I know I'm in the sweet spot for leveling when I can pull and kill 2 - 3 mobs at a time with no down time. That means the grind quests are gonna go fast, the escort quests will finish with the minimum of delay and the seek and go find quests won't be slowed by having to avoid dense mob populations.

It's a quantity over quality thing. Right now on my 45 rogue, I'm two, maybe three levels ahead of the zone's I'm hitting but I've consistently been getting 1 level for every 1.7 hours of /played time. Been doing that since I hit about 26.

I get the best gear I can find/afford (see note below), I use potions and elixors and scrolls, and I go after mobs like I was raiding. I use all my cooldowns, always. And I never, ever let myself get stuck in a situation where I may end up corpse walking. That is 100% avoidable downtime.

Learn 1st aid. Bandaids you make are cheaper than potions you buy and drink, and just a little bit slower.

Only buy gear that Twinkers might avoid. That means getting level 10 - 20 - 30 etc gear, instead of 8, 17, 29 gear. Twinks want the best piece of x9 gear they can get, which means higher demand which means higher cost. A 49 twink is not going to buy gear that requires min 50 level and a 59 twink is going after high 50's gear.

So, when you hit 50, put on the gear you started shopping for at 40 and start hitting the AH for the best gear that requires lvl 60. Get the enchants, get the scrolls, get the battle/guardian elixors. Get the food buffs. Fight mobs and do quests that at or slightly below your level and burn them down quick. Fast leveling will follow.

I do not do green quests, the higher zones give more xp per quest. This makes sense for me because I am leveling a druid with another druid. We are already killing our per-mob xp by leveling together, so we worry more about the quest xp as we just blow through mobs. Also, I leave a zone as soon as the quests have dwindled down. By that I mean, if I can't make circuits and complete numerous quests at once before having to take time to turn them in, I move on to a new quest hub. Exceptions to that are group quests or the end of a questline with a piece of gear I want as a reward. Also, long questlines give more xp for the quests at the end, something to keep in mind.

Those rules did not apply when I was solo leveling a holy priest. On her, I did do green quests, as I had much more trouble with yellow ones, and run backs are lots of time with no xp. For her, I went from one to zone pretty much completing them as I went so that I didn't get to far ahead of myself with mobs who would just squash me.

It simply depends on what you want, what zones you like, and how you like to level.

My rule of thumb for moving on in Northrend is to leave the zone either when I've gotten the achievement for completing the quests in the area or when I'm having a hard time finding more quests. Another good metric is when you get a quest that sends you elsewhere.

There's already two schools of thoughts in the above answers, one being that as long as the quests give experience, to do those, and the other that higher level quests give more XP. I'd side with the former.

I feel like the XP gain over time is very similar most of the time in that you can finish the lower XP quests faster, making up for the less XP. I personally like to feel like quests aren't dragging out, so that works for me. This also assumes that you're doing this alone. If you have a higher level friend helping you, then it's all going to go faster and you might as well do quests that reward more XP.

The other benefit is that you get the gold associated with them, and one you reach max level, when you start getting gold in the place of XP, you still have the high XP quests that give you more gold.

Even though I have two level 80s to bankroll alts, I really don't mind making gold just for leveling them.

When I'm bored.

This might sound silly, but it works (except for the horrible stretch between 48~58), just changing when the quests are crappy or there is too much traveling has worked for me.

I have lvled 3 toons to 80 myself and completed all of borean, HF, and dragonblight, before hitting 80. I saved the rest of the zones for making gold after 80, which has worked out quite nicely. One thing I did more than questing and killing was get my hands on a tabrad and run as much instancing as i could, gaining much needed facction rep for later and getting quite a bit of XP while grinding that rep.

Depends on the character: with my hunter/paladin, I try to stay in that zone while the mobs are yellow and the quests give good rewards. With the mage, most of the times, when I try to make yellow quests alone, I get killed, so I wait until they are green :)

I usually switch zones when I run out of quests to do. I prefer to finish all the quest chains in a zone and skip the next one than finish halfway and move on to the next one. Sometimes I leave a few group quests that I can't get a group together for.

When I outgrow a zone I usually move on to the highest level zone that I qualify for, so sometimes I skip one if I'm leveling faster than the zones were originally designed for (which is common since they reduced the experience required in most zones).

This is a subjective question.

• For max experience, switch zones when they (mobs) start being green to you. (The best is yellow always...)
• For a sense of completion finish all quests in a zone and then move on to the next :P

Hope it helps and good luck!

While I usually finish all the quest lines, I haven't quested seriously with heirloom items, I would have to say get Cartographer and just follow the leveling guidelines. Go with whatever you feel comfortable, a bit above the min, or a bit below because you're leet with those heirlooms and feeling ballsy.