How many boars does it take...?
When leveling from 1-90, some zones seem to fly by while others were apparently designed to push the boundaries of players' patience (I'm looking at you, Arathi Highlands). While much of this is undoubtedly due to zone design, can some of the leveling-time disparity be attributed to experience formulae? Let's find out!
Kills to level, 1-85
I've taken a bit of time to plot out the number of kills required to reach the next level, assuming all mobs are the player's level and no experience boosts are applied. Levels 85-89 were not included because I was unable to find a formula for kill experience beyond Cataclysm-level mobs.
1-58
Leveling through revamped classic (CataClassic?) WoW appears to give a linear increase in number of kills per level, with the curiosities of a dip at 28 and a jump at 40. If the data are correct (note: I have not verified this), less experience is needed the get from 28-29 (21,120 exp) than from 27-28 (25,760). Interestingly, this deviation from linearity did not exist pre-MoP. In Mists of Pandaria, the experience required to reach each level from 10-39 was reduced by 20%. All levels except 28 correctly reflect this change; the 20% reduction seems to have been applied twice for that particular level.
Boars killed so far: 10830
58-68
Observant readers may have noticed that the plot shows two data points for level 58 and 59. This is because the experience earned from killing mobs in Outland is greater than the experience for killing mobs in CataClassic (which is now a real word). Burning Crusade content can be started as early as level 58, even though the gigantic hike in experience-to-level doesn't take effect until level 60. Burning Crusade leveling still looks roughly linear (maybe with a tiny, positive second derivative), but has a much higher slope than earlier content - reaching level 67 requires almost twice as many kills as level 60.
Boars killed so far: 16355
68-80
There is little variance in kills-to-level in Wrath of the Lich King. The plot trends slightly upward here, but isn't strictly linear. All of the points are within the range of 65-67 leveling. To me, this expansion seemed to be very appropriately paced.
Boars killed so far: 27575
80-85
No overlap here; the first zone in Cataclysm can't be started until level 80. Cataclysm and Burning Crusade have in common a massive increase in experience-to-level for each new level. Still, the number of kills to level doesn't exceed BC levels until the last two levels of the expansion.
Total boars killed: 39015
