I finally had time to grind out level 61 this morning. I decided it would be a good idea to rise at 0500 am and get some grinding done with fewer people competing for the mobs. Since I play on a full server, that can be a real problem.

Brian Kopp’s Alliance Leveling guide calls for either grinding 61.5-62 or doing an instance with a couple of quests. Well, since I’m basically guildless I didn’t want a bad pickup group ruining the potential advantages of doing an instance, so I grinded it out. Boring, not very effective, but safe.

60-62 took me 13.5 hours, of which 60-61 took about 6 hours. The grind from 61.5-62 slowed me down some. I do try to get the least /played time possible for this review, and I try to simulate someone going from 1-70 seamlessly. In other words, I did not replace any gear at level 60, I don’t have an epic mount, and I didn’t turn in 25 completed quests when The Burning Crusade was released for an instant 150k XP.

I’ve also NOT logged out in an inn now that I didn’t play in a couple of days, to prevent myself from getting too much rested XP. I had a couple of bars only when I started today.

I think I had a good /played time on the 1-60 part, doing it in less than 6 days, and it was largely due to mapping out the coordinates (and a very good guide, OF COURSE). Now, however, when me and Brian made the navigation system available to everyone, you should be able to beat me no problem. Which I’m happy about. If you find the navigation system useful, I’d love to hear about it at: martin [at] wow-strategy.com

Here are a couple of screenshots.

Level 60 starting TBC: Level 62: