How long will leveling take in Shadowlands?

As you all know, we have covered a lot of topics, explained various dilemmas. Also, we have made various guides for you guys for the past few months. Now, let’s consider one more important thing when it comes to changes Blizzard introduced in their eight expansion – How long will leveling take in Shadowlands. 

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Of course, this depends on a variety of factors – but we’ll try to observe it mostly from core-system changes regarding leveling. So, let’s begin and figure out how long an average player will take to hit the cap. 

As we already mentioned, many factors come to play when giving a precise answer to the time needed to level a character in WoW. Normally, it depends on the class, player’s experience, whether you’re leveling an alt or main, etc. However, Shadowlands is bringing something unseen until now, the thing we already wrote about a lot – level squish. 

Supposedly, by introducing this change on a core-level, Blizzard wanted to enhance and speed up the time the leveling takes. 

What’s different

Now, besides the level squish that we explained, there are few more caveats with leveling in Shadowlands. Let’s differentiate between them, talk about each & see what changes it brings. 

Where to level?

First, something which is really cool and new is the possibility to choose the expansion you will be leveling in. Moreover, every expansion has it’s unique distinctions, and they are not equally efficient leveling-wise. Warlords of Draenor is the best if you are after efficiency and experience per time spent. Also, this option is exclusively for experienced players who’ll start at level 10+. Logically, leveling will cost you less time, if you play the expansion best suited for quick leveling and fall under the experienced player category.

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Anyhow, we have calculated the approximate time needed to hit the cap in each expansion (available for experienced players only). So let’s rank the addons ranked from the slowest to the most efficient. Keep in mind, that those are estimations and your mileage may vary: 

1. TBC – 24 hours;
2. WoTLK – 24 hours;
3. Cata – 20 hours;
4. MoP – 16 hours;
5. BfA – 16 hours;
6. Legion – 14 hours;
7. WoD – 12 hours;

Important to mention, those considered to be experienced players by the game itself can also change their choice of expansion to level at. That means one can start to level in TBC and change over to WoD, implying that the leveling speed is up to the player’s choice.

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War Mode on

Generally, getting XP while you level, can be affected by enabling war mode. As you probably know, Shadowlands comes with the War Mode option and it increases your XP gains by 10% when turned on. 

Additionally, if your faction is underrepresented, applying Call to Arms effect will increase your XP gains by 30%. Therefore, if one decides to turn War Mode with regard to his faction, he can get up to 30% additional XP reward while leveling. This accelerates the needed time to level additionally. 

Leveling 50-60

Overall, most of us would actually prefer to immerse in Shadowlands’ content, which starts at 50 going to 60. In that light, in Alpha, there was less experience required than it is now, because of Blizzard’s optimization in that segment.

Particularly, let’s stick to the middle point and say an average player will need 12 hours to hit the cap (going from 50) in Shadowlands. Nevertheless, a lot of players were getting to 58,59 and had the challenge to gain enough experience to finally hit the cap. Hence, they ought to backtrack and complete a bunch of quests from previous zones. 

Hopefully, Blizzard is working on fixing this, so expect even less time required to level 50 – 60.

Let’s calculate how long will leveling take in Shadowland

Now that we analyzed factors that are affecting leveling speed, let’s calculate, with them in mind, the total amount of time required to level. Therefore, let’s categorize things a bit, just to get a more realistic perspective of time.

• For the new players:

Since the new players can only level in BfA, after they reach level 10 in Exile’s Reach, they are instantly limited to the previous expansion. To remember, getting 1 – 10 requires going through Exile’s Reach and lasts for 1 – 1.5 hours.

Finally, the calculation for new players goes like this:

1.5 hours (1 – 10 in Exile’s Reach) + 16 hours ( 10 – 50 in BfA) + 12 hours ( 50 – 60 Shadowland’s content) = 29.5 hours to hit the cap.

By turning WM on (depending on the faction) you’ll get a 10 – 30% EXP bonus, so time will drop to 26.5 hours and 21 hours respectively.

• For the experienced players:

Let’s say you are starting at level 10 and WoD is your addon of choice since it’s the fastest. Hence, the calculation will go like this:

12 hours (10 – 50 in WoD) + 12 hours (50 – 60 Shadowland’s content) = 24 hours to hit the cap. 

By turning WM on (depending on the faction) you’ll get a 10 – 30% EXP bonus, so time will drop to 21.6 hours and ~17hours respectively.

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