More about efficiency of play time for the casual and not so casual WoW Gamer.

This was a big patch.  It’s going to take people a while to get used to all of it.  But we’re going to make the transition for you as smooth as butter.  And not only for this patch, but for every one yet to come.

Last time we gave you a rough outline of how to structure your play time to achieve maximum results in the least amount of time.  By applying a touch of time management to your play, you can pretty much experience everything the game has to offer in around 3 hours a few days a week.

So to recap the idea, it goes like this: Structure your play time around 2 Wintegrasp battlefield episodes.  Log in and do your Auction House work then hit WG #1.  After that spend some time running heroics, farming and dailies, then do WG#2; then you can log out or do a raid, knowing you have moved your toon further than almost anyone else on your server with the least amount of time spent.

So let’s give you a list of things to fill that second hour after WG.  Our system looks something like this:

  • 5:45 – Log in and spend 15 min on AH Domination
  • 6:00 – Hit Wintergrasp
  • 6:30 – Dungeons
  • 7:30 - Dailies, Arenas, Alts
  • 8:30 – Farming
  • 9:30 – Wintergrasp #2
  • (10:00 – Raids)

We do them in this order so that you have a good excuse to not stay in a lame dungeon group forever after a harsh run or two – I have to go finish my dailies guys, sorry to bail.  Or even better, it’s time for my 2’s games, it was nice running with you.

Then when you get done with the second hour and are basically killing time until WG, you can flow right from a daily into farming as you’ll see next.  Thrown VoA and OS in there for heroics once a week, and then add a raid a couple of times a week and you will have everything you could ever want well before everyone maxes out on Ulduar content.

So here’s what we’ve been doing specifically the last few weeks.  After WG we port back to Dalaran to grab the cooking daily.  Knock that one out then it’s pick up the fishing daily (yes it’s new, but this will be the way to go), then we’re off to Icecrown for the new Argent Tournament dailies.

The Argent Tournament (AT) is going to be a lot of fun and a sort of little time sink for you, so get on top of that one right away.  We’ll do more about progressing through the ranks as we experience the finished product more ourselves, but for now just use the link to the Wikki above and you should be able to figure out most of it on your own, it’s not super complex.

Then we’re off to Storm peaks, or if the quests for the AT take us there anyway we’ll hit the Sons of Hodir dailies as well.  While we’re in the zone, we can pop in to our favorite farming spot for a half an hour or so, or just herb the zone until about 20 min before WG.

Then we’ll fly back to Icecrown to turn in the AT stuff, make our way to the fishing daily spot, get that knocked out and then hearth back to Dalaran just in time to join a raid and pop into WG for our second round.  After WG we port to Dalaran, cook, alchemy, DE or whatever else for about 10-15 minutes and then we’re done for the night or completely free for raiding.

As you can see you can get a lot done without wasting time between tasks.  It’s just like stacking quests when you level.  There is a little natural flow between some segments of what you can spend your time doing.

It gets easier as you knock things out as well.  There will come a time when doing the fishing, JC or AT dailies won’t be worth doing any more except for some chump change.  At that point you can really step it up on alts, arenas, or any number of other things now that you’ve gotten a good portion of the content completely out of your way.  Shoot, after a few months WG may not even hold much benefit for you and that will save you another hour.  You could reasonably get to the point where you’ve done everything in the game and can just raid here and there or work it fresh on a new alt.

You really can experience the whole game this way, and not have to live at your computer to do so.  If you structure the way you move through the game properly you can get all the best stuff, do all the fun things, own all the cool crap and still take your wife or girlfriend out to dinner now and then.  It will cut down on your RL aggro radius and make you the envy of your guild mates.