Twinking through Burning Crusade

I am not a big fan of the Burning Crusade expansion of World of Warcraft. Especially Hellfire Peninsula is a bottleneck which is probably my least favorite zone in WoW. As a result I have a bunch of alts stuck at around level 60, stopped by a lack of desire to level through Outland. But now I'm leveling my paladin, who reached level 62 this weekend, and I found that because of various changes Outland is not so bad any more.

The one change I found is accelerating my leveling speed the most is the Dungeon Finder of patch 3.3. Starting from level 60 the random dungeon is a Burning Crusade one, which means I did miss some level 60 classic dungeons, but of course the Burning Crusade dungeons are far more PuG-friendly. Being short, even a PuG nearly always completes them. The loot is about 25 iLevels better than the loot of equally hard classic dungeons. And each completion ends you up with a Satchel of Helpful Goods, containing a blue item for your class on top of the loot you got from the bosses. For alts, who tend to accumulate rest xp, running dungeons is also a faster way to use that rest xp than doing quests, because quest xp aren't doubled by rest bonus.

The second big boost is that in the Burning Crusade you can get the first gear with gem slots. And gems aren't level-limited. Thus, given enough cash, you can put epic Wrath of the Lich King gems into your Burning Crusade gear. My paladin found a blue chest plate in Hellfire Ramparts with 3 gem slots, and putting in epic gems I basically doubled the stat bonuses on it.

Finally questing in Outlands has become a lot easier because you can now buy a flying mount cheap at level 60. Even Hellfire Peninsula gets a lot more pleasant and passes quicker if you can fly over it.

So all in all leveling through the Burning Crusade content is a lot less bad than I feared it would be. And of course Outlands also has its highlights, I always loved Nagrand for example. So I think that at least the paladin won't get stuck around level 60, and I'm looking forward to get him up all the way to the level cap. At level 61 he is already the highest level Alliance character I have, giving me the opportunity to do Alliance quests in zones where I have only done the Horde quests up to now. Fun!