Jame's Game Guides

If you're here, it means you play wow, and it's probably one of your main hobbies, if not your main hobby. But I'm sure you also fill your spare time with other things, right?

Well, here's what I do when I'm not playing wow:

1. Music - Ah well, who doesn't like music. But anyway, this is one of my most solid hobbies, and it's always what I do when I don't feel like doing any of the above. I always go back to music.
I can't really say I have a favorite band, I just like too many of them. I just have a favorite song of the day, and it changes almost everyday until I get bored with it :)

I like pretty much every style, from Metallica to Vivaldi, from Rise Against to Natalie Imbruglia. Just to give you an idea ^^

If I had to chose a genre as a favorite, I'd probably go with Rock (that includes all sorts of rock: punk rock, alternative rock, etc). Metal would be a close second and pop would be a very close 3rd.

What do I listen to right now?

This:



Blame Guitar Hero for making me realize how much I like that song! (today at least ^^)

I've also started to make new playlists on my YouTube account, I listen to them when I'm working on my guides or just playing WoW. For now there's only one playlist, but more will come, in case you're interested. Who knows, you might discover a few songs you like ;)

Jame's Playlist #1: Rock/Metal/Etc

2. MMA - If you've no idea what that is. MMA stands for Mixed Martial Arts, it's a combat sport where all fighting styles are used, Wrestling, Jiu-Jitsu, Boxing, Muay-Thai and other striking styles. You've probably heard of the UFC, it is the biggest organisation for MMA and honestly, it's a very exciting and fast growing sport. It's no longer considered as "human cockfighting", there are rules and the fighters are real athletes. Anyway, I love the sport and that's one of the things I do when I'm not playing wow ;)

To give you an idea, here's a video of my favorite fighter, Anderson Silva. He's a Muay-Thai specialist and in my opinion the best striker in the world, but he's also a black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, so basically he's as dangerous on the floor as on his feet:



3. Mangas/Animes - Maybe I'm too old for this, but I've been reading Mangas since the very first appeared in my country. I'm talking about Akira, Hokuto no Ken and the likes. I still read and follow a number of mangas, including Naruto, Bleach, Claymore and Full Metal Panic (I'm reading the novels).

If I had to say which was my favorite anime/manga of all times, I'd probably go with Full Metal Panic. I highly recommend watching the 3 seasons of the anime.

4. Movies - I love going to the cinema. I guess most people do, but anyway, I'm a huge addict. The last movie I went to was Wall-E, and as with most Pixar movies, it didn't dissapoint. A great movie, I highly recommend it.

I'm looking forward to seeing Valkyrie in January. I hope it lives up to the hype.

ps: If you have any awesome movie you'd like to recommend, go for it, I really like all styles besides musicals.

5. Guitar Hero - This is my latest hobby and it recently entered my top 5. I just picked up Guitar Hero: World Tour a few days ago for christmas, and I'm addicted. I love music in all forms, and I also love competition in all forms, and this game brings both. So I'm having a lot of fun really, I wish I had more time to play it at the moment!

Well that's just my TOP5, I've got other hobbies but this post is already long enough as it is!

Feel free to comment and to mention some of your hobbies too ;)

Hey guys, I´m half drunk and celebrating christmas with my family right now, but I´m still taking 5 minutes to wish you all a merry christmas and to thank you again for all the support you´ve given me over the past 3 months.

Thank you for reading my blog as well, I really appreciate that ;)

So, merry christmas and have a wonderful evening!

Hey everyone. Sorry for the lack of updates, I just didn't get much time to write lately, because of the following 3 reasons:

1. I'm working on my Zul'Drak Leveling Guide as fast as I can.
2. I'm currently working together with a professional Drupal Theme Designer to have a brand new theme for wow-pro. It's a lot of work but it looks very promisng, I can't wait to have it finished.
3. Christmas time is coming, so a lot of preparations have to be made for family visits, buying gifts, wrapping gifts (and god I suck at wrapping gifts), etc.

I'll still try to write a few blog entries during the christmas period, and after the first week of January, everything should back to normal and the blog will be back to a normal amount of activity.

Thank you for reading, and I wish you the best christmas hollydays!

Today I'm taking a short break from writing my leveling guides (do not worry, it's only gonna be today :P).

I decided it was high time to clean up the site, as many guides have been submitted a long time ago and are outdated.

I've already started cleaning up the Class Guides section. You can for example check the Druid Guides section and you'll see that there's only good guides there.

By good I mean that these guides are:

• Updated and relevant for Wrath of the Lich King
• Nicely formatted, or at least in the process of being properly formatted

There is a lot of work still left to do, so please bear with me and if you see any outdated guide, post a comment under it and I'll take it from there ;)

More importantly, since many guides are getting unpublished in the process, it means that new guides need to be written to replace them, and to keep track of what's needed, we're working on a Needed Guides list, which you can find here:

Needed Guides

It is a wiki page, so basically, every registered user can help keeping this list updated.

So if you feel like writing a guide, that's what you need to check first, to make sure that your efforts are not wasted ;)

Sorry for the lack of updates, but I've been trying to catch up with my schedule and to release the Grizzly Hills Guide for the Horde as soon as possible, which is why I didn't have much time to write about anything.

Meanwhile, a lot of new guides have been posted on wow-pro, and some of them are really good. So don't forget to check out the front page to see if any of these guides could be useful to you. Your feedback is always appreciated.

Anyway, as a reward for following my blog, I'll tell you now that my Grizzly Hills Guide will be released tonight (and not tomorrow), this time it's 100% sure :)

So keep checking the frontpage, the guide should be published within the next 4 hours.

Yay, the EU servers: Jame's WotLK Leveling Guides - Blizzard EU Forums thread finally got stickied. Thanks everyone for your support!

I also want to thank all the people who play on the US servers for all their sticky votes, please keep them coming and I'm sure the US Thread will also get stickied :)

All you have to do is go to the first post and click on the report button:

Then choose "Sticky Request" as report reason.

Note: You must be logged in with your wow account on the forums to see the icon.

Also feel free to post a comment to put in a good word and bump the thread, that never hurts ;)

Much <3

After all this hard work I'm really happy to finally find a way to make sure that my guides will be seen and tested by a larger amount of players.

Someone on the wow forums posted a reply on my thread and said "/vote for sticky".

And this made me think "Hey, it would be great to have my WoTLK threads stickied"

That way, more people will see this thread and discover my guides. Also, if the CMs sticky my thread, it will finally end all those "lol, keylogger???" posts, because it will prove that blizzard officials trust my site to be safe. And it IS safe, for heaven's sake :P

So basically, if my leveling guides helped you out and if you believe that they deserve to be stickied on the wow forums, please go to this thread and post a reply including "/vote for sticky", or something similar:

• If you play on US servers: Jame's WotLK Leveling Guides - Blizzard US Forums
  
• If you play on EU servers: Jame's WotLK Leveling Guides - Blizzard EU Forums
  

Also, please don't forget to go to the original post and to report it by clicking on this icon:

Then choose "Sticky Request" as report reason.

Note: You must be logged in with your wow account on the forums to see the icon.

This is one of the best ways to spread the word about my guides, so I would truely appreciate your help on this one.

Also, I'll be giving 2 Karma Points to anyone who votes my guide for sticky. All you have to do is send me a private message on wow-pro, with a link to the post you made and your character name.

I get this question a lot lately, so I'm gonna make a blog post and be done with it once and for all ;)

What are my plans in terms of guide writing:

1. Finish my WoTLK Leveling Guides - Zul'Drak, Scholazar Basin, Storm Peaks and Icecrown. Both for Horde and Alliance.
2. Release an addon version of my WoTLK Leveling Guides.
3. Write a Gold Making Guide for level 80 players.
4. Write a guide about how to use Key Bindings efficiently - I'll basically share exactly how I play my characters, how I bind my keys and the reasoning behind it. This has been asked many times, so that's why I'm doing it.
   
5. Revamp my other 20-70 Leveling Guides and make an addon version of them.

After that, we'll see, by the time I'm done with all the above there might be a lot of new things in the game, so it would be pointless to make more plans for now, I think I have my hands full anyway.

If you have any observations or suggestions, feel free to leave a comment!

And if you are a guide writer on wow-pro or plan to become one, I'd love to know what are YOUR plans ;)

In case you haven't noticed, I released my last leveling guide 2 days ago: Jame's Alliance Leveling Guide - Grizzly Hills (75-77)

If you've been following my blog and the release dates on wow-pro.com, you must have probably noticed that my guide was released a full day after the original release date. If you wondered why, here are the reasons:

1st Reason: Improving the quality

• One of my goals is to always improve the quality of my guides. Every new chapter I write, the quality improves. I try to make it more easy to read, more fluid and I try to make the maps better. If you take a look at my Grizzly Hills guide, you will notice that most maps only contain 2, 3 or 4 steps. Maximum is 5 steps, and it's only when there are no big images in the circuit. The reason why is simple: whenever I put too many steps in a circuit, people have to scroll back up to look at the map once they get to the latter steps of the circuit, and that's not really good. It makes them lose time and it makes them lose focus on the current step.
• To achieve this goal, I had to do a lot more maps than I usually would for a chapter of this size. To give you an idea, I had to design 41 circuit maps for my Grizzly Hills guide, which is more than what I had to do for the previous chapters, even though Grizzly Hills is a smaller zone than Dragonblight, Borean Tundra and Howling Fjord.
• I'm quite satisfied with the result, my Grizzly Hills guide should be even easier to follow than any other guide I wrote until now. However, as you can imagine, that took extra effort and time, which is partly a reason why I had to delay the release of this chapter.

2nd Reason: Managing WoW-Pro

Since the release of Wrath of the Lich King, the amount of traffic on wow-pro has nearly doubled, and more importantly, the community is at least 5 times more activte than before.

This means that everyday, I have to read dozens of comments as well as lot of new guides. And I also have to update the Karma Rankings accordingly.

As you can imagine, this takes a lot of my time. I'm really happy about it though and I wouldn't want it any other way.

While I'm on the topic, I want to say a big thank you to all the community members who take the initiative to reply to comments on wow-pro. This saves me a lot of time to not have to answer all the questions myself. So thank you, and please keep it up ;)

Improving the quality even further

I'm kind of running out of ideas at this point to improve the quality of my guides. So to close this article, I'd like to hear suggestions on how I could improve the quality of my guides even further.

Base your comment on my last guide, because I will revamp my older guides in the future (From level 20 to 70) and include all the improvements I have in my WotLK Guides.

Also note that I'm already working on an addon version of my guide, so that's already covered.

With that in mind, please fire away, and I'll do my best to include your suggestions in my next guides!

Lately on wow-pro.com, many new guides are being posted, and the quality has never been so high.

TIP: Subscribe to my videos on YouTube if you want to get them as soon as they're uploaded.

Another video on another quest which seems to pose problems to many people, mostly because it's a little buggy at the moment, but also because there are a few tricks to make it much easier ;)

1. Positioning. The Thane is kinda buggy and doesn't get damaged if you try to attack him from range, so you have to get in his melee range to "trigger" the fight.

2. Using the abilities in the correct order:

• Ability #3 does a lot more damage than Ability #1 and should be used whenever possible
• Ability #2 is a 5 seconds stun, which is awesome to prevent a lot of damage from the Thane

3. Strafing to avoid Volley damage. A quick strafe to the other side and you'll be taking almost no damage from his volley, but the best part is that you'll get cast a couple abilities before he's done channeling volley.

The end result speaks for itself: the drake was still above 50% HP when the fight was over.

I recommend watching the video in High Quality.



If you liked the video, please don't forget to rate it! ;)

Just a little sneak peak at one of the videos I made for my Grizzly Hills Guide (which I will release next week).

It's nothing special, but many people seem to have trouble with the quest [74] Escape from Silverbrook, so I tried to figure out why and found out that it's mostly because of two reasons:

1. Most people never changed their camera following style settings since they started playing wow. Default settings are set to "Smart", which is quite annoying when you want to keep on running while looking behind you.
2. Keybindings. Most people use mouse click for anything and do not use keybindings, which hampers their ability to quickly target areas and to use an ability.

Hopefully, this video will help them fix those two problems and the quest will be really easy for them after they watch the video.

I recommend watching the video High Quality.

Oh, and I hope you don't mind sudden music changes ^^



If you liked the video, please don't forget to rate it! ;)

This is related to my previous article about why it's not a great a idea to go to Northrend at level 68.

If you follow my advice, you'll not skip the rest of my Outland guide, you'll go to Northrend at level 70 or 71, and you'll hit level 80 somewhere in Zul'Drak or Scholazar Basin. That's if you play without rested bonus.

For normal players, who get rested bonus and also do some instances, they will probably hit level 80 in Zul'Drak.

That means Scholazar Basin, Storm Peaks and Icecrown will be untouched when they reach level 80.

And that's when the good part comes, if getting a lot of gold while doing fun quests is your thing :P

The average XP reward from quests in Scholazar Basin, Storm Peaks and Icecrown is 22,000 XP.


That's the average, and it's already 13 gold extra, which IS kind of a big deal :P

Now let's look at the more XP juicy quests:


And there are many quests like that in the last zones of Northrend.

So there you have it, another arguement for not going to Northrend at level 68.

I'm really happy to see I've already got so many followers on this blog. I started it less than 2 months ago and didn't expect I'd get so many readers so quickly.

So thank you guys for reading my blog, and I promise I'll bring more high quality articles for you as soon as I get more time. As you know, right now I'm working on the rest of my WotLK Leveling Guides, so I'm very busy, hence the lack of blog activity.

But still, I'll try to publish 3 or 4 articles a week, even if my schedule is tight.

On a related note, wow-pro.com is getting close to 1 Million absolute visitors. Which means that when it happens, about 10% of the total wow population will have visited my site at least once.

Not bad, and I hope that with the future guides the wow-pro community will release and with your help, we'll get close to 100% of the wow population someday ;)

So please, keep spreading the word!

As you can see from the title, there's a lot I want to talk about today!

I get that question a lot, everyday. So I will answer it here once and for all.

The answer is a clear no, going to Northrend at level 68 is a not a good idea, you are not doing yourself a favor. There are many reasons why it is so:

1. Level requirements on quests in Borean Tundra and Howling Fjord. There are many quests with level 69+, 70+ and even 71+ already in Borean Tundra and Howling Fjord. If you go there at 68, many of them won't be up for you and you'll have to go back to those zones later, which is a waste of time. That means more running around to the same spots where you could have done everything in one run.
2. Fighting mobs higher than you is not efficient. You'll have to fight level 71 mobs at level 68. Sure that's not a big deal, but fighting orange mobs isn't very efficient. They die slower and do more damage to you.
   
3. Level requirements on quests in Dragonblight and further zones. There are already level 72+ and even a level 74+ requirement quest in Dragonblight. If you start Northrend at level 68, there's no way you'll hit 74 in Dragonblight, even if you complete both BT and HF. (unless you play with rested xp all the time and do instances I guess)
4. You'll miss about 2K gold worth of quest. If you skip half of Outland and go straight to Northrend, here is what will happen once you hit level 80: all those Outland quests you skipped will be grey to you. That means no extra level cap gold if you go back to do them. Because if you're an achiever, you WILL go back to do them, for the reputation, the gold, the lore and the zone achievements, right? So why not do them while they are still giving you their full XP reward? If you do them before 70, while they are still yellow or green to you, you'll get the full exp reward from those quests, and you will ding 80 in Northrend much earlier, with several northrend zones left to do. And that means tons of gold from questing at level 80. (And I will release guides for each zone in Northrend). If you do it my way, you'll probably end up 2k or 3k gold richer once you're done with all the quests.
5. Difficult group quests. There are some difficult group quests in Northrend, being two level ahead will make it much easier (you'll be able to solo or duo some of them, which you could never dream of accomplishing if you'd go there 2 levels lower). For example in Dragonblight, there are about 8 group quests which really are difficult. You can't solo them, and duo'ing them is also very difficult depending on your class mix. If you go there with 2 level 74/75, you'll probably pull it off. If you go there with 2 level 71/72, you'll probably fail and have to look for more.
6. Gear upgrades don't make enough of a difference. The gear upgrades from Northrend quests are nice, but honestly, there isn't much of a gap between green quest rewards you get from Nagrand, Netherstorm and BEM and what you get in BT/HF. It's not enough of a difference to make it worthwhile going there so early and sacrificing all the above, really. I speak from experience, I have tried both methods.
7. I went there at 68. I've tried going there with my level 68 Rogue in quest greens (horde side), and then I went there with my other rogue, level 70, in quest greens (alliance side). The difference was really noticeable. It was much easier and efficient with the level 70, not to mention it allowed me to include every quests in circuits, without having to go back and worry about level requirements.
   
8. Overcrowding. Have I mentioned that Northrend is also quite overcrowded at the moment, which slows you down when questing? Try finishing Outland before Northrend, you'll love it. The outland zones are almost empty, you'll have no competition on the quest objectives and you'll have a great time.
   

And finally, there's something I need to clarify, because I get this from dozens of players a week.

There is a HUGE and WIDELY spread misconception among players:

They think that being higher level than the zone's average quest level is bad. They also think that doing green quests or killing green mobs is bad.

This couldn't be further from the truth. It's exactly the opposite! Green mobs die much faster, do much less damage to you and give about 90% as much XP as a yellow mob.

This is even more true for quests! Green quests give 100% as much XP as yellow quests, but are much easier to complete.

Do yourself a favor and listen to my advice: Do NOT skip zones unless you are so far above that the quests are grey to you. As long as it's green, it's great! Don't skip content!

Listen to me and you will level faster and easier. And once you hit level 80, you will be richer, have more reputation and achievements.

All it takes is a little self-discipline, resist the urge to go to Northrend asap, and in the end you'll reap the rewards.

And that's how the rest of the Dragonblight guide went for my hunter:



Total Time Played at level 75: 117 days 22 hours 20 minutes 0 seconds
Total Time Played at level 76: 118 days 2 hours 11 minutes 33 seconds

Time needed from 75 to 76: 3h 51m 33 s

That's pretty good isn't it? Well guess what, I'm actually dissapointed with it. Because I know the lower part of my Dragonblight Guide can do much better.

But let me explain why I didn't pull some crazy numbers this time:

• I did all the group quests of Dragonblight. I don't know why, but I just wanted to do them all and was hoping some special quest would become unlocked ^^ You never know, right? :P Anyway, this slowed me down quite a bit as you can imagine, as looking for a group and waiting on members to gather can take a while sometimes.
• As always, overcrowding slowed me down, especially in the New Hearthglen circuits, this was horrible.
• I dinged 76 right before I was about to get to the juicy part of my guide, which is at the end when you turn in a bunch of quests at the same time and then move on to the wrath gate cinematic for another couple of easy 30K xp turn ins. Just to give you an idea, look how much XP I already had just 12 minutes after I dinged 76:

216,000 xp in 12min, which means about 1,000,000 XP/hour ^^.

Of course, this was once again done without rested bonus and without consumables. So you'll agree that these are pretty good numbers, and it's very promising for the future.

So at that point I ran out of leveling guides to follow, just like you guys, and that meant back to guide writing for me.

But before let's have an overview at how level 70 to 76 went for me:

Total Time Played at level 70: 117 days 3 hours 23 minutes 53 seconds
Total Time Played at level 76: 118 days 2 hours 11 minutes 33 seconds

Time needed from level 70 to level 76: 22h 47m 40s

That means it took me 3h48 on average per level from 70 to 76.

And that was all done during the crazy release week. So there you have it, proof that my guide can level you extremely fast while playing at a rather casual pace.

Alright, I wouldn't call 3h48min a day casual, but I wouldn't call it hardcore either, I think anyone can agree with me on that.

Now of course, first time users of my guides probably won't do it as fast as I did, but the second time you go through my guide for your alt, and without having to deal with overcrowding, you'll probably come close to those numbers ;)

Or even better, next time you follow my guide, it will be with my in-game addon format, which I will be working on as soon as I'm done with the paper version for all the Northrend zones. And with that, nobody will come close to your leveling speed, no matter what!

So stay tuned.

Someone on the US Thread actually posted this:

C) James Guides seem to totally rip off Joana's guides at certain steps... Jame just words things differently.

This is just ridiculous, and I can't even reply over there. Frustrating.

It's just silly, I mean think a second. That would mean that:

a) I bought Joana's Guide or stole it.
b) I can't write guides myself.

Just so you know, Joana only write guides for the horde, and I wrote guides for both the horde and the alliance. So who did I steal it from for my Alliance guides? I'm just waiting for the next person to say I stole them as well from some guide you have to pay for.

Listen:

• Just because you paid for a guide doesn't mean it's better than mine.
• My guides are free, but that doesn't mean I stole them from somewhere.
  

I never ever even glanced at any of those paying guides. The only thing I know about them are from the e-mails and comments I get from people who use my guides and have tried those paying guide in the past. I get hundreds of those, and they are unanimous: they tried both and found my guide to be better.

Now I don't know, but if all I did was stealing work from Joana's or other paying guides, well then I'd be a pretty damn good copycat, don't you think?

What about my Wrath of the Lich King guides I just released, who did I steal those from? During the beta? I had time to re-write everything from some guide I stole and make it even better?

Ludicrous. My guides being free and available to everyone, I'm probably the one whose guide is getting ripped off left and right by shady paying guides sites.

So anyway, I shouldn't be getting worked up like that because the guy who posted this is probably a shill or is really badly misinformed, I'm just sick of seeing a new comment like that one every other two pages on the forums, I had to clear that up and I had to vent.

Sorry.

Hey Jame,

Just want to thank you for your work on the 55-61 Deathknight guides and the Horde Howling/Borean/Dragonblight guides. Without them I wouldn't have had the headstart in the Death Knight race.

Just a lil' something for the eye:



I dinged 80 at around 20:30 CET on the 16th of November. No, I didn't play the beta at all. Basically the only preparation I had was from your guides.

Using the Dragonblight guide + playing in the off hours was probably one of the most important things that contributed to my "victory".

One of the most interesting points in my journey was when I rushed away from my competitors in the 55-60 race in WPL/EPL, while the others went directly to Outlands, which led to a headstart of up to 2 levels.

I never doubted your choice of specc, whilst the most part of the Death Knights went for blood stating: "Unholy can't heal :(((". Well the top5 DKs worldwide were all unholy. Thumbs up!

I would've dinged ALOT sooner if I had the chance to read your upcoming guides for Grizzly Hill and more.

When asked for tips n' tricks I start of with wow-pro, then of course the various performance enhancers like red bull, fast carbs and loud music.

Worth noticing is that Frostmane is one of the most overcrowded servers in Europe, in the same line of the good ol' notorious Dragonmaw.

Cheers,

Blacktony - Level 80 Death Knight - Frostmane-EU

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This makes me feel really proud.

Next expansion, I'll work even harder and try to have guides ready until max level (which will probably be level 90). Who knows, maybe someone using my guides will get the world first 90 then, and without mob tagging powerleveling ;)


PS: If you followed my guide and you believe that they were a factor in helping you getting Realm First, please contact me. Send me an e-mail at jame.wow.pro.blog@gmail.com or post a comment here.

I'd like to add your name on this blog entry to have a list of people who owned it up with my guide ^^

Here's the latest update about my Hunter on Horde Side.

If you followed the previous blog article about it, you saw that we dinged Level 72 at exactly 117 days 11 hours 14 minutes 38 seconds /played.

Time to get from Level 72 to Level 73: 4h 6min 49s

This is a good score, but I'm sure we can lower it down to 3h once there's no more overcrowding in Borean Tundra.

I was about halfway through my Borean Tundra guide when this happened by the way.

Of course, this was done with no rested bonus, I log the hunter outside of an inn on purpose. So it's quite a competitive xp rate right there :)

After a food break I went on with the guide until I hit level 74:



Total Time Played: 117days 18h 47min 3s

Time from Level 73 to Level 74: 3h 25min 36s


Ok, you're probably thinking 3h25min for 73 to 74 is quite good, and it is. But it could have been so much better, at least 30 min shorter. See this was sunday noon and it was starting to get really crowded, especially the murloc quest hub.
The murloc quest hub was simply hell. There was probably more players than murlocs over there, and I couldn't even do the escort out of the cave, the quest NPC simply was always busy and a bunch of people were waiting for him to respawn, so I just moved on.

This is just to say that the lower part of my Borean Tundra leveling guide is actually extremely competitive, and that once the overcrowding problems are gone, I expect people to pull some crazy numbers while following it. 2h30 per level seems definitely possible.

And finally today I went to Dragonblight and followed the guide until I hit level 75. Sadly I messed up the screenshot, but here is how it was about 15 minutes before I dinged 75:


I took me exactly 3hours 30minutes to do 74 to 75.

It's quite good, there was a lot of overcrowding of course on this monday afternoon, but it wasn't as bad as Borean Tundra and Howling Fjord.

The good part is that I wasn't even done with the first half of my Dragonblight Guide. So I might very well ding 76 towards the end of it. Also, the lower part of my Dragonblight Guide is actually the best part, xp rate wise, so stay tuned and tomorrow we'll find out how much it took me to do level 75-76 ;)

So I thought I'd also let you guys know how it went for my Death Knight, following my 55-61 Death Knight Leveling Guide (horde version).

It went really great actually, despite being slowed down quite a lot in the starting area due to overcrowding, the leveling speed was amazing, it's almost twice as fast as what you can get in Hellfire Penninsula, so this just confirms what I've been preaching for months:

• The Plaguelands are an amazing place to level now, especially for Death Knights thanks to Death Gate.
• Going to Outland at 58 is a mistake - it won't make you level faster, all the opposite.

This screenshot was taken at the end of the leveling guide, right after I turned in the quest Glyphed Oaken Branch in Thunderbluff.

From level 55 to level 61.5 in 10h 55min.

Keep in mind this was done under the following circumstances:

• Zero Rested XP
• A lot of overcrowding in the starting area
• Many alt-tabbings to correct mistakes I found as I followed my guide
  
• I only used the starting area gear, no Blade of Misfortune or anything fancy
• No consumables
  

This means my guide can probably be done under 10hours in normal circumstances, and 55-61.5 under 10 hours is pretty damn good, I'm sure nobody can pull that off if they go to HFP at level 58.

Anyway, I'll keep on following my Outland guides now with my Death Knight and keep you guys updated as I go ;)

So I went to the midnight opening of my city and got my two Wrath of the Lich King boxes, and then I... slept!

Yes, sadly I couldn't pull the allnighter every serious gamer would like to pull, because I simply had work to do the next morning and needed to be reasonable :P

I only started playing the next day close to noon. I started with one of my horde characters first, a hunter specced Beast Mastery. And off I went to Howling Fjord to follow my horde guide.

I'm sure most of you experienced the overcrowding and how much it can affect your XP rate. Well it sure did affect mine, as the hunter I played is on a very high pop server, we had some very long queues later that day and some areas had more players than mobs for sure.

However, the results were still very good, not nearly as good as what I got on beta, but still, I caught up very quickly with several guildmates who pulled the allnighter and were already well into level 71 when I started to play (obviously, they weren't following my guide, or I wouldn't have caught up like that :P)

I took screenshots at every important step, to check how fast I was leveling.

This screenshot was taken when I logged in, before I went to Howling Fjord:



Total time played: 117 days 3 hours 23 minutes 53 seconds

This screenshot was taken right when I hit Level 71:



Total time played: 117 days 6 hours 53 minutes 46 seconds

If you do the math, that means it took me exactly 3h 29min 53s to ding. This is a pretty good score, considering the whole level was done:

1. Without any rested bonus
2. With a lot of people fighting for quest mobs, I estimate that this slowed me down at least by a good 20 minutes
3. Without any consumables

So yes, it's actually great and says alot about how fast one could level with my guide once the release rush is over.

And then more problems started as I was on my way to level 72:

1. Captain Ellis was nowhere to be found. That means the quest chain including [71] The Lost Shield of the Aesirites was broken. I spent 15 minutes looking for Captain Ellis, checking wowhead and various boards to find out where he was, and then I gave up and moved on. This was really annoying because the follow ups of that chain are really quick and give about 100K xp in total. That was a big setback. But anyway, I finished the rest of Howling Fjord and then moved on to Borean Tundra.
2. As the day went on, the overcrowding became worse :P Mid afternoon it was already crazy, at least on my server, especially for all the quests close to Warsong Hold in Borean Tundra. I wasted a lot of time waiting on respawns, I estimate I lost another 20 minutes there.

In any case, this is the screenshot of when I dinged Level 72:



Total time played: 117 days 11 hours 14 minutes 38 seconds

That means it took me 4h 20 min 51s to go from 71 to 72.

That's dissapointing compared to what I know I'm supposed to get, but this was release day crazyness and it can't be helped. It's still pretty decent considering that whole level was done with:

1. No rested bonus
2. No consumables
3. A broken quest chain
4. A transition from Howling Fjord to Borean Tundra (that damn turtle really took a while to come to Kamagua)
5. Very heavy overcrowding

Then after that I took a break and I logged out outside of an inn, because I don't want any rested bonus while testing my guides. I'll resume leveling tomorrow and hit 74 and then I'll report my findings to you guys.

Overall, besides the broken quest chain, I'm quite happy with the release of WotLK and with how my guides performed so far. The overcrowding was really a factor, but it was predictable.
I was still able to progress fast through most quests and I know for sure that once the dust clears, people who follow my guide will come up with some really amazing /played from 70 to 80. I guarantee you that :)

Meanwhile here's a very simple tip which might help you perform better in crowded areas:

Tip: When you get to an area where you have to kill a rare mob or anything which might make you lose time if you have to wait on respawns, immediately offer other players in the area to group with you. There's nothing worse than fighting with 3 other players over the same spawns when you could all be completing the quests together 3 times faster. I recommend making a macro with this simple line "Hey, want to group up for this quest?" and use it whenever the situation warrants it. Because trust me, sometimes, while you're typing that line, the mob you need spawns and the other player kills it in front of your eyes before you even get the chance to ask him if he wants to group with you ^^.

I know this must sound really obvious, but trust me, the macro helps, and you won't have to type that same line a hundred times that way ;)

This was done with my level 76 Rogue while following the last 25% of my Dragonblight Guide.

• This was done with no consumables. Just normal poisons applied on weapons and bandages/ normal food to heal up when needed.
• No rested xp.

That's right, 620000 XP / hour. That means you can theoritically get one level every 2 hours and half if you follow my guide properly.

Also, it can probably go faster with other classes, like hunters for example, as they never need to drink nowadays (I had to bandage and eat many times with the rogue, which slowed me down of course). So you can imagine how fast you can level while following my guides.

Why do I post this? Well to prove that my guides are better than any other addon like Questhelper. It's quite simple really. Questhelper is a nice addon, but it can't optimize your quest circuits nearly as much as what I've achieved through hard work. It can't think 3, 4, 5 or sometimes 10 steps ahead. It can't think of quests coming from remote quest hubs which have synergies with other quests you already have. And more importantly it doesn't tell you tricks that make certain quests much easier.

This is the reason why I still write guides, because I know (and I can prove it), that they are still a much faster way to level. If it weren't the case I wouldn't bother writing them and would also use an addon.

I challenge anyone to come even remotely close to such XP/rates with only using Questhelper (or any quest tracking addon). And I know it won't happen, because I've tried it to, and I know the limitations of those addons.

Of course, when you follow my guide the first time, you might not get such high XP/rates, because you won't know my circuits as well as I do. But there won't be that much of a difference, because my WotLK Guides are very easy to read, most steps are one-liners. I've really worked hard on that too.

It will also depend on your class and gear. The rogue I used on this circuit is very well equipped. But you know, a hunter or a DK in full quest green/blues can probably beat this score :P And other classes too I bet.

In any case, I'm sure anyone can get close to 500000XP/hour while following my guides, even if you are a slow reader. That means one level every 3 hours / 3 hours and a half. And that's really amazing in the 70-80 bracket.

Oh, and just a little bonus. While recording that XP/rate, I also got the following two achievements:



So yea, if you're still thinking "lol questhelper is fastest", well I don't think I will ever be able to convince you, because you simply don't want to be convinced, more than anything :)

If you:

1. Play World of Warcraft on the US realms
2. Like my guides
3. Want to return the favor

Then there's a very easy way for you to do so. Sadly I can't post on the US forums myself, because I live in Europe. And this is actually too bad because a vast majority of wow-pro readers come from the US.

Jiyambi was kind enough to post an announcement for me on the US General Forums, but unluckily, the thread really quickly disappeared off the first page and very few people got the chance to see it:

US General Discussion Link

So I would really appreciate if you could reply to that thread and maybe say what were your experiences with my guide. If it was helpful to you or if you plan to use my WotLK leveling guides, then reply to this thread and mention it :)

That's the best way to get our community growing. Help me turn this thread into a success like the one I have running currently on the european forums:

EU General Discussion Link

Thank you in advance for your support and... YES, WE CAN! ;)

I've been playing the WotLK beta for about 2 months now, and I have experienced only about 50% of the solo content there is to explore so far, mostly because I'm working on my guides for both Hord and Alliance, which leaves me little time to progress.

However, I have to say that I am really impressed with Wrath of the Lich King so far. The quality of the zones, the quests, the lore, the loot, everything is really well done, far better than what we got for the Burning Crusade, and that's saying a lot because Outland was already awesome.

The biggest improvement for me has to be the lore, the feeling of being involved in the storyline, even while solo questing. What you saw in the videos I posted in my previous articles is just a small part of that, there are actually better quests that those. Better in every aspect, lore, fun, loot rewards. You are no longer considered as a random schmuck, NPCs treat you like a hero and rely on you to save the world.

I don't want to spoil too much, but I'll just tell you this:

Do not miss this quest chain in Dragonblight: [74] Audience With The Dragon Queen.

It is the most amazing quest chain I've ever done in World of Warcraft. Period.

To get this quest you'll have to complete several other mini quest chains in Dragonblight, starting at your faction's outpost.

Some numbers about this wonderful quest chain:

• Number of quests in the chain: 25
• Number of blue items rewarded: 3
• Number of Dragons controlled: 2
• Amount of XP rewarded by the last quest in the chain: 41000XP
  

And that's not all. You get to interract with several leaders of the Dragon Aspects, including Alexstrasza the Life-Binder.




You get to watch a beautiful cinematic, and even better, you get to fight a truly epic battle alongside your faction leader. Thrall if you're horde. King Varian Wrynn if you're alliance.

I'll say no more because that would be really spoiling it too much :P

Anyway, if you don't want to miss this quest, you can simply follow my WotLK leveling guides, everything is included in it, not a single quest is left aside. And I'm quite happy with that, because seriously, it would be a shame to miss anything on Northrend when the content is just so epic.

I just can't wait to get to the final zones of Northrend, if they are as good as Dragonblight was, we're all in for a treat.

Everything is running smoothly now. Please go back to posting guides and comments :)

This is the next quest in the chain from yesterday's video. I warn you though, there is a spoiler in it, at the end of the video, watch at your own risk. Besides that, there isn't much to be said really, it's a very cool script, enjoy :)

I highly recommend watching it in High Quality (simply click on the HQ button):

Don't worry, there isn't any spoilers in this video. It's something you've already seen happen if you played the Warcraft III solo campaigns. It's a very cool script with voice acting and it explains why The Forgotten Shore in Dragonblight is full of ghosts and wrecked ships. I'll say no more, watch the video :)

I highly recommend watching it in High Quality (simply click on the HQ button):

Hey guys, since you've all been patient and supportive, I thought I'd give you a little sneak peak at one of my quest circuits in Howling Fjord. I was quite satisfied with my circuits, but I didn't know they were going to be that competitive, anyway, just have a look :P

Howling Fjord Circuit Preview

Granted, I did this with my rogue in full epics and I knew the circuit by heart so I blazed through it, but still, 560K xp/hour is madness. Levels past 70 take about 1,500,000 on average, so you do the math, I could theoritically hit level 71 in less than 3 hours on my rogue, without rested xp bonus.

Of course, some parts of my guides are not that fast, because you have to travel to the next quest hub and such things, but most of the time, it's that fast :P

I can't wait to try some speed runs from 70-80 once my guides are finished.

Dear wow-pro users. You've probably noticed that you can gain ranks with your member account on wow-pro.com. At the moment, the ranks are:

1. Member
2. Trusted Member
3. Honored Member
4. Revered Member
5. Exalted Member
6. Moderator
7. Administrator

With each rank you get, you get an extra star added under your avatar:

2. Trusted Member Priviledges

• skip captcha challenges (you know, those annoying codes you have to enter to validate every post you make)
  
• post comments without approval (no more moderation queue for you!)
  
• cancel own vote on polls

3. Honored Member Priviledges

• revert revisions
• rename the url of your articles
• create polls

4. Revered Member Priviledges

• create new encyclopedia books
• administer smileys

5. Exalted Member Priviledges

• post news on the frontpage!
• outline guides into the encyclopedias (change their category)
• inspect votes on polls

6. Moderator Priviledges

• administer comments and their approval queue
• administer forums
• edit guides (of anyone)
• edit news posts

That's all for now, but there will be much more priviledges in the future. The more wow-pro grows, the more advantages you'll get from being a high ranked member of our community.

How do I gain ranks?

To gain ranks, you must reach a certain amount of Karma Points.

5 Karma Points = Trusted Member Status
20 Karma Points = Honored Member Status
50 Karma Points = Revered Member Status
100 Karma Points = Exalted Member Status
200 Karma Points = Moderator Status

How do I gain Karma?

You can gain Karma by posting on wow-pro.com or on my blog.

Useful post = +1 Karma
Very useful post = +2 Karma
Ok Guide = +2 Karma
Good Guide = +4 Karma
Very good Guide = +6 Karma
Awesome Guide = +8 Karma

You can also lose Karma. This is a necessary evil to prevent people to spam the site with useless / bad information. Quality comes first.

Bad post = -1 Karma
Very bad post = -2 Karma
Bad guide = -1 Karma

Who attributes those points and how?

I keep an excel sheet updated everyday with every new post, guide or guide updates. I am 100% unbiased and I try to be as fair as possible. In the future, this will all be automated and everyone will be allowed to rate guides / comments. The site will be majorly revamped with a lot of new cool features, including a in-built ranking system. But for now, I'm the one managing it manually. Moderators will also be able to give points in the future as well.

Tips to gain Karma

• Make an effort with your spelling. Nobody likes to read broken english, with no punctuation, no caps.
• Avoid "d00d" speech. "u", "ur", "ure", "thx" is just irritating to many readers. Just spell the words, it's not that hard to spell 1 or 2 extra letters. You, you're, your, thanks.
• Before you write a guide, please read Jame's Guide Writing Guide. It should cover the basics.
• Don't waste other people's time. Before you ask a question, look if that question has already been answered. You don't know how many times I've had to answer the same question. Like "hey jame are you gonna write guides for WotLK? If yes, can you give an ETA?". This is very frustrating, that question is answered on our very front page. So please, before you ask a question, check the front page, check the website's section concerning your question, and if you still haven't found an answer, then write your comment. It will save me a lot of time, and the more time I have, the more guide I can write for you guys.
• Try to use the same name when you post on my blog as your user name on wow-pro, so that I can attribute +karma points to your account if you make a useful comment here on the blog. You can also simply leave a signature at the end of your blog posts mentioning your user name on wow-pro.
  

If you follow the above guidelines, you will never get Karma points deducted, you can only gain Karma.

It's quite simple really. Post useful things, be helpful to other members, post intelligent comments, informative content, and your Karma will go up the roof.

I've recently had a couple of members achieve honored status within a single week. One of them didn't even create a single guide, all he did was post very useful comments, which helped other users or which saved me a lot of time and helped me fix errors in my guides quickly. The other one just wrote a bunch of guides, they were mediocre at the start, and after he followed my advice, he turned those mediocre guides into Awesome guides.

The wow-pro community is growing every day and it is here to stay. Be an active part of it and you'll reap the benefits down the road, or god forbid, you might just want to help other people for free and be part of a nice community. :)

19th January Update: The Karma system is now automated and fully integrated in the site. You can check how many points you have in your user profile. To access your user profile, you can either click on your own avatar in a comment/guide you made, or simply click on "My Account" on the right-side menu.

And the best part, the rankings are now updated instantly whenever you gain points. Follow this link to see the Karma Rankings.

Sorry guys, there's just not much for me to write about lately, simply because I spend 100% of my free time writing my WotLK Leveling Guides. Time is running out so I'm in a rush, as you can imagine, thus the lack of updates.

I wish I had more time though, there are many things I wish I could do with my main character on the live servers (like all those cool new achievements I'd like to work on), but oh well, my leveling guides come first, and I want to get as far as possible with them before the beta servers close down.

So bear with me, things will soon get back to normal and I'll be back to writing blog articles more steadily.

Now that I'm nearly finished with my Borean Tundra guide for the Alliance and Howling Fjord Guide for the Horde, I can say for certain that I have to change the order of my guides once again :P

It's quite simple really, for the Alliance, Howling Fjord transitions very well with Dragonblight, and for the Horde, it's Borean Tundra that transitions well with it. So the decision was inevitable for maximum efficiency, my Northrend Leveling Guides will now follow this route:

Alliance - Borean Tundra (70-72) --> Howling Fjord (72-74) --> Dragonblight (74-75)
Horde - Howling Fjord (70-72) --> Borean Tundra (72-74) --> Dragonblight (74-75)

This is final and I'm now 100% sure that it's the best way to go.
Release Dates have been updated accordingly.

Anyway, time for me to get back to work.

Here's the latest update about my WotLK Leveling Guides. I recently had to make some significant changes.

Initially, the plan was:

Alliance: Start with Howling Fjord then go straight to Dragonblight. And then add an optional Borean Tundra circuit in the distant future, for level 80s eager to complete every quest/zone.
Horde: Start with Borean Tundra then go straight to Dragonblight. And then add an optional Howling Fjord circuit in the distant future, for level 80s eager to complete every quest/zone.

At the start this seemed great, but the more I progressed through Northrend, the more problems I encountered:

1. Some quests in Dragonblight have a level requirement of 74, making it impossible for me to include them in an efficient way if I have my guide take you there before level 74.
2. Some of the quests have you kill 75+ mobs. At level 72 that means killing orange mobs, which is also not very efficient.
3. Many elite quests, which can be soloed by certain classes or easily duo'd by others at level 74. At level 72, this is significantly harder for people with casual gear.

In a nutshell, going to Dragonblight at level 72 is inefficient. The most efficient level to go there is level 74 (or level 73 and about 400k xp from level 74, to be precise). And it snowballs from there, as you go through the next zones, more quests are inacessible due to your low level. Skipping those quests means:

• Quest circuits will less efficient, there will be more running around and less double/tripple questing when you go somewhere.
• You'll have to go back there at level 80 if you want to finish all the quests in those zones (for achievements and reputation)
  

To prevent that, my guides are now going to take you through both Borean Tundra and Howling Fjord before going to Dragonblight. There are only benefits from that:

• More quests will be available
• My guides will be easier to follow thanks to the extra levels
• You won't have to go back to previous zones once you hit level 80
• The XP/hour rate is actually greater that way. When I did Borean Tundra with my level 72 Mage wearing full greens, I sustained a 300,000 xp/hour rate while following my circuits. And mages are definitely not the fastest questers, they have to drink every now and then and all that nonsense :P
  

Anyway, if you want to see a preview of how it's going to look, check my Release Dates post on wow-pro.com, I updated them yesterday, with a link to a preview of all the guides which are nearly finished.

If you've been checking my Death Knight Shopping List, you probably saw that it's shaping up nicely. I'm putting a lot of effort into it, and recently I had to make a decision and I can't decide myself, so I could use some input on this.

I have to choose between 4 blue BoE Items (getting pricier by the day) or 4 cheap crafted greens, from the Fel Iron Plate set.
I've been leaning towards the Fel Iron Plate, because it's much cheaper, easier to get, and you can actually equip them at earlier levels. Also if you do the math, it's pretty close:

Girdle of Siege
Boots of the Decimator
Gauntlets of the Skullsplitter
Nagascale Legplates of the Beast

Armor: 2549 | Str: 124 | Sta: 77 | Agi: 44 | Hit Rating: 12 | Crit Rating: 18
Total Cost (avg.): ~200g (probably a lot more now, due to high demand)

Fel Iron Plate Belt
Fel Iron Plate Boots
Fel Iron Plate Gloves
Fel Iron Plate Legs

Armor: 2386 | Str: 122 | Sta: 114 | Agi: 0 | Hit Rating: 15 | Crit Rating: 0
Total Cost (avg.): ~31g

Armor and str are almost identical. Fel Iron Plate has a lot more stamina, a little more hit rating, but about -3% crit.

However, they are much cheaper, much easier to obtain (Blacksmiths craft a lot of those while leveling up smithing) and they also can be equipped earlier.

Or better, you can simply buy the fel iron ore / bars and ask a blacksmith friend to craft them for you.

So my question is: should I even bother adding the blues to the optional list? The difference is so small and the price so big, but I like to give people options. However, is it even a good option, considering everything?