World of Warcraft Arena Guides - Progression in Cataclysm Guides
Let’s start with the most basic progression system: experience points and levels. My first comment here is Boo! Only 5 more levels, what are they thinking! Realistically though the number of levels will not really matter as long as there are enough quests and zones to take you a long time to work through to get to the new max level of 85. For me, I am hoping that it turns out to be longer than in WotLK as levelling felt way too fast to me there. It was possible to hit level 80 within 2-3 days of played time, which was just too fast. I think it should take at least a week’s worth of played time to get through a game and I am hoping for at least that in Cataclysm.
The first and most common of the meta progression types is reputation grinds. While reputation gives you something to do, it takes too long in my opinion. The only things you gain from reputation are low level raid items and some enchants. By the time you grind out the rep, you were far more likely to have gotten a better top level item from a heroic or raid. It just seems that you take so long to grind out rep, that there is no real reward in the end. Blizzard should speed it up by at least twice, or keep it the same and provide better rewards.
The other new progression item coming with cataclysm and the one I am most excited about, besides levelling another 5 levels, is Guild progression. I believe this is going to be a huge one for Cataclysm. Finally there will be a way to separate your guild from the rest and gain bonuses from it. This has a lot of people very excited and that will help keep players in guilds and keep guilds active.