OK, questions has been asked many times.
Here is what you do while leveling:
Do Battlegrounds, as A) It gets you honour but B) It now gets you experience points for completing objectives which means your "killing 2 birds with one stone" as the expression goes.
DO NOT spend your Honour Points whatever you do. Wait until you get to level 80. Even when you get to level 80, do not spend them, as you wont have nearly enough for what you need.
Once you reach level 80, there are several things you need to do. Firstly I would suggest not going to BG as you will get destroyed. Instead doing your HC's and getting PvE gear. Once you have decent PvE gear, you can start doing things Like VoA which allows you to gain your PvP gear. Also with decent PvE gear you can half decently play PvP BG, although with no resilience you are bound go get done.
Once you have accumulated the Honour Points you need, start buying your PvP gear. First of, you want to get the set bonus that gives you 100+ resilience, this is two items. If you want to do PvP you need to get this quickly, therefore you need to get the cheapest two items, (normally shoulders and hands if I remember correctly). Once this is done you are good to keep adding, once you have your 100+ resi, you'll find it much easier to do PvP but not that wrathful gear is out, our still going to struggle.
Additionally what you want to do is gain Sons of Hodir reputation to allow you to get the head enchant for when you get your head.
REMEMBER: Always gem and enchant your itmes with the best you can possibly get as soon as possible.
I don't like grinding myself and I think WoW is one of the better games at avoiding it. For example, if you need to kill 12 enemies, you'll usually also have a quest that requires you to collect something in the same area and also one to kill a boss there too. You focus on the boss quest and you end up completing the others as you go.
If you do decide you need more gametime than 7 days, you can pick up the vanilla game for around £5/$7 (if you look around a bit) and that'll give you another 30 days of play.
Early mistakes/things you should know:
- Don't buy anything off the Auction House, you can get all your gear from quest rewards. You'll just be throwing your money away at early levels.
- If you want to do any professions, pick either herbalism (gathering herbs), mining or skinning (skin animals you kill for leather). You can sell the items you gather for good money. The other professions rely on the gathering professions, so you really struggle with them on your first character unless you have at least one gathering profession. Pick two gathering professions for maximum financial gain - you can always drop one later if you want to pick up something more useful.
- People will advertise their guilds in trade chat when you're in cities. Look for one that seems friendly and /whisper them. The main channels in WoW are zone bound - so you can only see trade chat in cities for example, and the general chat for your current zone. This means it can be quite hard to get help through them when you're out questing. Guild chat is universal and hopefully much more helpful. You can get by without one, but guilds have guild rewards, such as bonus XP and lower repair costs, so its worth having one. NOTE: don't ask the guild for money for epic flying or for anything from the guild bank until they trust you enough to give you access - it seems to be a common newbie move.
- You can follow quest chains all the way through the game (from level 1 to 85). But if you are confused about where to go next, or just bored with your current zone, there are Hero's Call boards in all the major cities that'll point you at your next/alternate destination.
- At level 10 you get to pick what 'spec' you want to be. On each spec there is a little symbol that indicates what type of role that spec will play. For example, a little dagger means a DPS spec, a little shield means a tank spec, a cross means healing. Some classes, such as Hunter can only play in DPS roles, where as others, like Druid, can play all three. At 30 you can buy a Dual Spec and switch between two different roles depending how the mood takes you.
- Use the Dungeon Finder when it becomes available. You pick what role you want to play (Tank, DPS or Healer) - make sure you pick the right role to match your spec, if you're a Paladin, for example, and your playing a Retribution spec (which is DPS) but you queue as a tank, your new party friends won't be too happy with you. Dungeon Finder finds you companions from other servers, not just your own. Queuing as DPS can take 10+ minutes, queuing as a healer or tank is usually less than a minute. When your party has been assembled you'll be teleported to the dungeon, and teleported right back to your old location when the dungeon ends - meaning you can queue while you're out questing.
- If you like a bit of PVP, you can queue for battlegrounds at... level 10, I think? Even on PvE servers. It works much like Dungeon Finder but without needing to pick a role. It's worth reading up on the different battlegrounds though, each battleground has different win conditions. On one you might have to capture a flag, on another you might need to capture three towers.
That's all I can think of right now, hope you enjoy the game :)
Best Answer
The most efficient way is would be constantly winning rated arena matches. However this is highly unlikely since at one point you'll reach a rating where constantly winning is close to impossible.
So the options listed here are your preferred strategy (in order of efficiency).
World quests!
Those can earn you the most honor for how little time they need to complete.
Unfortunately there's only 3 tower quests (300 honor) every 24 hours. There are also the arena quests which are done rather quickly (500 honor) but they also only spawn every 6 hours.
So what should you do after that?
First win of the day!
Make sure you'll get the first win of the day for every queue there is. Battleground wins will give you more honor than arenas and rated will reward you with more than unrated matches (the rating doesn't matter here).
Now you've completed every worldquest and you've won at least once in every queue available to you? Now there's only one option left:
Zerging BGs
Ok we all know that zerging in BGs is bad and you shouldn't do this if you want to win. Unfortunately it's still the most efficient way of grinding honor after you've completed all the other options. Note that while this is faster than "properly" playing the objectives in BG it's not an insane difference.