Efficient Grinding in WoW

There has been a debate going on since the World of Warcraft beta first hit the Internet: Grinding or Questing?

For whatever reason (most likely learned habits picked up from earlier MMORPGs like Everquest and Asheron’s Call) most believed that Grinding is the most effective way to level your character.

Then along came Mancow (Joana) who was a vocal proponent of Questing as the fastest means of leveling, and he actually produced video to prove it during a Blizzard-endorsed power-leveling competition on the WoW Community Forums (these videos later became the foundation for Joana’s Horde Leveling Guide).

There are those now who claim that Questing is indeed the fastest way to level … until you reach level 35, and then grind grind grind.

So how to most effectively grind when the time comes that you must? I recently saw a great blog post on how to most effectively manage your grinding time at WoW Gold For Sale. The author runs through a comprehensive list of good grinding practices and – here’s the gem – gives specific grinding tips for each class. Sweet.

To me, I think the truth about how to most quickly level your character lies somewhere in between. I’m not sure how anyone can deny the importance of questing (it’s like free xp), but there are times when you simply cannot solo or even duo certain quests and are forced to wait until you are higher in level to complete them; it is times like this when you must turn to some good solid grinding to get that bump to the next level.

One final thing to remember about grinding: when grinding you should take your cue from a concept spawned by Starcraft: APS, or ACTIONS PER SECOND. Essentially it means that victory will always go to those who perform the most actions every second – in our case the quicker you are able to bag-and-tag the mobs you are grinding, the quicker you will level. Period.