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This was a 'project' I started to see just how much more rich these new level 85 characters are (or are going to be).

I repaired fully and emptied my bags of everything not needed for leveling, then sent all gold to an alt so the character literally started at 0g. I then quested normally, always taking the quest reward that vendored for the most gold unless it was a good upgrade (this character was a paladin and Plate armor tends to vendor highly anyhow).
I did not go out of my way to farm ore but if I saw a dot and it was close by, I grabbed it.
I started with 150% rested XP and gained roughly another 20% more between sessions. This was done entirely while Fast Track 5% was available and partially while Fast Track 10% was available.
She also had one hour of an extra 10% XP gain from the inscription journal buff.

Pretty much, she was about as 'normal' of a leveling experience as someone who really wanted to push to 85 would have right now.

Note: She was about 11% into level 80 due to some ore farming but had not done any Cata quests. Also, as she's my main miner at the moment, she lost a few silver total in mailing fees when I needed bars smelted. Otherwise her gains are completely pure.

Upon dinging 85 she had completed all of Hyjal, all of Vash'jir, all of Deepholm (with one day's worth of dailies), the introduction quests for Twilight Highlands, Blackrock Caverns twice, Vortex Pinnacle once, and Stonecore once.

Total gains:

4880g76s86c
25 BoE Greens
1 Wrath BoE Blue (from a lockbox)
121 Embersilk Cloth
341 Obsidium Ore
77 Elementium Ore
7 Uncommon Gems
21 Volatile Air (she's an Engineer)
22 Volatile Earth
4 Volatile Fire
2 Volatile Water
99 pieces of cooking meat
1 Heavenly Shard

At current AH values on my server, this is just under 12k gold worth of gains and she still has all of Uldum and Twilight Highlands to finish.

Great post.

It still amazes me when people get to the level cap and then complain they have no money.

Quit buying useless crap on the AH and you'll have money as your test proves.

While the Op's post was brilliant, I must confess that yours is even better Best point

Yeap 5k gold is what you get while leveling from 80 to 85 while selling all the trash you find, done it twice now but for me it was a leveling frenzy so i didnt bother to farm sell stuff on AH, only on occasion.

Pretty interesting baseline - and 12k definitely isn't anything to sneeze at.

I know it's not going to swing it wildly in either direction, but out of curiousity's sake how long did it take you to get to 85?

I'm curious what the comparisons are versus your very "normal" approach to say, pure gathering. I'm assuming the gathering will be far more lucrative and far, FAR slower, but would be curious to throw some data/numbers around.

Can't tell you the /played time, but 3 weeks into Cataclysm, I have an 81, an 84 and a half and one 85 (all started from 80)
Doing quests is fast and easy with all the breadcrumb quests, and I'm betting that the rested characters (which had to log in since Cataclysm or they didn't get 'rested') will level even faster.
Gathering is also good for lots of XP and so is Archaeology (too many ways to level)

My DK is almost 83 from gathering, killing a few mobs who were "guarding" my nodes and doing the starting Vashj'ir quests to get the seahorse.

Don't plan on doing any more quests either

You do get more gold at 85 for quest. I did all of 84 to 85 via archeology on my pally as I tried to level it up. Going back to do quest I was getting more gold for the same quest than my 84 mage was getting gold/xp.