WoW-Pro Leveling Addon - How the launch went


The Cataclysm launch went very well. I dinged 84 last night with my character, and I did that while:
  • Editing mistakes I saw in the leveling addon files
  • Sleeping and eating (granted, I don't sleep much) normally!
  • Only took the morning off on tuesday, which means I almost did normal work hours since the release and still managed to hit level 84 last night around midnight in Uldum while taking notes and updating the leveling guides as I went.
This just shows how good our leveling addon is! It allows for such fast leveling, without ever having any downtime being stuck on a quest. I'll hit level 85 tonight easily, while taking notes to update the Twilight Highlands guide ;)

And it keeps getting better, as our team of guide writers and testers go through our guides several times, we spot mistakes or things that could be optimized, and we improve them!

Cataclysm is out since only 3 days, and we already got tons of updates, which will be implemented in the next Addon Update (coming soon!).

Meanwhile, if you can't wait and want the latest versions, I've uploaded the new Uldum file, which I just re-optimized myself. It should be near perfect now:

Download: WoW-Pro Leveling Addon - Updated Uldum File

And of course, our Uldum Leveling Guide gets you the following zone achievements:



About addon leveling speed: I honestly don't think there can be a faster way to level up. I was level 82 in about 7 hours of /play after the launch, and that's with:

  • A very poorly equipped character which I hadn't played since he hit level 80 back then in WotLK!
  • All the overcrowding and fighting over the same NPCs with other players. I even lost 20 minutes on a certain quest in Mount Hyjal, it was hell.
  • I was taking notes as I went! Wasting time alt-tabbing between the game and my notepad.
So just imagine the kind of leveling speed you can get without all those hinderances ;)

All in all, I'm extremely happy and impressed with the our Leveling Addon, and I can't wait to do a speed run with a new character once it's all finished.

I'll post my results of course once I'm there, so stay tuned (list of our feeds, twitter, facebook, newsletter, etc) for more leveling guides and addon updates!

WoW-Pro Leveling Addon - Cataclysm Ready!

Hey everyone!

We've been working hard on our leveling guides for Cataclysm, and they're ready!

Not only do we already have a lot of guides ready for Cataclysm:


But we also have our own in-game leveling addon:


If you've never heard of our amazing free leveling addon, here's a quick video to give you an overview:




Please remember that all our guides are free and driven by the wow-pro community. The only thing we ask in return is to SPREAD THE WORD!

  • Talk about it (tell your friends, your guild)
  • Share the video on Facebook
  • Share the video on Twitter
  • Share the video on message boards you visit
Thank you in advance!

Duck Hunt - Behind the scenes!

If like me, you were lucky enough to have a NES when you were a kid:



And if you were also lucky enough to play Duck Hunt, with the awesome Nintendo Zapper!


Then you might remember how you cheated sometimes and held the gun point directly against the screen to shoot the poor ducks, right? ;)

And you also remember how the more ducks you shot, the faster they flew around on the screen!

Well, finally, here's the explanation!






ps: More Cataclysm Leveling Guide news soon!

Cataclysm Leveling Addon project coming along nicely!


For those who haven't heard of our Cataclysm Leveling Guide project yet, here is a short summary:

  • Our aim is to have a full 1-85 Leveling Guide by the time the Cataclysm expansion pack ships.
  • Not only will have have the usual paper version of the 1-85 Leveling Guide, but we also plan to have it available as an in game 1-85 Leveling Addon, covering all zones.
  • This includes a full revamp of all the old Azeroth leveling guides.
To that effect, we've been working on our very own leveling addon, with Jiyambi leading the wow pro leveling addon development. She's been making big progress with the leveling addon, which is already in a stable version.

For a list of all the current and upcoming features which will be integrated in the addon, please visit our official wow pro leveling addon page.

So far, the support from the community has been great and I'm confident we'll have the best set of leveling guides and leveling addons by the time Cataclysm is launched.

If you want to test the addon and help with improving it, you can get the latest version here.

Stay tuned until then if you don't want to miss on this huge project! Follow me on twitter if you want to be informed instantly whenever we have news to share.

After Iron Man... Iron Baby will save the world!

I'm sure many of you have seen Iron Man 2, or at least the first sequel.

Well, if you have, I'm sure you'll find this video I just stumbled upon hilarious ;)



Enjoy!

Starcraft 2 Beta Key Contest on Starcraft Replay via Twitter

Starcraft 2 Replay is having yet another SC2 Beta Key Contest!

This time, they've got 3 Starcraft 2 Beta Keys to give away.

The contest is really easy, all you need to do is to follow them on twitter and to retweet the original article as instructed in the contest rules.

Good luck to all participants. Trust me, it's worth it, playing Starcraft 2 Beta is a blast!

Starcraft 2 Replay, SC2 Strategy Guides - Fansite Launch



This is it, I just launched my Starcraft 2 Fansite, which will contain Starcraft 2 Replays, Starcraft 2 Strategy Guides, Starcraft 2 Build Orders and Starcraft 2 News.

I suggest that you start by reading the first SC2 News Article I made, which will explain how this Starcraft 2 Fansite works.

I think you're all gonna like it. But before more people start coming, I'd really like you guys to test the site, create an account and try out all the features.

Just click around, try to find bugs! And if you find them, please let me know. You can private message me on starcraft-replay.com, or on wow-pro.com, or post a comment here under this article, or e-mail me:

jame @ wow-pro dot com

Really looking forward to hearing your feedback.

ps: You can already watch Starcraft 2 Replays without SC2 Beta Access! Click the link to read my guide on how to do that.

1-80 in 3 days /played with no rested bonus

Proof that my leveling guides are still quite performant.

Tizz recently posted a screenshot of the latest character he leveled up while using my leveling guides, and here's the result:


3 days 11 hours 37 minutes 47 seconds from level 1 to level 80.

Granted, he had the Heirloom items (Chest, Shoulders, Weapon) and some gold to twink his character, but still. With no rested bonus, no recruit a friend bonus and no powerleveling help from any other character, this is pretty amazing.

And this character is a shaman. Shamans are very quick levelers, but not as quick as say, hunters or death knights for example. So this score can be beat while using my leveling guides :)

If anyone is up to the challenge, I'd be curious to see this record beat!

Original post on wow-pro.

SC2 Beta and Starcraft-Replay Launch date!

Update: The site will be launched on Saturday 27th February. There are still a few details we need to take care of to ensure a smooth launchs, so we had to postpone the launch date a little.

I finally got in SC2 Beta! That means you'll soon see some SC2 Guides and SC2 Build Orders for me, as well as some replays. ;)

I haven't got to play the beta a lot yet because I was way too busy this week-end, however my brother did have time and he already has over a 70 games under his belt, so he'll help me with build orders. He is actually a much better RTS player than I am, so expect to see some cool replays from us soon.

Meanwhile, I'm still looking for extra SC2 beta keys. Not only because my brother always hogs my account, but also because the other people helping me out with my new starcraft 2 website need to have beta access to be able to write guides and upload replays.

Which brings me to my announcement...

My new Starcraft 2 website will be go live this week on Saturday, the address will be:

www.starcraft-replay.com

For now, it is password protected so you can't access it. This new project of mine won't be only about sc2 replays of course. It will contain sc2 guides and build orders written by myself and other members of the community, as well as the latest starcraft 2 news.

It will be pretty much like wow-pro, only better. My starcraft 2 website will look a lot cooler and have awesome community features, including an xp system and a reward system for the top contributors.

Take a look at my previous sc2 website project article to find out more.

WoW-Pro Leveling Addon - A new start

It looks like we won't be able to use TourGuide as a base for our leveling addon in the near future. To find out why, visit this thread: http://www.wow-pro.com/node/2850

But this might actually be good news, now is actually a great time to create a new addon, specifically for wow-pro, and with all the improvements we would like to implement.

We were already going to re-write the whole guides from 1 to 60 for Cataclysm anyway, with the arrival of Cataclysm and the revamp of all the old Azeroth zones, so the timing could not be better on this.

We've already got a few wow-pro members willing to help on this new project, but since this is a huge project, we'll take all the help we can get.

In any case, we need everyone's input for our new leveling addon.

What features would you like to see in the new addon version?
What would you like to see changed compared to the old version?

Discuss it here, your opinion matters.

Starcraft 2 Beta Started! Beta keys needed!


The Starcraft 2 Beta has just gone live early this morning! Here's blizzard's official news about it.

While that's great news, it also saddens me a little that after all these years running a useful fansite for World of Warcraft and writing tons of guides which have helped the community, I didn't get a beta invite for Starcraft 2, despite all my attempts.

So here I am again, turning to my community, asking for help. My Starcraft 2 Website is about to go live, and I badly need beta access or I won't be able to write guides, news and post replays there.

So please, if you've got a spare beta key and want to help me out, this will be a HUGE help.

How to contact me:
  • e-mail me at jame.wow.pro.blog (@) gmail.com
or
  • send me a private message on wow-pro. Log in on wow-pro go to Jame's profile and click on "Write Private Message"


Thank you.

Starcraft 2 Beta will start on Monday 22nd of February

That's my hunch, and here's why:

1. The beta release was officially announced for the month of February during the blizzard conference call on February 10th. It was also confirmed the next day by Blizzard's official starcraft twitter account:


2. The Official Starcraft 2 Beta forums came online yesterday:

(click to enlarge image)

So why Monday 22nd?

Well, try to put yourself in blizzard's shoes. If you were blizzard and wanted a smooth beta launch, would you start it at the end of the week, when most of your employees have week-end plans and when most SC2 Fan in the world is done with their work/school week?

I think I would launch beta at the beginning of a week, so that if anything hits the fan, my team has the whole week to fix it.

Plus, if anything does hit the fan, there will be less people complaining about it on a week-day than on a weekend day, simply because they'll be busy with work or school.

It turns out Monday 22nd is the last monday of the month of February. Hence my hunch.

What's your hunch? ;)

My Starcraft 2 Website Project - A closer look

As promised yesterday, I'm going to give you more information about my soon-to-be-launched Starcraft 2 website.

The website is still password protected so you can't access it right now. Therefore I'm not gonna link the URL. However, I'm going to show you pictures.

Please keep in mind we haven't made the final touches yet, so it will look better than that when it's 100% finished.

And since a picture is worth a thousand words, here is 10000 words worth of pictures:


(click to enlarge image)

As you can see, the top window will allow you to see all the Top rated Guides, Replays, Users and to quickly access them.

The 4th tab called "New Shields" is a list of guides / replays who got an award, which we call "Shields". You earn them when one of your guides or replay got a lot of positive ratings:

(click to enlarge image)

Those shields will always appear next to your avatar when you post guides and comments, not only to show off, but also to provide links to your best contributions to other users.

Shields will also be listed in your user profile page, along with other information:

(click to enlarge image)

Creating an account will be easy as pie and only take a few seconds:

(click to enlarge image)

You will always be able to track your current XP while logged in, thanks to this little user window on the left side of the screen:

Each new level you gain, you will unlock new avatars, which you can activate in 2 clicks right from the "Manage Account" window from the above picture. Here is how it looks like (click to enlarge the image):


(click to enlarge image)

To make sure you don't miss it, you'll get a congratulations notice whenever you level up:

(click to enlarge image)


Of course, the website will also offer an advanced replay search and an advanced guide search function:

(click to enlarge image)

For the guide writing tool, we really worked hard to provide our guide writers with everything they need:

(click to enlarge image)

And finally a last big spoiler. There were only 6 Ranks on wow-pro (Registered Member, Trusted Member, Honored Member, Revered Member, Exalted Member, Moderator), there will be 20 on this new Starcraft 2 Website, here are the ranks and the XP required for each rank:

(click to enlarge image)

The website should be up and running before the end of February, hopefully before the beta starts.

I'm really excited about this new project and I'm sure you guys will help me make this new website as great, if not better, as wow-pro.

Stay tuned!

My other big project: Starcraft 2


Tomorrow morning I'll reveal exactly what's that secret project I've been working on over the past few months.

Yes, it's about Starcraft 2, and yes, it will involve a website, guides, replays, news, and most importantly: an incredible community system.

If you thought the wow-pro karma system was nice, you'll be blown away by this one, it is ten times better, at the very least ;) More details about this tomorrow!

Starcraft 2 beta is launching this month, and so will my website. I know some of you who follow my blog maybe do not care much for Starcraft 2, or the whole RTS genre for that matter, but trust me, you should give Starcraft 2 a shot, it's going to be leagues beyond anything the genre has seen.

I actually played Starcraft for nearly a year, when I was 17 - 18 years old. I had a ladder ranking of 1400+ or so (if you never played the old starcraft, that was pretty decent), but was limited in my playtime because back then, there was no broadband internet available where I lived, so I played on a good old 28.8 kbit/s phone modem.


My Starcraft pro career came to a swift end during the 1998 summer holydays when my parents received a phone bill of about 2000$, which I had to pay back with the summer job money I had earned that very same summer. Good old times ;)

In any case, Starcraft was an amazing RTS, probably the most balanced RTS ever made, and the 2nd opus won't dissapoint.

So yes, from now on, Jame will not be only writing guides for WoW. I will be writing guides for Starcraft 2, and in the future for Diablo III.

This is one of the reasons why I created a Twitter account, to help people who like my guides find them quickly, no matter what website I post them on. The other reason is that Twitter will allow me to stay in touch with the wow-pro community members better. Oh and, the last reason is that Twitter is just pretty damn cool.

Add me on twitter if you don't want to miss anything:

Follow Jame on Twitter
See you tomorrow for a big update about my Starcraft 2 project ;)

Zul'Drak Leveling Guide - Testers Welcome!

In case you missed it, a new Zul'Drak leveling guide is out, both for the Horde and the Alliance.


If you take a look at it, you'll probably think that I wrote it, because it looks exactly like one of my guides. I didn't, this guide was written by Theos, who recently joined WoW-Pro.

I must say I was blown away, the quality level is just as good as mine, and it was his first guide!

This makes me pretty confident about my Cataclysm Leveling Addon and Guide project, when new members are able to be this helpful, I really think I'll get enough help to make my Cataclysm project work.

Now all this guide needs is Testers! If you got a character who hasn't touched Zul'Drak quests yet and feel like helping out, then try the Zul'Drak guide and report the following:

  • Spelling mistakes (if you see any)
  • Quest circuit optimizations (if possible)
  • Leveling Speed (XP/hour) - If you can
Please post your feedback as comments directly under the guides so that Theos can easily find them. Oh and, don't forget to rate the guide too ;)

Big Update: WoW-Pro Leveling Addon, Cataclysm and other news

Hello fellow readers, I'm back!

I apologize for being so inactive over the past few months, but I was going through some big changes in my life, so I didn't have the time nor the motivation to stay active on wow-pro and on my blog.

But now that things are back in order, expect frequent news and big projects from me ;)

WoW-Pro Leveling Addon Update - Cataclysm


1. There will be a Cataclysm Leveling Addon and Cataclysm Leveling Guides

  • Yes, you read that right. I will be writing together leveling guides for Cataclysm, and that includes a full revamp of the old Azeroth zones from 1 to 60. But this time, I will do it smart, which means I won't be doing this all by myself and run out of time before the Cataclysm beta ends.
2. How are you going to make a full Cataclysm Leveling Addon in time?

  • I will build a team made of wow-pro members, and they'll work together with me during the Cataclysm Beta to speed up the guide writing and leveling addon writing process.
  • Here's how it will work: we'll get Cataclysm Beta Keys, then I will assign zones to each of member of the team, give them advices, quality control their guides and improve them as I see fit until they reach the "WoW-Pro" standards.
3. Who gets to be on the Cataclysm Leveling Addon & Guides team?

  • Needless to say, the wow-pro top contributors will have priority, they already have the experience in guide writing and/or addon writing, plus they deserve to be asked first.
  • However, this is a huge undertaking, so new members will probably be more than welcome to help on certain aspects of the project.
4. Where do I sign up?

  • Nowhere for now, keep following my blog and I will let you know as soon as it's time ;)
5. What can I do to help meanwhile?

  • We will need Cataclysm Beta Keys, and I'm not sure I can provide enough on my own. So if you have contacts to get some beta keys and are willing to help with this project, let me know so I can plan ahead, that would be a huge help.
  • Keep on talking to your friends, guildmates and other gaming buddies about wow-pro, about the free quality leveling guides we provide there, and how helpful the community is.

Other News

HolyJame Leveling Addon Speed Testing

If you were following the progress of Holyjame, I'm sorry to let you know that there won't be a next chapter.

The reason is simple: with Cataclysm coming and the whole old Azeroth zones being revamped, it makes little sense to work so hard on the current 1-60 zones.

However, I will be doing a similar speed testing diary once we're done with the Cataclysm Leveling Addon ;)

My other big project

I lied, I haven't been completely inactive while I was away. I do have a big project going on, and yes, it's related to a Blizzard game. I can't reveal much more right now, but I will in the coming few days right here on my blog, you don't want to miss it ;)

Stay tuned, and thank you all for your patience and support!