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.

(more…)

I’m gonna keep this post short and relevant. By this time you probably know I’m following and reviewing Brian Kopp’s Alliance Leveling Guide.

Since the last update I’ve done 3 more levels in 22 hours, which felt kinda slow at times. There were a couple of reasons for this.

First, at one point in the guide, when I was 25-30% into 65 and right on track with the amount of XP I should have, there were 5 quest turn-ins and then the guide said you should be 40-50% into 65. Well, if you do the math on that one, those 5 quests would have to give 120k XP, if they were to take you from 27.5% to 45%.

Needless to say, they didn’t.

From that point on I was behind 120k XP or so which I had to catch up to before I started on the level 66 part of the guide. (more…)

I’ve been making a habit of going up at 3.30 a.m. to play WoW lately. See how I’m busting my ass for these reviews? It’s not that I don’t enjoy it, of course I do! I’m just saying there’s a difference between this site that has REAL reviews as opposed to FAKE ones on other websites. Just beware of that.

WoW at night is almost like a single player game. No ganking, no competition for mobs, that sort of thing.

After several nights of this, I hit 65 this morning. 62-65 took me 20 hours for 3 levels. Not bad considering Brian’s promise is "10 days to level 70", and since I did 1-60 in 6 days I’d have 4 days to get to 70, which is 9 hours 36 minutes per level. So I’m certain I’ll get to 70 faster than 10 days. (more…)

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.

(more…)

I was thinking of giving "first to 70 on my server" a serious shot with Brian Kopp’s alliance leveling guide, as I’m sure many others considered.

Well, for starters, Brian’s server went down due to heavy traffic, so no one has been able to access the guide, which is very unfortunate and regrettable indeed. In fact, it sucks really bad.

I had the fortune of having a working copy on my hard disk (which I cannot share, sorry) since I helped Brian with the 60-70 coordinates. So I entered Outlands at 0200 a.m., after picking up TBC at midnight in a local game store, and started racing ahead. Well, turns out some people got the Burning Crusade delivered already on Monday, so they had it installed and patched right when the portal opened at 00:01 am.

I was two hours behind.

(more…)

I hit lvl 60 this morning in 5 days, 21 hours and 2 minutes! I think that’s fantastic, if I may say so myself. All thanks to Brian Kopp’s Alliance Leveling Guide

There was a huge difference in time between grinding and questing the last 10 levels. With questing, the longest time to level was about 5 hours, and I did many levels around 4, some even faster, whereas with grinding it’d take you 5-6 hours per level and likely more because you have to travel to town to resupply, travel to new areas, and you’ll get ganked etc.

The only grinding the guide called for at this stage was from level 59½ - 60, which I chose to do in the cave at 67.42 in Winterspring. It’s full of easy, high-level mobs that you can single pull and it just seems like no one goes there except for a quest sometimes, so you can grind away without interruptions.

In closing, I have to say I followed the guide 99% of the time, but you can’t do everything exactly as it says because some quests start from items that drop, and you may not get them. I also forgot to turn in a quest, and I stupidly destroyed a quest item I had to bring back to complete a quest so I missed out on 8000 XP.

If I’d do it again with a hunter on a PvE server, I’m confident I could cut my time by several hours. But now I’m gonna lay low with this toon and wait for TBC to take it to 70. Gonna see how it goes with green gear…

Oh, I almost forgot, here’s a full review of the guide now.

Just a short update on my progress with Brian Kopp’s Alliance Leveling Guide.

I dinged 54 today in 4 days 19 hours /played time. Amazing how Joana was level 60 in this time…

It means I’ve gone 6 levels in 23 hours. I’ve been to Blasted Lands, Searing Gorge, Un’goro Crater, Azshara, and Felwood, mostly. Un’goro was fantastic XP… there’s nothing like turning in 12 or so quests in 15 minutes and gain half a level from that alone.

Felwood turned into one big gankfest. It’s really quite a small zone with high level players, and 60s farming Timbermaw rep. There was a lot of competition for mobs, and a lot of corpse running. So going from 53 to 54 took five hours.

By the way, Brian just keeps improving his guide. I logged into the members area today and noticed he had added class specific tips for warriors, priests, warlocks and mages. They’re written by someone else, but I don’t think Brian would put anything on his site that isn’t up to par with his guide.

The guides are like ½-1 page of short leveling and combat tips, and there’s a leveling build for each class broken down by levels so you know where to place every talent point. It might at least help you on your way, should you choose one of those classes.

More later.

I finally got some time to level my ally hunter the past few days after a two week break.

As you know, I’m following Brian Kopp’s Alliance Leveling Guide to a T. Everything has been going well except one part where he recommends you take a group to Uldaman and do some quests there, which he doesn’t specify exactly (unlike in the rest of the guide).

I was very skeptical about that, since instance runs often take a long time to organize, and often lead to wipes. But I wanted to do it for review purposes, so I thought I’d look up some quests and buy a boost through it. Bad thinking. I spent 40 g, which was almost all I had, on 2 level 60s clearing Uldaman for me. Little did I know the experience gained was going to be that bad with the lvl 60s in the party… I’ve actually never had anyone boost me before, but I guess it was a 40 g lesson. Oh well, at least I got a nice blue gun.

(more…)

Yep, that means I’m level 40 now.

Here’s a pic (click for bigger size):

I’ve covered a lot of ground since level 30. Brian sends you off on quests all over Azeroth, both in Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdom. All quests have been quite simple, except "Sunken Treasure pt 1" and a few related underwater quests that had me dying once or twice. But with some help from thott it wasn’t really a problem.

Not only am I leveling up fast, but an added bonus from questing is all the reputation you get with various factions. For example, I am now friendly with booty bay and ratchet, and honored with Darnassus (which will give me a nice discount on the lvl 40 mount). Even if you return and do these quests at level 60 they never reward anywhere near as much rep as when you do them at a lower level.

(more…)

Heya,

Today I hit level 30 with my alliance hunter Idkfa. It took me 36 hours. I don’t know if that’s fast or slow, but it feels like I’m leveling up quickly.

I try to streamline everything as much as possible, but today I allowed myself some time to auction various loot I have found on my adventures. Cash is always needed for skills and repairs, but I don’t think I will afford the mount when I hit 40.

Most quests have been quite easy to complete so far, except Supplies to Auberdine which I gave up on at level 25. I think I could’ve completed it with a potion and some practice, but it didn’t seem worthwhile and it was no quest chain so I just skipped it after a few failures. Underwater quests are a pain, too. Luckily, those are few and far between.

I really enjoy using Brian Kopp’s Alliance Leveling Guide. It’s so much easier than grinding (I grinded my last character all the way from level 25 to 60). Even after long hours it feels varied and fresh. The only frustrations I have is when I can’t find quest items on the ground, or run the wrong way to a location. It wastes time. But I guess it’s like that for everyone on the first run. Fortunately, everything is linked to thottbot so I can easily look things up as needed.

So far I’m very impressed with Brian’s guide. It’s amazingly accurate in its descriptions and instructions.

I’ll keep you posted.