You see, when you see reviews for a lot of these guides, they are generally trying to sell them. I won’t lie to you here, I do earn a commission if you do decide to purchase the guide through my link. However, because of this, a lot of those “reviews” that you read are written by people that have never even used the guide before.

That being said, though there is certainly an opportunity for myself to be like those other “review sites”, I find it unethical to try and pitch the greatness of something that I’ve never tried myself.

That’s why I set out to make this blog. It’s a completely honest and transparent look at one of the top Alliance leveling guides.

I tell you this, because like a lot of people I was fooled into thinking Dugi’s guide was actually the best. After trying two different Alliance leveling guides, I can tell you that this is not the case. At least in my opinion.

So, after trying out the demo version of Zygor’s Guide I was extremely impressed and decided to use it to take a character all the way to 80. So here is my final review of this guide:

To start, I’d like to remind you of the conditions I set out for the guide:
It was a brand new server where I had no friends, no high level alts or money to start with. This also means that I didn’t have a flying mount in Northrend until 77, or any heirloom items that boost experience.

I took up skinning and tailoring for my professions. Tailoring was for bags and some times I was able to upgrade my gear, skinning was purely for money and even then I was only vendoring the skins that I did get.

As well, I tried my best to limit myself to just 4 hours of gameplay a day. I was able to average this, although some times I went a little higher, and from about 75 to 80 I was up to 5 hours hours a day. Doing this the guide was able to take me to 80 in 7 days, 8 hours, 16 minutes and 44 seconds of /played time. This equated to just under 6 weeks of leveling. (40 days to be exact).

So was it fast? Absolutely. There were times where I felt like I flew through levels, but there are also some things to take into account:

Rested experience. I wasn’t able to play *every* day, but I was able to play most days. That being said, I did have times where I had quite a bit of rested experience. In addition, once I was in Outlands, more often than not Alliance had the PvP buffs for each zone that gave a bit of boost to experience. Even in Northrend it was really common for Alliance to have the Wintergrasp buff (as you’ll probably see in most of the screenshots.)

In general, however, I found myself very much ahead of the guide while leveling. The transition from the starting zone guides (levels 1-12) and the main guide (13 and on) I don’t think was done very well. The guide expects you to be a certain level at certain points. However, unlike Dugi’s guide, it tells you that you need to grind in order to continue on with the guide. There was only *one* instance where I actually had to grind in order to reach the leveling goal, and that was between 12 and 13. I had to grind basically half of level 12. After that point, I ended up being well ahead of the guide, and could even skip quests at points.

And I did have to skip quests. This is because during the Azeroth part of leveling there were a couple of times where you were asked to buy certain items. Surprisingly money wasn’t an issue it was the availability of the items themselves. On my server it was really difficult to get these items. So I ended up having to skip the quests they were needed for in order to move on. I didn’t like this, as it meant I had to look up certain quests to see if I was able to skip them or if they were a part of a chain. Luckily, they never were and it didn’t hurt my leveling as such, but for some people, I could see them being frustrated with this.

The key to leveling quickly is called “quest stacking”. This is the process where you pick up a bunch of quests and then take them out all at once. Zygor’s Guide does this brilliantly. I was extremely impressed with the leveling path as often I would be able to take out a bunch of quests and some times make a whole level just from turn ins alone.

That’s the other great thing about Zygor’s guide. You’re never left guessing what to do next, and you’re never confused about where to accomplish different quests. The arrow that guides you is awesome, I never looked up co-ords, I just followed the arrow and was able to find everything I needed.

Another thing I absolutely loved about the guide was the in-game talent advisor. You simply load which leveling spec you want to follow (in my case, I leveled a Frost Mage) and every time you gain a level the talent window pops up with a “+1″ beside the talent you should be investing in for each level. Because of this I was able to kill faster and have far less down time. Often times you can find great specs online, but you’re never really told in what order to invest the points, and Zygor’s guide does this brilliantly.

One thing I should point out, however, is that when there are certain mobs that you need to kill the guide will point you in the right direction, but in a lot of cases you’ll have to take a really wide radius. Especially if you’re killing animals.

My final thoughts are this:

If you’re leveling an alt, Zygor’s Guide would be the perfect way to do this. You would have all the resources you need to power level a new character to 80 in the quickest way possible.

If you want to take a character from 1-80 on a brand new server (as I did) Zygor’s Guide is still really damn good.

Although at times there were certain apsects of the guide I disagreed with, and a few things I didn’t like (as I explained above), my overal feeling is that it does an amazing job of making sure you get to level 80 in the fastest way I have ever personally seen in all my years of playing WoW.

Zygor’s Guide pitches that it will get you to 80 in 7 days /played. Well I was a little over that goal, but still at 7 days, so I give them props for being able to deliver on that one.

Do I recommend it? Absolutely. By the end of my journey I was level 80, well ahead of the guide and had a lot of money. Add that to the fact that I rarely alt+tabbed, did absolutely no grinding after level 12, was never left guessing what to do next or where to go.

So if you want to power level your toon and are looking for the ultimate Alliance leveling guide, I highly recommend Zygor’s guide. You absolutely will not be disappointed.

If you want even more details about my use of the guide, feel free to check out my other blog posts as I explain in detail my experiences in each level.

Thanks for stopping by!

I tried to get it so I could /played and take a screenshot so the achievement banner would show up, but just like every other level the talent menu pops up as well, so my character is blocked. But the good stuff is still there.

So now what I’m going to do is go back through all the blog posts and prepare a final review for Zygor’s Guide.. It’s probably going to be pretty long, but extremely accurate and as honest as I can be about it.

For those that have been following along, thanks! And I’ll post again real soon.

Honestly, I felt like I flew through 78, it really felt like the shortest level since I hit Northrend.

There were quite a few easy and quick quests this session, that were worth a lot of exp. I thought this part of the guide was really well done, though the first thing I had to do when I got here was kill 60 animals. Surprisingly, this didn’t actually feel like grinding. I think it’s because I wasn’t trying to loot anything, rather, no matter what I killed it still counted towards the quest result.

I also realised that since I’ve hit Northrend I haven’t had to skip any quests, either because it asked me to buy something from the AH (which it hasn’t for a very long time) or because they were too difficult. I’m so far ahead of the guide now though, that I don’t think it would matter much.

I am at 7 days /played time, and it looks like when I ding 80 I will still be in the 7 days range so I’m pretty impressed with that.

Next update I’ll be level 80!

It’s taking about 5 hours now to gain a level, and I know I said I wouldn’t be going over a max of 4 hours a day, but when you’re this close…you just gotta keep pushing.

I didn’t run into any troubles, but I’m definitely loving having the flying mount back. It makes things a hell of a lot easier.

2 more levels to go! I should be 80 by day 40

I spent the entire session in Grizzly Hills, which is one of my favourite zones of Northrend. I like the foresty-type scenes. I only had one quibble this time around, and it really was nothing to do with the guide but the way the quests were designed.

There was one point where I had to keep going up the same path over and over again, killing the same mobs, over and over again, to accomplish different tasks each time I set foot up the mountain. I can’t recall the name of the area, but there was a quest chain of 3 or 4 different quests that had you go up the same path again and again. If I had cold weather flying before this it wouldn’t have been as much of a problem, and I think for Rogues or Druids who can stealth, they might not mind it so much either.

As a Mage I do have invisibility which I used quite a lot, but unfortunately it’s on a 3 minute cooldown so I wasn’t able take advantage of it too much.

Anywho, like I said, I have my wings back so that should help speed things up a bit.

3 more levels to go!

I actually ended up about an hour over what I normally do, again, because of the Wrathgate event. The guide actually gets you all the way to the point where you get the achievement for being a Veteran of the Wrathgate, and also for doing enough quests in Dragonblight, however, it actually makes you skip the really cool part.

I don’t want to give away anything here, but it’s probably the coolest thing I’ve ever seen done in this game, so even though the guide said to skip it, I did it anyway. Of course because of this, I “wasted” a lot of time doing the event and not gaining any experience. So I think that played a big factor in why it took so long to level this time around.

And what is it with Blizzard and their poop quests? I can think of three I’ve done since hitting Northrend on the Alliance side. I can’t recall any when I think about leveling as Horde….

I honestly thought I was at the half a level a day point, but that turned out to be false. I’m a fair ways into 75 at the time of this writing, when I thought I would only be half way there. Although good, it makes me feel like Howling Fjord could have been done a bit better.

I know that I had quite a bit of rested experience, on top of that Alliance always seem to have the Wintergrasp buff on my server, and while I think it obviously helps level you faster, I have a hard time believing that it can make up half a levels worth of experience.

Anywho, it looks like I’m gearing up for the Wrathgate event pretty soon, which has me really excited because I’m a big lore dork and I *LOVED* the Horde version of it. I can’t wait to see what the Ally one has in store.

I ended up one quest short of the achievement for doing quests in Howling Fjord, so I’ll definitely have to go back and finish that once I’m done with the guide.

Part of the reason I decided to level an Alliance character was because I wanted to experience Northrend from the Alliance perspective. I have to say, I’m a little disappointed because really, the questing has been very similar. I do like the new architecture and some of the towns are pretty neat, but so far, it hasn’t felt much different from leveling my Horde toons.

This has nothing to do with the guide but the actual game itself. I know it takes a lot of work, so I’m not trying to criticize too much, I’ve actually had some experience developing my own homebrew games, however, I thought that it would be different enough to feel as though I was experiencing something new, but that really hasn’t been the case so far.

I continued my questing in Howling Fjord, and compared to how quickly the other levels went by, it was really noticeable this time around. I’m not sure if that’s just because it takes a lot more questing to gain levels, or if the guide has slowed down a bit.

Either way, I’ve managed to knock out over 100 quests and I’m still here. I’m kinda getting sick of the place to be honest. I really have no idea where the guide will take me next, I’m guessing Dragonblight but I haven’t looked that far ahead.

At any rate, if I’ve done the math right, I should be level 80 in about a week or so.

I think for the first time since starting this experiment I will be the same level I was this time as the next time I post. It’s definitely taking longer to reach the next level.

That being said, this session saw quite a bit of running back and forth in the beginning, but also more clever questing that allowed you to take out a bunch of quests at once.

I finished up in Borean Tundra (and got the achievement) and have been in Howling Fjord for most of this level.

Onward and upward!