The World of Warcraft (WoW) is a huge place, bigger than most all of the other Massive Multiplayer Online games (MMO.) What this means for you is that you won’t see all of it if you take just one character all the way to the maximum level (which will be 85 with the Cataclysm expansion.) With that size comes all kinds of things to do, plus arenas, battlegrounds, raids and dungeons, thousands of quests, and more.
If you want to get leveled as quickly as possible, maybe to join your higher level friends or get to the end-game content sooner, you might find the number of quests and objectives to be daunting. By following a few rules, though, you can greatly speed up your leveling, regardless of class or faction. The quickest way to get leveled, of course, is with a professionally created product, like Zygor’s leveling Guide, but that’s only for the people who really need to get to max level ASAP.
There are a few time killers that you need to be aware of. PvP is great fun (for many of us,) but it doesn’t help you get leveled. Shopping is also fun, especially if you have a full wallet, but it doesn’t get you leveled faster. Hanging around town, lying about your exploits with your pals, spreading insulting rumors about the other faction, won’t get you to 80 or 85 any sooner. Not that you shouldn’t kill them at every opportunity or inform your associates about just how slimy the other side really is, just be aware of how much time you spend doing that.
Next, WoW has a couple of things that multiply your experience gained. The first is the tried and true “rest XP.” Log out in an Inn and you’ll get bonus XP when you come back to the game. The longer you stay in the Inn then the longer the XP lasts. The other is Blizzard’s Recruit-a-Friend program. What this does is link your account to your “friend’s” and then the two of you team up, kill together, and get three times the normal experience points.
Besides the faster XP from Recruit a Friend, teaming will speed your leveling because, even though the basic XP gain is smaller, you will have less downtime in addition to killing things a lot faster. This gives you a big advantage over going solo. Of course, to make this teaming thing work, you do have to have a compatible partner.
Skip the crafting professions, for now, since they’ll slow you down. If you have adequate gold then skip the gathering professions. The idea is to control anything that will slow you down. Selling your loot is another time waster, but you have to do it. Make a level 1 character to be your “banker.” This character will live at the Auction House (AH.) When your bags are full of loot you just stop by the nearest mailbox instead of making the trip to the big city. Post your stuff to the AH when you log into the banker. You’ll also want to have the biggest bags you can afford. You’ll be able to collect a lot more loot before returning to that mailbox.
You don’t always have to train when the opportunity presents itself, you can skip that trip to the trainer if the new skill(s) isn’t worth the effort. Don’t buy new stuff all the time. Every few levels is fine. Certain classes are, of course, a little more gear dependent than others, but even the most dependent can wait three or four levels between upgrades.
Do quests instead of just grinding and group your quests. Any time you pick up new quests group them by area. Any quests that are in the same area will be done at the same time. If you’re going to hit a dungeon try to get as many dungeon quests as you can. If you want to go into the big city then save all your city quests for that time. The worst way to go is to do one quest that takes you all over the place, then hand it in and do another which hits the same areas.
Just by following a few easy steps and by organizing your time and how you do things you will greatly improve your leveling speed. You won’t go as quickly as you would with a professional leveling guide, but even without one you’ll still have fun and be faster than most people. And isn’t that the point?