Pre RAF days, my first 5man group was a priest and 4 mages. other than getting to level 20 by mostly grinding in a few select overworld places, as at the time, thats when Arcane Explosion became instant cast via talents and my priest picked up holy nova. I ground totaly in instances. I must have ran Shadowfang Keep about 40 times to get all the cloth drops off the last guy for all 5 of my guys. If I remember right there were 3 drops for each toon to get. I did the same with SM and Sunken Temple etc.

With the reduction in xp needed to level 1-70, you can easily get to 70 w/o doing any collection quests by doing kill quests and just grinding and it wont be painfull.

Northrend and the 70-80 run... If you want to unlock stuff like dailies. your going to just have to bite the bullet. My current group is grinding out every quest I can get my hands on, but im enjoying the lore and I know that there is only so many quests and things to do in this expansion and I feel I will have them all done to my satisfaction before the next expando pack comes out. I will say this. There is no way in hell ill do this again with another group. Im already getting the urge to start a new 5man group as collection quests now are nothing more than time sinks at level 80, and I have 4.5 zones untouched in Northrend.