There are several theories out there about the best method for faster levelling. One theory is that killing "hard" monsters at or just above your level earns more experience per hour than killing easier ones a couple of levels below. I set out to test this theory recently on a couple of lower level alts. The results are inconclusive.
My testing was done on a level 25 warrior and 26 priest. Both were fully rested and have unexceptional gear. No heirloom items were used.
The warrior started out killing the level 20-22 humans at Durnholde keep. Syndicate Watchman for example. These guys showed up as green difficulty. After 30 minutes of slaughter, he'd gained about 12,000 exp. Unfortunately my noob warrior skills got him killed 3 times. The corpse runs were relatively short so should not impact too much on the end result.
After repairs and handing in relevant quests, the now level 26 warrior moved on to killing the farmers and townsmen over at Hillsbrad Fields. These guys are anywhere from 22-28 and the ones I was mostly killing were about level 26. After another 30 minutes of slaughter, this time with no deaths, he'd gained about 11,800 exp.
The easier kills earned slightly more exp, even with the unfortunate character deaths. Both grinding areas are fairly densely populated so there was little time between encounters.
I killed lots of the same farmers with the priest a little later. She kills things slower since there was a lot of drinking between battles. The kills were rated as green or yellow. I didn't record the starting values for experience so I'm not sure just how much she gained in the 30 minute test but it felt like a similar amount to the warrior.
The priest tried to move on to killing the tougher guys in the azurelode mines. The high density of mobs and the fact that they flee when low in health made this really tough. No deaths were suffered but the rate of kills was very much slower. I feel the warrior may make better headway in this area.
The numbers don't really come out clearly in favour of any strategy being superior. There may be a slight edge to killing the easier mobs since the higher number of kills offsets the lower experience per kill. I didn't test the effects of questing on the rate of gain. Again there is probably a slight edge to quickly completing the easier quests. Though its satisfying to kill orange and red mobs its just not efficient.
