hoped that he would have waited for my new hard drive and we would continue on to 80 just as merrily as before. However, the day the new hard drive came in the mail and I began reinstalling WoW, I saw that he had already reached level 70. The next day I confronted him on it and his reasons were that he plays a lot more than I did (which was not at all considering I couldn't do anything with all of the lag on my old computer) and he thought I would understand already having three max level characters and him only have his death knight.
What should I do, Drama Mamas? Should I continue to give him the benefit of the doubt for the sake of our friendship or should I just take my losses and move on without him? -- Raging Altoholic
No matter -- let's cut this friend of yours some slack. Sometimes what sounds like a great character concept doesn't turn out to be so fun in practice. Maybe your friend still loves the idea of the character combo but can't stomach the grind of releveling. It happens; my husband and I can't seem to push a new combo higher than 70 lately. The only thing you can do here is figure out ways to break up the monotony. Run BGs every so often. Spend an entire night nabbing a couple of levels inside instances with the dungeon finder. Agree on one or two nights per week that you'll work on your duo, and back off from there. Try a different faction or realm type. ... Whatever makes leveling enjoyable again.
Unfortunately for this situation with your friend, the "raging" aspect of your "raging altaholism" has overtaken the whole point of leveling as a team. Even if things are stalled out (either temporarily or permanently), there's no reason to kill off the duo and piss off your friend in the bargain. He may or may not regain enthusiasm. Either way, you've got plenty of other characters to dally with. So go ahead and get your game on -- just do it with another character.
Drama Mama Robin: Duuuuuude. Chill out. Go with the flow. If you're really a raging altaholic, then the solution is simple: roll another druid! Quit with the ultimatums and deadlines. Play the duo druid when he wants to play it and play your solo druid when he doesn't. Yes, your solo druid will catch up and out-level your duo druid, but so what? Big deal.If he gets upset that your solo druid is leveling quickly and that you are happily playing without him, then he needs to be more understanding. It's not like he waited for you with his priest. If he wants to catch up, great! If he wants to create another duo to play with you, great! If he gets snitty about the whole thing, well, that's icky. But have him come up with a solution -- the reasons behind his reticence to play with you may come out. Of course, that may be a bad thing. Hmmm, is there something outside of Azeroth that he may be upset about?
It may not be about the duo at all. Hours in Dalaran not doing anything? Perhaps he's got a little somethin' somethin' on the side. I mean, this is pure speculation and I may be totally wrong about this, but it sounds like some heavy chatting is going on and not with you. Perhaps he has found himself a groovy kind of love?
Your stress over this is sucking your fun and his. So relax, man. Schedule duo dates with your friend -- a couple hours a week -- and don't bother him about it otherwise. If he wants to play more often, let him volunteer when and how often. Don't push. Don't nag. Let it be.
Drama Mama Robin is out. Peace!
Drama-buster of the week
Sometimes, there's nothing like advice from a real, live player who's been there and done that. If you're looking for advice, use the /who command. You're most likely to find people with time to chat if you /whisper players who are traveling or in cities. Ask if they have a moment to answer a question about their class (or whatever the issue is) for you. The main thing to remember: don't send a random /whisper to someone who's in the middle of something requiring focus. Don't /whisper anyone who's in an instance (distracting someone at the wrong moment in an instance could literally cause a party or raid wipe). Don't /whisper someone doing an escort quest. Players who are farming for materials may be bored silly and interested in chatting, but they may have had a terribad day and want to chill out with some mindless, solitary grinding; either way, be polite. Most people love to help when approached politely!
Remember, your mama wouldn't want to see your name on any drama. Play nice ... and when in doubt, ask the Drama Mamas at DramaMamas (at) WoW (dot) com.Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Drama Mamas
Reader Comments (Page 3 of 3)
danawhitaker Apr 23rd 2010 4:33PM
It's not a matter of selfishness, I don't think anyway. I don't like (read: hate) PVP at low levels, for instance. Some people in my guild use that as their sole method of leveling. I could never duo with someone who just wanted me to run battleground after battleground. It's mind-numbing to me. The same goes for running dungeons. I acknowledge the fact that my method of loremasterpalooza isn't for everyone. But I'm also running on the tight schedule, for old world at least, of Cataclysm potentially messing up what I'm trying to do. I'm not willing to wait until my characters are 80 and risk going back to do Loremaster only to find out that it very likely will be massively changed simply because of some of the zone changes that will be taking place.
Now, I wouldn't be opposed to making a toon of a class I haven't tried yet (shaman or druid) and running it up with a friend. But there are certain things I would not do in the leveling process because I don't like them at all, and because I don't have a lot of time for them. Solo questing is something I can do during the day while taking care of my daughter without worrying about leaving someone (or four other someones, in the case of a dungeon) in a lurch. Even from friends, I've gotten a cold response before when I'm helping them with something during the day and I have to AFK because my daughter needs something - even if I tell them why.
I've done the joint leveling thing before, in other games, with other people. And these are all people I know outside the game, not just people I've met in the game. I have never seen tandem leveling work well. Someone's either trying to drag people through zones and quests they want to do too quickly, or doesn't show up at all for weeks at a time leaving the duo character in limbo, or someone has too much free time and starts to move beyond the group, or one person likes to chain run dungeons and everyone else finds it boring. It's a game - not a job. If two or three people don't find playing the same way fun, they probably shouldn't be playing together. You can still play in tandem without being grouped together and questing identically. I find it preferable, really. Everyone's still leveling, but they're doing it enjoyably, and we still can chat on vent or in guild/party chat.
Some of us are talking about tandem leveling worgen in Cataclysm. But I'm already hesitant about that because I'm not sure I'm interested in playing a shaman or druid, and the only other class I've not yet played is death knight, which would start a lot higher than the other classes.
Go look at your /played time, and tell me, really, are you willing to sacrifice *all* your enjoyment for the amount of time that needs to be invested into leveling a character in tandem with someone when you don't enjoy it? Even mild compromise can make the most compatible duo miserable. That's like trying to force a friend who doesn't like raiding to raid with you. It will not work. In fact, it will likely directly fail, and probably cause more real-life repercussions in your friendship or relationship because of it.
Kylenne Apr 24th 2010 1:42AM
@ Lemons: Yeah no. Selfishness is expecting someone else to compromise their idea of fun just because you want company.
This isn't a marriage, it's my leisure time, and my $15/mo. Leveling is not raiding. My friends get a say in how fast/when I level when they can arrange for my job to give me more paid time off. We do plenty of other things together, on and off the game.
Lemons Apr 26th 2010 1:59AM
Oh now I'm the selfish one? Nice deflection.
You don't have to be married for there to be a give and take, I think it exists to some degree in all relationships, or at least the ones you actually value. I don't care how you slice it, but the whole "we do it my way or it's not fun" just sounds like the mentality of a 12-year-old brat. Selfish means you're primarily concerned with your own interests, and I think that fits this situation to a T.
I find it fun to hang out with certain people and that supersedes whatever need I have to control the situation like and OCD maniac. So when they wanna do a quest I might not wanna do, I'll just do it, because I'd want them to do the same for me. I don't think you're going to hang onto your friends very long once they realize you won't even go a little bit outta your way for them, especially concerning something as trivial as a video game.
woecip Apr 23rd 2010 2:40PM
"The plan was to get to 80 as quickly as possible, then realm transfer to a PvP server "
Lame......really.....lame....
Artificial Apr 23rd 2010 6:38PM
Very... why would you want to transfer to a PvP server? The only kind of PvP you can do there that you can't do elsewhere is "world PvP", which is where lamers who can't do real PvP go to gank people. PvP servers are really for people who are bad at PvP but want to kill people anyway. No point to going to one if you're actually any good...
Lemons Apr 23rd 2010 3:14PM
You should just head back to whatever you were doing before this. That's what I did.
There was this kid at school who kept saying "reroll on Burning Blade and I'll even help you level up!" So I did. I made a Shaman and started leveling, the problem was he was already like level 14 or so. I asked him if he wanted to help me power level, and he said "not really, lets just wait until we get the same level." And this guy played a lot so it was quite a feat to even my level with his as he was also leveling up at the same time.
Another factor...he had another friend he was leveling with. His friend was a priest and he was a mage and they had this whole thing going where he'd round up like 10 mobs and just spam Arcane Explosion and the priest would heal him.
Finally one day I evened out with him at level 30. I whispered him saying "finally we can level together!", but instead he was like "nah man I need to level." I guess he didn't want another dude in the group with him and his priest mooching off their leet aoe exp.
I didn't agonize about this, pretty clear what should be done at this point. I deleted the shaman, and went back to playing my main (the shaman kind of sucked anyways). At school he was like "dude, we should level that shaman" I just said "I deleted it." Turns out his priest quit school and started playing wow like a full-time job and had vastly outleveled him so he was looking for someone to level with. Poetic justice if I've ever seen it.
I was still friends with him, but I just realized that leveling a character with the guy wasn't something that was going to realistically happen. Basically the moral of the story is you can beg all you want, but you can't really force someone to level with you. At some point you just gotta cut your loses and go back to whatever you were doin before.
Imagene Apr 23rd 2010 4:12PM
It's a game. The point is to have fun. If you're not having fun playing with someone else because you're not getting to play at all, go do something that IS fun for you, even if it's leveling the character you're supposed to be leveling with someone else.
Yar, chill out. It's only a game.
WaterRouge Apr 23rd 2010 4:19PM
I know this is a bit late for the mass readers to see but here's my opinion on the Mama's opinion and other commentator's opinions.
The recommendation to just level another druid personally seems silly to me. For one, if this is an altaholic then its likely this recent druid is taking up their final character slot. Many people I play with do not want to play on different servers either as you don't have your friends to chat with, or the resources of your main to help get mounts/proff mats or what have you.
Also, we don't know what was exchanged between the two in the beginning. What if they had agreed to level every day or three times a week or whatever and The Priest simply wasn't fufilling it? What if they agreed to be a certain level at a certain date? We don't know. Either way I don't think its unreasonable for the RA to be asking him daily, if they both play everyday, to do some sort of leveling.
RA said that he has seen The Priest sitting in Dal for hours, not that that's all The Priest does. He also said that The Priest does seemingly frequent pvp/raids so its very likely that the two druids did both while leveling up. I doubt that RA tried to bring flavor to the grind of leveling.
As for maybe The Priest not enjoying leveling as a druid, I don't see how that's a likely thing to consider. RA said that they were feral/resto, meaning a warrior/rogue and a healer. From what I understand, there isn't much to not like about that. Maybe if the Priest was the feral it could be but I'm sure the Priest is/was the Resto because of their healing experience.
I don't think its fair to suggest rolling another druid as an alternative for three reasons. The first being that the server may be full and the second being that I personally don't see the logic in having multiple characters of the same class. Its clear this person's intentions are to have max levels of each class, not just level whatever he can (three 80s). Plus, why should RA roll a different of the same class when he/she rolled that class to level as in the first place! That's basically telling them to just throw out the already 26 levels earned. If they only leveled for a few hours at a time, once or twice a week, then its likely that 26 levels took a long enough time.
This has already been stated but I find it insulting to tell RA to "chill out". We should remember that "raging" is just a fun term nowadays to show some level of anger. Due to the lack of rapid !s in RA's message, I think we can assume that they aren't about to throw their laptop's hard drive out a window in frustration. Plus, even if he was at that level of raging, we need to look at a very specific reason for RA doing so.
The Priest already leveled ahead at a somewhat critical point when they were trying a Shammy/Priest combination. It's not like RA just stopped logging onto his shammy, he informed his partner of the situation and hoped for the best. What he earned for that hope was a lack of a leveling partner. I doubt the shaman was able to catch up those 7 levels if his partner gained them that quickly (assuming less than a week for the new hard drive to arrive). RA has a perfectly reasonable example of why he shouldn't sit there waiting around for his partner when his partner didn't wait for him.
Alright that was my opinion on this but it was pretty biased because I actually know who wrote this in real life. If you want to know how this worked out I'll tell you.
----Spoiler Alert!----
RA had given The Priest until 10:30 their time zone for an answer and when RA logged onto his druid to see what that answer was he discovered that the Priest had put him on ignore. That's a pretty inclination that The Priest didn't care to level with RA anymore.
A week later, The Priest took him off of the ignore list and apologized. The Priest admitted that he honestly didn't like leveling as a druid, because it made HIM rage. RA, having taken his losses and leveled solo, was at level 31 at that point and again offered to level with The Priest who turned him down.
The two are now great friends again but its likely that RA will never ask The Priest to be a leveling partner in the near millennium.
Feralubu Apr 24th 2010 2:08AM
So I guess the advice should have been: You can't count on the Priest. Stop trying to, and save yourself some grief.
icepyro Apr 23rd 2010 5:59PM
Interesting advice. I have a similar problem (kinda in reverse though) with my roommate. He gets the bug to learn a new class, but at the cost of losing sight on anything involving his other characters. He is there to learn, and while he wants to have fun with friends, he can't wait to see what's next. I enjoy leveling a new toon with a new class, but our off days are different so he has a hard time NOT leveling then. Seriously, we level every chance we get and he still gets ahead.
Lucky for me, I spend my breaks at work reading sites like this so I can catch up rather easy if I have to. Since he doesn't read these sites, he actually gets slowed down by deciding what talents to take, leveling professions by brute force, etc. Also luckily, we are in the same guild so I can see what level he is and if I need to catch up. I also have an army of alts so if he gets too far ahead, I usually just switch his partner to a different toon.
Sadly, this is about all I can do. I work on said army if we are even and not leveling, so it's not as big a deal this time, but still kinda crappy.
Cyno01 Apr 23rd 2010 7:32PM
Yeah, this is an interesting topic fr me. A few months ago I convinced my fiancée to give wow a try, and she got hooked pretty quick. She doesn't have a whole lot of time to play, but is closing in on lvl 50 with her Mage. I on the otherhand have been playing for three years and have 3 geared 80s, my main with loremaster and definitly didn't feel like leveling another toon untill the expansion. Thankfully she's content to solo lvl most of the time and call me in to roflstomp a dungeon when she gets a dungeon quest or two, or needs me to drive yer arround for holiday achieements in my chopper.
But, she's probably going to be 80 before the expansion, so I've been trying to decide which toon to level with her 80-85. My main is right out, because I want him to 85 asap, an will probably try for realm first engineer again. I think a Mage/ shammy duo would be pretty good, throw ES on her and let her tank. I also have a DK, but I levld him to 77 in outlands (loremaster of outlands) and think I may do the same ith northrend since he hasn't touched the last 5 zones.
I just don't know if a dk/mage duo would be better for leveling. :-p
Amaxe-1 Apr 24th 2010 11:03AM
I've found leveling pacts are pretty frustrating unless it is a case of two people in the same place. Invariably one person will enjoy the process more than the other, or have more time than the other, and will feel frustrated that the other isn't interested or doesn't have the time.
Leveling an alt of the same class is annoying, because then when the other person wants to play, you need to go back through the same content you did before.
And of course, if one already has all 10 slots filled, its an exercise in frustration if one wants to play *that* class but can't because of the leveling pacts.
Ultimately I think trying to put the brakes on leveling will lead to resentment in the long run. I've done it and hated it, and don't plan to do it any longer.
zappel Apr 25th 2010 11:29PM
if you are serious about an alt, never tie it down to a buddy. i would usually create buddy alts and just let them rot (not from my lack of effort - i am always ready to play, but its usually the buddy that isnt). the serious alt i will take to L80. no emotional ties, no pain. and you get to keep your buddies too.
zappel Apr 25th 2010 11:31PM
oh and sometimes after the buddy part is broken, i would pick up that neglected alt and make it a dedicated alt and take it to L80.
Zahira May 11th 2010 5:54PM
I have similar issues leveling with my husband, we have very different play styles, I attribute this mostly to the fact that he's been playing for 5 years, I have only played for 1 and 1/2. The issue is I like taking my time, seeing everything, working on reputations while they are still relevant for the level, I have no desire to rush to level 80...He on the other hand is all about leveling quickly with no concern for enjoying the old content. Due to our different play styles it is hard to level together and I spend many hours on my main (lvl 80 NE rogue) running randoms, working on obscure reps, running content I never got to see due to him rushing me to level faster the first time and he gets annoyed and often asks when we will work on my pally and his hunter, I answer "when I feel like working on it I'll let you know". I have explained to him why I find it frustrating, he doesn't get it but excepts that is how I feel. He recently agreed to stop harassing me about it, and after a week or 2 went by I found myself feeling like I should be as considerate as him and give his idea of fun more of my time.
Perhaps RA should do the same, stop harassing your friend about it. Explain to him that you really want to level with him but you feel like your pressuring him to do it and that you don't want to be that way. Tell him your going to work on something else and he should let you know when he feels like leveling those characters. If after a few weeks he doesn't give you any time then perhaps he's not as good of a friend as you thought, and you may want to move on if he's not being as considerate of your feelings as you were of his.