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.