I don't know if this has been said already but i don't feel like goin through over 600 comments at 11:45pm, to check for someone with the same point. here goes:

The real problem here isn't the amount of xp you need to get to level 50. In my opinion it's supposed to be hard/challenging/time consuming to get extreme enchantments. The actual problem with enchanting at the moment is that it's almost impossible to gain xp the intended way, and/or without causing large amounts of server-side stress

I think that you should also gain xp from mining ores.

As i said, in my opinion, you should gain xp from mining different kinds of ores. the amount of xp you would get should vary relative to the ore you're mining. the different values of the ores could be something like:

• Coal: 1 xp
• Iron: 5 xp
• Gold: 10 xp
• Redstone: 10 xp (i don't know, maybe a bit too much, since there's a ton of this stuff when you get far enough down)
• Lapis Lazuli: 15 xp (not sure, but i think this is about as rare as diamonds, but not nearly as useful. therefore they should give more xp that other ores but still not as much as diamonds.)
• Diamonds: 50 xp

The game is called Minecraft, and i think we can all agree that the biggest aspect of the game are Mining, Crafting and Building. I don't log onto my SMP server thinking "Oh boy, today will be swell! i hope to slaughter a lot of hostile monsters!" (well maybe sometimes).

Another option could be to make crafting grant xp. Of course not every recipe should yield our precious green orbs. Maybe something like, crafting armor, tools and weapons could give a mere 5 xp pr item; not too mush, and not too little.

These options would also take away stress from servers, because right now people have to make xp-farms, that can build up a ton of lag. As a lot of other fine gentlemen/ladies have mentioned in this thread, it is very boring and repetitive to farm xp.

On another note, if you're playing on a medium to large server, monsters begin to become scarce, thus making it even harder to find monsters and gain xp the intended way. The other day i was curious about how long it would take to get to level 50 by only killing monsters that spawn at night (I ran this test on a medium-sized server). Keep in mind i only did this for 30 minutes so my results may be VERY unaccurate (because really, who has the attention span to kill monsters for over 30 minutes?). I calculated how much xp i had gotten using the charts found on how much xp it is needed to reach every level (found here). The (possibly inaccurate) result was a shocking 25 hours! and that's without breaks.

Another major problem with enchanting is grinding xp for hours and the getting efficiency III for 50 levels of xp. at level 50 it should not (again, in my opinion) be possible to gain such low-quality enchantments. There should be less randomness for high level enchantments. While still not throwing Efficiency IV, Unbreaking III, Fortune III at every pickaxe, at least one max level enchantment should be minimum for 50 levels of xp. Because seriously, you're squeezing the souls of 925 monsters into a single tool.

One thing that REALLY bores me out of my mind is putting a pickaxe in the enchantment table and taking it back out, just to repeat it again^{andagainandagain.} You get it. When i want to spend my, hard earned, 50 levels of xp i want to be able to spend it without having to hunt down the possibility to use them. A possible fix, as others have stated in the comments of this thread, could be a slider for how many levels you would like to use on the inserted item.

One final thing before i conclude my suggestions toward enchanting in Minecraft: A disenchantment table. I have at least 3 pickaxes lying around with Efficiency II, that i got from bad enchantments. I just made new ones (i'm very rich diamond-wise on my server) with better enchantments. Now these 3 pickaxes are more or less useless until i run out of diamonds. A disenchantment table should, of course, be very hard to acquire. for example it could involve an enchantment table and some eyes of end or something. The function of this item would simply put, be to destroy the enchantment from an item (possibly at the cost of 2% of durability).

And that, ladies and gentlemen is probably the longest comment i have ever writen on reddit the internet.