Someone never played Prophecies! You were near the end of the game by the time you finally dinged 20 if you were playing just prophecies (Like, in the desert, iirc). And on your first char, that took a couple days.
Anyways, yeah, there's no steep leveling curve, and 80 levels is just a number. Leveling doesn't mean much, pretty much the only reason it's there is so that people aren't like "HIT LEVEL CAP IN A DAY, GOT BORDZ. GAME IZ BAD."