This week’s topic to get an advantage in leveling is using player versus player (PvP) battlegrounds to your advantage. This form of leveling is not for everyone. It does, however, offer a change of environment for those who are not fond of repeating quests yet again to get a toon through leveling. A little cross-faction blood can go a long way to soothing one’s woes. Patch 3.2 introduced this new leveling opportunity as PvPing before the patch, would only gain reputation with the specific battleground, and honor for killing members of the opposite faction, capping flags or towers, and of course winning or losing the matches.

Leveling Bonus: Alterac Valley

The most experience through battleground leveling can be gained through Alterac Valley. It’s the BG that will usually take you the longest to get through but through capping towers, killing foes, and gathering resources, a faction can come away with decent experience and honor, even if they ultimately lose the match. Of course, leveling is made much easier and faster if you win. Putting forth the effort will get you leveling much further. As a secret between you readers and myself, I used AV in leveling my mage to 80 by alt tabbing out and working on a research paper while moving my toon around every couple of minutes. I was able to do this because I would stay at our base, where much activity and moving wasn’t expected. After patch 3.2.2, the experience gained was lowered and it seems the AFK ploy was discovered so players were more watchful and would report AFKers. This doesn’t mean it can’t be done. It just means every few minutes, it would be prudent to shift locations slightly to not affect the leveling. The more active you are, the more experience you will gain for leveling. You can’t complain when others do the same though, and if you really get into PvP, you may get upset at others for taking advantage of this. The more people that are not actually playing, the higher the disadvantage of your faction.  If you go to the Alterac Mountains, you can pick up AV specific quests to add more experience to your leveling.

Leveling Doing PvP Dailies

Doing the PvP daily yields a good chunk of honor and experience for leveling. Random and weekend battlegrounds also give bonuses. Remember, AV is not the only BG that yields experience! In your questing, you may also come across leveling PvP quests in Tol Barad, Wintersgrasp, Grizzly Hills, Hellfire, Nagrand, Auchindon, Zangarmarsh, Eastern Plaguelands, and Western Plaguelands. These leveling quests vary from capturing towers, to killing a specific amount of cross faction NPC enemies. Warning: This does expose you to world PvP, which can be both fun and/or frustrating at any given time. Beware corpse campers. I like to log into higher leveled characters and return the favor, but if you don’t have one, log into another character for a few minutes or minimize your window, or even take a bio or food break, then come back. Most people will leave after a few minutes, if they don’t enlist some guildies for slaughter.

Using your Leveling Honor

Please remember that you can start going into BGs at level 10. At first, leveling through BGs without resilience may be frustrating but honor along with experience is easily gained. You can use the honor as you go to increase your survivability. There is a cap to the amount of honor you can receive so don’t think you can save it and purchase high level items as you go along. Though at one point you could do that, it is no longer possible. Leveling through battlegrounds offers the variety you may need to make the process more bearable, at times even enjoyable.

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