Leveling slower than the guide

[jasonmstone]

I started using Zygor's guide after a long hiatus from the game, starting at level 70. I'm now 79% through 74... and the guide seems to think I should be level 75 now.

This happened last level, too, where I ended up having to grind forever and a day to get caught up to the guide.

Can I expect this to happen with every level up to 80? Because it's really annoying having to grind through (literally) hundreds of mobs to get to where the guide thinks I should be before continuing.

[treyfer]

Well, I usually had a hard time with the guide keeping up with me, What I would do was toss up a bit of dungeons with questing so it wouldnt get bland, it would take about 20 minutes from dungeon to dungeon, but they got me alot of the way through and ended up making my levling faster. So next time your grinding it up, que DPS for a dungeon or two

[cabby]

It's pretty rare for someone to fall behind the guide, normally the guide falls behind the player.

My recommendation would be for the next week keep queuing up for random dungeons and follow the guide while waiting to get into the dungeons. This should get you ahead of the guide and once you're ahead you shouldn't see it get ahead of you again.

[Cartman]

I suggest turning automatic skipping of quests off (set the allow levels ahead slider in the dynimc progress section of the guide options to 80). Maybe you were ahead of the guide and it then skipped quests.
Do you have the quest achievement for Tundra and Fjord? If not you may have missed some quests.
After you change this setting you can go through the guide from level 70 again and right click the down arrow to automatically advance. So you are able to do missed quests again.

I never fell behind the guide even with chars that went to northrend at level 69 as you usually have rested bonus all the way from 70 to 80 and you get most experience points through quests and not by grinding.

I don't think it is necessary to grind to get a level up. With rested bonus I hit level 80 in Sholazar with my horde character without heirlooms. I don't know when the horde guide ends and how much it covers of Storm Peaks (the alliance guide covers nearly full Storm Peaks) but you should be able to reach level 80. If not you can do some daily quests or if you own the dailies guide you can follow a pre quest guide for Storm Peaks or Icecrown.
When doing both starting zones you will always be ahead of what the suggested level for a zone is so after the Fjord there should be not problems with the required level. And after patch 4.0 no class should have difficulties with the quests