Back in the land of Warcraft, and following good advice, I deceided that to got the most WoW Gold possible I should try and get a Horde character to level 80.

Surprisingly, was going to try my hand at Horde leveling for the first time. Leveling my Blood Elf Warlock, and finding that it was very different from leveling an Alliance character. I have four level 80 Alliance characters in my account, and assumed I knew all there was to know about getting from 1 to 80. How wrong I was.

For most players there are two ways to gain experience. Grinding mobs, or questing. Back in the "bad" old days, grinding mobs seemed the only real way to progress. There simply were not enough quests in the game to keep you occupied for long. You would go to a new area, complete a handful of quests, and then be stuck killing mobs - waiting for re-spawns - killing them again.. This really could have spelt the end for Warcaft if Blizzard hadn't done the sensible thing and filled the place with a lot more quests. That, along with increasing the amount of "rested" bonus and the speed it was acquired really speeded up the leveling process, and made it a lot more fun as well.

Now there are so many quests that another smaller problem has arisen. It is sometimes difficult to sort out one quest for another, having and equiping the right piece of quest specific equipment at the right time and making sure you do them in a logical order appropriate to your level.

If you really wanted to be slick you would pick up quests in a very specific order (something questhelper does not help with one little bit). Making sure you had the right items slotted or purchased, then doing the quests in the most logical and time efficient manner.

How many times have you fought two lots of mobs for a quest, only to find later that the second mob type is required for another quest? If only you had had the foresight to have already accepted this second quest you wouldn't have to go back and re-grind the same mobs again.

Similarly, have you ever been to a quest giver and he asks you for something like a mug of ale, which can only be bought at the place you left about 15 minutes ago? If only something had triggered you to buy this item before you even got the quest. It's enough to make you scream. Or would be.

The free "Questhelper" does none of these things for you. It's good, but it would be great to have something that did the job a whole lot better.

I've recently been using a new in game tool called "Zygor's Guide 2.0" and it claims to do all the things I've listed above. Giving the most optimized Alliance and Horde leveling paths. Straight away it's telling you what quests to pick up. Unlike Questhelper that only guides you through quests you already have, this guide scans the local area and tells you where to go, what quests to pick up, what items if any, then plays you through the quests in detail. No more arriving somewhere only to find that a quest wants you to go all the way back to where you just travelled from and buy some vendor item. With this guide, you get the vendor item...go to the quest giver, "Well Done" you've already got the item he's after in your inventory. Like ESP.

It is worth noting that I used the Horde version of this guide and the differences between the Alliance and Horde paths are quite remarked.

I have a couple of points here. PvP servers will sometimes make quest completing a bit harder. Certain quests that ask you to farm Mobs that have value outside the quest for both factions.This can cause issues. Player killing and Ganking - but that's PvP for you. If you can't stand the heat then don't go in the PvP kitchen.

Luckily you can force the guide to skip quests you can't do (or don't want to do) but it's a point worth making. So the quests are all in there, and each one is in detail and plays out through an in-game GUI that works seamlessly with the WoW interface - neat!

In pratice I level through level 70-75 in about 3 and a half hours per level rested (and I only level rested).Levels 75-79 take bout 5 and a half hours each, and level 80 about 7.

Now I can knock almost an hour off my 70-74 time. One and a half hours off my 74-79 time, and over 2 hours off my time spent leveling at 79.

At lower level's (where there is less travelling involved) I now have an even better return percentage wise. I don't know about you but I always find 30-45 to be particularly slow. But whizzing through them in almost half the time I used to certainly makes the experience a great deal more enjoyable.

It's a shame that leveling isn't seen as more fun in itself. But we live in a world where people want to be level 80 and getting some Icecrown loot as quickly as possible. Ok that's fine.

The quests are supposed to be fun, and part of that fun is discovering for yourself. If that's what you want then don't use this guide at all (or any other guide for that matter). But you might miss some important plot points. Much of the lore of Warcraft is given out through the questing experience. Not to mention that the BoP quest rewards offer a decent upgrade path for most classes - saving you a lot of gold at the auction house. Leveling in the manner offered by this guide seems to offer the best of both worlds.

If you want any more information about this particular guide then try the links below.