I have often pondered why multiple guildies leveled way faster than me in World of Warcraft when we all focused on quests. When I leveled my character, I was focused and did everything I could to speed up leveling—this included using a leveling spec combined with the highest dps rotation, and anything else to decrease my downtime. So, here is my conclusion, with three main reasons why my guildies are leveling faster than me.

1. My guildies have leveled multiple characters comparing to my first one. In other words, they have gone through the quests before and therefore are more familiar with them.

2. They simply have more time than me! I have a family and a full-time job, so my playtime is limited.

3. Many WoW players have a good leveling guide that takes them through the process smoothly and quickly.

I think this third and last reason is the most important because I can actually do something about it. So, I decided to read up on World of Warcraft leveling guides for Cataclysm with hope to have a couple new level 85s to play with and not having to spend as much time as I did the first time around. Upon extensive research on leveling guides, I came across five criteria that I used to select the one for me.

First of all, it has to abide by Blizzard’s user agreements. I am not going to risk getting my account banned for a quick level 85. Next, it is all about quests! So, naturally, the guide has to be crystal clear on taking users through quests, especially long quest chains that are complex and yield a lot of experience. The beauty of being guided through quests smoothly is that it can enhance the gameplay because it takes the frustration of getting lost out of the game.

Thirdly, the guide needs to have good tips and strategies on how to complete the quest quickly. The quest descriptions are not always clear on what is needed to complete the quest. As such, I often rely on websites like Thottbot or WowHead that have quest tips to save me time on trying to figure out complicated quests. It would be great if the leveling guide can somehow incorporate information from this type of website.

The fourth criteria for an effective WoW leveling guide is to provide information on how to spend talent points as you level on a specific leveling spec and using the right glyph. It would be helpful to know the best rotation that can yield the highest dps for single target and AoE damage for the leveling spec. This will save you a lot of time trying to do research and reading up on how to spec, glyph your character, and destroy mobs as fast (and as efficient) as possible.

Last, but not least, the Cataclysm leveling guide must have a user friendly interface that allows the player to see and follow easily. I have seen guides that had giant arrows and texts that cluttered my screen to a point where it was hard to see where I was going. It would be ideal to have a navigation-type of tool that is part of the user interface to guide the WoW players getting from place to place. The WoW leveling guide that I finally went with is the Booster WoW leveling guide because it met all the criteria presented here.