Some of the veteran players may remember the days when a player with a few champion kills under his belt could be as many as six or seven levels ahead of his competition, even early in the game. Riot nerfed champion kill experience to help address the issue, and things seemed pretty even for a while. I would rarely see a disparity of more than four levels, even between solo lanes and duos.

Lately, though, things seem much more like the good old days. I am regularly seeing players with five or more levels on their opponents, sometimes in the same lane. Seriously. I played a game a few days ago in which my team’s bot lane Singed (don’t ask) was level 5 when the enemy Vayne was level 10. He didn’t AFK. He wasn’t getting zoned. He did die a couple times early in the game, but that kind of discrepancy should require a much more significant turn of events.

Have you noticed more significant level gaps than usual, lately?

When I started my little WoW experiment I knew the first 48 (not playtime, just the first two days after resubbing) hours were likely to be the litmus test of my enjoyment of the game. If I got bored or lost interest or just generally wasn’t enjoying myself, I wasn’t going to spend any more time trying to rekindle the flame. Despite a whole slew of problems, I actually enjoyed the first couple days back.

When I first resubbed I jumped around my characters just to see what was new. Most of them had reset talents, so I didn’t screw with them too much. Since I was going to be playing with friends on a new server, I fired up a brand new druid, thinking I’d level him for kicks alongside my only 80, my hunter. I had somehow forgotten along the way that leveling a druid prior to level 20 is about the worst thing in the game. Why they still won’t give you cat form at 10, bear form at 20 is totally beyond me.

I started thinking about other classes, but then I went back and looked at the class previews for Cataclysm and realized my best best for leveling will be then, when the original world has changed and classes like the hunter have received their respective mechanic revamps. Lucky for me I had a 66 druid sitting on my old server and quickly transferred him to my friend’s server.

By day two I was having fun blowing through some quick quests in Nagrand. The buff to normal flight speed helped a lot. I was 68 in just a couple hours and on my way to Northrend.