Jame's Game Guides

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 :)