Finally I’m on the "magic" level 60, the old level cap.

10 more levels to go, as my to be arena partner constantly reminds me…

Let’s see just how fast level 1-60 went by:

3 days 20 hours! Completely shattering my old record 5 days 21 hours to 60 with my alliance hunter following Brian Kopp’s Alliance Leveling Guide. (However, that was before patch 2.3 so things were slower then.)

Since 3 days & 20 hours = 92 hours, if you were to play 3 hours a day on average you could get to 60 in one month. If you play 2 hours a day it’d take 1½ month and if you play 1 hour a day it would take 3 months.

Or you could do like Joana and do it inside one week ;-)

Full disclosure requires me to mention that I was using some rested EXP here and there. Consequently, I was running about 1 level ahead of the guide, which didn’t hurt and resulted in less grinding at level 59 (you have to grind out the last level in Outlands, or you can do some other quests in Azeroth but the grinding is quicker according to the guide).

This also allows me to calculate an estimated leveling time from 1-70 with Joana’s guide. Since I’ve done level 60-70 with my mage already, in 54 hours (starting with full rested EXP at level 60), that would bring the total 1-70 time to 92+54 = 146 hours, or 6 days 2 hours!

Will you be able to level this fast? That depends. Sometimes you don’t want to powerlevel because you want to take things easy and not feel stressed. That’s what I would do but for this review I wanted to go fast…

What I can tell you is that you will immediately start to level much, much faster than you could ever do on your own, surprising your guild mates and friends with your progress.

Next up, I’m going to wait for full rested EXP and then do 60-70 with Team iDemise’s brand new Horde Leveling Guide to see which one is faster (I’m assuming warlocks and mages level equally fast).

For the purpose of this review I’m gonna skip the warlock epic mount quest for now and save for a normal epic mount to save some time.

If you want to level this fast, all I can say is check out Joana’s Horde Leveling Guide. It really is an amazing help and I could never have gone this fast without it. I’m sure it slashed my leveling time by two thirds.

Thanks again Joana!

I dinged level 50 today on my blood elf warlock.

As you may know I’m testing Joana’s Horde Leveling Guide and following it pretty much to the letter. I was using some rested XP at level 40 and then again a few levels later, so I’m running approximately 1 level ahead in the guide. I think I’ll skip an entire chapter of the guide soon to catch up.

The warlock is fun and quite easy. Everyone my level who has tried to gank me has ended up doing corpse runs instead of me. I’m using the leveling talent build from Killer Guides’ Warlock Guide and it has served me really well.

My /played time now on level 50 is 2 days 21 hours. When I was leveling my hunter with Brian Kopp’s Alliance Leveling Guide I was level 48 in 3 days 20 hours, so the 2.3 patch has saved me a lot of time so far.

It also means I’ve gone from level 40 to 50 in 20 hours.

Joana’s guide has been a tremendous help, but a little more detail in some places wouldn’t hurt. Sometimes he just says: "Go do the following: Quest X, quest Y, quest Z" without saying what to do. He does have maps that help a lot but I find myself reading the quest log often as well. But since I’ve done many of the quests before, it’s not a big deal for me.

Click for larger image.

I just dinged lvl 40 yesterday on my blood elf warlock. Getting a free mount is sooo nice.

I’ve been following Joana’s Horde Leveling Guide and recording my leveling times. I didn’t want to feel stressed out all the time so I haven’t been rushing every single step. I’m still trying to go fast and not waste time but, for example, if I have to take some time off from leveling to gank an alliance who’s bothering me I will. (I play on a PvP server as always.)

The guide, together with the in-game addon Meta Map, has been a tremendous help and the instructions in the guide were for the most part enough to complete the quests. Only rarely did I have to read the quest log (hard work indeed) or look things up on wowhead.com (takes all of about 30 seconds). But I’ve done many of the quests before so I guess I have a small advantage there.

This is also the first time I’m leveling up with the new 2.3 patch with the faster leveling changes.

Here are some pics of my progress:

Notice the arrow in the picture above? It’s part of the map addon that comes with Joana’s and Brian Kopp’s guides (as well as some other ones now) that shows you in which direction to go for the next step in the guide. I don’t think I have to tell you how extremely useful that is.

I was using a little rested experience here and there but not too much.

For comparison, when I was leveling up my hunter with Brian Kopp’s Alliance Leveling Guide (before the 2.3 patch) I was level 30 in 1 day 12 hours (8 hours slower) and level 40 in 2 days 17 hours (16 hours slower). And the hunter is a faster class to level than the warlock, so the patch is really a great timesaver!

You might compare these leveling times to your own by typing /played and see how much time you could save by following a leveling guide.

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.

Have you ever gone into a new zone and been stuck because you don’t know where all the quest givers and quest hubs are? Ever felt like you lacked quests so you had to grind? Well, here’s the solution.

Go to www.wowhead.com and click Browse –> Zones. Then just select the zone you’re interested in and choose Horde or Alliance to bring up an interactive map with all the quest givers (and even items that start quests). You can also see if the quests are first in a chain or have a pre-requisite.

How neat is that? It will obviously save a lot of time and it’s so much better than thottbot’s clunky interface (at least from my experience).

If you want more short tips like this, tell me so.

I’m finally getting around to it. Doing a run with Joana’s Horde Leveling Guide, that is.

I’ll be doing it as a blood elf hunter, a class I now have some experience with. I’ve spent a little bit of time preparing for the run by scouting out ammo vendors in all the major Horde-controlled cities.

I’ve also mapped out all the coordinates in the guide with meta map, so I now have the same navigation system I used with Brian Kopp’s 1-70 Alliance Leveling Guide. (I can’t make any promises because it’s not my guide, but hopefully it will be available with Joana’s guide too, soon.)

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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.

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