In general I don't think there are addons that are currently disallowed. So if you want to have one for the route or similar, you could use it. At least for now. :D

Nice to have this category. Eventho no footage is kind of sad, it isn't super realistic to get a good amount of entries with that. :x Would still be nice to take a look at what people did, maybe find some neat ideas and such. :) "Instant levels" include both granting levels and character boosts, I gather? :)

Gonna have to figure out which chars I didn't use RAF on before I can submit anything here. Was about to submit my freshly dinged druid, but I used RAF on her, so nope. :D

Welcome mate, looking forward to checking out your runs. : ]

As far as I know addons are okay as long as they do not do something that conflicts with any of the rules. That was the answer I got from sadrunslive when I asked in the Clarifications thread.

Said said, using grouping and TSM mail to 1-click mail prepared heirlooms/potions is a not insignificant timesave. NPCScan does not really do anything you cannot do by having maps open on a second screen. At least for the older areas where it doesn't do the alert sound. For the other AddOns you are listing, I don't really see how they should give you any kind of (unfair) advantage. More than anything they might add to your loading times, which depending on the run might cost you more time than it could potentially save. :)

Okay, as a quick update - rare mobs award x15 XP compared to normal mobs. Or at least that was the case for the mobs I killed recently and put into my spreadsheet. x)

So it might be possible to level to 10 faster than just by murlocs as a human by skipping to some of the rares in the area. :)

Up to 244 killed Nagrand rares now. Four bags, one potion in total. Farming them with mythic HFC gear still takes a bit of time and you need XRA to even stand a chance of getting a decent amount. If my numbers are average it will take several hours for obtaining a single potion. With okay gear, with less it will obviously take a lot longer.

So it will basically be another filter/sort thing like the potions and race one?

It would make it so we can at one glance see who did use groups and who not, so it's big improvement. I still think that not-grouping ought to be the standard, but this sounds like an awfully big step up! For now we don't really have a lot of runs in any >10 categories anyway, so it does not feel like the biggest of deals, but let's hope it changes a bit. :]

So, everybody is in favor of using groups?

So sad having to rely solely on 4 others (who do use heirlooms!) to get good times for everything from level 15 and on.

For no heirloom just getting there takes quite some time. And then getting a shit group on the third run and restart without having done anything wrong yourself after like 3hrs. It's really bad.

And also it is absolutely impossible to make sure there isn't any abuse of the LFG "random" queueing with friends.

Hm. Just farmed the Nagrand rares to get resupplied on potions. Managed to kill 101 of them in a bit less than 3hrs of farming with xrealm assist. They dropped a total of two bags.

With Krol the Blade being camped 24/7, it makes obtaining this just a ridiculous task. : (

The 6:48 one would be nice. : )

But thanks already!

Gonna upload two more runs when I go to bed, let's get some numbers on that board! ^_^

Are they also split by pot/no pot? If so, I could re-submit my no-potion human run, right? :) Since it was replaced by the potion undead one.

Wow, thank you so much, awesome stuff! :)

Does that also mean we can get listed once per race? Would love it. Just saw the post over there. Would find it fun to see how fast people are on those zones, since I really haven't looked into those yet. But that would take them to be run first ^^.

edit: Having the fastest one on top just makes a lot of sense. It is nice to get an idea of how quick the races are by looking at the leader board, while still acknowledging the top time per race! :)

The title kind of says what it. I would like to have the race used in the run shown on the leaderboards and being able to submit seperate runs depending on the race. I don't think creating a whole new category for each would be a good idea, but having it like they have for Diablo2, where they have a seperation by class would really be nice.

The starting areas are completely different. Worgens and even moreso Goblins will never stand a chance to compete like it is now. Just leaving their areas takes really, really long. And glitching out of it like you can for worgens would end up wasting several minutes for swimming, so not an option either.

I tried some runs with anything else but human or undead, but as expected the times there were not close. Seperating the runs by race would be really motivating for me personally. And also permit things like "Fastest Worgen Startingzone/Level 10", mentioned in the thread sadrunslive made on the Warcraft forum.

Thoughts, guys? :)

Hey, since sadrunslive asked us to do a thread for a poll let's do this!

I am using this rather bloated term in the title because it does not only include the LFG and the AH, but also other already banned behavior like guilds (the runner has to join!) and premade groups. It means that we as runners have to rely on our own ability and nothing else!

Of course there will always be some interaction with other players like when killing questmobs. Or another player nicking a rare from us. But that is something that we will never have any influence over. There is a major difference between the runner actively seeking out other players so they help him for his advantage and other players randomly killing our mobs!

Having the LFG allowed per default makes runtimes arbitrary and every planning beyond level 15 is useless. Just figure out the best route to 15 on a class that will be able to queue as tank, the rest will be LFG-lottery, most of it beyond our controll.

I am not against having categories that allow for LFG, but right now it is the standard category, whereas I sincerely feel that the standard category should be as pure as possible. Of course it will slow a run down. But not by forcing us doing a less than optimal route. But by forcing us to use a route we build ourselves. Not one built upon the heirloomgear of other human players!

Let me kill the animals. Not them! :D

PS: While I understood the "have half of the people who submitted a run within the last month"-rule, I find it very harsh. From what I have seen so far the forums are used by only a small amount of the people who actually post runs, even getting half of them to read this post will be tough. I hope that this might be reconsidered, if this thread gets some positive response. : )

Thanks for the link. Used it quite a bit lately!

Also the wowwiki.wikia.com pages for XP per mob and XP per level are really nice: http://wowwiki.wikia.com/wiki/Formulas:Mob_XP http://wowwiki.wikia.com/wiki/Formulas:XP_To_Level

Super nice for theorycrafting routes. Only thing missing is something about rare mob experience. Any of you guys has any info on that? :)

A few questions regarding the rules:

Can I interact with myself using my second account? The rules are against some interaction with other players, but don't seem to limit boosting yourself with a second account.

Do I need to use the same account to mail me items? Using my other account saves quite some time.

Are there any restrictions for using AddOns and/or Macros? So far I have not used any, but quite a few are useful. If you can use them, what is the stance on Cross Realm Assist?

Thanks on beforehand!

And also - I really don't spam you with all of this because I don't like what you are doing, sadrunslive. I think it's an awesome job you are putting up with the /wow section of speedruns.com! Checking all the runs and being active and helpful on the forum, I really appreciate that! I also think it is a good thing that you don't just go and change rules after two or three guys whining on the forums. It would make runs not comparable and segment them a lot more. Going against that is generally very sensible. I do feel like some of the restrictions ought to be changed and a few others put in place, but I am happy that you are in charge here. Doing all this work is nothing I would want to have to put up with. ;D

Hey guys. We have had this coming up in a few of the other threads and I would like to adress it with this thread. Eventhough there are other things as well, that I would rather not have in the speedruns, experience potions are one of the premier problems I have right now.

I made an heirloomed run with double potions to demonstrate my point. I initally just wanted to go for level 20, but then on the fly decided to extend it for a bit. If it was prepared well enough it would have been easily possible to reach level 40 within the duration of one Elixir of Ancient Knowledge.

Obtaining even one Elixir of Ancient Knowledge requires very like a commitment of more than an hour on a top geared character to farm the Nagrad rares for the bags. The time it takes to just gear up to that level (720-730+) where you can kill them quick enough to make it worthwhile with Cross Realm Assist is insane. And one could even argue that you rely tremendously on others for the gearingprocess.

The Elixir of the Rapid Mind is completely again RNG and obtained from either Garrison Missions, rare drops or lucky Savage Gifts. Or bought from the AH. But it is not cheap and you will have to stack up on quite a lot of them if you want to compete in runs.

While having the potions makes for some flashy videos - I got to level 20 in 10:31, more than 40 minutes quicker than the current WR, it isn't viable whatsoever to be consistently run.

I actually wanted to try running it as a human, but the prospect of having to gear up and level a character from scratch just so I could consistently farm the Elixir of the Rapid Mind on some random low-pop server easily put me off.

I did enjoy doing the run. But more as some showcase thing, not because I think we should have it in one of our categories. I am cutting the video right now and uploading it next. Please take a look at that and tell me what you guys think about it! Potions should be in their own category or just blocked completely, in my opinion. I will submit the 1 to 10 and 1 to 20 parts of it just as a statement. But it just makes the other times look ridiculous. Kind of shows that potions create a category of their own. ; )

I am going to add the links to the videos as they are uploaded - which with my connection unfortunately takes way too long. : /

First part, 1 to 10 in 4:03min: Second part, 10 to 20 final time 10:31min:

PS: I used my second Elixir of the Rapid Mind and used up the Elixir of Ancient Knowledge as well, hitting 36 in the end. The route up to level 30 is decent, but I was pretty much adapting on the fly here. Also I had a friend check out the rare spawn positions, since I had not done all of them before. If anybody is interested I can upload that as well. (You can see me running around in Western Plaguelands in search for a mailbox for about 5 minutes in the later parts of it, lol.)

Changed my older post a bit. : )

Well, guilds are banned, which to me seem to be a lot weirder than having LFG or AH banned. At least the benifit is marginal at best. 10% Mounted Speed, a few seconds for heathing. That's pretty much it. I think having categories for heirlooms and no heirlooms is a good thing. I don't care about the rng heirmooms. If they are allowed, I will use them, otherwise not. Disallowing them makes the run easier to attempt for everybody else.

The AH/LFG thing is mostly a solo vs yolo debate. Splitting that makes sense to me, since solo will be a lot easier to attempt for others and more consistent. Whereas LFG makes the run completely dependant on other people. Yoloing 10 tries hoping for good parties is okay, but would probably be the category I would try less. ;) The other games I have seen were mostly not depending on other players. Except what I saw at Agar.io, which was completely stupid, but the "fastest to 1000 Mass" run there feels too much like what LFG runs will lead to...

PS: 7AM here now, need to get some sleep. Hope I don't rave too much because of that. ^_^

another (last) edit for tonight: For something like a 1-60 or longer run, I don't feel remotely as bad about having LFG or the AH. Still it will be two different runs. But for a run of that length you can do a lot with queueing for only solo dungeons at set times to get into some you hardly ever see by going for random dungeons and can get quite some XP out of doing the quests there as well. Randomness of the groupquality on average also cancel out on longer runs or at least be less significant.

really last edit: The no heirloom run saying "No Mailbox" in the description right now is kind of misleading. I initially took that as an AH-ban as well, since that uses the mail. So took it as a "you must not get items that you did not obtain yourself".

Hey guys. Since this at least for the shorter runs seems to be what makes it that humans are super strong, I would like to ask you if you have found any more even remotely comparable spots to our murlocs? : )

In Redridge Mountains the Gnoll camps have semi-instant respawns where they have a forced respawn upon the death of the last mob. Since they are at level 15/16 that should be pretty handy for 1-20 routes. Will try to build something on that, testing it I got 1-20 loomed in an hour.

Up front - it's completely fine if you do not read all of the below. It's gotten a bit more than intended, the shortest version is: I do not think you can compare LFG to anything else from a risk/randomness standpoint. It is not a choice, it will 100% of the time be the quickest thing to do and thus render our runs the runs of the four other guys who carry us.

Now the wall of text... ^_^

The major problem with LFG is that regardless of your effort (and in no-heirlooms the effort doesn't really do much anyway) the group will be what dictates your speed. So starting from level 15 everything will depend solely on people that are not the runner.

You can't compare LFG to soloing dungeons. Soloing you do not get teleported for free, which is the first huge timesaver. You also do not get the bonus experience for the random LFG dungeons (important for both runs) and you don't get the loot bag (important for no looms). In general dungeons will get you to full blue a lot quicker while also letting you level up a ton faster. Also completing them on anything but a melee class will be the opposite of fast. Which we don't like! And even then you will have to wait for several levels. Soloing dungeons is slower than leveling by quests, even without any optimized routes for the quests.

For questing and just killing mobs you can optimize a route on your own. If a rare is not around, either go grind a few more other mobs for that XP or just carry on without him. I enjoy that part of it. But I don't enjoy having to hope for people that are fully heirloomed to queue with me for several dungeons in a row. For a >1-20 run the dungeons will be the main part of the run and already the 1-20 ones will be completey dependant on the quality of the other members of your group. Not myself. Checking other players runs just to see that they got into a better group is weird, I want to learn from their routes and see cool things because they know and play this game well! I don't care about seing Brewdojr who can pull two rooms of mobs and Kegsmash them into oblivion because he is fully loomed. : /

For any runs that don't go below maybe level 40 I don't see how the AH will help a lot. If you can't use it to buy XP potions, that is. For a speedrun getting upgrades on the AH will only be relevant if you aren't doing dungeons because else you would outlevel them way too quick and they will literally have zero impact. And for non-LFG runs you would rely on items selling fast. Which again is something other humans controll. Not the game as such. Also both the AH and LFG are exploitable and not verifiable.

Potions and looms are different in that looms stay, while potions not. From my limited experience with speedruns you have a lot of games that do some newgame+ or where you use characters that have to be unlocked. But that are one-time things. For potions you will have to come back and accquire them again for every single run. So the one thing that cuts >50% of a run's time will actually take ten times that time to obtain. Whereas the heirlooms just took me some time once. I am not overly sad having them for a heirloom-category to see just how quick one can be. But I would like to have a "fair" heirloom category as well, without potions and for that sake without the rings (Bye to those 10%XP).

edit/update: The potions also need you to get gold on the faction you use for a run. While can get them for Horde, I will have to farm quite a bit to get them on Alliance. The toons I create for speedrunning are the only Alliance characters I have. Leveling up an Alliance character just to be able to consistently get the Elixir of the Rapid Mind on one of those backwater german lowpop servers would be quite a pain. : / My looms just transfer over. As will the Elixir of Ancient Knowledge.

PS: Asked it earlier but kind of got lost in the discussion - can we use splits of longer videos for the segments? I did a decent 1-10 no loom time when attempting 1-20. Can I use the run for both categories or only one of them? Will also be important for when you actually use potions. Less pricy ¤cough¤ It's not like I'd want to use later segments to get to a good segmented time for the longer run. Just use one of the segments for it's own. :D