More on Gnomore

Thanks to Tesh from TishToshTesh for the comment and response to my question about Gnomore's way of progress. The response was a set of questions itself, which lead me to think the basic zest of Gnomore project more deeply. The response was as follows:

I have a potentially odd question or three: Why bother leveling at all? What is there at higher levels that a pacifist would care about in the first place? In other words, what's the point?

This isn't to say that this is a silly project, not at all. There's something deeply appealing to me playing against the grain. It's just, well... what can you even *do* at higher levels that you can't do at lower levels if you're not worrying about killing stuff? Yes, you can survive better with more levels, and you can go to new places without wildlife eating you, and maybe some crafting that is level-based, but even there, most of the economy is built around optimizing murderers, and the "endgame" is about murder treadmills.

So, maybe dig a little more into the "why" and derive the means to that end?

Now the original idea was to repeat the well known Pacifist Undead Priest experiment and level up to the cap without killing a single creature. Granted, he started his priest and rogue way back when and levelling by herbalism or mining wasn't an option. So he resorted to doing battlegrounds for the exp, in a way allowing the other players to kill each other while restraining himself on healing and using bombs. The original way I thought on doing this was to be the Healer, not the killer, and go through Dungeon Finder, but that would be the same, now wouldn't it? Not actually the pacifist way even if i didn't kill anything myself.

Now I did some reading on that splendid blog about levelling a character without killing a single thing, and it seems he has started yet another character as Gnomore is, complaining already how easy everything is now as you get experience from herbalism, mining, dailies and all. Sure, I'm not at all saying it is as hard as it was back in 2007-2009 when he levelled his first toon to level cap, when all you had was quest experience and exploration to go by.

My response to Tesh's question was to do the levelling for the exploration's sake: without experience you cannot go from Azeroth to Outlands and Northrend, Mt.Hyjal and so on would be closed as they are. Sure, I could do the naked run from one end of the continent to the other, but would I like it? I doubt it.

I'm a social player for the most part, so the dungeon party healer approach was closest to my normal mode. However, this is the way I'm levelling my banker druid, healing a random every now and then, so why bother.

So I will be levelling Gnomore by gathering professions and exploration, with occasional quest every now and then. I'm not making the errand running my aim, I just take the quests which seem appropriate and which I can relate to as being 'important' to my character. The question of dailies will be dealt with when the time comes, and for sure I'm not rushing this. I have all the time in the world, Three Stooges to go with and probably even level up my mains to see the end content, who knows.

Gnomore, the Pacifist Gatherer, will go along when the mood hits. Hopefully often.

Besides who cares if it's been done before? I haven't, and that counts!

C out