Paid levelling guides. Whats your opinion?

[mikekim]

Got to the point now that I have levelled up 5 sets of toons and I know the levelling route backwards now :thumbup:

[Knobley]

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.

[HPB]

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.

[DgtlSorcrs]

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.

[glo]

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.

[heffner]

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.

[Ellusionist]

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.

[Evilseed]

I'm using http://wtbblue.com and rocking my 5x druids nicely.

[Pippin]

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.

[darkxer]

Tour Guide[/url]
TourGuide is an ingame leveling guide I've used the paid guides and this free guide is better than all of them.

Doublewide
DoubleWide is a simple AddOn for a simple idea -- pull the quest log into side-by-side areas so it's double wide instead of cramping the size of the quest list.

Light Headed
LightHeaded is a very simple addon that displays quest information and comments from http://www.wowhead.com in game, eliminating the need to Alt-Tab when you get stuck on quest.

TomTom
TomTom is your personal navigation assistant in World of Warcraft.

Cartographer
Cartographer is a modular, lightweight, and efficient framework for manipulation of the world map.
Get the latest Cartographer here.

QuestHelper
QuestHelper compiles a list of waypoints for the quests in your quest log, and sorts them so as to minimize the distance between them, and so that they happen in the correct order.
Make sure you enable the tracked filter or it will interfere with TourGuide.
Just a heads up QuestHelper has a known bug where it will lock WoW up when starting a timed quest.

There is a FAQ about installing addons.

Enjoy.

The post i quoted is right on the money.
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.