Interesting guide

[0311_marines]

I'm a new WoW player, I have a month before my deployment to marine boot camp so I was looking for a way to kill some time when I don't have anything important to do. I found a 14 day trial snuggled away with my WC3 game and was curious about this video game. I liked it right away, hit the trial level cap in only a few days and bought the full version.

I've played a lot of RPG's and without a doubt, I knew WoW leveling is way too slow. I looked for cheap alternatives and I found a trial version for this guide. I tried it, and enjoyed it. It showed me some new quests that I never knew about, had clever shortcuts and most importantly spared me from wasting hours on unnecessary gameplay.

As good as the guide is, like most things, could always benefit from improvements. Sometimes the questing path is skeptical and I can see a more efficient path to complete quests and it doesn't take into consideration character classes too much. Some classes have an easier time completing some quests than others. And as I'm getting higher and higher in levels, I am frequently seeing more "You should be level x, if not grind a bit." Which may not be a problem if you only need 5 - 10% more experience, but will be if its 15% or more.

So bottom line, I enjoy using your product and I would recommend it to a friend, but I'm not so batshit crazy about it like a lot of other users. Like many things, it just needs a bit more refinement. At least updating doesn't take more than a few seconds.

[voltec]

First of all, let me say "Semper Fidelis" Marine - well... soon to be Marine... lol I am a retired Navy Chief (officially retired Jan 31 this year) so I am proud to welcome you as a fellow Service member. As a junior Marine (E-3 and below), you don't have to worry about what you are doing that day, someone will be more than happy to tell you - so make sure you are ready to follow the orders of those senior to you - even if you don't understand why.

As far as your assessment of the guide, you are right, there were times when I wondered why I needed to run so far just to get a flight path or for a single quest rather than at least do some quests on the way, but overall, I trust them completely and they really do well for me.

Take care and God Bless You - and let me be one of the first to Thank You for your future service!
Matt

[Kamchak]

Welcome to Zygor guides, and Semper Fi. Nothing you have ever done in your life will matter more to you than the moment you are blessed with the title of "Marine."
Try to fight off the tears of joy.... I dare ya.

On to your observations:

The design of the game is to keep you logged in trying to complete quests and get XP to level. The longer it takes, the longer you keep paying that monthly fee to Blizz. Simple economics.

Zygor's guide takes out the most useless quests that really aren't needed to level a toon, and condenses the 'running around' to as little as possible, getting you from a-z, or in this case, 1 - 80, as fast as possible. But again, this is all based on a game structure designed to keep you busy.

Why go all the way to another area for the flightpoint (fp)? They come in very handy as of right now. In Outland and Northrend you can get a flying mount, so fp's are not as required as they are in the <60 zones.
Keep in mind, the game does not stop when you hit 80. Some say (myself included) the game will just be getting started. So having fp's is a major plus right now.
However, with Cata, that is ALL about to change.
I will still recommend you get all those fp's in Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor. It gives you a good time to bio break while moving to an area.

God bless you and your family, recruit.
Boot camp is all about the mind. It is far from personal. In fact, they may be saving your life. Just trust in what is happening, knowing they are there to make you into much more than you are today.... a Marine.

[0311_marines]

Thanks for the warm welcome guys. Happy to see other servicemembers that play this game. Frankly, I am very excited to join the service, but I will miss some of the pleasures of a civilian life.

I can understand taking the extra time to grab a flight path that near an area, because that will save me some time in the long end. What I don't understand is why the guide occassionally suggests a particular mission before another, even though there is no distinguishing parameters between the two. For example, if your playing as Horde in Stonetalon, at one point the guide tells you to complete a mission which is in the middle of two future objectives. One is to destroy to harvesting machines and the other is to kill an elite spider. Instead of telling you to destroy the machines first, it tells you to kill the spider first forcing you to make an extra trip back to destroy the machines, and then turn in a mission that was in the direction of where you were to kill the spider.

I'm still going to listen to my own instincts, I can't rely on technology completely. I look ahead a few steps and if it doesn't seem right, I'll do what I think is more efficient. Zygor is still reliable for the most part, but there a few times when his directions do not seem to add up.

[cabby]

That seemingly out of sorts pathing might just be the guide wanting you to have to kill more mobs for added XP to go along with the quest XP. I'm not positive on this but that's what I tell myself.

[pinghansen]

I use the guide to keep me "centered" - from doing too many worthless quests.

The real beauty of this guide is the SIS, which lets you step outside the guide whenever you please.

I run a lot of randoms, where I do a little research first, to get the dungeon quests for a huge boost in XP. I also do a lot of targeted quests at the top of my level bracket to get better gear gear - often best-in-slot for multiple levels, like Mahlin's request in Arathi Highlands.

Thus, and because of my heirlooms, I'm always ahead of the guide, but I'm having significantly more fun, than if I were by just following the guide. My leveling process has not been the same for two characters, as there are always major differences, because of all the quests I'm able to skip. As an example, I recently skipped almost all of the quests in Theramore/Dustwallow Marsh on my lock.