Thanks for posting my question!

I rolled a Blood Elf warlock. With the Blood Elf starting zones being so overcrowded, I decided to move my new toon to Tirisfal as soon as I hit level 8, and after that I moved on to Silverpine and The Barrens.

My strategy seemed to work: the areas were a lot less crowded and leveling was easier. However, I now had to go through areas I've seen and done a dozen times already. So now my Blood Elf warlock is at level 20, and I'm already bored with him. So there you have it, my first big BC mistake.
 

I can't imagine a well-played priest ever not being in demand. Take it easy and enjoy yourself.
 

Not certain about rep gains in heroic mode, but the Shattered Halls (Hellfire Peninsula), The Steamvault (Zangamarsh) and Shadow Labyrinth (Auchindoun) level 70 instances give reputation from trash mobs and bosses all the way to exalted. All 3 Tempest Keep 5 mans give Sha'tar rep till exalted as well.

And honestly, you will need alot of gear from those instances if you want to try heroic mode. I went into heroic mode Slave Pens with my bear form druid (to see what it was like), 20k armor (about 65% physical damage reduction) and the very first trash mob hit me for 1700.
 

Not taking the time to read the story behind the two factions in Shattrath. I watched the TV while taking the guided tour and then randomly picked The Aldor.
As a mage and a tailor, it might have been wiser to side with the mages rather than the priests. I'm not sure it's even possible to grind back from "Hated".

My second big mistake was assumption. As the old saying goes, "assume" makes an "ass out of u and me".
By level 67 I had finished all available quests in every area except Shadowmoon Valley and Netherstorm. Two bars into level 68 and I'd finished all the quests I could manage solo in Shadowmoon.
I looked at the map of Outland and "assumed" that a flying mount was required to reach Netherstorm, because it didn't appear to be connected by land. With no possible quests left to do and a bit of bitterness towards Blizzard for not providing enough quests, I spent the next 20 hours of /played time grinding fire elementals in Shadowmoon.

With 5 bars to go until 70, a level 67 in our guild asked me for some help with a few quests in Netherstorm. Such is life. At least I have 32 [Primal Fire] sitting in my bank now.
 

As for rep suggestions, I think everyone did the same thing you did in Thrallmar just because of the excitement of the new area and new quests to complete. I'm also about half way through honored in Thrallmar with nothing left to gain realistic rep. I"m sure the shattered halls and quests associated with it would be enough to put you over into revered to get the key to the kingdom so to speak.

I can offer this bit of advice though. WHen you first get to Zangarmarsh, buy up all the Unidentified plant parts you can find and turn them into the NPC for the 250rep/10pcs. I did this after some higher level guildies sent me some pieces and told me what they were for (before I had gotten there). I checked the AH once or twice each day and bought out all that were there. Then, I was nearly at honored with them before I did many of the quests. Although now, after doing every quest I could find in the marsh, I'm halfway through honored again, almost honored with the Sporegarr and 1 bar from 65.

So my new plan is to skip Terrokar forest and go to Nagrand. From there I'm hoping to run the Auchindoun dungeons for Lower City rep before doing any of their quests as well while levelling and questing for the consortium, and Mag'har. I think this plan should work out such that I could be honored with the Lower City through instance runs, then go back and do all of their quest chains. Hopefully this will put me to revered. The drawback is that I"ll be doing all of the quests on easy mode as a 67 doing 63-65 quests and mobs.

I think it should work best though to minimize my rep grind runs to revered.
 

So far, I'm happy with my choices overall.

I said "pass" with my warrior main on the "easy PvP epics", a decision that I'm content with since I've already upped many slots, some more than once, with Hellfire Peninsula quests and drops.

Instead, I played a new-to-me class, priest; an undead alt that I rolled right after the 2.0.1 patch dropped in. As a side benefit, she got a ton of Silvermoon rep (mostly "Horde faction" rep) because of the timing. I stuck with her for the first two weeks of the BC, except for two very brief forays into the chaos - took my main into the Outland, and rolled a BE.

I then rolled my first "earnest" BE - a Warlock - and enjoyed a quieted-down Eversong Woods and am well into the Ghostlands. That has been new, fresh, and very fun for 16 levels (so far).

For the last few days I've quested my main to level 62, all fully-rested, and with very little competition. Frankly, I haven't even bothered to fret over rep. I wasn't a raider, so I have no worries about guild raiding slots either.

Last night I did, however, run into my first annoyance with what I feel to be a horrible Blizz design decision relating to world PvP on PvE/Normal servers. Note that since Blizz doesn't enforce faction balance, population runs about 70% Alliance - 30% Horde on my server. I was minding my own business doing a quest, questioned a mob, he went red, and I subdued him. All seemed good - then suddenly I got ganked by Alliance! Turns out that this mob had quietly turned me PvP on the main road in from of an Alliance town. And, no, I checked -- this quest was NOT marked PvP. Thanks, Blizz!
 

Alsalil

You can switch factions by turning in basilisk eyes to the blood elf in the Lower City. That will give you 250 rep per turn in and lasts until friendly, by then you'll get friendly with the Scryers and unfriendly or hated with aldor. She gives the quests even to hated people.

There is a similar quest for people who wish to switch to aldor but I'm not sure what it is.
 

It pains me to say this, but if you want to raid with your guild I suggest getting to 70 quicker.

In my guild the faster levelers have already started raiding with other guilds instead of helping the rest of us get keyed.

I think that's what I'll blog about today. :D
 

I wouldn't worry about the guild. If they're really good friends of yours, they'll make room for you. If not, new guilds will be formed by those who took longer to get level 70. There will always be somewhere to go if you're skilled.
 

We've had that priest flood too, yet I constantly get invites. Keep people alive and you still get invites =)

My only regret in BC was taking Aldor right out of the box. At the time, if you didnt choose, you couldn't get bound in Shat, I was told (which was incorrect). My lock avoided this same mistake.

I've doggedly done every quest in each zone I walk through to be sure I maximize my exploration time. I took 2 weeks off my priest main to level my lock alt and handle RL stuff. This means he's not at the 70 border several guildmates are, but I'm very happy with my pace.

Only one error...not bad, I'd guess, especially considering I read absolutely zero about what happened in the beta.
 

Biggest mistake: 4 alliance characters (tier 2, Grand Marshal) to 60.

Now I'm horde at 70. :)
 

Regarding your comment concerning gaining rep, you're doing it as intended. The standard WoW player is not going to pass up a yellow (!) over an NPC's head, especially in the first Outland zone which is intended (via quest rewards) to level-set the non-raiders. The rep grind is being reserved for the max level cap, that being 70. It's evident in that the level 70 dungeons give rep for kills and have some repeatable quests (Coilfang) that yield rep. It's just Blizzard's way of elongating the value of the expansion. First you play the quest game, with some dungeon game mixed in, then comes the rep and attunement game, then, the "end" game in the raid encounters.

As for regrets, I actually don't have any yet. I've taken the laid back approach you describe. My main is a druid, who I've decided to play as a feral hybrid (meaning 21 pts in resto). Why? My guild is short on healers and who doesn't need a healer in any 5-man? It's nice to know I can tank a dungeon, and heal one (or dps in cat and heal with my quick shift key bindings :)

I've enjoyed not worrying about rep/grinding/itemization/meta-gaming/stats for awhile. I'm letting the game come to me for a change.
 

My mistakes so far haven't been the choices I made. I quested to level 70 in about a week, clearing each zone and then moving on to the next. I had lots of fun. I correctly assumed that the Aldor/Scryer rewards were mostly crap, so I made the choice (Aldor) based on the spell damage enchants. I have my flying epic mount, several Heroic keys, attunement to Karazhan and Exalted Aldor reputation.

My mistake was that I didn't take a hard look on my professions. Now I'm stuck at 359 Goblin Engineering, with each yellow item costing more than 500g to make. Most of the items are subpar to put it mildly, and even the best item (Goblin Rocket Launcher) is completely useless against flying targets. And now that Blizzard has announced a professions revamp (with Engineering getting looked at first), I can't start leveling Tailoring from the beginning.
 

My son had the same issue with Rep. He raced to 70 then found that he had no more quests and didn't know what to do to gain the vast amount of honor he still needed. He's back in the instances now. When he gets bored he goes on his Paladin who is now 65. Damn his eyes. My main is still 62.5.

My biggest mistake is still jacking around with my priest's spec. I want to do instances more but had respec'd to Shadow and dont have the mana pool to heal and uncertain group in the instances. With PUGs you get ppl doing their own thing and suddenly 4 people are taking damage, I heal them all, then I'm taking damage. By the time we recover, I'm OOM.
 

While in the middle of Zangarmarsh, I came to the realization that I'm losing out on rep gain because of silly mistakes like selling drops that I didn't know would be useful.

So, took 2 days off playing just to research regarding rep gains. It seems like there's going to be a lot of instance running but probably not as much as trying to get AD Exalted.

Anyway, came up with this file ( http://mum-mum.pbwiki.com/f/BC_Rep_Grind.xls ) to get a bird's eye view of things.

I'm still questing because I really dislike grinding, even if it is instance running. Yes, instance running would be better but the quest rewards are hard to tosh up since it would make instance running so much easier.

At the end of the day, it's really the player's choice although losing out on raids is tough for a lot of folks. Now with the smaller raid sizes, it's probably going to just end up being more competitive than anything else.
 

Conserning your quest about Thrallmar rep, I'm not very sure, but atleast here on alliance side (Honor Hold) it goes so that at level 70 you get a quest to create Shattered halls key and some quests to shattered halls that you can't take before you're level 70.
 

The excellent speadsheet provided by wena is missing Thrallmar rep. We know where your priorities lie :P
 

^_^ spreadsheet fix now. :P