Leveling in Northrend

[Rin]

For my current team, I brought them into Northrend at 68.
From 68-70.3ish, I did most of the quests in Howling Fjord (~100 or so), and then I farmed Utgarde Pinnacle's Prince Kelesith for his blade about 5-6 times. That brought me up to level 71.
From 71 to 73 I went to Borean Tundra, and completed about 105 quests there (also did the Nexus shoulder quest, but no other quests in the Nexus)
73 - 74 was spent in Dragonblight. I've done all but 3-4 of the quests for the achievement there.
74-75 was spent in the Grizzly Hills. I then took a break and started working on buying gear and resting my characters
75-78.2 was spent largely on dailies and instance grinding (with rest experience, you should be able to get at least 230,000 exp/hr in an instance - which is about 1 level every 6-7 hours)
78.2-80 is being spent in Zul'Drak, there's enough quests here (+Gundrak instance quests) to ding 80 at this point.

That leaves me with Sholazar Basin, The Storm Peaks, and Icecrown citadel untouched @ 80.

On my Horde team, I started them at Northrend at 70.
I finished Howling Fjord, Borean Tundra (3-5 quests away from the achievement), Dragonblight, Grizzly Hills (10-15 quests from the achievement), Zul'Drak, and about 15 quests in Sholazar Basin before I ding'd 80.

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If you dread questing, you shouldn't have a problem instance grinding, but ONLY instance grind if you have rest experience (otherwise, questing is much faster). Also, if you dread questing and instance grinding, then simply get to 73 and do Grizzly Hills dailies until 80. It would take about 52 days to get to 80 with only 1 hour of game play per day. (73-80). That's only a bit over a month of casual play, plus you'd clear about 13,000 gold between now and then just doing dailies, and you'd have all of the quests in Northrend available in case you ever decided to do the quests.

Cheers

[Basilikos]

Now that I've made actual attempts at overcoming some RL limitations on my PvE team's Northrend leveling, here's the scoop so far.

My PvE team was grinding instances to 70. I had nearly every quest from Terrokar Forrest and up to do after hitting 70. Why? Easy gold. Anyhow, I hit Northrend just after dinging 72. Yeah. So I'm FINALLY playing regularly again and have just leveled to 75 without entering any instances, but doing EVERY quest I can get my hands on. I've not quite finished Borean Tundra, but I have completely wiped out Howling Fjord.

First and foremost, I'm learning to love collection quests. Yeah, there's a definite slow-down factor when doing them, but they're almost totally indispensable for several reasons. I'm likely going to be half-way to 76 before leaving the "starting" areas. Dragonblight follows and then on to Grizzly Hills. From there, we'll see. I've read a number of reports that are forcing me to save for the level 77 cold weather flying purchase. That has been done already on each of these characters. After that, it seems like the epic flying will come quickly enough if I keep up with the questing.

I think my situation (what with starting Northrend at 72 and all) is pretty unique and will probably not help anyone, but I thought I'd share a different perspective.

[David]

I personally would never go to northend that late. As soon as possible I`m moving in that direction for sure. I`m currently sitting at lvl 66,5 so it will be soon. But I run paladin + 4 shamans so I can grind instances as well to get enough quests.

On my alliance team which I retired at lvl74, I started in northend at lvl70 after the release of WOTLK. Also cleared the first 2 zones and working on DB when I quit.

That would mean I would get in qust trouble with my current team, luckily I can fill it up some with instancing.

[Starbuck_Jones]

I'm almost done with Dragonblight. I'm at about 112 quests completed and 115 is the achievement mark, but there is a quest hub that I haven't even gone to yet. The alliance place at the wrath gate, right now im doing the goblin quests by the giant canyon. After Dragonblight is cleaned out, I have 3 quests for the Old Kingdom undead bug dungeons. As of right now, I am 15% away on my Paladin from 78, and 30% away on my druids. Cold weather flying has sped things up, but I also dont have to fight my way into things anymore either so questing is faster, but missing out on some xp from unrelated trash. Just fly in. assassinate a guy, fly out.

I predict that my paladin will be 78 by the time I finish the normal quests in DB. I plan on going back to the Nexus and farming 3 more of these off hands for my druids. http://www.wowwiki.com/Tome_of_the_Lore_Keepers One of them already has it from the one time I ran it, then spend the time and knock out the 3 Old Kingdom quests and im sure by then my whole team will be 78. with a lot of content left to see and do.

I haven't looked into boss loot for the dragonblight dungeons but if theres any upgrades that are not too big of a pain to get, I may stay and gear up my team on them.