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Much like when The Burning Crusade was going to be released, most major games retailer have started putting up banners of Wrath of the Lich King, prompting you to pre-order the expansion as soon as possible. It’s a good indication that the game expansion is coming out really soon. In fact, Wrath of the Lich King has been said to be released around November or December. Is it pure speculations, or has Blizzard announced that somewhere? I’m not sure. But all of us are certain that, it’s not that far away.

For all the hardcore gamers who have completed Sunwell Plateau, WotLK is a long-awaited sequel. They are done with The Burning Crusade. They can’t wait. They want something new in-game like now. Of course, Blizzard made WotLK to cater for these people, to keep their accounts active, to keep their money flowing in. But what about the rest? The ones who barely have time to level their Paladins to 70, let alone raiding and enjoying every single content that Blizzard has designed and inserted into the game? Are you anticipating WotLK as much or are you dreading the extra levels to level at your currently impossible speed?

In this article, let me show you some tips to race your characters to 70 as soon as possible and experience as much contents as possible before WotLK comes out.

1. Use A Leveling Guide

Leveling guide is crucial and should be used by all players, casuals or hardcore players. A well researched and well-written guide could provide you the most efficient routes to the next level with minimum efforts. With a guide, you will always know exactly what to do next, where to go next, what to get, and who to kill. This simplify a lot of the researches that you have to do because someone has researched thoroughly for you, and you can just focus on leveling your characters with your limited time.

Personally, I like Jame’s Leveling Guide. Not only that it’s very detailed, thoroughly written with a healthy amount of pictures included, it’s free. I know a lot of others follow this guide too because it’s simply one of the best free leveling guides out there.

On the other hand, there are also a lot who swear by paid guides. What’s so special about them that Jame’s Free Leveling Guide cannot match? Guides like Team iDemise’s or Joana’s guides etc, they claim to have leveled 1-70 in less than 1 week, which is pretty damn amazing. Perhaps what really glue others with such guides is that, they usually come with some sort of add-ons too. A mod that directs you where to go and what to do in-game. Saves you a lot of trouble alt-tabbing, and most importantly helps you avoid mistakes. I know I made a lot of mistakes skimming through the wall of text in Jame’s guide, that I often realized that I skipped a step and had to go back to an old spot again.

2. Spec Retribution / Protection

As much as you might want to be an ultimate healer in the end-game, Holy is not very efficient for leveling. This is mainly due to the lack of itemizations in the lower levels, which diminishes the effectiveness of the tree greatly. Personally, I find speccing Retribution from level 10 to level 34, then respec Protection for Reckoning from level 35 onwards were the fastest for leveling. Some waited till level 40 to respec, but it’s up to you.

Ultimately, the survivability of Protection minimizes the cooldown in between fights for a Paladin, and subsequently allows leveling to be faster. I mean seriously, if you can only take 1 at a time, and have to drink after a few fights, you waste too much time in the cooldowns. A Protection Paladin can take up a few at the same time and still come out alive, with full health and mana bar to take on the next group almost immediately.

An added advantage is that, you can form an instance group anytime and be the tank as required. Hardly anyone spec for tanking in lower levels, so you will be pretty in demand.

3. Upgrade Your Gears Consistently

Paladins are unfortunately, much like Warriors. We are very gear dependent. Without proper gears, we perform next to nothing. If you do not have enough money, make sure you at the bare minimum, upgrade your weapons and/or shield as frequent as possible. Every 4 levels would be a good time to change your weapons. If possible, try to change your armor pieces no more than every 10 levels. If at level 50 you’re still wearing at a level 28 piece, you are not maximizing your Paladin’s potential. If it’s a blue item however, then it would be a different story.

Usually, I just aim for green items for economical concerns. Why waste 100g on a blue item, when I can get a green item at 5g, and change it a few times through the levels?

4.A. Be A Tank

If by following the advices above, you finally arrive at level 70, here’s a tip to gear up as soon as possible. Spec Protection and be a tank. Tanks are always in-demand for WoW, and Paladins are fantastic aoe tanks. Initially you will be running 5-man and heroics dungeons. Paladins excel in these dungeons. But why do you have to be a tank you asked? Here’s why.

So that you can form a group, and make sure that there is no Warrior or Paladins in it. Since you are the tank, you don’t need any Warrior or Paladin tanks anymore. You can easily find a non-Paladin healer. And for dps and cc, there are plenty everywhere. Warrior as well as Paladins are not quite considered as dps/cc anyways. So yes, then you can evil-ishly grab every single plate item that drops. Be it a tanking gear, healing gear or dps gear. :D That way, theoretically you can gear yourself up in 1/3 of the time.

Note that if any other plate wearer is in your group, a few things might happen. Firstly, they roll on your tanking gears. Secondly, if you roll on their dps gears, they might get pissed off because some might feel that they are entitled to dps gears due to their roles in the group. Finally, well unneeded stress for you if you couldn’t win the things you want. Zzz.

4.B. Farm Welfare Epics

If you are more of a PVP person, then perhaps you can spec Retribution or Shockadin to farm the battlegrounds regularly for Season 1 or Season 2 Arena gears, which are now obtainable via battlegrounds’ marks. My advice is that, if you jump right in after you hit 70, you will get pwned pretty hard. Battlegrounds aren’t as fun anymore with the losing premades being pretty common nowadays.

However if fun is secondary to you, with gears being the primary concern, feel free to form a losing premade. What’s a losing premade you asked? It’s a premade team that does nothing but stand at the spawn point, so that the game will finish in 5-minute, and then they can move on to the next game and next mark.

5.A. Join A Raiding Guild

After running all the 5-man instances and heroics, perhaps you are finally geared to raid. Hopefully if you are a very casual player, you will be able to find a progressive casual guild that only raids in the weekends. What’s WoW unless you start raiding anyway? PVE is in my opinion, the main part of the game. Missing out and you will be losing out in all the stories and lore that surrounds the WoW universe. And most importantly, raiding rewards you handsomely with nice gear upgrades. And hopefully before WotLK comes out, you will at least managed to get through quite a few raiding instances and experienced the majority of the contents.

5.B. Form An Arena Team

You can form a few if you want. 2v2, 3v3 and 5v5, up to you to choose. This is perhaps the ultimate phase of PVP that you can get into. Join the team, find compatible classes and teammates, and climb through the ladder to be the top in each bracket. It’s not easy, and you will take a long time gearing yourself up and slowly climbing up. Still, if PVE is not your thing, then you can at least try to have fun perfecting your skills in defeating everyone else. :)

6. Have Fun

I suppose casual players know it better than most hardcore players, since for them, WoW is not a dominant part of their lives yet. So when they log in, they want to have fun for a couple of hours before they move on to their real life again. This is ultimately a game, so have fun while racing to level 70 before WotLK comes out. :) If it makes you frustrated for any reason, time to get a consultation.