Leveling in World of Warcraft: Cataclysm has changed quite a bit. It doesn’t require as much experience as it did in the past to gain most levels, quests have been changed to flow better, and Blizzard finally figured out that maybe a waypoint on your map might help you find some of these quest objectives without having to install an addon for the game.
Even with all of that though, leveling on your own still isn’t a breeze. There are still junk quests out there that you may not want to complete, and there are optimum paths you can take that you may not know about. Nothing beats experience.. if you’ve done these quests many times, you’ll start to figure out which quests to take and which ones just simply aren’t worth it, and how to optimize your time by combining quests together to turn them in all at once.
That being said, wouldn’t you rather someone else did all of that grunt work and you just had to follow in their footsteps? This is why leveling guides are so popular, and people are willing to pay for them. How much is your time worth to you? Is it worth just $10 an hour, or $20 an hour? Even at just $10 an hour, it only takes a couple of wasted hours to equal the cost of most paid guides out there. Once you start thinking that way, it really starts to make you wonder.. how many hours of time have I wasted, and how many could I have saved?
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I don’t know about you, but I think this way because my time is worth something. The less wasted time I put into a game, the more time I have to do other things I like. The less time it takes me to get to 85, the more time I can put into getting better gear, etc.
Given all of these things, I’ll break down some guides for you. I’ll even give you some free options, because not everyone agrees with my time/money theory.
Let’s get started..
Zygor Leveling Guides 1 to 85 – Horde and Alliance
The Zygor Leveling Guide is one of the most popular leveling guides around, because of the depth and detail of the guides. This guide covers more zones that most guides will, giving you a lot more options than you’ll probably see elsewhere so you can level up in zones you’re comfortable in.
Forget about Questhelper and addons like it, because installing these guides essentially gives you an addon that walks you through your entire leveling process, telling you the right zones to go to, what quests to pick, where to go to complete them, pretty much every single step you need to take to level quickly and efficiently.
Check out the Zygor Leveling Guides if you’re serious about leveling quickly.
Dugi Guides 1 to 85 Cataclysm Leveling Guide – Horde and Alliance
Dugi Guides may not be as popular as Zygor Guides, but they offer just as much detail and are slightly cheaper, giving you more bang for your buck.
Dugi Guides covers all of the new Cataclysm zones and dungeons, as well as dailies, and the new quest areas for the two new races in the game. Just like the Zygor guides, it has an addon that walks y0u through every quest you should take in the fastest way possible for both Horde and Alliance.
Dugi Guides may be the underdog, but they have a great product that you won’t be disappointed in.
Joana’s Leveling Guide 1 to 85 – Horde Only
Joana’s Horde Leveling Guide comes in third on my list, and that’s partially due to the fact that it’s Horde only. It’s still an extremely in depth guide of how to level very fast, but let’s face it.. not everyone out there rolls a Horde toon.
This guide is extremely detailed however, created by a guy that has put a ridiculous amount of time leveling characters from the ground up. He has set records for leveling characters to 60 on new servers several different times.
He has compiled all of his data into an easy to follow guide that walks you through his entire process, going through the quests he does and doesn’t take, and the routes he uses when doing them. This guide not only comes with an in game guide pointing you in the direction you need to go at all times, but it also comes with countless hours of videos you can watch to show you his methods.
If you are leveling a Horde character, check out what Joana’s Horde Leveling Guide has to offer. It’s a bit more expensive than the Zygor guide, but some of it is a bit more thorough since it’s specific to Horde only and he’s put so much time into the Horde line of quests.
WoW-Pro Leveling Guide – Horde and Alliance
The Wow-Pro Leveling Guide addon is a community supported addon, with user submitted paths and guides for zones and quests. This one can obviously be hit or miss, since it is user submitted content. It doesn’t have the depth and completeness you’ll get from a paid guide, but it is free, and it is one of the best free tools you can get to help you level faster.
QuestHelper Addon
The QuestHelper addon is another great free tool that helps you streamline your quest objectives into better paths. It can’t help you to know which quests are better than others, and which ones are complete junk, but it will help you get through quests faster.
Even though Blizzard has added waypoints to the world map to help you find your objectives, QuestHelper goes a step further and maps out the best path for you to take to complete your current quests, and gives you a heads up arrow to show you where you should go so you don’t have to keep checking your map all the time.
