World of Warcraft at Ten Ton Hammer

Over the next few weeks, Ten Ton Hammer will be taking a look at several leveling guides. We'll be covering in-game paid leveling guides, as well as some free guides available for use on the internet. Every guide claims to be the fastest and the best, but which one really IS the best, and which ones are just cheap scams? We intend to find out. After we've reviewed them all, we'll have a comparison to see exactly which leveling guide reigns supreme.

Today Jeff Francis takes a look at the paid leveling guide by Team iDemise.

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Guide: Team iDemise Website: www.teamidemise.com Type: One time charge Price: $47 USD Reviewed By: Jeffprime

You stand at the beginning of a grand adventure, imagining the glories and wonders that await you as you enter the World of Warcraft. You’re new to the game and have heard horror stories of people spending an eternity of time to get to the end-game content, so you’ve decided to try out a leveling guide to help you through the game. Our purpose is to review some of those guides, starting with Team iDemise’s leveling guide, MapMod v3 revision 5.3 (say that 5 times fast!).

Layout

MapMod is an in-game addon leveling guide that walks you through all 80 levels of the game. As you play, the addon exists as a small box that you can open and close via an icon on your minimap. The box can be moved around the screen to where you want it to go. In addition, the addon can be left opaque or made transparent, depending upon your preference. I chose the option to keep the addon hidden until I moved the cursor over that screen area, and then the addon would appear as long as I kept the cursor on it.

MapMod is incredibly easy to use. You have two drop-down menus. The first is the main level range such as 11-20 (or at the beginning, your starting area); the second menu is the specific level you are currently doing. Each level contains many steps that walk you through the level. Each step that you complete, you can check the box at the bottom of the addon screen and then click on the ‘next’ button to go to the next step. If you wish to double check a previous step, you can cycle back and forth through the various steps. Checking the boxes as you go is a good thing as that when you next log back into the game, MapMod goes to the first unchecked step on the level range you were currently doing.

At each step, there are some instructions for you to follow such as get a specific quest, turn in a quest, where to find a quest location. Each step has a coordinate location showing where you need to go. In addition, MapMod has a coordinate tracker at the bottom of the screen showing you your location at the current time.

Now that you know how to use MapMod, the question is how useful is it and is it worth the price? To answer that question, we’ll go over various good and bad points to the leveling guide.


Good: The quest grouping is extremely good. What I mean by this is that the guide will tell you to get certain quests, which you may not do right away. Later on, though, you’ll have other quests that can be done in the same area and then you’ll do that earlier quest whilst doing the quests you recently picked up. This saves you a ton of time by not running endlessly back and forth again and again. Nothing says joy like running from one end of the Barrens to the other on foot time and time again! To me, this is the main strength of the guide. Anything that saves me hassle and time is golden.

Bad: There are some problems with some of the quests the guide tells you to take. There are a few quests (mainly in the starter area) that the guide tells you to pick up, but then you never do them. In fact, when I was leaving Tirisfal Glades to head to Durotar, the guide told me to abandon any quests that I hadn’t finished. What!? Why tell me to get the quest in the first place if I wasn’t going to do them? I think a lot of people could get easily confused over situations such as this. To be fair, this situation gets rare as you reach higher levels, but it does happen from time to time. Sometimes, you do a quest, but the guide does not tell you to turn it in. Later on, a level or so higher, the guide might tell you to turn it in along with some other quests, but that’s not always the case. I had a few quests that I was never told to turn in.

Bad: The guide assumes that you’ll do no instances so there are no instance quests. I normally wouldn’t mind this as that the guide seems to be geared for you to solo your way through to 80, however, some of the quests it has you take can require up to 3 people. To be honest, there were a few quests that I eventually dropped as I couldn’t do them solo, even if the guide told me that I could solo it, but it would be challenging.

Good and Bad: Most quests that require a little more thinking to finish (especially how to fight a boss a certain way), the guide gives you accurate information on how to do so. However, some quests that could benefit from more information don’t get it. This happens infrequently, but it does come up from time to time.


Good: The guide is rather accurate in your level progression. I found that I was usually about a half-level or so higher than the guide put me at. This was mainly due to my harvesting leather, so I was going out of my way to kill animals as I was traveling as opposed to just heading straight to the quest area.

Bad: The guide does not include class quests. It would have been nice if there was a third drop-down menu that highlighted your class and would inform you when to take a class quest. The only class quest given is the one in the starter area which is to essentially introduce you to your first trainer.

Good: The guide reminds you to get the flight points of various camps as you travel. However, it does not always tell you to get the flight points at higher levels. Use your common sense and get every flight point you come across.

Good: As stated above, the in-game coordinate system for getting and doing quests is extremely, extremely helpful.

Bad: The coordinates are not always right. This happened only a few times, but each time was extremely frustrating. This situation usually occurred when getting a new quest in the middle of nowhere (usually from a solitary figure wandering in the wilderness). I’ve had the coordinates be off by as much as 20 points, which can be a pretty big area to cover. This problem reared its ugly head in Terrokar Forest in the Outlands. I had several quests in a row where the coordinates where off. After running around like a madman, I finally looked up the quest locations on the net. Again, this happened only a few times, but each time was extremely irritating. For a guide that I pay good money for, this really shouldn’t happen.

Final Verdict

So, is the guide worth the money you’ll shell out for it? Overall, my answer is a hesitant…..yes. While there are free guides out there, this one has the benefit of being an in-game guide which makes it much easier for you to access and use. The design of the guide is simple and easy to use. Overall, the quest selection is well done, but there are glaring problems such as wrong coordinates, not turning in some quests, no class quests, etc. While the lack of class quests isn’t that big a deal overall (you’re not promised class quests when you buy the guide), the problems of not finishing quests or wrong locations is a bigger deal. I want a guide to be easy to follow and the problems should be minor. If this was version 1, then I would expect more problems. Since this was a later version, the information should be correct. That being said, the guide saved me a lot of time and hassle (except when I was looking for a quest giver in a wrong spot), which was the point of following it in the first place.