I just finished a big work project so it's back to World of Warcraft for me! I played for the first time last night in a couple of months. There was a big update between the time I stopped and yesterday. But I thought ahead and had my client all updated. It did give me a chance to re-spec my character. That's the process of allocating talent points in your talent tree. It can make a huge difference depending on what you choose. I read up a little about it and decided that I wanted my Shaman to be specialized in Enhancement (after some advice from my co-workers.)

I played for a while and then I decided to read up on power-leveling now that my co-workers are 20 levels above me. From what I have read, other than paying someone or using a bot, the best way to power level is to do quests and grinding 2-3 levels below your current level. I have actually been doing the opposite of this. The quests I have been doing are mostly orange and the monsters are 3-4 levels above me. They made a good point. You spend a lot of time healing/waiting in between kills. When you are killing monsters that are below your level you spend more time killing with no downtime. Each kill is worth less but you get more kills which amounts to more XP in the long run. I'm really going to have to try this the next time I play.