The following results were made possible to me only by following Brian Kopp’s Alliance Leveling Guide.

Here’s a picture as I hit level 70:

Don’t be fooled by my total /played time. It’s really much lower. Here comes a bit of math, but bear with me on this.

I hit 60 in 5 days, 21 hours, 2 minutes. Here’s a screenshot of that.

Then I spent 1 day, 14 hours, 11 minutes on level 60, gathering about 100 g, skilling up skinning and mining, teaching my cat bite rank 7, clearing up some bank space and traveling to The Dark Portal (and fooling around a fair bit). That was before TBC was even out, so I couldn’t go on leveling. Here’s a screenshot of me standing at the Dark Portal.

I hit 70 in 10 days, 7 hours, 49 minutes… but to get the /played time actually spent leveling you’d have to subtract 1 day, 14 hours, 11 minutes from it, which gives 8 days, 17 hours, 38 minutes.

"BUT", I hear you saying, "it’s unfair to subtract ALL the time spent at level 60 from the final /played as it would take some time to tame a pet for bite rank 7, clear the bank a bit, and travel to the dark portal" (let’s not count mining and skinning as I haven’t used them at all in Outlands). You’re right. So let’s liberally add THREE hours for getting a new pet ability and getting ready for Outlands. Then the final /played time for 1-70 would be 8 days, 20 hours, 38 minutes.

OR, you could just BUY some more bank space, (which I would’ve done to save time if TBC was out when I hit 60), SKIP getting bite rank 7 (you can do well without it), and just GO straight to Outlands and you’d have an even better time. But let’s say 1-70 took me 8 days, 20 hours, 38 minutes.

Fair? More than fair I would say.

As for gear, reputations and my pet, here are the details:

Gear: http://ctprofiles.net/4911572 (Note: Almost everything is wrong except the gear, and a green ring is missing)

Pet and Outland reputations:

Oh, and after buying the flying mount for 100 g and riding skill for 800 g, I’m left with 577 + a couple of hundred worth of items. So don’t worry about affording both your epic mount and flying mount because you will.

The XP rate in the guide was a bit off on the last two levels, so I had to do 3-4 group quests and grind a tiny bit at level 68.

Finally, I can only say that I LOVE Brian Kopp’s Alliance Leveling Guide. Following it is wicked fun because you’re always on the move and gaining XP and levels and reputations so it’s never boring. And you get to see most of Azeroth and Outlands as well.

I can’t wait to do it again, but now other challenges await (like Joana’s guide).

Hope this has been useful to you so far.