So here I am, a newly returned player (although I may not be able to use the “newly” title for much longer) and a newly addicted craft/alt-aholic.  And I find myself leveling at what seems to me to be an astonishing rate.  Now this isn’t because I have a lot of time on my hands, because I don’t.  However, when I do get an hour to myself, if I haven’t leveled at least once one on an alt or made a substantial amount of XP with Meredoc, then I am simply not trying.  I must be doing something related to crafting, because when you quest you can really zoom right along in your leveling below level; at least you can in my level range.  I’m sure the grind will come soon enough past level 51!

But is this a good thing?  I’m not sure.  See, there are downsides to this decrease in required XP.  Back when LOTRO started, you spent a lot of time doing lower level quests.  Sure, some of them were a pain and caused you to run around, but you got a distinct feel of the land and its inhabitants.  Maybe the pie running quests were lame, or convincing the three elf brothers seemed tedious, but what did you care?  It’s not like you were moving ahead all that quickly and completing the quests really helped get some XP.  These days though, you can skip most of the tedious quests that you want.  Heck, you can skip the entire Old Forest if you want.  There are so many quests around that you can pick and choose at your leisure.  I know I really didn’t want to do the quest line to get the bee salve in The Shire, which is probably the only quest line I truly dislike there (pie and mail quests included).  So I didn’t do it.  Still, I was able to level so quickly that my Epic Quest line final goal quickly became green in its level status.  And this isn’t just on one alt, but on all of them.  Heck, by the time I was ready to start the previously mentioned Old Forest zone in the Breelands on my Captain, Hunter, and Burglar, all the quests were green there too.