I was wondering your take on effective leveling. Do you think it is best to just jump in swords, arrows, spells flying or grind out tasks and level up without the risks. I am betting some builds will level faster than others due to pluses on mana and health replenishment times. i have read a the Primal build {Archery, Shadowplay, Auramancy} allows you to level up quickly. I would imagine the quests would be a good way to go. Just do one and move onto the next since you are at the required level anyway. I'm no stranger to grinding for hours to raise a particular skill set though. Any thoughts?
Labor is your best option! It is unique to this game but it will save you tons of time if you use it efficiently. You can go crazy with it too if you make as many level 15 alt chars as you can so that they can drink a "labor pot" aka workers compensation potion every 12 hours. Labor is shared by account. You can save up 5k labor, then buy a Vocation Tonic off the AH (50% more exp from labor for 1h). Craft/gather til you run out of labor. Drink a labor pot on your char and all of your alts and repeat. You can easily make your money back if you craft the right items and grow the right crops (do some AH research!)
This is the way to go definitely if you don't like questing or bothering with lore, or you're leveling an alt and want to skip all the quests you've already done. I'm a lore freak myself and so I like to level by quests so I don't miss any part of the story. Story is what makes the game for me. Questing is definitely not the fastest way to level, but it's not the slowest either.
I agree with mimsee about doing the quests so you get the story. Some people are just into that, but if it isn't your thing, you've got options. I like that about this game - all the different choices for leveling.
haha but there is no way to be a better player without a higher level. There is a question why are you playing? To have fun or to play well.