When to Buy an Alliance Leveling Guide

I’m a lifelong Horde player having been playing World of WarCraft since the open beta back in October of 2004. I swore I would never play an alliance toon if my life depended on it. Fast forward six years to the summer of 2010. Wrath of the Lich King has been out for nearly two years, the Ice Crown Citadel has been out for a year, and Cataclysm is still over two months away. The dreaded lull period in the world of Azeroth is upon us. This is when I make the decision to do the fifty dollar realm/faction transfer with my oldest character to join real life friends on the Alliance.

The first thing I had to do was rename my character and recreate his appearance on the Alliance. Luckily my characters name was available and I decided to go from Undead to Human figuring I could naturally transition him back to being Undead. I also liked the idea of seeing what my Undead friend looked like when he was alive. As I entered my new server I quickly realized I had no clue where anything was outside of the shared capital cities of Shattrath and Dalaran. End game content would remain the same in Nothrend however I knew that in order to truly get the Alliance experience I would have to engulf myself in the lore. Simple things like knowing where to buy alchemy supplies on the Alliance side were unknown. This left me with a completely lonely and uncomfortable feeling.

I figured the best way to truly immerse myself in the Alliance world would be to create a new character and start from scratch. This was no easy decision to come to knowing that in a few months when Cataclysm is released, I’ll be extremely temped to create a new Worgen character. On a side note, having played the Worgen race at Blizzcon 2009 I can honestly say that randomly transforming from Human to Werewolf is a lot of fun. So a new character needed to be created. I thought to myself, which race did I despise the most when I was on the Horde? The choice was easy, Gnomes! I made a cuddly little female Gnome named Snugglepuss and I was off on my personal quest to learn the ins and outs of the Alliance side.

While a member of the Horde I had several toons including an Orc Death Knight, Blood Elf Palidan, Undead Mage, Tauren Druid, and Troll Shaman. I could never quite bring myself to make a Hunter. Knowing that there was no option to create a Gnome Hunter, I decided to go with something that made almost no sense. Snugglepuss would become a Warrior. Not simply a Warrior, a Warrior with the intent tanking her way to level 80 with a protection spec.

So my vertically challenged Warrior’s life begins. I thought to myself, OK, what next. Luckily Blizzard has included several patches to the game since its early days which included a variation of our favorite addon called Quest Helper. Blizzards in game version works fine if you want to slowly work your way through the content. I, on the other hand, was up against a deadline (Cataclysm) and needed to level up fast. I decided to purchase an online Alliance Leveling Guide which promised to provide step by step instructions on how to quickly power level which would take Snugglepuss from 0-80. I have always felt that level grinding was a cruel form of torture so I welcomed anything that offered relief.

I ended up running a quick search on Google for an Alliance Leveling Guide. I was amazed with how many people offered both paid and free guides. I figured if someone was selling a guide then they had to be fairly confident with the material they were providing. What I found with free resources, from past experience, was they sometimes were not exactly correct with their advice. I also knew of several free resources that I could turn to if I ran into a road block. I ended up spending $20 on a power leveling guide that looked legitimate. I can honestly say that it helped me 100%. The Alliance Leveling Guide took all the guess work out of which area to quest in next, when I should start using the dungeon finder as well as when the best time would be to start in the battlegrounds. Pretty much everything in the guide was new to me since I had not leveled a character since the days of the Burning Crusade.

I highly suggest to anyone who has decided to level a new character to consider spending a little money to get the best advice. I figured that it is better to follow a step by step guide which costs twenty dollars would be more valuable than the loss of time it would take me trying to figure everything out on my own. Good luck and have fun. See you all in Cataclysm!