For those of us with many alts, the early days of a new expansion can be quite a shock. Leveling your main up takes a LONG TIME.
It's good, though. The process is never going to be tougher or more demanding, and it's good to do that on your main character. It's a combination of things: you don't have the professional support of your alts, so crafted gear and all that good stuff is nowhere to be found. You also don't know the quests yet. Now, I was able to speed through Jade Forest a bit because of the Beta (I did stop to read all the quest text, because there's some cool stories in there.) Jade Forest is also the most linear zone. It does have a couple places to go off and do side-quests, but if you follow the basic path from Stormwind/Orgrimmar, you'll get through the major story of the zone.
Now, I also have a tradition to always run the dungeons the first time with a guild group including a real-life friend, and because I have way too much free time on my hands, I tend to level up faster than him, so I've only done one run, Temple of the Jade Serpent. Annoyingly, my computer still seems to be running into overheating issues (I hope it's because of some crappy add-ons I squashed.) So, despite a disconnect here and there, the run was quite fun, and way easier than I remember it from early in the Beta.
Jade Forest is solid, and I moved on to Krasarang Wilds, rather than Valley of the Four Winds. I'm not sure this was the best idea. While KW has some good quests and a very cool vibe, it's somewhat rare to come across a zone as cheerful as Valley of the Four Winds. For once, the stakes are relatively low, and you can just chill out in a nice farming area.
From there, I went to Kun-Lai Summit. I'm somewhat conflicted on this zone. I was hoping for more Mountaintop Monastery action, but most of the time you spend in the steppes, and the promising Mogu-themed quest chain led down the mountain to a very remote, kind of dreary village that was being attacked by... oh, I won't spoil it. I understand there's a quest chain that leads into the non-instanced version of Shado-pan Monastery, which I'll have to do on my next toon.
From there, I went to Townlong Steppes, which is pretty cool. There is a major quest chain where you spend a lot of time with the Shado-pan, who are not exactly the bundles of silly, cheerful, gluttonous joy that most Pandaren are.
So, I'm currently sitting at 88 with a bar and a half to go.
Gearing: You're only going to get one quest reward per quest before Townlong Steppes. If you are a mainspec tank or healer, but are leveling in a dps spec, you can probably just ignore quest rewards until then. The "Adventuring Supplies" guys give you some decent stuff to get something resembling the average person who was max level in Cataclysm, so you'll be able to handle it with the gear provided.
Vale of Eternal Blossoms can actually be accessed as early as 87, and I've got to say the place is gorgeous, especially the mini-city (I assume the Horde one is similar in appearance.) Actually, it's this kind of ornate, Imperial Mogu look that I wouldn't mind seeing more of in other parts of the continent.
I expect I'll be hitting 90 some time this weekend (busy for much of tomorrow, and then I'm going to start working on factions and bringing the Core Five to the continent. Just logged in on all of them to train up professions and get their rest experience started. On my main, I'm cool with the long slog, but the others I think I'm going to want to get up there a bit quicker.
A critique: Alliance and Horde have somewhat different quests in Jade Forest (I know the Horde is different from the Beta,) and at least different settlements in Krasarang and parts of Kun-Lai. Hoping to see more of that in Dread Wastes (but not that hopeful.) There's actually some great characters, like Sully and Amber Kearnen (from Westfall!) who I wouldn't mind seeing again. Guess we'll have to wait for 5.1 to see the serious influx of Horde/Alliance folks.
Oh, and the engineering tinker, Goblin Glider, is maybe the best thing ever. I crossed about a third of the continent after jumping off the peak of Mt. Neverest.
Oh! And the Monk:
Gaotso, Brewmaster tank, is now level 23. I actually deleted him at 5 and made a Draenei to break the mold, but realized I'd never play a Pandaren character if I did so, so I went back (so long Isodin, we hardly knew ye.)
Anyway, so far tanking is ridiculously simple - Keg Smash, Breath of Fire, Jab, Jab, Blackout Kick. Repeat. Toss Dizzying Haze around if you need to round things up. It'll be nice to get Brewmaster Training at 34. Can't believe Purifying Brew doesn't come until 75. Doesn't that seem like something they should have you training to use from early on?
I'm finding the major pitfall of leveling up through dungeon runs is that you will have a hard time leveling professions.
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