Starting a Human

I tried an experiment in leveling a Human Paladin in WoW on the Eitrigg server (marked for new players) by avoiding the quests and professions, showing that Blizzard has made the starting areas so simple that the quests are not necessary for leveling. I was doing about 5,000 experience per hour just killing things, about the same rate as I do while completing quests. I noticed that the early quests have so little experience that it takes about the same amount of time to kill stuff as it does to complete the quests. I got up to level 6 doing no quests, then tried the quest to kill wolves and bears. One problem with that quest is that you kill many more wolves than needed because the wolf population is much higher than the bear population. You search for bears for a long time, especially on the "newbie" servers where the population is higher in the starting areas and players are competing for the same quests. The experience from the quest is about 600, while each wolf or bear gives you 90. You might as well kill 5 or 6 more wolves to get the 600 experience. It takes almost as much time to run back and forth for the quest. My character ended up with just about all starting equipment, rather than the quest rewards, but the quest items are so paltry that it doesn't make much difference. I can use a gold-digging-banking-auctioning alt to buy or find stuff to twink him anyway. The experiment also demonstrates that leveling a character can be done fast without leveling professions and doing quests. The secret is to keep killing one monster after another, not walking any great distances. You have to find where the monster population is thick and heavy. One huge disadvantage to leveling a character by grinding is that it is terribly boring.