Leveling in WoW

[Clemz]

The intro zones(Vash'Jir and Hyjal) should be designed around players in WotLK questing gear. You'll gear up there and then move on to Deepholm, which is where the first real jump in mob difficulty really came into play that I noticed. You'll also see that Hyjal and Vash'jir are labeled as 80-82 zones, instead of x8-x2 like Hellfire, Borean and Howling Fjord were, so most(if not all) of the quests are gray until 80 anyway.

Edit: Cata.wowhead is showing the starting zones to be 78-82, I thought the official word was they were supposed to be 80-82, but I'm not sure anymore.

[Kaylia]

its also gonna be really hard to go quest in cata in wotlk greens. There was some guy who did it on beta and he said the jump was really taxing on him because of the enemy HP buff. I had to restrict myself to 1 mob at a time while i was leveling my icc geared druid through beta. Granted it wasn't tuned perfectly then, but i have no idea if it was undertuned or overtuned. So yeah the ilvl of equip difference is huge, but so will the difficulty of mobs because you have bad gear, which is the primary thing to worry about when leveling new chars through northrend.

You will be geared decently after 10 quests though. The difficulty wont last very long.

[Vandole]

i had no problems levelling when i was playing alpha. made a premade then went to 82.... i'm sure it's been balanced better since june though.

[Kaylia]

Premade are geared in 251 though. Player who just finished wotlk will have ilvl 180 blue, and maybe 1 or 2 251 from the dungeon. Not that I think it matter in 1v1 against trash.

[Kurp]

I haven't played WoW in well over a year. My guild blew up when we were on Yogg and I quit shortly after that.

I haven't been paying much attention to Cataclysm at all, but a friend and I have decided that we're going to play new characters. Which of the Horde zones should we start at and which are the most changed. I'm going to roll either a Paladin or a Warrior, leaning towards Paladin now. I've leveled through all of the Horde starting areas and zones pre-Cata. I'm just curious to know what would be a good path to take for playing through as many new experiences as possible while leveling.

There is an outside chance that we decide to go Alliance. So, info about that faction would be great also.

[vrumpt]

http://www.wowhead.com/guide=cataclysm&world#.

couple maps there that showcase each new zones level range for both continents. If you go horde, Azshara is well worth a look for your 10-20 zone. Really there are so many different paths and zones you can level through now you'd have to level multiple characters to see them all, or just run back and do them for funsies. The quality of the new quests is Cataclysm level, better than Northrend quests; they didn't half ass the low level quest quality just because its lower level content.

As for as most changed ones, thats a really hard question. Everything has been changed so much. I guess for horde if you want to avoid vanilla quests as much as possible, go Azshara > Ashenvale > Stonetalon > Southern Barrens for starters. Thats all i bothered to go on my beta toon so i have no idea what the rest of the continent is like. Never even touched Eastern Kingdoms aside from the plants vs. zombies quest in Hillsbrad for my sunflower pet.

Really i think as a general statement most people are severly underestimating what Blizzard has done with the old world. The amount of content that went into it is just mind boggling and the fact that its all free just adds to that feeling. I highly recommend everybody take at least one new character to 60 to see all of it, because thats where a very large portion of Cataclysms production time went into and it shows.