The Joy of Hardcore Leveling

I know, sounds crazy doesn't it. But I enjoy leveling, and I consider myself somewhat hardcore about it. And I'm not in any way trying to knock the hardcore raiders out there. Trust me. If my life lent itself to it, I'd probably be playing only one toon and raiding 4-5 nights per week. But I've got 3 kids and a wife who doesn't like video games. So my play time tends to be extremely limited.

If I can play in evenings, it's usually because I'm traveling for work, so I'm hooked up on my laptop, on hotel wireless somewhere - not really the best set up for raiding. And even when I try it, just subbing in at the end of a raid or something, the fact that I have trouble cracking 2K dps in ilvl 213+ gear just raises more eyebrows than it's worth. Can't really say - hey guys, I'm on Hampton Inn wireless and a laptop with no graphics card, so I'm driving 1000+ latency and about 3fps.

I really can't do arena's either for pretty much the same reason. What rogue? You have died..release spirit? I do love PvP, but even battlegrounds and Wintergrasp can be pretty frustrating.

So that brings me to the one thing that I can do, and something that I really enjoy, which is leveling different classes of toons. There is a certain satisfaction from dinging a new level, getting new spells and talents, or getting a nice quest reward. And I can seem to do pretty well in 5 mans, so that's all on the table while leveling. Again - not topping the chart, but I can pull my weight. So that's what I do. But boy, wouldn't I love to be hitting Anub or Twins on Hard Mode.

Interestingly enough, I belong to a fairly hard core raiding guild, the understands my situation and is just grateful that I'm more than happy to provide enchants, mats, etc. pretty much whenever and am more than happy to provide help to folks leveling different classes. And exchange, every now and then, I get brought into a raid so that I can see some of the newer content.

So tonight I'm working on my paladin. Was spending a bit of time late last week on the hunter, but skipped right from the Shaman to the Hunter, which I hadn't planned to do, so thoughts I'd go back and give the pally a little leveling love. He's sitting at 28 right now. The hunter I got to 61 before I switched back over.