Leveling With A Significant Other
Some people would give anything to have their significant other play WOW, to understand the strange virtual world that holds so much of their interest. I’m not going to go into how I feel about wives who constantly decry their husband’s gaming, because that is a whole other can of worms. What I am going to write about today is those lucky couples of which both halves play WOW.
Not all couples who play WOW play it together, as they like different facets of the game or have different playstyles. There are however, a lot of couples that do play the game together. I’ve known couples that level together, raid together, or even lead guilds together.
My husband Jardal and I always have at least one set of toons we are leveling together. One of the reasons that WOW has become such a successful hobby for us is that it’s something we do together. Otherwise we would be playing separate video games in separate rooms, and fighting over various consoles. This strategy of leveling together certainly has its pros and cons which I’m going to discuss today.
Cons
You will end up bickering over ridiculously stupid crap. Constantly. I cannot emphasize this enough.
You will find it hard to stick together in the game world. Yes, you can see your partner’s dot on the mini-map, but due to lag it isn’t always accurate. You will wind up attacking different mobs at the same time, left behind fighting after your partner gets away (especially if they’re a druid), or completing quest tasks when they’re just a bit out of range. Using raid markers works fantastically well in a crowded area – last week I was having serious trouble figuring out which Boomkin I was supposed to be helping.
You must be careful about starting escort quests, phased quests, or bombing runs – make sure your partner has turned in the preceding quests first and that you click accept at the exact same time (escort quests should normally prompt you though). This means reading the quest text to determine what kind of quest you’re accepting instead of just blindly clicking.
There are a lot of bugs in Cataclysm related to cinematics, phasing, and group questing. If things aren’t working correctly for you, but worked great for your partner who clicked first, then I would advise either abandoning the quest or logging out and logging back in. This has solved all of our issues so far.
You will never level at the exact same time. Somehow, one of you will always be ahead on XP.
Gathering professions suck. Gathering now provides XP which unbalances things, as well as causing the gatherer to dart off seemingly at random, because they absolutely must grab that node of elementium (see this post on Aggro Management for a nice rant about it). Skinning doesn’t have the XP issue, but does slow things down a tad. It also sucks if your partner skins the mob before you can complete a certain type of quest objective, such as planting a flag on a corpse. Never ever have the same gathering professions on a pair you are leveling – the competition would tear you apart.
You will wind up expecting your partner to do something that they are expecting you to do. This includes healing, quest objectives, cleansing, and more.
Your partner will be better than you at some things.
Pick up the x items-from-the-ground quests are very irritating. Your partner will ninja that sparkly rock you were heading towards.
Similarly, getting x items to drop from a mob is annoying. It always seems like it will not drop for one person until the other is done.
You will likely compete over shiny BOEs.
You will argue over which quest to do next.
You will argue over what the quest text means.
You will get tired of waiting for your partner to finish dicking around with their gear.
You will want to play your character when your partner is tired of WOW or wants to do something different in-game.
It will be very hard to resist the temptation to go on without them – especially when your guildies are just looking for one more person for a dungeon run.
You will find yourselves discussing leveling plans while eating dinner in a nice restaurant on a Friday night. The server will interrupt you to take your order, just as you’re saying something like, “I picked up a really nice dagger from that last quest with the Murlocs…”
Pros
So with all those cons, why would you ever consider leveling together?
The obvious benefit is that questing is generally much easier as a group. You can kill mobs faster and take on packs or mini-bosses that might normally bring about your demise. This is especially true for classes that are renowned for being difficult to level or very squishy. I had no trouble leveling my priest with Jardal’s shaman, as he could take the brunt of the damage (if he could keep aggro from me).
Another great thing is that it is less likely that both of you will misread the quest text and wander around lost. Usually one person can figure things out.
You will definitely learn how to work as a team if you level together. It can improve your communication skills.
You will learn how to forgive.
Lastly, and most importantly (this over powers all the cons for me) you probably will have more FUN leveling together. You get to laugh about all the silly goblins blowing themselves up, squee over cute animals, see beautiful scenery, complete objectives, overcome obstacles together, and generally just enjoy interacting with each other. I’m sure this doesn’t work at all for some couples, but it is truly what keeps us playing WOW.
Do you play WOW with your significant other? I’d love it if you would share some of your experiences.
Because the new zones are SO heavily phased and linear, you need to stay in lock-step with each other. This means you should not level without each other…. however, OH COME ON, when do we have perfect time match-ups?
So you either designate ZONES or TOONS for togetherness… or a combination.
We’ve designated Hyjal a GROUP zone and Vash’jir a SOLO zone. So last night when my husband couldn’t sleep, he swam around in Vash’jir, and we stayed in sync for questing in other zones. I mean, it would be a bigger deal if we were lower level and a couple of hours leveling without me would put him totally ahead. But in the 80′s, whatever. So he gets a few bubbles ahead.
Also, we have toons that we level separately. I level my druid solo because it’s pretty solo-friendly. However, I level my priest with him because I am fairly squishy and it is easier to be paired.
As for “where the HELL did you just go”? Raid symbols. Totally. Use them and abuse them.
Zelmaru recently posted..Mages Should Help Organize Pulls
Yeah, we definitely have solo toons in addition to our leveling pairs. I also am a bit obsessed with my professions, so I tend to do that when my husband is busy.
Art and I quested together on our first toons to a point. then we did it again on our second ones…to a point. Then we learned we just don’t work well together. He is a rogue, he likes his stealthy stuff, I was a face melting priest I wanted to start casting. Cries of “dammit I was trying to pickpocket!” were heard often. He works, I don’t, and I wanted to play my character. We’ve tried a few more times but we apparently are just flat out solo players. Sometimes I’ll grab a similar level alt to whatever he’s playing and join in, but mostly we both play just not together…lol
I find it’s easier if the computers are physically near each other, ’cause then you can look over on their screen, communicate normally, and hear all their game sounds (especially helpful during instances & raids; it’s amazing how dependent I’ve become on various, in-game audio cues that aren’t generated by my character/my immediate environment). If we’re not in the same room, it’s exactly like a PuG and I wind up feeling extremely disconnected/confused — like I’ve gone deaf or blind. It’s the weirdest thing, and in some cases it can seriously cripple my effectiveness. :\
Raid icons? Hell yes. All the time. So unbelievably necessary in the new worgen/goblin starter zones… What a chaotic mess!
Hehe — we tend to yield gear unto each other. It can be painful at times, sort of like when you’re at a restaurant and you’re fighting out who’s going to pay for dinner and you go back and forth a bit before one of you finally gives up. Maybe we’re just polite? Not 100% on that, LoL, but that’s the way it goes regardless!
We usually play on our laptops next to each other, but sometimes his gets too laggy to handle. When he goes to other room to the desktop, it makes things infinitely more difficult (because I’m usually too lazy to move). Shouting at each other across the apartment is a terrible idea. I agree that hearing his in-game sounds is helpful.
The fighting over gear is hard… and unfortunately it seems like cloth caster gear is HOT STUFF. My recommendation for that is to create leveling pairs that aren’t the same profs OR fighting for gear… AND that have a jump on the dungeon finder. But sometimes you can’t get EVERYTHING you want and have to make sacrifices.
For example, I have a healing priest and a DPS druid. He has a mage and a prot warrior. Sure, the healing priest and the mage are a terrible leveling pair because they are fighting for gear… however, think of the DUNGEON FINDER. The mage NEEDS to pair with the priest, or there would be 20 minute queues. Just like the DPS druid NEEDS to pair with the warrior to cut the queues down as well. If we leveled the priest and the warrior together, sure, we’d never fight over gear, and we’d get groups instantly. But then the mage + kitteh would have a horrible time with the dungeon finder!
Zelmaru recently posted..Cata Questing Content Review levels 80-85- Vashj’ir
Fighting over gear is further compounded by dual specs. We have a fantastic combo for queues this expansion, with a resto/ele shaman and bear/moonkin druid, but we definitely both want the caster accessories. The armor specialization has helped a lot with this. If I leveled my rogue with his druid, we’d be fighting over the agility gear and have longer queues.
I did play with my bf, but only until about level 40 where he decided to drop the game for work and geocaching. I still do a bit of geocaching, but only with him. He doesn’t play wow anymore, though when cata was released he did a 10 day trial extension and we got our paired characters to a whopping level 5 togrther. He probably played a grand total of 4 hours in that 10 day trial.
He is full time plus, me part time now, full time prior, unemployed before that and part time before that.
As for me, one server with an 85 and 7 80′s, one 20 and one 68. Another server with an 80 and 71 and an army of lowby alts.
He just puts more value on working (he is really good at what he does) and geocaching. Don’t even get me started on how many games I have bought him that he hasn’t even completed yet.
Me and my husband find questing with each other tedious at best. We both tend to level with gathering professions and, depending on class, he likes to move faster than I do. We do try to keep at least one set of toons within a level or two of each other so we can queue up together for instances. Then at level cap we raid together.
Care and I played together before she started this grad school business. Unfortunately–we are the anti-team when it comes to a virtual world. Her idea of playing WoW is to do everything and I mean everything. She wants to level cooking, cleaning, fishing, first aid, and her main profs. She wants to do every quest, find gear/weapons that look cool. She will stop mid-quest session and head to the Auction House to do her “banking”. Her bags/bank are as organised as her RL closet. Which–given her science background has everything but labels for each hanger. My closet is much like my bags in WoW. There is &^%! all over the place. (But I know where it is!)
Carrie also detests dungeons. I should qualify that statement: She detests dungeons with me. It has everything to do with Carrie is a methodical, processing type. I am a charging, swiping, and I’ll taunt when things go South type. Doesn’t work so hot in an instance.
In the end: Care found a guild that had people a lot like her. They did quests, took raid-like time to finish regular 5 mans–and that was perfect for her. We could still geek out over Friday date night about WoW. It was just in our separate guilds/friends.
I spend probably 90% of my WoW time playing with my significant other these days. It surprises me just how well we can level and quest together now, but it really wasn’t so flawless in the beginning. Playing together was a little difficult at first because he was familiar with the game, and I didn’t even know how to get to Stormwind, and then because he had to work full time, and I was unemployed, so I would pull ahead. Over the years it has improved, and though we have our “solo” toons, it’s never as fun playing alone as with each other! We’ve leveled 6 characters each to 80 together and 2 each to 85, sometimes we have the same professions, or want the same gear, but we just take turns and we’re always happy. Plus there’s nothing like getting caught by 7 mobs and both surviving with help from the other, or 2 manning a 5 man quest, to bring you closer together <3 hehe!
Heh, I think it holds true for friends as well as lovers. Chas and I carry on like this when we’re levelling together.
I also picked up a good tip from Zelmaru which is to put a condom on your partner when you’re playing together. I mean, uh, use raid markings. But then you just squabble over who gets to be the star and who gets stuck with the condom/nipple/strange orange circle. But it helps you locate each other and it means you don’t go chasing after the wrong toon as often.
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My husband started the game about 2 months before me, got his 1st toon to about 45 & got stuck so once my trial was over, my pally & his warrior levelled the rest of the way to 80 together. We did drive each other nuts though
My hand of reckoning would pull them in just as he hit his charge or vice versa but we got thru it ok. He was at work & I wasn’t so I got my ambassador by about lvl 70, levelled my fishing & cooking & got a second toon to 60 solo plus numerous other lowbie toons.
We geared up & raided together on those toons until this summer when the guild imploded. We’ve tended to level solo since but do dungeons together when we have alts in the same range. Gear & loot is easy – we both take it in turns & swap things around later if needs be. We’ve just started levelling a hunter & priest to 85 yesterday & it’s brought back all the old aggravations straightaway but it’s fun too. I think we’ll survive the next 3 levels ok
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