WOTLK Leveling Guide

[Minnerva]

Here. Idiot's guide to wrath leveling:

LEVEL RANGE: 70-74
SPEC: Ret
ZONES: Howling Fjord -> Dragonblight
INSTANCES: Figure on 3-4 runs of Utgarde Keep to relieve questing numbness, plus make up some gappage.

Don't bother going to Grizzly Hills. It's going to be filled with more people because the starter zones send you here.

LEVEL RANGE: 75-76
SPEC: Prot (Wear ret gear as prot + sword and board)
ZONES: Dragonblight -> Zul'Drak -> Sholazaar Basin
INSTANCES: Violet Hold, Azjol-Nerub. Again liberally mix an instance run or two in to keep yourself from going crazy.

LEVEL RANGE: 78-80
SPEC: Prot (Wear prot gear)
ZONES: N/A
'INSTANCES: ALL. Instance grind baby. By this point you are probably numb from questing, or there's enough PVP going on, or both. Either way it is time for you to start gearing for heroics, so you'll need the +defense gear upgrades. I'm not saying you can't quest if you don't want to, but seriously it is time to get your shit ready for 80. Also you'll have a flying mount now so instance grinding is easier.

this has more failure than that post about USA Presidential Election '08

[Equitas]

1) Borean Tundra All quests
2) Fjord All quests
3) Dragonblight all quests
4) Grizzly Hill All quests
5) Zul Drak All quests

by now your 78, pick a zone you like most, finish the others for the extra gold.
Scholozar is the best for 78-80

and stay ret until your 78

[degre]

and stay ret until your 78

Never.

You'll have to pry my shield out of my cold dead hands.

[2ndNin]

71-72: Instance grind
72-73/74: Howling Fjord
74-75: Dragonblight
75-76: Part of Grizzly, or parts of BT
77-78: Zul'Drak
78-80: Ice crown

That's how I did it anyway.

[Nich]

It's taken me a couple of days longer than a few other people in my guild who were relying soley on beta experience/zygor's guide (or loltauntspam hax of a protwar/spriest combo), but I basically did most of the first level in UK, then did all of the quests in HF, all of the Coldarra quests, The Tuskarr quests in DB, all of GH, all of the rest of BT, and am now getting started on the ZD quests at 79. I'll either stick it out here or just go to IC.

I've spent a heap of time levelling professions on alts (the worm cave in northern dragonblight is awesome to skin, and sholazar is awesome to do mining laps) via farming mats on my pally, but I mostly just pick up every quest at a hub and then follow questhelper's directions (when they make sense, anyway, sometimes it's just stubborn) >.>

[Discus]

Arrrggghh, please don't send people to the Boring Tundra, it's awful on every level - too busy, bland landscape, etc. The Boring Tundra Shoulders from Nexus are worth the trouble though.

I skipped and aoe ground instead after spending an hour queueing with 6 other players for a qst mob to spawn. Then I went to the relatively empty Howliong Fjord and remembered just how good WoW can be.

[Elsie]

I think, looking back, the best possible thing you could have done is play a lot the first day or two and get the hell out of the starting area.

On my server, I got out of Borean Tundra fast enough that all the alliance (and horde) I saw were like-minded in the desire to level fast and left each other alone. Many even helped out, to speed up their own questing on specific mobs since a dog fight over a named quest mob benefits no one.

At this point, the ideal thing seems to be to stick to fringe areas or highly populated areas. In fringe areas, you don't really see many others so you have a low likelihood of getting camped. In high population areas, there's usually enough other same-faction around to keep things civil or safe. The counter-part is sometimes high population areas get taken over by a faction for a short time such as Coldarra (more-so earlier on) and Zul'drak.

[Threatco]

Jame's Horde leveling guide.