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40 of 41 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Quite Poor, 15 Nov 2008
Some game guides (such as the ones for Final Fantasy XII or the fantastic hardback for the Collector's Edition of Fallout 3) are well-designed mines of information that deserve to be almost permanently open by your side when playing the game. You would think from its size that this guide deserves to join that illustrious company. Think again.
Full colour printing may seem like no expense has been spared, but most of the screenshots here are pretty ugly, uninformative, too large (so they are pixellated) or so small that they tell you nothing at all. Visually, the book has very little pleasure to offer.
As far as content goes, the story is even worse. There are some useful tips on dungeons and the quest series for the new class (Death Knight) but nothing so useful that you would really want it, and telling players who have already devoted over a hundred hours to the game (on several occasions) that they are going to need a healer, a tank and DPS for an instance is a waste of time. Shockingly, this book only covers four of the instance dungeons and does not even list the remaining dungeons (except as part of the Achievement page): if you want to progress any further than Drak'Tharon Keep, then you're on your own!
In some cases the guide is actually less informative than the in-game information. It doesn't list cooldowns or casting times on spells and only gives the same text that you can see in the game, with no further advice. In the case of the Death Knight class you are given some pointers on abilities, but no real information at all on the talent paths. For no talent does the guide tell you the percentage enhancement: possibly for fear that the developers will change this and render the guide obsolete. Nevertheless - even if you make allowances for the fact that the guide was produced as the game was being balanced by its creators - the talent trees in this book are less useful than any on-line calculator because the icons are not even labelled with the name of the talent. This is unforgivably bad design, because you would have to remember the icon and find on the next page if you wanted to make sense of it.
I spent some minutes trying to find information on the new Priest top tier ability (Penance) before realising that the authors have separated spell abilities available to all members of a class from those awarded by talent points. (I think that most players will want to be able to find a list of the things they can put on their spellbar separate from the talents that affect the mathematics behind the game.) The way in which abilities are arranged (alphabetically rather than by the level at which they become available) is also confusing. For ease of use, I'd give this book a very low overall score.
For the new Inscription profession you get a list of all glyphs but no account of what effect they have, which again renders it almost completely useless as a guide. There should have been a guide to all the glyphs for each class since existing players will want advice on how best to employ a powerful new enhancement system.
Page after page is taken up with lists of quests with no account of how to complete them or the stats on the quest rewards. No one with an up-to-date quest add-on will even bother with this, whereas really useful knowledge about developing appropriate stats on characters is completely ignored.
This book is quite cheap given all the work that went into producing it, and obsessive fans of the game will certainly find some useful pages here and there, such as the detailed list of the new Achievement system. If you don't buy this, though, you really aren't going to miss it.
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Not the dungeon guide, 9 Dec 2008
I can only agree with the previous review.
Having ordered and received the guide before the actual game, I was quite eager to open it and indulge in what I was to expect once the actual game has arrived.
I was also quite stricken by the lightness and incomplete feel of the content:
The best section of the entire guide is the death knight quest chain. It almost seems as if a different author has written and taken the screenshoots for the section.
The other sections seem unfinished, difficult to navigate and incomplete. All sections are glossy and full colour but the actual content such as on spells, skills and the new inscription profession are poor.
This is not surprising when comparing it to the other general guides that came out for the classic edition and burning crusade. They aim at the casual gamer who either does not know the game or the hard-core fan that buys everything with a WoW Logo (and does not care about the content).
I had bought their Dungeon Manuals for both classic and BC games and was very impressed by the level of detail and usefulness. And would certainly buy their dungeon guide once it will get released. I would wait though for the first big patch Blizzard will probably release soonish - with more raids and dungeons being available.
My recommendation for those considering a purchase is the following: if you are new to the game consider this buy. If you are an experienced WoW gamer you will be disappointed.
If you are quite familiar with the game but not a WoW fan collecting everything that is released, look out for the next dungeon manual they will release - especially when (between now and then) your character has advanced to the point of being ready for the more complicated raids (whatever gets released after Naxx).
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent for Wrath of The Lich King, but not a general WoW guide..., 17 Feb 2009
I bought this after reading reviews that said the previous WoW guides were out of date, and so chose this one as it is the newest WoW guide printed. However, it is mainly a guide to the new features in the latest expansion pack, only skimming over most of the main concepts of WoW. It would seem a better idea to buy this book in conjunction with BradyGame's 2006 World of Warcraft Master Guide for a more complete guide...
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