A little over one week after launch, seeing level 80 players running around isn't such a rarity in World of Warcraft. Since Wrath of the Lich King's release, many have been sprinting like gazelles fleeing lions toward the new level limit, presumably so they could be first to delve into the high-level dungeon content and grab hold of the more powerful items Blizzard included. Yet doing so presumably precludes fast levelers from experiencing what seems to be one of the stronger aspects of the expansion: the narrative cohesion of the game world.

Instead of just smashing together a bunch of pretty looking and diverse zones and calling it a new continent, Blizzard has clearly made the effort to build in the Lich King and his accompanying fiction into many of the world's quest lines, generating anticipation for the eventual battle against him. Of course the biggest draw of pretty much any MMO is the social aspect of it, whether it's shuffling resources between guild members to craft powerful items or organizing tactics to combat the most difficult dungeon challenges, but that doesn't mean the leveling process has to be a chore.