Best Leveling Addon

I’m going to say three things that some people might find *gasp* controversial. Game-wise, at least.

1. Warlords of Draenor was one of my favorite expansions.
2. I hate Mists of Pandaria. Not hated, hate. Like, still do.
3. I use leveling addons, and will damn well pay for a one if it’s good enough.

Mind. Blow. Right?

 

“ROKK!” shouted the masses (if three voices could, in fact, be considered masses).  “EXPLAIN THYSELF!”

Sure thing, brumblefarts (Wait, what? — Editor). It’s pretty simple.

1. WoD made me an in-game millionaire with only five to ten minutes of “work” per day. Had I started sooner, that would have been multi-millionaire and I’d be pimping around on that million-gold spider mount today.
2. Leveling in MoP was so boring, so time-consuming, so loooooooooong, that I actually walked away from WoW for an entire year. Doing more than a handful of quests gave me a headache born of frustration. No expansion, no video game in my entire life, gave me that kind of negative physical reaction.
3. I hate wasting my time.

Now I should have prefaced this entire thing by saying I don’t care about WoW Lore. I’m barely interested in reading quest storylines, but I will most likely not remember them. I will read only the quest text that says “Choose your reward.”

What’s this? I’m being handed a note here from the Hurt Feelings Department… *sigh* (Do I really need to say this? I shouldn’t have to spell out… Okay, fine. FINE. Fine.)

I understand that many people who play World of Warcraft enjoy the rich story, the expansive lore, and the clever quest text. I am by no means marginalizing how they choose to play, nor implying that how I choose to play is better or worse than how others choose to play.

(Well said.)

You do you, snowflake, is what I’m saying here.

(*sigh* So close.)

I’m generally not the “Log into WoW and look at the flowers” kind of guy. I’m not a tourist, much as I might want to be. I’m a DO WERK kind of guy, and I want to do it in the most optimum way possible. I don’t like wasting time, and running around trying to find the best way to get up a cliff to cut some goblin’s ear off is wasting time.

It’s an unspoken truth that “the game starts at level cap” (quoted because people say this, so I guess it’s not really that unspoken). To its credit, Legion has been quite enjoyable to level through (due to mob scaling and the various side quests of Class and Order Hall missions). But after running through every zone about three times now on six different characters, I just want to get through it as fast as possible.  

Like I said, I enjoy using leveling addons. For Legion, I’ve actually bounced between two of them. One of them, Zygor’s Leveling Addon, I paid for because I wanted to get my Alliance characters leveled quickly. However, this was before people started talking about Conslegion. Since then, I’ve used it to level some Alliance, and all one of my Horde.

Truth be told, I enjoy both addons. They take me through different routes, so things stay somewhat fresh as I beat the content to death over and over. But each addon has its charm.

What do I like about the Zygor addon?

• It’s very thorough. Step by step guidance, with a custom TomTom arrow to make sure you don’t get lost. It explains what to do for certain steps of a quest. For Legion content, it even has guides for Suramar and Class/Order Hall questlines.
• The guides are available for all expansions, not just Legion.
• It’s more than just a leveling addon. It has guides for rep grind, making gold, holiday events, pets and mounts.
• Constantly being updated.

While it sounds like the cat’s pyjamas, there are a couple of things about it that really tweaks my trousers.

• It’s a paid guide, and you pay for everything. You can either pay a one-time fee for each individual guide (Legion Horde and Legion Alliance are separate guides, despite essentially being the same damn thing). Or, you can become a monthly subscriber which gives you access to everything, past and future, for $8/month.
• It’s a system processing beast. When I load Zygor, it chugs up 175MB of processing juice because the game loads everything in one shot. I’ve had my system hang up and crash occasionally during loading or big fights. I can’t say 100% that it’s because of the addon, but it seems to be a common issue shared by many who use it. Definitely frustrating when you just want to finish a quest, but you keep crashing to desktop.  

And then there’s the Conslegion addon. Hey, if it’s good enough for World First players, it’s damn sure good enough for me. What is it about Conslegion that floats my boat?

• The price is right – Free. Nothing wrong with free.
• Like Zygor, Conslegion guides you through the zone questlines quickly. It sticks mainly to zone storylines, avoiding side quests. Very streamlined, as you would expect from an addon designed for World First leveling.
• It’s a very processor-lite addon. Bare bones, covers quests for a handful of zones.

Fills the bill, so to speak. So what’s not to like?

• It’s only good for Legion leveling zones. It won’t help you get through Suramar, Order Halls, or any other expansion outside of Legion.
• Now that the expansion is months old, Conslegion isn’t updated as often as other leveling addons. It still occasional bugs on certain steps, and since World First has come and gone, cleaning up those bugs isn’t exactly a priority.

So which is better? Honestly, you can’t go wrong with either one. Conslegion will get you to 110 just as fast as Zygor will. But Zygor will get you through the entire Suramar questline, as well as the Class and Order Hall questline. Plus, if you have alts that you want to level up to 100, Zygor can help you with that as well. You’ll have to pay RL $ for it, but it’ll do the job. Assuming you don’t get disconnected.

Of course, you can choose not to use anything and level up the old fashioned way. Tab out and check Wowhead when you have questions. Follow the in-game map. Whatever works for you.