Jame working on an addon, guides for other games
Gamespy has an interview up with Jame of Jame's famous leveling guides, which are the how-to of choice if all you want from your character is to get to 80 as fast as possible. I have to admit that I've never used them -- while I do use Questhelper quite a bit (which takes lots of the guesswork out of where to go next), I also like exploring on my own pace, and Jame's guides turn Azeroth into a list of to-dos rather than an actual game. Still, they do work -- if you're leveling an alt or just don't care about the content, following the guides to the letter works fast.Jame says his wife was the major driving force behind the site -- she needed help leveling, and he found that he had most of the major steps memorized. His site is run completely off of advertising, which he says keeps him from competing with other leveling guides that you must pay for to use. He's also working on an addon, and he says that it actually works faster than Questhelper, so that should be something to see.
Finally, he says he's working on putting together guides for other games -- "Diablo III, Starcraft II, and other MMOs" all get mentioned, so if you've already been following Jame's advice, you might be following it for a while longer. Good to get a little insight and background into the man behind the gold standard for leveling guides.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Fan stuff, Leveling, Interviews






Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Mane Jan 29th 2009 4:12PM
A step by step leveling guide add-on?! That'd be nice for blitz leveling my alts :-D
JDM Jan 29th 2009 4:25PM
Give the TourGuide addon a try.
Matthew Feb 2nd 2009 10:56AM
Jame's addon uses TourGuide.
mcclary Jan 29th 2009 4:12PM
I leveled my priest to 80 without the use of any guides and just went zone by zone (HF, BT, GH, DB, SB, 80 in ZD). On my deathknight I have used his guide for Dragonblight and Grizzly Hills. It was amazingly fast and made the most of my limited playtime. With full rested xp I was doing levels in ~4.5 hours.
On my priest I remember thinking (in Grizzly Hills) "I have to go back to Drak'jil (?) Ruins AGAIN!?" And on my DK, everything just flowed.
I play in windowed mode and kept his guide open right beside wow.
Hurry up with your ZulDrak guide Jame! :)
-Mc
Capitalism Jan 29th 2009 4:47PM
Hurry up with your ZulDrak guide Jame!
And Basin! Need cash and your the best at optimizing zones. I never would have seen as much of NE without your Guides. Even with 5 hours of /played per level. Dinged 80 on my priest right after GH. There now with my 77 DK. Gogo!
AyaJulia Jan 29th 2009 4:17PM
The guide itself was always faster than using QH, and using the addon version is doubly so because it takes out the added time of alt-tabbing, remembering where you were, reading the next step or two, looking at the location on the provided map, and alt-tabbing back to execute.
Wow-pro's Tourguide addon + TomTom + LightHeaded = Ultimate speed.
Kyane Jan 29th 2009 4:52PM
@Keyra
I've leveled ...too many...characters to 70. I used Jame's leveling guide after having my 2nd 70 and figured I'd give a shot at the leveling guide. I'd seen all the content, I didn't need to try to remember where things were, and following a list and having something tell me "don't forget 2 elixirs of fortitude noob" was welcomed.
Tourguide replaced Jame's guide when leveling 3 more characters to 70. I'm using Jame's guide to level additional characters to 80 since I already have 1. My play time has changed drastically in the last few months so I need to be as efficient as possible when leveling now.
Kyane Jan 29th 2009 4:57PM
ugh...apparently I hit the wrong "reply" button >_<
NERF REPLY BUTTONS!
Monne Jan 29th 2009 4:52PM
I tried using a guide back in TBC and it just wasn't for me. Miss a quest or quest item and you're no longer in sync with the guide. Now you've got to take the time to see where you missed an item or chain quest.
I'm sure they are great, especially if you start out with a fresh character and no previous quests. However for starting mid-stream it's just a pain.
Keyra Jan 29th 2009 4:22PM
This might be a nice addition to augment Questhelper but just to powerlevel? I'll pass.
I'm one of those that's having fun actually just playing and exploring. The other night, I was riding around with my main and said to myself, "Hey, I've never been this way before...I wonder what's over here?" A step-by-step guide to leveling just for the sake of leveling kills that curiosity and turns it into "I GOTTA GET TO 80 FREAKIN' NOW" thing.
Maybe that would appeal to the kids and hardcore PvP and raiding freaks (you know you're out there!), but I think I'll just stick to exploring :-)
AyaJulia Jan 29th 2009 4:32PM
"Maybe that would appeal to the kids"...? Did we really have to take a shot at age/maturity here? Some of us adults have already explored the game several times over and would like to simply level.
Ed (Sindarin, Hydraxis US) Jan 29th 2009 4:34PM
From a different point of view, when I was following a step-by-step levelling guide for my mage, having levelled to 80 without the use of such things on my hunter, I found that I saw more of the world using the guide, as it pointed me to places I might never have found otherwise.
It's sort of counter-intuitive, but for me, I found I experienced a greater diversity of places in Azeroth when following a guide. It's worth saying that I wasn't afraid to ignore the guide at times.
John Jan 29th 2009 4:34PM
When I leveled my main, I started in Howling Fjord, did all the quests I could find until I got "I toured the Fjord". Then I moved to Borean Tundra, did the quests until I got "Nothing Boring..." and moved to DragonBlight. I did each zone until I got the achievement for that zone. I was 80 before I was much into Zul'drak.
Now that I am leveling my alts it is all about speed. I have seen a good portion of the quests I just want to get to the endgame on the alts.
Keyra Jan 29th 2009 4:36PM
...AND hardcore PvPers and raiding freaks...
Yes, I typed more than "kids" there; however, if it makes you feel better, I will add the following list:
...and...
People who don't like to wait to get up to where their friends are...
People who want to look uber-kewl in armor that doesn't loook like it was pulled from a trash barrel...
People who have had too much Red Bull and can't think slowly enough to do the quests at a normal pace...
...I could go on, but my break's over.
Thalanx Jan 29th 2009 5:21PM
If you're worried about missing quests / lore / exploration while following guides, then you should actually following Jame's Guide.
His WotLK leveling guides include 100% of the quests in every zone. Needless to say I easily got the zone quest achievements for every single zone following his guide.
He actually mentions it at the start of each of his guides, he lists the achievements you will get if you follow this chapter, etc.
So yea, you won't miss any content, you will actually do more content than if you were on your own.
Keyra Jan 29th 2009 6:00PM
I might definitely have to look into his guides then! If for nothing else than helpful hints on completing some of the quests that I've otherwise been having problems with :-)
Thanks for the advice, everyone!
Firestride Jan 29th 2009 4:23PM
I leveled from about 35-50 using Jame's guide, then took a long break from the game. I used Questhelper after that, and while I don't love it, I do vastly prefer an in-game tool.
erogroth Jan 29th 2009 4:25PM
I prefer Zygor's guide. It is a pay to use but it is really really good. It has separate guides for each of the starting areas and then takes you through step by step with the arrows and map dots and everything. It even has little notes that give a description of where the person or object you are looking for is located. If you are looking for a certain NPC the arrow will lead you right to him but the not will say "standing on a blue rug under a tree" or something to that effect. Very very useful. I leveled 1 to 80 in under 8 days of play time.
erogroth Jan 29th 2009 4:27PM
Oh yea. here is the web site http://zygorguides.com/
Its an all in game guide. There is a demo video avialable on the homepage.
AyaJulia Jan 29th 2009 4:33PM
Jame's new addon version of the wow-pro guides does exactly this.