The Pandaria Boost

Having gotten my Nightborne Hunter to level 80, I took her to Pandaria, where she got to feel really ambivalent about fighting the Alliance (I don't have much of an RP concept for her, but I think she feels conflicted between her desire to reconnect with the Blood Elves and her gratitude for the Alliance's role in liberating her people.)

Anyway, what struck me was how absurdly efficient the leveling process has been. I'm already halfway to 83, and that's after a couple hours of play this morning. One can hit 81 before even getting to Grookin Hill on a Horde character.

Though I have great nostalgia for Northrend and Wrath of the Lich King as an expansion - and it was a huge improvement on leveling over what came before - the truth is that the 60-80 leveling experience is a pretty slow one.

However, what this means is that by the time you hit 80 and get to start in Cataclysm or Mists content (Cataclysm goes pretty quick too, but I think Pandaria is proving the smoother experience) leveling up the rest of the way is pretty much a breeze.

I do wonder if one day they'll make Draenor and the Broken Isles a shared 90-110 experience to give people options. The good news is that Draenor's leveling experience is actually the strong suit of the Warlords expansion, so even if some zones fall a little short (I'm looking at you, Gorgrond,) the overall experience is both quick and rather easy.

Anyway, I'm excited that my Nightborne is "over the hump" as it were.

My Highmountain Tauren is finishing up his old world leveling in Azshara (because sometimes it's fun to play around with the level scaling to do things in an unusual order.)

There are of course four more allied races coming in BFA. I'm still a little undecided about what classes to go with for some of them, but here's my general plan:

Dark Iron Dwarf: Either Mage (Fire) or Warlock (Destruction.)

Mag'har Orc: I really don't know. I'm trying not to overlap allied race classes, which eliminates Hunters, Warriors, Rogues, and Paladins - though I doubt they're getting the latter. I might consider making a Priest, but honestly this is probably my bottom-priority allied race.

Zandalari Troll: Most likely a Shaman (Elemental.)

Kul Tiran Human: Druid 100%. With their creepy wicker forms, there's a good chance the Kul Tiran might supplant my Night Elf as prime druid. (As cool as the Allied Races have been, none has really gripped be enough to consider making one of them the "main" for their class except the KTs. If you forced me to delete my old characters and make new ones, I'd probably make a Lightforged Draenei Paladin as my main with a Worgen Death Knight as my prime alt, but I'm way too attached to the Human Paladin and Draenei Death Knight by this point.)