Alliance Leveling Guide: Final Post – Zygor Review
When it comes to World of Warcraft Alliance leveling guides there are definitely a lot of choices out there. If you go back to when I first started this blog I actually didn’t go with Zygor’s guide at first. There was about three days where I spent time leveling my Mage using Dugi’s “Ultimate World of Warcraft guide”. Needless to say I wasn’t very impressed by it. I felt that the guiding arrow was sporatic, I often fell short of my leveling goals to the point where quests it told me to pick up weren’t even available to me. To top it all off I felt that the talent advisor was extremely confusing and frustrating to use.
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!
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