Hi,
I presume by "powergaming" you simply mean leveling as fast as possible.
First, forget quest rewards as far as powergaming is concerned. Sure, if a good drop or a good reward comes your way, use it. But to waste time for an additional couple of points of armor or an additional 0.1 dps just doesn't pay off.
Looking at the quests, they basically come in a few flavors. Free points for going someplace you're eventually going anyway -- obviously worth doing. Extra points for killing a bunch of critters you were going to kill anyway -- again, it's a free lunch. Some dinky reward and points for killing a named boss -- not worth the time. Instances -- too much down time unless one is tied into a very active (and reasonably good) guild.
Killing vanilla critters at or just below your level is about the fastest way of leveling from what I've seen and from the people I've talked to. It doesn't max XP per kill, but there is almost no down time and unless done very badly no recovery runs. With decent storage and a reasonable knowledge of what is and isn't worth trying to sell, you pretty much only need to hit town every few gaming hours which you can do with a hearthstone -- and that's the only useful thing to come out of the whole "rest" fiasco.
With maps like the one you linked to, it becomes easy to find regions with critters just right for fast leveling. And, of course, if one has done a region with a previous character, it becomes pretty fast to get all the worthwhile quests there.
As for the quest log filling, not a problem for a powergamer. For one thing, he's not gonna fill his log with a bunch of 'elite' quests. And he's not going to grab quests that involve a lot of running around for just a few points. By cherry picking the quests as he does the critters, he'll make very fast progress.
I started a character on the PvP server just to see how fast I could level using that method. Got to level 5 in 1 hour and to 10 in 5:29. That's when I quit in boredom. Someday I'll go back and play her another five hours or so and see what happens.
--Pete
I presume by "powergaming" you simply mean leveling as fast as possible.
First, forget quest rewards as far as powergaming is concerned. Sure, if a good drop or a good reward comes your way, use it. But to waste time for an additional couple of points of armor or an additional 0.1 dps just doesn't pay off.
Looking at the quests, they basically come in a few flavors. Free points for going someplace you're eventually going anyway -- obviously worth doing. Extra points for killing a bunch of critters you were going to kill anyway -- again, it's a free lunch. Some dinky reward and points for killing a named boss -- not worth the time. Instances -- too much down time unless one is tied into a very active (and reasonably good) guild.
Killing vanilla critters at or just below your level is about the fastest way of leveling from what I've seen and from the people I've talked to. It doesn't max XP per kill, but there is almost no down time and unless done very badly no recovery runs. With decent storage and a reasonable knowledge of what is and isn't worth trying to sell, you pretty much only need to hit town every few gaming hours which you can do with a hearthstone -- and that's the only useful thing to come out of the whole "rest" fiasco.
With maps like the one you linked to, it becomes easy to find regions with critters just right for fast leveling. And, of course, if one has done a region with a previous character, it becomes pretty fast to get all the worthwhile quests there.
As for the quest log filling, not a problem for a powergamer. For one thing, he's not gonna fill his log with a bunch of 'elite' quests. And he's not going to grab quests that involve a lot of running around for just a few points. By cherry picking the quests as he does the critters, he'll make very fast progress.
I started a character on the PvP server just to see how fast I could level using that method. Got to level 5 in 1 hour and to 10 in 5:29. That's when I quit in boredom. Someday I'll go back and play her another five hours or so and see what happens.
--Pete
How big was the aquarium in Noah's ark?