WoWeekly: Leveling From 70 to 80 – Go Questing Or Level In Instances?

Thursday, Feb. 25 2010 | Author: Lia

With the introduction of the new LFG system, Blizzard has changed the way of leveling from level 70 to level 80. Before patch 3.3.0, the best way to power level to any level is by questing. Just by doing quests the whole day and in the most efficient manner. If you don’t understand what I mean by ‘questing in the most efficient manner’, check out the quest leveling guides made by Joana. Her guides can get you to level 80 in the fastest way possible!

But with the new LFG system, people are leaning towards leveling thru instances. Just queueing the whole day, doing the same instances over and over until you ‘DING!’

While some people like to grind instances to level, I normally level by power questing. But after leveling let’s say, 3 or 4 other toons, you kind of get sick and tired of doing the same quests over and over and OVER, and reading the same stories and lore again and again.

I just finished leveling another toon to 80. I leveled this toon by instance leveling and it just makes me think of the pros and cons of leveling a toon by either power questing or by going to instances.

Leveling by Questing:

You get more money from the quest rewards and by selling the item rewards that you don’t need.
If you’re careful enough, you spend less on repairs since you can avoid quests that are too hard to do.
You don’t need to wait for anyone else.
You get more reputation by doing quests for the different factions

Leveling by Instances:

You get better gear from instances.
You get to know how to play your toon in a raiding environment. It took me a while to get used to tanking on my paladin since I was playing him as retribution from level 1 to 80.
You get emblems and other cool items like mounts (i.e. Oculus and Utgarde Pinnacle)
No need to run all over Azeroth since all you have to do is queue. But then you have downtime since you have to wait in queues.

For now, I’ll probably be leveling with instances, unless I plan to level an alliance toon (since I don’t know the Alliance lore yet). But when Cataclysm comes, I’ll probably go back to power questing again!