World of Warcraft players shapes and sizes

15 Minutes of Fame: Congrats on 70! How did you find yourself finally at 70? Was it the end of a long, hard campaign, or did you make a concentrated push once you neared the home stretch?

Noor: A long campaign. I've pretty much played every day. Some levels took a month, if I had to do most of it by doing Battleground dailies. Leveling this way is really daily-limited -I can't decide to go out and push for XP because I can't kill mobs for XP, and I've done every quest that I can do at my level.

Naysayers opined that Noor would give up the ghost of the tedious task of leveling without killing long before he reached level 70. But lo and behold, here we are just post-Wrath launch – and Noor's ticked right past 70, plugging steadily along toward the new max level cap of 80. 15 Minutes of Fame caught up with him to see how he was holding up on the long, slow climb to the top.
 The diminutive subject of 15 Minutes of Fame's inaugural profile, back in January of this year, spent a good chunk of change longer than a mere quarter-hour in the limelight. The life and times of Noor the Pacifist, who levels without experience from kills, garnered widespread attention not only here at WoW Insider but in an onslaught of hits from Digg, Stumble Upon, Fark and even the very cool people at Boing Boing. It seemed like everyone wanted to talk about the guy who plays World of Warcraft without actually killing anything.
What was Noor's total time played to get to level 70?

To get to 70, 59 days and 6 minutes played.
Did you find the going any easier or more difficult once you reached Burning Crusade content?

Easier, as there were new quests with much more XP available. However, there were some easy quests I couldn't get due to reputation. I can't get to Friendly with Honor Hold, which means I can't do their daily quest and a number of other quests. I can't even get to Neutral with the Kurenai.
What became the main methods of advancing your xp once you reached BC content?

Fishing was a main method. Catching a Strange Engine Part gets me 12,650 XP each time (an Alliance-only quest; Horde catch a Broken Engine Part instead, which is just a vendor item). I started fishing in Zangarmarsh around level 49, but couldn't turn in the five parts I'd caught until I hit level 55. When Blizzard announced the reduction in XP per level from 60 to 70 pre-WotLK, I started saving Engine Parts so I could turn them in after patch 2.0.3, and I turned in 21 parts -over half a level at level 65. Overall, I've fished up 99 Strange Engine Parts, for 1,252,350 XP. With the new dailies I can do at level 70, I don't need to fish for them anymore; they only get me about one-sixth of a bar now, anyway.
Two seasonal event helped enormously: the Midsummer Fire Festival and Hallow's End both had new dailies that awarded a lot of XP. The Fire Festival got me levels (and new quests) so fast I went from level 49 to 60 in less than two weeks, instead of being stuck at level 49 for a month doing Battleground dailies.
I also changed professions a fair amount to do profession quest chains at various levels. I did Leatherworking for the wild leather chain in the 30s and Blacksmithing in the 40s.
Did your strategies in PvP change any as you reached higher levels?

Not really. What I really missed was level 47-49 Warsong Gulch. I was wearing Green Whelp Armor and two Freezing Bands, so any player hitting me while I was running the flag had a better than one in 15 chance of freezing or sleeping.
What about player reaction to you in BGs -any changes there?

No. Some people think it's neat, some hate it. I've actually stopped doing Battleground dailies (except AV) after patch 2.0.3, as fishing for Engine Parts is generally faster leveling. After the first 3.0 patches came in, Alliance stopped winning AV, so I stopped that, too.
I still build my talents and equipment as a WSG flag runner, though. I was pretty well-liked as a level 49 WSG flag runner. I also use non-weaponish weapons: Mug o' Hurt (with the built-in proc to slow runners) with Icy and Crippling Poison is good for WSG, and now that I have Shiv, I can apply Crippling Poison to an enemy WSG runner with Last Month's Mutton. If I ever catch a Steelscale Crushfish or a Rockhide Strongfish, I'll use that instead of the Mutton.
Did you do any quest lines involving fights that don't kill anyone?

Yes, I just did the Repurposed Technology quest in Borean Tundra, where I have to destroy a Harvest Collector and reprogram it. I couldn't reprogram Harvesters that other players had destroyed, so I used my Gnomish Universal Remote to have one aggro the others and get destroyed that way. That's one of the 20 or so movies I have up on my blog.
Some past quests like that have been Save Techbot's Brain! (which I justified because he, too, would be reprogrammed, according to the quest text); Sunken Treasure, where I let the two Water Elementals beat on me so Professor Phizzlethorpe could work; and some quests like The Deserters and The End of the Deserters, where you beat someone up until they surrender.
How's your pacifist Priest, Reinisch, coming along these days?

Pretty well; he's level 34. He's got a few quests he can do now, though Horde always lag behind Alliance in non-combat quests. I'm working more on Noor right now, but I'll get back to him.
Both Reinisch and Noor have met other players who have tried leveling as a pacifist. Most drop out around level 10 or thereabouts, but Ahimsah, a pacifist Blood Elf paladin, has even passed Reinisch and is level 36! We've done a few instance quests together, and we're planning to do more.
We'll be able to leapfrog deep into an instance by running in, getting to a normally safe area, then have Ahimsah cast Divine Intervention on Reinisch, who will go out of combat. When the mobs reset, Reinisch can then resurrect Ahimsah. It's pretty amazing how long we can survive doing tag-team healing in dungeons, and we both have Gnomish Cloaking Devices that can be used to get out of combat.
Philosophically, was your focus on pacifism/not killing as strong at the end of the stretch to 70 as in the beginning, or did the focus shift more to alternate forms of leveling?

It was always more about alternate forms of leveling, just adding an arbitrary restriction and seeing how that changes the game for you. It's kind of like a personal Achievement goal.
Is Noor headed to 80 now? What's next?

Yes, Noor should be able to get about 90,000 XP per day doing dailies, which is more than a bar of XP a day at 70. New quests and some more dailies should keep her going, and I should be able to get the Salty title eventually (the biggest obstacles being the STV contest and the rare fish catch One That Didn't Get Away).
Any screenshots of the Big Ding?

No, hitting 70 was pretty dull. I bought a Dalaran portal from a very tired level 75 Mage on Day 2 of WotLK and did the quest to teleport to the ground and back, which left me a few thousand XP short of 70. So I explored up around the Goblin town K3 and hit 70 around there, just running around.
When I'm about to hit 80, I'll try to let people know and probably do it as a daily quest in Shattrath, unless there's some quest I can finish anywhere (like Gutrot's Level 70 Sen'jin Beach Party, where he used the staff to summon the image of Archmage Vargoth to complete a quest to ding). If there is one, I'd like to try and publicly ding 80 in the throne room of Lordaeron ...
Did you have any accidental kills along the way?

A few. Noor has a few kills from throwing Bombs (intended for their Stun/Freeze effect) in Battlegrounds, and when she tried to distract some Murlocs in Wetlands using her Battle Chicken so she could pick locks, her Engineering was so high that the Chicken was level 60 and wiped out about four of them (there's no off switch on the Chicken). She also accidentally clicked on a Scourge Cockroach when running around Stormwind during the zombie event, which turned her into a zombie. (As a zombie, Noor kills things and actually got the Gnoll drop item quest Gold Pickup Schedule near Hogger).
Noor also gets credit (and a little XP) for kills from Battlegrounds or when grouped for taking the Bone Waste Towers for the Spirits of Auchindoun daily. Noor will also actively fight Horde in that daily if she has either the Evil Twin or Soul Split: Evil! transporter accident debuffs. Finally got to use her Goblin Rocket Launcher ...
I also accidentally got my Unarmed skill to 2 (when I was on a naked Mining run; I always wield some non-weapon like a Fishing Rod or Blacksmith Hammer now) and my Dagger skill to 2 (by absent-mindedly Sapping an Orc to help a Night Elf get to Ironforge; I had just found out earlier that I can Sap Horde players in Battlegrounds without having my weapon skills go up, and I was so used to sapping Orcs that I totally forgot myself).
Any support from other characters or players?

Ving made my Green Whelp Armor and things like Lockpicking gloves, +Stealth boots and Herbalism gloves. He's the head of the Bare Necessities guild, and I might do some WSG premades with his guild eventually.
Wildbill made some of my Engineering items (you can often use Engineering items levels before you can make them) and made Flash Bombs for me, until the recipe finally turned up on the Auction House.
Wildbill also told me about a daily quest, Gaining the Advantage that I couldn't get. After Googling around, I figured it out. The quest code only offers it to level 70s who have Master Mining/Skinning/Herbalism, but not Grand Master, because it's pre-WotLK. So just on Monday, I dropped 450 Grand Master Mining -to take up Mining! After grinding back up to 275 to get Master Mining, I could get the quest, but I'll have to grind a bit more until I can actually mine in Outland. I won't go to Grand Master until this quest is fixed; XP is more important than mining.
Pureblade and Lucyindasky are two players who often do the Spirits of Auchindoun daily with me.
Phobomancer is a Horde player who would /cheer at me when he saw me, so I figured he saw the first WoW Insider story on me. When we ran into each other in Shattrath during the zombie event, we ran around until we could both turn into zombies and finally have a conversation (vomiting to keep our health up). Hey Phobomancer, if you read this, /beckon me next time you see me.
Also helping was Ahimsah, a pacifist BE paladin.

Tags: World of warcraft