Ding 60 for Horde Paladin

I dinged 60 on my Horde Retribution Paladin Renon on the Ghostlands server. That was after about 5 days and 17 hours of play, or close to 137 hours, which is not a record but pretty fast for me. I am trying the style of concentrating on my solo play, rather than spending time on professions.

I don't think leveling is the only achievement worth pursuing, because a game like World of Warcraft offers so many other achievements. One problem with WoW and other games is that professions are not always well designed. In WoW, professions fail to help a player all during the leveling process. In the current iteration of WoW, the only use for professions is for raiding at max level. The time spent for professions is a waste until the character reaches max level, so my advice is to level first, then develop professions. It makes leveling easier and makes the professions easier to build as well. Drops from monsters and quest rewards are always better than the armor and weapons you can make. Enhancement and buffs for raiding are not really needed early in character development. I raised enough gold for two characters' mounts by selling cloth and other items from my Paladin.

I am using Jame's free guide from WoW-Pro to level. I think it is the best guide out there, regardless of price, even though there is some unevenness in the guide, like misplaced waypoints and features that don't work, like an attempt at putting a series of waypoints down to guide the player. Another problem is that I keep exceeding the leveling goals of each section, meaning that the guide is always slightly behind. I skip many parts of the guide, like the whole section that takes the level 58 character from Outland to the Eastern and Western Plaguelands to level to 60 before returning to Outland. The guide misses the mark there, because it is actually easier to stay in Outland and level there before taking the quests that require level 60. I also do no group quests unless I can solo them.

The Paladin class has to be one of the easiest classes to level in Patch 4.0.1. I have no mana problems and seldom run into difficulties, unless I am surrounded by monsters more than 5 levels above me. Consecration is a little weaker now, but Holy Wrath has been buffed for AOE.