I started Mists of Pandaria when it came out, end of September 2012. Early November 2012 I cancelled my subscription. Somehow at that point in time I didn't like Pandaria, and I only got one single character from level 85 to 90. With that experience it is understandable that I was somewhat reluctant to play Warlords of Draenor. I didn't play directly on release, but waited until Christmas 2014, where I first took a free 10-day trial before subscribing. By now it is safe to say that WoD clicked far more with me than MoP: Over 9 months later I am still playing. Of course it helps that Blizzard allows me to play for free now, I have enough gold for 2 years worth of WoW tokens.

Maybe my problem with Mists of Pandaria was a bad choice of character class: The one class I leveled to 90 was my priest, based on the logic that I'd get into dungeon finder groups very fast. But two things happened: I grew completely disenchanted with WoW dungeons, they turned from the content I liked the most to the content I like the least; and I more and more found the shadow priest soloing combat style tedious and annoying.

So when I started Warlords of Draenor, I bought the expansion and got a free boost to level 90, which I used on my fury warrior. I had much more fun playing that character solo, and got him to level 100 first. I also played my shadow priest, but less frequently, and it took a long time for him to reach level 100. I think I reached level 100 on my frost mage before I reached it with my priest. The frost mage was level 85, which the patch changed to 1 xp away from 86, and I leveled him through Pandaria by doing half the quests in the Valley of the Four Winds, and all the quests in Kun-Lai Summit. My fourth level 100 character is a Worgen demonology warlock which I just created for this expansion. I only played him through the Worgen-specific starting area, and then paid to give him a boost to level 90. With these 4 level 100 characters I played for the last several months.

This weekend I decided to go for number 5. After analyzing what combat style I liked and trying out some stuff like a death knight I had, I went for retribution paladin. I had one of those at level 85, human, on a different server. So I transferred him to the same server where my other level 100 characters are, so he could get stuff from the Worgen warlock. Now the frost mage I had leveled through Pandaria using quest gear. For the paladin I went for heirloom gear, which gives a big boost to experience gained. The results was a sort of speed run: I just reached the Sha of Doubt main event in the very first zone, Jade Forest, when I already hit level 90. I haven't even done all the side story quest lines in Jade Forest, barely more than half a zone to get from 85 to 90!

Now the paladin is in Draenor, in his own garrison, a few xp away from level 91. At level 91 stuff will happen on the gear side: From the warlock (who has blacksmithing) the paladin received an iLevel 705 crafted axe. I find it kind of crazy that the crafted gear in WoD has this low a level requirement and this high a possible iLevel, after upgrades. The Pawn addon tells me that the crafted 2H axe is a +500% upgrade to the level 90 WoD quest axe I am currently wielding. And then I will have to make a decision about the rest of the gear: Right now the heirlooms are maximum level 90, but I could further upgrade them to 100. I might do that for the xp bonus, because after having already done 4 characters, I pretty much did every quest in this expansion.

On the other hand that wouldn't leave much to play for that paladin once he reaches the level cap: The naval missions of my other 4 characters give "baleful" tokens that are bound to account, so my paladin already has a bank full of baleful plate tokens. But I think it will still be interesting to play him in Tanaan Jungle. I also want to change his profession from currently blacksmithing to engineering. I could also, just for fun, go for a Gnomish Gearworks early (even if that isn't the most efficient way to level your garrison) and play him as some sort of crazy gadgeteer paladin. That might be fun!