So I’ve hit 70 now with my mage, following Joana’s Horde Leveling Guide from level 60 when I started Outlands.

It took me only 53 hours and 50 minutes, which was quite a surprise.

When I did 60-70 with Brian Kopp’s Alliance Leveling Guide on my hunter it took me 68 hours. However, this time I started with full rested experience so that explains a large part of the difference. I had also done many of the quests before, which helped. But I still think I did well considering a hunter is faster than a mage.

Overall I’m very impressed with Joana’s Horde Leveling Guide. The path he takes you on is very streamlined, and you can solo almost everything. (There were a few 2 and 3 man quests that he tells you to do, which he soloed, but I had to skip those with my mage. A hunter could have done them solo though.)

There was also a quest chain on the level 69 part of the guide that now requires level 70, so it had to be skipped as well.

Despite skipping most of the group quests and optional quests, I turned 70 with quite a few quests left in the guide. So even if you’re not using rested XP you should be able to quest the entire way to 70 using this guide.

Compared to Brian Kopp’s Alliance Leveling Guide I think Joana’s could’ve had a little more instructions here and there. Or maybe I’m just lazy and don’t like reading the quest log too much. Nevertheless, I think the guide is a great help for leveling as evidenced by my 54 hour run.

Thanks Joana!

I’ve done three more levels now in 19 hours with Joana’s Horde Leveling Guide. That comes out to 6 hours and 20 minutes per level. And this was without any rested XP. That’s about the same as with Brian Kopp’s Alliance Leveling Guide.

I find it stressful to speedrun. I don’t think I’m cut out for it. I’d like to slow down and smell the roses, but for this review I do my best to complete all instructions as fast as possible.

I’m also a bit perplexed by the fact that I’m almost at the level 67 part in the guide, and still just a few bars into level 66, even though I started with full rested XP at level 60. I have skipped almost all group quests and optional quests, true, but the guide is a solo guide so it shouldn’t set me back this much in my opinion.

I guess I’ll have to wait and see how it turns out. 

I’ve gone three full levels, from 60 to 63, in 11 hours and 40 minutes since my last post following Joana’s Horde Leveling Guide.

I had full rested XP when I started though, and that lasted me all the way to level 63.

The guide has been a tremendous help so far. It’s not quite as detailed as Brian Kopp’s Alliance Leveling Guide. The difference is that now I actually have to read the quest log and see what I’m supposed to do to complete the quest, whereas with Brian’s guide it was all spelled out exactly in the guide.

Everything is going by with the speed of light. Half the time I don’t even know what I’m doing, just following the steps and trusting that the guide is correct, which it has been so far. (Just some small typos hardly worth mentioning.)

I’ve also skipped all the optional (group) quests since I had a lot of rested XP and didn’t need the extra experience from them.

Now I’m doing this with a mage, as opposed to a hunter that Joana played. But it works just as well. The hunter is faster of course, but I’m not having any difficulty completing any quests.

More later.

I’ve had it with the alliance!

They lose most every battleground (except AV which is about 50/50).

So I’m gonna level my undead mage from 60 to 70 following Joana’s Horde Leveling Guide.

I haven’t touched it since The Burning Crusade came out, so I have full (1.5 bars) rested experience unfortunately. That means I will be slightly off in the guide, but I think I’ll be able to evaluate it fairly none the less.

I will try to do my run as fast as possible, minimizing downtime along the way.

Here’s a pic of me standing at the Dark Portal with way too much /played time…

I should be able to do 60-70 in less than the 68 hours I did it with Brian’s Alliance Leveling Guide, since I have rested XP now. However, a mage levels a bit slower than a hunter, so we’ll see.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

P.S. Almost forgot… Here’s the mage leveling build I’m gonna use. This will serve you well if you ever roll a mage.

Here’s a bit of a confession for what happened to me yesterday…

I had gathered most of the mats for the crafted gun Gyro-Balanced Khorium Destroyer and I was just looking for someone to make it. It’s a material-heavy gun, requiring in total several stacks of fel iron ore, adamantite ore, khorium ore, eternium ore, and 12 primal air and primal fire.

I got several offers for the crafting, and since it requires a primal nether they ranged from 150-200 g. I also got an offer for 50 g.

50 g seemed too cheap, so I was suspicious right there. When I /who the person, I saw it was only a level 68. Now that should have told me to run, not walk, away from the deal.

However, I’m a pretty trusting person and I’ve had a lot of stuff crafted and enchanted without problems. One time I even used my alt to trade a lot of mats and gold to a crafter (probably worth 1000 g in all) and then logged on my main to finalize the deal, only to discover I had forgotten the name of the crafter (didn’t have him on friend’s list either) and had to ask in the trade channel for him to whisper me. He could have easily taken my mats, but guess what? He whispered me and we made the deal and I got my stuff. And most people are like that. Most people. Especially, in my mind, level 70s who have invested a lot of time and reputation in their character.

But this guy was the exception. And I guess I was a bit too eager to get the gun, to do the proper research on him…

Long story short, I traded him all mats except the primal airs, after which he proudly yelled (in Ironforge) "I scammed again" and rode off.

Sadly, it’s not against the rules of the game to scam other players, and Blizzard will do nothing.

While it sucks that such players exist, it’s up to us to avoid them. Here’s how:

• Ask for referrals. Demand the crafter shows something with their name on it that they have crafted with that profession.
• If your server has a forum or website, look for a list of crafters for the item you want made.
• Look on your realm’s forum on worldofwarcraft.com or wow-europe.com for scam reports. Chances are a scammer is a repeat offender. (If I had just done this I would have found other people’s stories on how they were scammed by the same person.) Put known scammers on your ignore list.
• Ask them to link the ability, not just the finished item, and ask them to link you the mats. Verify that they are correct.
• When in doubt, stay out.
• If possible, have them craft something small before something big. For example, if you’re dealing with a leatherworker and you’re bringing knothide leather when the item requires heavy knothide leather, have the LW make heavy knothide leather out of some of your mats and trade them back to you.
• Check the level of the person you’re dealing with. Don’t expect a low level character to craft epics, like my friend who traded all mats for an epic to a level 37 scammer…

Luckily, my character is not poor, so I can still afford the gun. It just saddens me that there are people out there who obviously enjoy scamming others.

So be careful.

Playermenu adds an extended menu when you right click a player’s name in chat windows. It also affects your friends/guild list.

Configure using /apm or /pm

Now this may not sound very exciting at first, but wait till you try it.

TinyTip is a mod that customizes your tooltips so they reveal some pretty cool information just by mousing over your targets.

For example:

• See the guild name of your target (great if you know a certain hostile guild are gankers and want to kill them on sight)
• See buffs on your target in the tooltip
• See debuffs, or only curable debuffs
• Show PvP rank in the tooltip
• Relocate the tooltip to your cursor
• Best of all: See the target of your target in the tooltip. This is great. When someone is targeting you and you move your cursor over them you’ll see <<YOU>> in the tooltip without having to target them directly. Great in PvP. Helps to see (presumably) who’s inspecting you.

Write /tinytip to bring up more options than you care to configure.

Get it at WoWAce using WoWAceUpdater, or download and install it manually from ui.worldofwar.net.

See all the nice info I get at a glance? I can tell a level 70 undead mage from the guild <Hostile> with almost full life but low mana is targeting me. (I could also have seen his PvP rank if I wanted to.) Better feign death so he loses his target.

Targetbuttons will add a menu of up to six buttons you can click once a target is selected to invite, follow, whisper, trade, duel or inspect. You can choose to only display some buttons, or all. You can change the sizes and spaces and layout and move them around.

Personally, I’ve placed them above my target frame.

The unit frames, by the way, are customized with AG_Unitframes (I’ll get to that another time.)

Targetbuttons is "out of date", but it works fine.

Type /tbopt to configure this mod.

Bags and Merchants simply opens / closes all bags when you trade with a merchant, a player, the auction house, the mailbox, the bank and such.

You can get the latest version here. However, I suggest you get WinAceUpdater from www.wowace.com and download and update it with that program. It will be a great timesaver if you use more Ace mods in the future.

Tip: Bind "open all bags" to "b" and you’ll find yourself just hitting "b" instead of ever using the bag bar if you use this mod.

Another simple mod I use: Autoprofit

I was first introduced to it by Joana. No surprise there! Who else would dig up a mod that sells all your vendor trash quickly and easily except for the fastest leveler in the world?

But it’s really neat for anyone. It’s the kind of addon I like. Does one thing, does it well, and is easy to use.

Just install it and you’ll see a new button on your trade screen when you visit any vendor. Click the button to sell all your junk. That’s it.