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I used brian knopps guide for a long time, i've recently come across tourguide and this has now replaced my need for any guide outside the game, unfortunatly at times i do need to check up on things on wowhead but Lightheaded would solve that problem. I would recommend to anyone before they buy a guide, try tourguide, its free so you have nothing to lose :)
I haven't used any guides, but I swear by carbonite. I estimate it increases my leveling efficiency at least 2-3 times.
It outlines all the areas for quests and pinpoints all the quest givers. So if you need to kill 10 things, it will tell you exactly where they spawn.
No guessing anymore where things are... you just steer towards the colored area. Another awesome feature is you can scroll and zoom the map just like Google maps.
You can get all the info you need for free.
This will cost you time. There are also some free guides and some are very good. Personally, I'd say: Don't waste time on levelling guides. Or any other guides. I get curious all the time, but mainly you get the information that is posted on the forums / fan sites, pressed into a double-line-spacing pdf. And that's it.
If that's worth the money... well, you decide.
Paid leveling guides aren't worth it.
The time you win by leveling quicker, will be wasted on reading the manual. Seriously, get an addon like questhelper, and more you shouldn't need. :P
In the past I've used paid levelling guides and at the time were well worth the price. Unfortunately, I'm not familiar with any paid levelling guides on the market at the moment so I couldn't offer an informed opinion. As others have mentioned, there is a mod called Carbonite (paid subscription) and it's well worth every cent they are asking for it. To be honest, if they tripled the price I'd still pay for it. Some people have an objection to paying for a mod, but I guess it's the same people who have an objection to paying for a levelling guide.
If you are multibox levelling all you need is questhelper.or another of the freeingame add-ons.
I wouldn't go near i-demises guide,after 6-months they still havent fixed the Nagrand and Blades Edge coordinates.
That and their new interface sucks badly.
I hear this all the time and it's just not true. Questhelper is a great mod, and I use it a lot, but it doesn't completely replace a guide if you're looking for max leveling efficiency.Quote:
Originally Posted by 'Kaynin',index.php?page=Thread&postID=132854#post1 32854
Here's why:
Suppose you start out in area A with a bunch of quests. Some of those quests tell you to go to area X and do whatever and then come back. So you do, then finish all the other quests in area A which gives you the breadcrumb quest to the next area, call it area B. Now in area B you find there are one or more quests asking you to go back to area X and do whatever. Sometimes even kill the exact same mobs. Clearly this is not efficient.
Questhelper will never tell you "oh yeah, wait on this quest because you're going to need to go there anyway a few quests away", so it doesn't help you figure out the optimal path of execution.
You may think this is a small difference, but trust me, when you put it all together it saves you a ton of time.
The main advantage with leveling guides is not that it tells you how to do the quest. Its the order that you do the quests in.
WIth joanas guide he has leveld tons of 1-60/70 and i'm sure 80s on beta/live but he basically goes through and decides which quest take less time for the most exp.
I found joana's to be really efficient.
I used joannas guide way back, and it was the best thing since sliced bread for speed and efficiency.
I use quest helper now, just to help give me cordinates... but nothing I have found in game replaced the "good" guides.
The big thing is that many of us leveled without the guides and addons. We wanted to go faster so we bought the guides since their were no real addons that do what questhelper/tourguide/etc does at the time. If they were out there, they were buggy as hell. I bought Brian Kopp's and even though I was on my 5th toon to lvl 60 (these were single boxed), I learned so many quests that I missed the first 5 times that it wasn't even funny.
Honestly, with outlands and northrend, I would have probably only used it to tell me which quests to skip. Let QH tell me the specifics for most of the quests.
I have used Joana's up to lvl 43. I 2-boxed it and did all the quests (even loot quests... it's 2box, not 5) Ended up 2 levels behind the guide. Let my rested xp catch up a little bit and fell right back into place with it.
Brian Kopp's was a little better than Joana's for me, but I will still randomly turn on the Joana 1-60 videos when I can't find anything on TV for background noise on a late raiding night.
Regarding the OP, I don't think the paid guides are neccessary now. The addons and free guides will suffice.
Got to the point now that I have levelled up 5 sets of toons and I know the levelling route backwards now :thumbup:
I've used Brian's guide, and, to a lesser extent Joanna's.
I think they were worth it at the time.
Nowadays Questhelper does the job well enough for me. The only real advantage to the guides that questhelper doesn't provide are what quests to AVOID. But since that was mainly from a solo perspective it wasn't as applicable to multi-boxers. The guides offer some other slight advantages to help you optimize your path as well as things like "make sure you save all your xxx, and be sure to buy an xxx while you're inn xxx"... a few little things like that to speed things along. I'm not sure those niceties are worth the price any more.
I've used Joana's extensively for several characters. My opinion is that if you are in a hurry and plan on quickly leveling, use it. There are some caveats though....
1) It sucks the life out of you. Questing is no longer fun, it is a horrid grind. It becomes WORK. For some reason this is much more depressing than using a mod like Quest Helper or Liteheaded/TomTom.
2) If you follow the guide the way Joana wants you to, you won't be doing anything else, no professions or anything (other than first aid), so prepare to grind that later.
3) This is not a multi-boxer friendly guide. Quests that are 'Group' quests are often skipped by Joana, while a boxer would find these quests quick and easy. Gathering quests that Joana takes the time to do, would simply kill a multi-boxer.
So if you're leveling one character, want to do it fast and don't mind being a mindless zombie for a few days, go for it. That's how I leveled my hunter to 70 super fast. Otherwise, don't. For some reason, the mood is lighter when you're picking your own path, and honestly with all the quest mods out there, you can be just as effiecient while being the master of your own destiny and determining what quests are good for you and which ones to skip.
edit: Additional note - I felt compelled to say that I attempted to follow Joana's WOTLK guide while dual-boxing my priest and hunter. By the time I hit 75 I was ready to /wrist /delete /unsub. If you've got even 2 characters going at once, don't do it that way.
Before I started MultiBoxing, I bought Brian Kopp's Alliance guide and when I went Horde, I bough Joana's Horde guide.
I found they helped a lot when I didn't really know the area/quests, and even when I was coming around an area leveling a new toon and sort of knew the quests, I found the guides to be useful for locations and for "stacking".
Now that QuestHelper and other addons are out there, I find that the real value of Joana's guide (for me) is still in "stacking". Sometimes, they send you to get all these quests in one area, and where according to QH, you'd just go kill these guys, turn in./ whatever, the guide will say "now, go here and pick this quest up" and sure enough it turns out that you can now complete two quests at once instead of ending up running back to an area you've been in to do a different quest you could have done at the same time had you known.
Also, since the guide tells you when there's likely to be an escort or when something is a "collect x of these" if you read slightly ahead, you can adjust for multiboxing.
Also Also, with the new phasing areas and the way that quest givers/turnin folks tend to pop up in multiple places in Northrend, QH has been directing me to the wrong place (mostly for quest turnins) a lot. I find that double-checkin to see that Joana's given location matches questHelper (and putting in my own TomTom waypoint if it doesn't) has saved me a lot of frustration.
The lesson here is that no matter what tools you use, there is no substitute for paying attention and using your head.
So, I tend to use Quest Helper, do a quick check of Joana's guide, and refer to Thottbot, wowhead, and wowwiki as needed, and in the end, I rarely follow any of them 100%. They're only tools.
Back in the days you might have found a guide useful but there really is no need for it now. Blizzard has gotten much better at their zone and questing design almost to the point where you can't really mess up regardless of which direction you go. Grab questhelper addon and take a few seconds to read the quest text before you head out you should be able to knock levels out fast enough. If you come across a collection quest hit your favorite site and see if the chain is something you want to do.
I like Jame's guides. If you want a plug-in/add-on and videos to go with the guide then you will likely have to pay for a guide. They aren't really expensive and it's only worth it if you want those extra items, but buyer beware because I know that there was at least one guide that basically took Jame's guide word-for-word up to L60. I consistently read good reviews about Joanna's guide.
As for content, I'd say Jame's guides are better, if not as good as, the others I have seen. I have used both his Alliance and Horde guides to 70. However, since I installed Questhelper I find that it's fairly adequate for my needs.
The main advantage of a guide is to make leveling the most efficient through "multitasking" and reduce time by not running in circles. Guides also indicate those out of the way escort quests and dropped quests (you know the ones that you get a drop and click on it to start a quest). Questhelper does not show dropped quests (AFAIK). They are the easiest quests to do too!
Also, the majority of guides are obviously not written with multiboxing in mind. Of course, that doesn't stop me from using them as I just skip the collection quests I don't have the tolerance for.
At this point I doubt I would pay $ for a guide.
I can't believe I'm only like the 3rd person posting that uses Zygor's guide! It uses TomTom, also.
It's absolutely awesome! I have NEVER opened a webpage to look up quest information since installing Zygor's guide. There are times it doesn't advance to the next step on its own, but with a little common sense (knowing you've completed that step), you just press "next" and you're back on track. It has every quest in the game except dungeon quests, for obvious reasons.
I'm a sole believer in finishing every quest because -- what if you miss one quest that was part of a huge chain where you could have gotten major XP? You do just that--miss it! While it's not that big of a deal pre-BC or pre-WotLK now, still having every quest in the game is priceless.
QuestHelper is too sloppy for me... you pick up a bunch of quests, but it doesn't strategically send you down the quickest path. All of my slaves run it, just so I can see when they've picked up all "20 items" or something without having to shift-click the quest in my log.
I'm using http://wtbblue.com and rocking my 5x druids nicely.
I have used Joanna's and brian's and there were both really nice but my only complaint about them is that I had to either print them off or keep minimizing to read them. I am using zygors now and it freakin rocks. I hate questinig and this made it so much easier. Mind you this was only on one toon.
The post i quoted is right on the money.Quote:
Originally Posted by BGuru',index.php?page=Thread&postID=96463#post9646 3]I tried all the paid guides and like TourGuide best.
Here is a post I made in the macro forum.
Here are some addons I use to help with leveling.
[url='http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info7674-TourGuide.html
Lightheaded + QuestHelper + TomTom or Cartographer = Better than any guide..
I bought Zygor's guide and asked for my money back with NO reply from the seller.
I'd have to say, the Brian Kopp guide was amazing for pre-BC and it was far and away the best guide I've come across for the BC era of wow as well.
Unfortunately, Kopp promised lifetime upgrades to his guide when purchased, for all those who purchased at or around (or prior to) the release of Burning Crusade.
Sometime prior to WotLK, he updated his site and changed the site to read, lifetime upgrades for Classic through Burning Crusade content, but that each future expansion would be its own product.
I can understand where he's coming from; he puts in a lot of time during the beta to find an optimal path.
But he pissed off a massive number of people. If you give lifetime upgrades to something you sell, you should honor your word.
Bottom line, anyone who purchases now will get what they paid for, lifetime updates to the content purchased.
Anyone who purchased the previous guide is ripped off by someone whose word has no value.
I'll never give Kopp another penny.
Even if his guide was the best I've found to date, integrity has a value and Kopp has demonstrated he does not have many values.
*Edit - To the poster above me*
If the author guarantees you money back with no questions asked, both paypal and your credit card company will credit you or give you a charge back.
I did this with a wow guide that did not deliver remotely close to what was advertised.
The authors site promised a no questions asked money back guarantee.
The author answered my emails while I was a prospective buyer, but would not respond to me as a politely disgruntled purchaser.
Paypal was quick to credit my master card.
Joana's guide did the same thing. Promised free upgrades, then wanted extra cash for the Northrend Guide. The reason is that I'm sure the old guide wasn't making as much money anymore as everyone already has it. No incoming flux of cash means no reason to upgrade it. It's the same thing that happend to my favorite mud client, Zmud. The software creator had promised free upgrades for life and it was all good for a while. When the money stopped coming in, his next major upgrade was called Cmud, so he could charge for it again. It's a shame in a way to have to pay more money, but if there's no influx of cash, there's no reason to keep working on the product. At that point, you've always got the chance to stop using the product, which is why I never moved to Cmud. I did however purchase the Northrend guide from Joana, thinking it would be useful (and I'm sure it is to single-boxers).
I used Brian Kopps lvling guide and they are really good.
Not only from an XP point of view which is where they shine, they are also constructed to max your rep with each faction.
On a side note, alot of odd things like pets etc are also included as "optional" ie if you dont mind getting side tracked for 15-30 mins.
Never paid for em tho, but i would say they Brian Kopps would have been worth it.
From a mBox perspective i use questhelper, I get all quests and with 5 chars i just trash, no guide needed since they usually never include xping in instances and I prefere to lvl in instances.