Well Rested

The story of how WoW's rested experience system came about is pretty well known I think, but just in case you haven't heard it before, the gist of it is basically this: With MMOs having had a reputation for being too addictive even back in the early 2000s, Blizzard wanted to discourage players from binging on the game to an extent that might be detrimental to their health. So they decided that after you'd made a certain amount of progress in a single play session, an XP penalty for mob killing would kick in, encouraging you to take a break.

People did not like this at all, but then someone had the genius idea of reframing the whole thing: Without actually changing any of the numbers, the previously reduced rate of XP gain became the new normal, while what used to be normal became bonus experience from being rested. And suddenly people loved it! Great marketing at work there.

Before Classic, I hadn't really thought about rested XP for a few years. While SWTOR nominally copied the system from WoW, its levelling is way too fast these days as it is, but even before then it was never really meant to be the kind of game where you advance mainly through mob grinding, and quests have always been unaffected by restedness.

Looking back at some of my old blog posts here, I was complaining about levelling being too fast right after Cata's launch back in 2010, and actually even a couple of weeks before that (though that was more focused on questioning the value of heirlooms). When things are going too fast, the last thing you want to be is rested. (I can't find the particular quote, but I seem to recall that there was even a period where I intentionally logged out outside of cities/inns in an attempt to slow down my accumulation of rested XP.)

In Classic though, levelling is much slower than in most modern MMOs, and when you run out of rested experience it does feel like someone suddenly stepped on the breaks. It's not bad enough to make me want to stop playing if I'm having fun, but it definitely makes it feel nice to be rested.

During my early Classic altoholism one of the things I enjoyed doing was rotating through to a different alt every evening so that the others had time to accumulate some rested XP in the meantime. I soon realised that I didn't really want to level them all in sync though, as that meant doing the same content over and over again in quick succession, which to me at least partially defeats the purpose of having an alt.

Still, even with my focus having shifted to my hunter full time, I'm generally not short on rested XP. Many days go by when I don't find any time to play at all, and every one of those helps to feed my blue bar for those longer weekend sessions.

What's funny to me is that this has led to me discovering a point where too much restedness can become a bit of a nuisance even in Classic, and that's when it comes to levelling my hunter's pets.

I've mentioned previously that most guides advise against trying to level more than one pet at a time, yet that this didn't stop me from successfully doing just that back in Vanilla and BC, which is why I'm happily doing it again in Classic now. However, I'm being reminded of a problem I seem to vaguely recall having back in the day as well, and that is restedness.

You see, hunter pets need a lot fewer experience points to level up than a player character. I'm not sure of the exact number, but I think it's something like a third of a character level? However, they don't benefit from quest experience or restedness, and they don't gain any XP while you are both the same level, only after you've recently levelled up. With one pet that's not an issue, but with two you may actually find yourself outlevelling one or both of your pets sometimes due to quests and bonus XP boosting you further and further ahead.

It becomes even worse when you're not 100% consistent with swapping between the two pets whenever they need it, such as happened to me when I ended up running the entirety of Maraudon with my bear while he was already at his current level cap, while my wind serpent was sitting in the stables being three or four levels behind. I had meant to swap them around beforehand, but then I ended up getting a group invite right at the dungeon entrance with no good opportunity to go back and see the stable master, so that was that.

Ultimately it's not a big deal, because no matter how far behind one or both of my pets might fall, eventually I'll hit sixty and at the very latest they'll be able to catch me up again once my character stops gaining XP. I just find it amusing that I find ways for levelling to feel too annoyingly fast even in a game where it takes most players months to reach the cap.