Paid levelling guides. Whats your opinion?

[Killerc]

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

[not5150]

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.

[Glord]

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.

[Kaynin]

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

[Fleecy]

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.

[5fingersofdoom]

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.

[BobGnarly]

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

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.

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.

[Dgc2002]

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.

[Iceorbz]

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.

[Duese]

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.