Jame's Game Guides

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:


See you tomorrow for a big update about my Starcraft 2 project ;)

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!

First of all, yay! 200+ blog followers already. Thanks everyone for following my blog!

And now for the news, here is a list of what am I working on right now and what's coming next for wow-pro:

• Finishing the Leveling Addon and making it perfect (short term)
  
• Adding a chat on wow-pro (short term)
• Zul'Drak, Scholazar Basin, Stormpeaks and Icecrown leveling guides (medium term)
• Complete facelift of the site, with a lot of new cool features (medium term)
• A guide writing contest, where the winners will possibly win Starcraft 2 beta keys and other goodies. (medium term)
• Netherstorm and Shadowmoon Valley leveling guide (long term)

Feel free to comment on this and to add your suggestions!

It looks like my interview with GameSpy is having side effects.

Wowinsider just published a news article about my guides ;)

You can find the article here: WoW Insider Article

I appreciate getting more coverage, really. Because the only weakness of my guides is that they aren't known enough. People tend to overlook them because they are free, thinking that because it's free, it's probably crap.

However, there are a few inaccuracies in this article, sadly. I wish the guys at wow-insider would have contacted me and I'd gladly have provided them with more accurate information.

Anyway, I'll list the inaccuracies here:

• My guides do not turn the game into a "to-do" list. It does not ruin the content, it actually makes it more enjoyable. Every single person who tried my guide said so. The reason is simple: while following my guide, you're doing as many quests as possible, in the shortest time possible, with as little running around as possible. So basically, you will probably do more quests than if you were not following my guide (because I make sure to include even the most hidden quest chains in the game when they are worth it). You will effectively enjoy more content than if you were on your own. Moreover, what my guide does is cut a huge chunk of "running back and forth", by smartly optimizing the quest routes (and if you thought QuestHelper's route optimization tool was smart, you'll think my circuits are genius). So yes, my point is simple, my guides WILL make you enjoy the game more, while also making you level faster, I guarantee it.
• While following my guide, nothing is preventing you from reading the quests descriptions. Moreoever, you can read it in a more relaxed way, you don't have to focus on sorting out what part of the information is important to complete the quest, you can simply enjoy the lore instead.
  
• My wife didn't "need help" leveling ^^. As I said in the GameSpy interview, we were both leveling our alts together, and she was simply following me because I already had those "optimized quest circuits" in my head, and she was just enjoying the ride. But she would have been fine leveling on her own, even though I wish I could be that superhero taking a damsel in distress through the mazes of Stranglethorn Vale. But it just wasn't like that :P
  

Luckily, I see that a few of my loyal wow-pro members are already posting there under the article to correct those discrepancies. So it's all good, and I'm really happy to have such a supportive community.

In any case, I'd like to thank wow insider for bringing my guides to the attention of their readers. Because that's really what I care about the most: people trying my guides. A lot of effort was spent on writing them and improving them (and not only my effort, an army of wow-pro members also helped testing them and gave me feedback), so it always pains me to see people totally ignore my guides and jump on the "paying" guides, simply because they think "FREE" cannot be as good "Paying". Well, this is true in most cases, but not in this case. And to change that mindset, all we can do is spread the word about it, and that's exactly what wow insider and gamespy are doing at the moment. So cheers to them!

ps: I'd gladly give an interview to wow insider, should they be interested in more infos about my addons, guides or future projects.

Hey guys, sorry I'm not done with the next addon chapter as I had planned. You'll have to wait a little more for the next adventures of Holyjame the retadin.

However I've got some interesting reading for you instead. I had an interview with GameSpy today and they wrote a nice news article about it.

You probably know part of what we discussed already if you follow my blog, but there is also some new stuff I never talked about before, so I recommend checking it out, it's very nicely written.

You can find the article here: GameSpy Interview.

Feel free to comment and discuss!

Hey guys. Just a quick post to inform you that I tomorrow I should be done with the second chapter of Maw's Human Leveling Guide (12-20).

And that means that you'll be able to see Holyjame in action again! :P

Meanwhile, I've also been playing Urban Rivals a little. It's a free online card game and it's pretty fun.

I created a guild there for WoW-Pro members, we've got about 20 members already ;)

My blog followers are of course more than welcome, check this forum post I made for more info about joining.

Come join and the fun, and stay tuned for the next chapter of the adventures of Holyjame!

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!

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 ;)

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!

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.

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 ;)

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.

In case you haven't heard, Blizzcon was last week and a lot of interesting announcements were made. Here's a short summary of what were the biggest announcements, in my opinion:

• Diablo III, the Wizard Class was revealed. Wizard Trailer | Gameplay Video
• Patch 3.1 will be the first content patch of the expansion and is already done. It will include Ulduar, a new raid instance (10 and 25 Man)
• Patch 3.2 will add another raid instance to the game. Still unknown.
  
• Patch 3.3 will introduce the Icecrown Citadel and should also resolve the storyline of Ashbringer.
• Blizzard's "secret project" is confirmed to be a new MMO with a brand new universe, but we won't hear anything about it before a while. My hunch on this is that this MMO will take place in a futuristic universe, involving space travel and conquest and all that stuff. World of Starcraft anyone? :p
• And my personal favorite: Dual Talent Specs. This new feature should be added to the game in one of the content patches following the release of Wotlk. Hopefully in Patch 3.1.
  

What does that mean? It means you'll be able to save 2 different Talent Specs for your characters, and that you'll be able to switch between the two as much as you want, any time you want, besides while in combat or in arenas.

This change made me smile, because it's something which should have been done years ago, and I actually had tried to push for this change back in 2005!

In 2005, before I even started to write guides, I was a warrior and I was the main tank for my guild, we were raiding The Molten Core and Onyxia. As the main tank, I was full protection specced, which meant that I was doing as much damage as an asthmatic clam. In short, outside of raids, I couldn't do anything with my warrior, I couldn't farm gold and I couldn't PvP well either. The only option was to respec during the week-end and then respec back to full prot for the next raid week.

100 Gold spent on respecs every week was really a pain in the butt. Not to mention, I was still unable to farm gold or to pvp during the week, as I could only afford one re-spec per week, and I'd do it on the week-end to get the most out of it.

I wasn't alone with this problem. All the healers in my guild were complaining about it too, they were having big issues with their repair costs and being unable to farm decently.

So I made a big post on the blizzard forums, suggesting that blizzard should allow everyone to have 2 talent specs they could switch to or to drop the respec costs to something reasonable such as 5 or 10 gold maximum. It was a very long post, well argumented and it clearly showed how unfair it was for Healer/Tanking classes at that time.

Sadly, the post got immediately jumped by a bunch of immature posters, their sole arguement being "LOL u can't hav everything u know... u can't be the super main tank 4 ur guild but also be the super pvp star..." or "It's called talent SPEC because u have to CHOOSE for ur character.... what's the point of choosing if u can re-choose as much as u want???"

Basically, the post got ugly and disappeared quickly despite my efforts to keep it bumped and to get support from other players. No Blizzard poster ever read it I bet. I was angry and swore to never post again on those damned Blizzard boards (I broke that promise not so long after, but anyway :P). I couldn't understand why people where so blind and couldn't see the glaring issue at hand with the talent specs.

This got even worse as time passed. When the Arena system was added to the game, people wanted to be able to do a couple of arena matches in the evening after the raid was over. My guild had a lot of problem with people showing up on raids with PvP specs, because they didn't want to respec everyday, and they didn't want to be gimped in arenas either.

Finally, 4 years later, they are going to add this feature. I'm not saying I'm some kind of super visionary here, because seriously, this was obviously needed from the start! I can't believe it took so long, and I'm glad it's finally there (almost!).

If we're lucky, this will be added in the first content patch after the release of WotLK. And that means December maybe, in the best case scenario! But knowing Blizzard, it's more likely to be somewhere in the middle of the first trimester of 2009.

In any case, this is a great change and I can't wait!

Completely different topic today. Northrend servers are down right now so I'm taking this opportunity to write a little article.

Lately I've been pressed for time, the release of Wrath of the Lich King is nearing, and my Northrend Leveling Guides are far from being finished. The guides are going to be huge, each level is an enormous task. So it's taking a lot of time to write these guides, and several external factors are slowing me down as well.

The european beta servers are laggy and unstable. In certain Northrend zones, it becomes unplayable during peak hours. There's nothing I can do about that though. So I just accept it and deal with it.

However, there's another factor which has been slowing me down: taking care of the website. Everyday we get dozens of comments and half as many new guides, which I have to read and approve.

This would take much less time if people knew how to write a guide properly. Sadly, most don't and I have to work on their guides for them or put the guides back to draft status and explain to the author why.

There are several reasons why some guide just can't be published:

1. Redundancy - This is the most frequent reason. Some people just create a guide without even checking if the topic has already been covered in another guide. I think we've got about 15 Durotar (1-12) Leveling Guides so far, and the worst part is, that none of them is of high quality. We don't need 15 Durotar Guides, we just need one, and possibly a high quality one.
So please people, before you write a guide, check if the topic has already been covered, and if it has, don't write a guide about it UNLESS you're confident you can write a much better guide on the topic.

2. Horrible Grammar & Spelling - This is reason #2. Some people just write a wall of text, no punctuation, no caps, no paragraphs, no spell check, no text formatting at all, zero image, loads of typos and grammar errors. The end result is something ugly nobody wants to read. And that's sad, because some of those guides actually have interesting content, but they are just presented so poorly that nobody will even try to read them. Hell, some people even misspell the title of their guide.

Example: Duratar Lvling Guild (instead of Durotar Leveling Guide)

3. Useless content - This is more seldom, but it still happens that some people write guides which would even be useless to complete newbie. Like: "A mage casts spells, you can either take talents for Fire, Frost or Arcane. If you take Frost talents, you will use your frost spells more...etc".
Seriously, who needs such a guide? :P

4. Poor content - This is the most painful one. Sometimes, people actually write a guide which looks nice, has a few images and decent text formatting, but the content is just bad. This happens most of the time when people try to write a guide about a topic they aren't very experienced in.
For example, many people try to write a class guide, even though they've barely played the class themselves. The end result is that they'll just disappoint people who follow their guide and then realize that the advice given was very poor.
Here's what I suggest: Don't write a class guide until you've played the class extensively, reached level 70 (or 80 soon) and tried all 3 talents trees, solo, in group and if possible in a raid.
This applies to every other aspect of the game. Only write a guide when you know that you've got above average knowledge on a certain topic.

____________________________________________________________________

Anyway, to fix this issue, I've put together a little guide this morning, covering the most important points of guide writing, in a very condensed form. I hope it will help the wow-pro community to produce better guides and I encourage everyone to read it and try to write a useful guide.

Here is the link to the guide:

Jame's Guide Writing Guide

Time for me to go back to Northrend and to work on my leveling guides :P

In a nutshell:

I'm 28 years old, I'm married, I've got a job which allows me to have a lot of free time, and I play MMORPGs, probably too much for my own good, but it can't be helped I guess ;)
I enjoy writing guides, I do this as a hobby. I do it for free, I don't plan to and I don't think I ever will commercialize my guides. That's all I'm willing to reveal for now.

With that being said, I'll do my best to keep this blog interesting and informative. So stay tuned!