Fifty levels

I played a lot of WoW in 2005, mostly levelling, and I remember the shape of it better than any dungeon: the first ten levels flying by, the slow bit in the thirties, and the stretch in the fifties where one more level was an evening's work and you did it anyway because the zone was good. That shape is what I am building. Our cap is 50 instead of 60 and the numbers are ours, but the feel is that one.

I built it backwards from three numbers. Quest your way to 50: about 190 hours. Only kill things: about 310. Only fish, mine and craft: about 800. Everything else about XP is tuned to land on those three. Questing wins by enough that nobody feels they should be grinding, and professions earn XP slowly enough that you do them because you like them.

Levels 1 to 20 take about 27 hours, 21 to 40 about 93, 41 to 50 about 73. Half the game is the last nine levels, on purpose: the early game has to move, because you do not know yet whether you like the class, and the late game is where you end up living.

One rule holds it up: a mob seven or more levels below you gives zero XP and zero loot. Without it the smartest way to level is to farm the weakest wolf in the game seventeen thousand times, and every zone after Elderwood becomes scenery. With it, the forty zones get walked.

Quests carry about two thirds of your XP. A quest's reward is defined as "worth N kills at this zone's level" rather than a typed number, so if the curve needs tuning I change the formulas and every quest follows. An errand is worth five kills, a normal quest ten, a chain step sixteen, a finale thirty.

Whether 190 hours is right, nobody knows, because nobody has played 1 to 50. When someone does, the design document changes first and the code follows.

October 11, 2026: the level cap is 60 now, not 50. The hours in this post were worked out for 50 and will change; I'll post the new curve when it's done.