Today when I asked my friend about his level, he said to me: “I only hit 77 last night (and had a celebratory flight in Icecrown!). Because the story is so much richer than TBC this time, I've been doing every single quest in a zone before moving on to the next - random early UK run aside. I guess if you played a lot more you could be at 80 already doing this but I expect a lot of people haven't been playing through the content like that - but have been skipping ahead to level faster. I'm in Grizzly Hills at the mo and there are a lot of level 80s about doing quests…”

Don't be so worried. When level to Northrend, someone hate but some player love. What changes do you like and changes do you hate? Many of expansions fundamentally change the game that we've become so comfortable with. Some are good, some are bad but all serve their purpose.

Changes such as achievements pulled many back into areas or doing fights many of us hadn't visited in years relieving many of that "The expansion is near" lull. Remember when Molten Core took 2 nights? Changes like grinding for cooking recipes and random drop first aid books are the suck. Random dropped spell books sucked in AQ20 so I am not sure what Blizzard was thinking on that stuff. Also having pretty much milked The Burning Crusade for gear I am disappointed that the upgrades aren't a bit more forthcoming. With 10 new levels we really shouldn't be waiting for "upgrades" at 77 or 78.

Do you like? With WOTLK upon us for over two weeks where do you stand in the leveling race? Is it really a race? Well for some people it is. Get to 80 quickly, get into the new content, and get the new gear. For others they are immersing themselves in the game. Blizzard has done a great job with incorporating quest lines that bring you through the entire continent and story lines that read through the quests perfectly.

With the choices that people have made there are also a number of people who believe that this leveling is different than the leveling in BC. In talking with a number of people in guild and the community they feel that it has been much tougher to hit the level cap in WOTLK than in BC. We all know that things have changed in guild mechanics since release of the original game. The time of having the large guild with enough players to sustain a 40 person raid has long been gone. Now with 10 person versions of all dungeons we see another change in mechanics to guilds so what is your guild doing to help you get to the almighty 80? Some of the hardcore guilds are taking their people and running dungeons.

Hope you can level your account as quickly as you can!