Cataclysm is coming soon! It's time to start thinking about methods of leveling to 85. We're going to look at the three most common and obvious leveling paths: Questing, Instancing, and BGing. Each method has pros and cons and, as with most things in WoW, the personal tastes of the individual player will determine which path is best for them.

Questing

The traditional method of leveling is by completing the quests available throughout the WoW world. There are pros and cons to this method of leveling, particularly at the beginning of an expansion.

The good part about questing is that you take in the entire experience of the expansion. By the time you hit level 85 you'll understand the general plot line of the game's story and have a decent idea of what's going on. If you're into the World of Warcraft lore then questing will be a no brainer. If you level by questing you'll also probably know where everything is! This is important for when Blizzard releases new instances or you need to farm for a specific recipe or complete a specific quest. If you spend all your time in dungeons then you'll have a hard time making your way around Azeroth when you finally hit 85.

Quests are typically the least demanding way to level in terms of gear or skill. They're balanced to be completed by players in very poor gear and don't often require much in the way of coordination or intimate knowledge of your class. If you're new to the game or starting out on a different character for Cataclysm then it's probably a decent idea to get used to your new abilities while you level to 85 rather than jumping into PvP or Dungeons immediately.

Questing is also very straightforward. Thanks to the built-in quest helper that Blizzard added in during Wrath of the Lich King it's easier than ever to figure out where you're going and what you need to do when you get there.

The built-in Quest Tracker is indispensible for leveling up

The main downside to leveling via questing is that when Cataclysm comes out there are going to be a lot of people leveling. Quest areas are going to be filled with players competing to kill the same mobs and complete the same objectives, so you can easily get slowed down and frustrated. There is a lot of appeal in hitting the new Cataclysm instances and avoiding the rush.

Leveling in Dungeons

As of the current Beta build, Cataclysm 5-player instances give a considerable amount of experience; enough to make it well worth your time to complete them and possibly enough to give them an edge on solo leveling by questing. As we mentioned before, a huge selling point of the leveling by dungeon strategy is that you'll avoid the massive herd of players that'll be infesting the questing zones at the beginning of the expansion. You'll also be able to level up with your friends much more easily if you decide to level in instances. Questing can often pose problems for players leveling in groups since you'll frequently need to loot unique drops which can take ages to farm for multiple people. If you hop into an instance there's no downside to playing with up to 5 of your friends.

The main point of instances has traditionally been the superior gear they drop. That's a huge incentive to level in the instances because it means that the second you hit 85 you'll likely be in nearly full Rare (Blue) quality gear and be ready to go straight into Heroic instances which are the next step towards raiding. Due to this factor, raiding in instances may be the method of choice for players that are trying to get ahead of the game and use their time as efficiently as possible.

This method of leveling isn't without some significant downsides. If you're a DPS that isn't playing with a friend that happens to be a tank or healer you're probably out of luck. Instance queues are bad enough on live servers, with the queuing population being skewed drastically towards DPS. You'll probably be looking at depressingly long queues at the start of Cataclysm. Tanks and Healers on the other hand will easily be able to solo queue and 'chain' instances due to the high demand for their services.

Already slow DPS queue times will likely worsen in Cataclysm

If you spend all your time in dungeons, you're going to miss out on most of the Cataclysm story. You can obviously go back and do the quests later on but it probably won't be as fun, so if this is something that is important to you then you should probably factor it in when deciding how to level!

Leveling in Battlegrounds

The experience values for BG leveling probably aren't finalized so it's difficult to say whether this is actually an efficient way to level. If the experience ends up being comparable to instancing or questing then this is going to be a great option for PvP oriented players. If you level in BGs you'll be raking in tons of Honor Points that will contribute towards your level 85 PvP gear. BG leveling is also a great way for PvPers to get experience with their class, and more importantly get experience against other classes.

The main unknown for whether this method will work for you is going to be how the queue times are. Blizzard said at one point that there are going to be "region-wide" battlegroups for Rated Battlegrounds. If that applies to normal BGs as well then queue times may be good enough for most players, otherwise you'll need to be on a battlegroup where your faction gets fast queues.

If you decide to level in BGs remember that you're not going to get much in the way of new gear. You're pretty much tied to whatever gear you had at level 80. It's probably more realistic to combine BG leveling with instancing or questing so that you can pick up at least some gear on the way to level 85.