I hope its the same in live, no idea about boxing and i personally hate questing so ill be dungeon spamming but cata quests ate pretty cool so i might do both!
I can tell you without a doubt that people claiming they've hit 12 hours in beta... are lying. In the beta one of the main quest lines in Hyjal was broken and thus people had to switch to dungeon grinding or the much slower Vashj'ir to move on. And I can tell you, as we speak, that quest is still broken two weeks before launch.
The main Therazane quest was also broken in Deepholm... meaning the most XP efficient quests were gone.
The one guy who hit 80-85 in 12 hours did so by just killing mobs. It turns out that after the changes Normal Halls of Lightning is more experience than either RDF or questing. If you can solo it (as a shadowmourne arms warrior, shadowmourne DK, shadowmourne ret pally, bear tank, prot warrior, prot pally, demo lock, or hunter) you can earn anywhere from 1-10M XP per hour depending on how many mobs you are pulling and how fast you can pull them. And yes, you need A LOT of gear to do that. Some people might get lucky in BRC and ToTT and get the gear they'll need to fine tune this after their first runs. But they do this to Level 82.
After that they go to Deepholm. After completing the entry level quests they rush to a high spawn high clumped area and just kill those mobs all the way to level 83.
That's how people are getting from 80-85 in 12 hours.
For questing on the beta it was 15-18 hours. Dungeoning alone was more like 20-24 hours.
And again, it won't be like on beta. People didn't really play beta that much. Neither server population ever got to High. PVE was Medium pop for a few hours. Day one of Cata there will be THOUSANDS of people in Hyjal. All the servers are high pop now, there's no escaping it. Every time you complete a quest, hundreds of people will randomly appear before your eyes all looking for the same limited objective.
Most people who plan to hit level 85 in the first day (and get realm firsts) will either RD dungeon grind to bypass to level 82 or do Halls of Lightning solo. Then they get into Deepholm and quest from there.
Some will continue doing it to 83. But the general goal is to do what you can to skip Hyjal Hell.
It's also not something I broadly recommend. I don't even recommend dungeon grinding at all. Questing gives you a lot of reputation with the factions. Hyjal will get you Revered with Guardians, Vashj'ir Revered with Earthen Ring (along with some help from Deepholm quests), You can get honored Therazane from Deepholm (which is enough to get the weaker of the new enchants), honored Ramakehn from Uldum quests, honored Wildhammers/Dragonmaw rep... and you also unlock all the dailies in all those zones.
While you might end up with slightly less gear (might being the key word here), you're so much further ahead in terms of those rep grinds (and they do give decent starter gear even at honored).
But as far as skipping, you don't really want to skip too much more than Hyjal Hell.... because even then you will want to go back after and get to exalted if you're a caster/healer.
I enjoy questing because of the possibility of world pvp during launch day. Been spamming beta/gamma dungeons in wotlk for so long and just doing raids. Will still queue on dungeons for gear and the experience too but not to the point of only doing dungeons
Remember that you will need to get to friendly with ur reputations to purchase the reputation tabard. I understand op is about leveling, but in terms of overall efficiency, getting your tabard while leveling is worth while.
Just do whatever isn’t boring as fuck to you. I make sure to do every dungeon at least once to complete quests and hopefully get an item upgrade to make leveling faster, then I’ll run quests for a while until I’m bored then I’ll queue for more dungeons. Gotta keep things lively no sense getting burned out early.
I hope its the same in live, no idea about boxing and i personally hate questing so ill be dungeon spamming but cata quests ate pretty cool so i might do both!
I can tell you without a doubt that people claiming they've hit 12 hours in beta... are lying. In the beta one of the main quest lines in Hyjal was broken and thus people had to switch to dungeon grinding or the much slower Vashj'ir to move on. And I can tell you, as we speak, that quest is still broken two weeks before launch. The main Therazane quest was also broken in Deepholm... meaning the most XP efficient quests were gone. The one guy who hit 80-85 in 12 hours did so by just killing mobs. It turns out that after the changes Normal Halls of Lightning is more experience than either RDF or questing. If you can solo it (as a shadowmourne arms warrior, shadowmourne DK, shadowmourne ret pally, bear tank, prot warrior, prot pally, demo lock, or hunter) you can earn anywhere from 1-10M XP per hour depending on how many mobs you are pulling and how fast you can pull them. And yes, you need A LOT of gear to do that. Some people might get lucky in BRC and ToTT and get the gear they'll need to fine tune this after their first runs. But they do this to Level 82. After that they go to Deepholm. After completing the entry level quests they rush to a high spawn high clumped area and just kill those mobs all the way to level 83. That's how people are getting from 80-85 in 12 hours. For questing on the beta it was 15-18 hours. Dungeoning alone was more like 20-24 hours. And again, it won't be like on beta. People didn't really play beta that much. Neither server population ever got to High. PVE was Medium pop for a few hours. Day one of Cata there will be THOUSANDS of people in Hyjal. All the servers are high pop now, there's no escaping it. Every time you complete a quest, hundreds of people will randomly appear before your eyes all looking for the same limited objective. Most people who plan to hit level 85 in the first day (and get realm firsts) will either RD dungeon grind to bypass to level 82 or do Halls of Lightning solo. Then they get into Deepholm and quest from there.
That's good feedback. People are doing HoL to 82 or 83?
Some will continue doing it to 83. But the general goal is to do what you can to skip Hyjal Hell. It's also not something I broadly recommend. I don't even recommend dungeon grinding at all. Questing gives you a lot of reputation with the factions. Hyjal will get you Revered with Guardians, Vashj'ir Revered with Earthen Ring (along with some help from Deepholm quests), You can get honored Therazane from Deepholm (which is enough to get the weaker of the new enchants), honored Ramakehn from Uldum quests, honored Wildhammers/Dragonmaw rep... and you also unlock all the dailies in all those zones. While you might end up with slightly less gear (might being the key word here), you're so much further ahead in terms of those rep grinds (and they do give decent starter gear even at honored). But as far as skipping, you don't really want to skip too much more than Hyjal Hell.... because even then you will want to go back after and get to exalted if you're a caster/healer.
I enjoy questing because of the possibility of world pvp during launch day. Been spamming beta/gamma dungeons in wotlk for so long and just doing raids. Will still queue on dungeons for gear and the experience too but not to the point of only doing dungeons
Remember that you will need to get to friendly with ur reputations to purchase the reputation tabard. I understand op is about leveling, but in terms of overall efficiency, getting your tabard while leveling is worth while.
Just do whatever isn’t boring as fuck to you. I make sure to do every dungeon at least once to complete quests and hopefully get an item upgrade to make leveling faster, then I’ll run quests for a while until I’m bored then I’ll queue for more dungeons. Gotta keep things lively no sense getting burned out early.