Rest is a device that allows more casual gamers to stay somewhat on par with other players, as to character level. It's also a clever device to encourage less-active players to keep their accounts, making players want to come back and play some more after some time away from the game. Rest also adds more value to the subscription fee. In light of the controversy of game addiction, rest also gives players reason to cease play. Blizzard has also indirectly stated that World of Warcraft play should be taken in moderation according to loading screen tips.
Storing up rest
Resting...
While in an inn or anywhere in a capital city, your player portrait will begin to glow and your level circle will say zzz, indicating that you are resting. If you log off here, you will continue to rest while offline.
One bar of rested XP (5% of a level) is earned for every 8 hours spent resting. A maximum of 30 bars (150% of a level) may be earned. In other words, you can leave your character resting in an inn or capital city for up to 10 days (without gaining experience) before you earn the maximum amount of rest state, and a resting character stores up one full level of rest in 160 hours (6.67 days).
You also become rested while logged off in the wilderness, but the accumulation is slower. When logged off "outside," rest is gained at one fourth the rate in an inn, or one bar every 32 hours.
It may also be possible to engage the resting state while in ghost form, or dead.
Consuming rest
Rest mark
When rested, your XP bar will turn blue, and a notch will appear indicating exactly how rested you are. You will earn double XP from killing monsters while rested until your XP bar fills to the notch. A rested character earns double combat XP until this rest state is consumed, at which point the message
- You feel normal.
appears and you resume normal XP gains for kills. NOTE: Your rested state marker-notch can go off the right side of your XP bar such that you won't see it until you gain at least one level.
When you are rested, when you kill a monster, in the combat log it may say something like
- 120 XP (+60 rested XP).
In this case, you did not get 180 XP. Your total experience was 120, half of which was a rested bonus. Unrested, that kill would have yielded 60 XP.
A note on consuming rested XP: Let's say you had 5000 rested XP. You get 120 XP for killing a mob. You now have 4880 rested XP left, not 4940. That extra XP that you got "(+60 rested XP)" was not the only XP pulled from your rested XP pool.
Non-combat experience such as exploration and quest experience does not consume rest state. The rest marker will be moved forward by as many XP as you gain from the exploration or quest.
Further information
When you are about 5th or 6th level, you will receive quests to go to another town area. This town is where the first inn is available to a new character. Put another way, until you get your first 5 or 6 levels out of the way you will not happen across an inn and so you will have to 'camp out' when you logout, accumulating rest at the slower "wilderness" rate. It is easy enough to get these first five levels, so it is good to finish those quests and hurry over to the inn.
At this inn, and at all other inns that you find, you will find an innkeeper, who can bind your 
[Hearthstone] to that inn. Activating your hearthstone you will move your character to that bound inn. This is useful for rapid or unexpected logout situations; you can activate your hearthstone and log out at the inn, gaining rest.
Since rest XP is based on percentage, higher level characters will receive higher absolute rest xp. So the higher your level, the better rest is for you.
By having at least two characters, you can rest on one while playing the other! This is one pro of having alts.
- Also see
- [Hearthstone]
- Resting at the Official site.