It depends completely on your preferred playing style. If you really want to increase your level as fast as possible, you can do it but it is still going to take quite a long time to reach the maximum veteran rank. If that is not important to you, it will take even longer.

In my case, it took me a couple hundred hours playing time just to reach level 36, which is about how quickly I usually progress when playing Skyrim. When I play TES games, I'm not trying to accomplish any particular goal or reach a maximum level, I simply go where I think my character would want to go and do whatever seems like fun.

I like having a somewhat different experience with each character, so if I'm playing a 2-handed barbarian, I'm not going to do the mages' guild quests with that character, etc., and a lot of the quest content is still fresh for the next character.

In my view it's different from other games where people feel they have to rush and can't enjoy the game until they get to the maximum level. There are so many different quests and things to do, I would never be able to complete all the content in the game. I'm not even sure I will ever reach the level cap with any character

Why oh why would you play through a TES game.

firstly, 50 IS NOT MAX LEVEL. VR10 is max level.

this is as they predicted. 100-150 hours per alliance zone, which gets you to level 50. there is still the other two allaince zones to complete better known as 50+ and 50++ which should get you to VR10.

so yeah. it takes a lot longer than a week to get max.

Seems rather typical of your average MMO. SWTOR, WOW, GW2, FFXIV you name it. I think the hardest leveling experience I've encountered was FFXI back in the day.

Suppose I should add that every mmo has a portion of players who will complain the game is lacking content. Many mmo players feel that hitting level cap as fast as possible opens up the "real" content. I am sure ZOS is trying to pump out as much Vet content as possible but it will NEVER be enough for such players. The game is designed heavily around open content while leveling (consider vet ranks as levels too). Elite dungeons will be devoured and a single Adventure zone will not be enough for such players.

Luckily the game also has the DAOC pvp end game to keep some busy but pve "raiders" are not "smell the roses" people and expect a series of posts complaining about end game content within a month. Sadly there is little ZOS can do about this.

well seeing as there are three alliance zones, all of which add up to 100-150 hours each, and to reach cap you need to do all three, its quite a long time.

Pretty much, I was just stating people who have reached Level 50, since not everyone I know hasn't reached VR 10 yet.

I don't get this mentality at all, it just seems so idiotic to me.

I mean where the hell do people get the idea that rushing through ALL the content unlocks more content? whats worse is that they start complaining that theres not enough content even though they just did all of it.

@verdantsf, then you're a no-life, what do you want me to tell you? The game is meant to be played for fun and enjoy the content that ZOS created, not speed through it then complain there is not enough content.

For the Post WoW MMO, that is about right. Asheron's Call took years... There shouldn't even BE an "endgame", but that is what people have been trained to expect from mmos.

Beta players have likely already done the content slow once. Why would they want to do it slow again?

Hell, from my personal experience it seems short. 400 to 450 hours sounds a whole lot better.

Well Asian games a few years ago followed this model, huge amounts of grinding and low xp quests. It was the time it took about 6 to 8 months just to hit the max level.

@shadow9d9, it actually seems to opposite for beta players. The only time I can understand to rush the game is in the beta because you have only 3 days to play until the next beta session. That's why there's people in the beta already at veteran rank.

I agree. I also have mixed thoughts thinking back to FFXI. Sure, it felt like a real accomplishment when I finally hit the level cap, like I'd endured something and should feel a sense of achievement.. in truth though, setting aside my rose tinted glasses and nostalgia; it was painful and boring as hell for the most part.

Annd.. thus you state the difference between the PTS Beta players he is talking about and the Stress Test Beta players you are talking about. Stress testers cant get to 50.

@Darlgon, well... LEEDLE LEEDLE LEEDLE!

The last character I ran through the PTS started on Thursday, and by Saturday Evening I was level 6 close to being 7. I played about 24 hours over those days. I was doing some grinding (more than I wanted actually), and gathering of resources to try crafting things, and some questing when I was leveled up enough to do them. I never got very far from Daggerfall this entire time.

So, I imagine if you someone min maxes and uses all the exploits (none of which I have discovered) and optimizes activity and all that other MMO stuff, then getting to level 50 is not a stretch in that time. Also, your battle leveled to 50 on reaching Cyrodill, so that could explain seeing characters at level 50 early on, as you only have to be level 20 go there. I don't know how your character level is displayed at that time, because I have not gone there.

So, the fact that someone is at level 50 after 4 days means nothing unless we know how they got there.

Yeah, i was so boring i only had 3 jobs at the level cap and ignored all the others. Samurai, Paladin, Dark Knight. Was too boring to level the others.

@CCNA, the only thing I can think of is they did all quests given to them because it's pretty difficult to grind for XP in TESO. Well, it takes long is what I'm trying to say.

I mean the closed beta players that have played for a long time.

@shadow9d9, oh, I misunderstood you before than. If they played in the beta for 15 days or so than I can understand how they got to their rank I suppose.

That alone made skeptic about the level on normal servers, maybe on the PST servers this would be possible. Since all the content over level 20, same with the new areas, are locked meaning it would take way more time grinding the mobs or it was attained by playing PVP, but i still find that theory doubtful. Still you can go to pvp at level 10.