Completely FREE WOTLK Alliance and Horde Leveling Guide

Posted by Markco at 8:00 AM

Just My Two Copper sat down with Ding80.com ’s webmaster, Hawque, to discuss his free leveling guide.

JMTC: Welcome Hawque! Thank you for taking the time to speak with us. I’m sure my readers are going to fall in love with your leveling guide, as I have.

Ding80.com: Hi Markco! I'm a regular reader of your blog and I'm glad I have this opportunity to sit down and speak with a gold making genius like you.

JMTC: I may be good at making gold, but you've got me trumped on leveling characters for sure! Speaking of leveling, I regularly advise all my readers to level their alts in order to ‘cover’ more professions. Could you take a moment to describe your site to my readers? What is Ding80.com? How will it help them?

Ding80.com: Ding80.com is a completely free leveling 1-80 Alliance Leveling Guide and Horde Leveling Guide. Both guides are hundreds of pages long, contain hundreds of images, and both feature a system of leveling purely through questing.

Readers who follow the guides will have the time it takes from leveling to 80 drastically reduced.

The guide maps out in detail the complete journey from Level 1 to 80 and does not just tell what quests to do, but also which mobs to kill and where they spawn. It actually shows you the locations with detailed map images for every place you'll visit and all the mobs you'll kill all the way from level 1 to 80.

Only the most efficient methods to gain experience are shown - there is no grinding necessary at all. You could get to 80, purely on your own through soloing in under one played week if you followed the guide with the goal of speeding through the leveling process.

JMTC: How do you react when people tell you that your guide is BETTER than other leveling guides that cost money?

Ding80.com: I'm pretty glad when that happens. I must admit I'm a little bit of a lore nut - I love to know everything about World of Warcraft. Hence, I was led to do heavy questing through which I realized it was definitely the fastest way to level. Then, I decided to map out every single step on where to go and what quests to get.

This mindset is where the quality in my guide comes in, because I try to get the reader to quickly be able to understand the steps and be able to follow them easily.

Many commercial guides only offer vague instructions on areas to level or grind in. My guide is a colossal step up from guides which just say "Grind here at X level," and a major step up from guides which just say "Do these quests" in writing. My guide has the steps listed out and are broken down to the smallest detail so that every time you move, you see where you're moving to - there are maps and paths associated with each step as well.

The previews the other commercial leveling guides give have some unclear directions, shorthand instructions, or even inefficient leveling paths.

I really focus on maximizing efficiency of gaining experience and making the guides extremely user-friendly.

JMTC: I love your leveling tips section, would you mind sharing your favorite tip?

Ding80.com: As a funny anecdote, the first character I ever leveled was a priest, back in original WoW. I leveled from 1-60 as pure Holy, putting all my talents in plus healing power, simply because I didn't know about respeccing. My advice is not to do that. :)

Hence, my personal favorite tip happens to also be the most important tip which stretches all the way from 1-80. Research the best leveling build for your class! Do this while leveling up (or even before you start the character!). If you choose talents which focus on killing faster, then that benefit carries through every single level and you level much faster.

There are many resources out there (World of Warcraft forums, etc) which present the best leveling spec. You will then kill faster, which will make you level faster.

JMTC: Do you have a deathknight leveling guide yet?

Ding80.com: Yeah. The Death Knight guide was actually the first guide up on the site because I got in the WotLK beta for only a few days and decided to give the Death Knight area a whirl.

The leveling rate is quite fast, you make 55-58 and get out of the zone in just about three hours.

If you've never leveled a deathknight before, I encourage trying the zone out - the lore behind the DK starting area is really interesting too.

JMTC: My favorite part about your guide is that it’s so fresh. Every other online guide out there was created before the xp bonuses for level 1-70 were implemented. Do you think that this is what has made your guide so popular, the fact that it is new and updated for WOTLK?

Ding80.com: It is definitely a big benefit that the guide was created post-xp changes because this makes the guide the most up to date. The guide is very consistent in actually being a certain level when the guide says you're supposed to be a certain level. Additionally, there's a bit of time saved in the lower levels as well because of new travel paths (the Stormwind to Auberdine boat, for example).

Again though, I think the most key part of the guide and what makes it more practical and useful than other guides is that it really shows every step to take and is very quest-centric which maximizes experience rates and minimizes travel and research time.

JMTC: How long until your Horde guide reaches 100% complete? I saw that you have 1-75 done as of 2/28/09.

Ding80.com: Definitely by the end of March, and I'm hoping to get it up earlier than that!

JMTC: Well Hawque, I want to thank you for all the great work you’ve done for the wow community and for agreeing to participate in this interview. I know my readers are going to enjoy your work as much as I have.

Ding80.com: Thanks Markco. And I want to thank you for the great information you're providing for the wow community too. You and me bud, we should team up! If people level alts using Ding80's Alliance and Horde leveling guide AND follow your gold tips provided during the quick leveling process, they'll easily have more money than they can use even after buying their epic flying mount.

They might have to buy a swimming pool and fill it with all the gold coins they'll have. Thanks again for the interview. I see you've made a gold guide of your own, best of luck with that, keep up the good work and I'm sure it will be great!

Check out Ding80.com and write your thoughts in the comment section as always.