Are quests necessary in pandaria?

[Madruga]

You really don't need to quest to level from 85 to 90, but you really should.

Doing the 4 dungeons over and over again would be excruciating. Not to say you are suposed to run heroics after that to gear up...

If you really are into PVP, you really could level in BGs... But questing is the fastest way. And you see some nice lore at the same time.

[pimpeddakota]

I recommend you not to do D's just to level... because when you have to run them as heroics you will want to /wrists... As some have pointed out some of the reps require quests to be done to allow you to see phased areas

[Matt0193]

For quests that are absolutely necessary, I'd say it's only the Temple of the White Tiger chain. That's if you'd rather unlock the vale yourself, as opposed to being portaled there.

The quest itself can be picked up at level 87 from most random questgivers, it'll say something along the lines of "Prince Anduin" or "the Human prince" is attempting to talk the White Tiger into granting everyone access to the vale.

Aside from that, nothing else unlocks anything that is particularly important. You'll probably be left with some annoying phasing issues, not seeing the whole of the Vale if you don't do the introductory quests or missing later quest hubs because you didn't do the zone's starting quests.

The only plus for Mists, as opposed to Cata's design, is that while many of the quests are linked in one way or another, you are allowed to wonder off and explore other hubs without having much of a problem with quest availability. Valley is a fine example; You can almost skip the entire Chen storyline and still complete most of the zone. However to complete the "Saviour of Stoneplow" achievement you will need to complete every chain, including the Chen storyline and finding the hidden master. Kun-Lai is quite the opposite; almost all of the zone can be done in any order with the exception of the Grummle chain which requires you to do escorts from one camp to another.

I suppose you need the quests to open the VoeB?

Yes, but that's only if you intend to do anything within the vale, such as finding rares (Yorik's Smite Costume <3) or Dailies. Once you're in, you can fly everywhere else.

[announced]

just dungeons and pvp to hit 90? we'll see u in a few months.

dungeons give laughable amounts of exp per lvl... pvp isnt much better offering around 1m for a win.. best advice is just to quest. u need some to unlock the klaxxi and the vale.

[Revolutions]

I leveled my paladin doing the Rare Hunter Method.

Queue for dungeons as dps and within the 15-30 min queue time go hunter Rares. Its a fun way to level.

[Deleted]

Dungeons don't give too much XP but if you chainrun them you get fas at clearing so you can complete them in 7Min or so. And even if you are questing it is usefull to run Dungeons occasionally because there are Quests inside and nice Loot that in turn speeds up questing.

So you are clearing the lowbie instances in 7 minutes at the right level? Seems legit:P.

Regarding the topic, I'd just make sure to jump to townlong and dread as soon as possible, for the added perk of klaxxi & shado-pan rep.