Customer Reviews

World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade Official Strategy Guide (World of Warcraft)

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

I found I've used this strategy guide very little as it is much easier to find the information I seek in the various online databases like Thottbot, Allakhazam, WoWHead, etc.

This guide stinks, and I don't like it.

Trade items - it only lists the mats, not what they do or stats. Better off using a mod
Armor and weapons section - it doesn't list stats on any of these. Better off using a mod to get this information.
Maps - too small, but at least somewhat useful
Quests - many mistakes; not sorted in any order that makes sense. Very hard to use this situation. It would have been nice if they had been sorted somehow - alphabetical order, grouped by quest chains, grouped by quest giver location, anything.

Overall, this was a complete waste of money. There is information obtainable from thottbot, allakhazam, or wowwiki which is easier to find and more accurate.

Stay away from this.

I ventured into reading this book with an open-mind, as I do not know much about Burning Crusade. However, I was rather disappointed. About more than 80% of the book is just tables of quests and items. ( They should have put charts in searchable tables online, but fortunately many free sites do this anyhow ). And looking through the tables, I notice that the items documented are pre-BC 1-60 material.

Another portion of the book covers Blood Elves and Draenei, so if people struggled with level 1-10 content, then there's a lot of material here. Also covered are all of the revised and new talents. Most of this was known for a long time and discussed, but nevertheless, I did find some minimal value in discussion of that for material that I neglected to read in WoW forums.

Some qualities that I liked from the book:
- Overview on Dungeons and Levels, New Battlegrounds (around page 22)
- List of Rewards from Faction Reputation (very excellent material)
- List of Alliance/Horde Grand Masters to learn new crafts (page 10)
- Map Guides with Key (useful when quest says goes to unknown place)

Things absent from the guide:
- Details on new Hunter Pets and trainable abilities, locations, etc.
- Details on strategic quest chains needed for reputation
- Details on anything relating to Caverns of Time and Mount Hyjal
- Details on speciality Leatherworking bind-on-pickup patterns (dragonscale, tribal, elemental)
- Details on Smithing Specialties (Armorsmith vs Weaponsmith (axesmith, hammersmith, swordsmith)) bind-on-pickup
- Details on new crafting patterns and where to get/farm resources to make them
- Detailed Reputation Guides for factions, e.g. important to farm HH rep in instances as it stops at honored, and quest afterwards for quest hand-in reputation.
- Documenting race-specific Priest powers for Blood Elf and Draenei.
- Listing Quest Chains, and one liners of what to do or something similar.
- Listing Quests related to instances
- Explanation to locations in map guide, more detail on the regions.
- Details are where to get rare patterns from venders, or drop tables on bosses.

I think basically in conclusion, this book completely misses the boat. It doesn't have essential information on key quests chains for reputation, crafted goods (especially the specialized ones) and what is needed for the ultimate end-game material: attunement for Mount Hyjal and Caverns of Time. If you need general precursory information, then this guide is not bad.

Ask yourself whether you are new to WoW (World of Warcraft) or experienced.

If you are new to WoW, then the bulk of BC (Burning Crusades) material is not relevant to you until you've played for quite a while. The new zones are all level 58 or higher, which for a casual new player to WoW will take a while to reach. By then, you can buy the second edition. If you are new to the game, go ahead and buy the *second* editions of "Master Guide" and "Dungeon Companion", both of which are fine for new visitors to Azeroth. And note that this guide assumes you are fully familiar with current WoW, for example only the new talents are explained.

A third of the book is full of equipment tables (the purpose of which is dubious since it's incomplete and won't tell you *how* to get *any* of the items). Many pages are dedicated to crafting tables, again missing pertinent information (e.g. the characteristics of any of the items!). And there is no information to help you find and navigate the best online resources, such as Allakhazam, wowwiki, and thottbot.

The graphics for the zone maps (something that really is useful in a guide book) are poor. And the page layout for the zone chapter is HORRIBLE. The first zone (Hellfire Peninusla) has a two-page legend and starts out the chapter on zones, which means that *every* other zone after it are layed out such that the legends for each map is on the *next* page!

If you are already familiar with WoW, then the first edition of this book is so full of duplicate material that you already know, and errors and omissions for material that you *do* want to know, that it will be just frustrating. Not even the flight path maps are correct (some FPs are missing, some are on the wrong spot on the map, and the faction element to the FPs is not even mentioned) - so you can imagine the quality to the rest of the material. Indeed, the portals in Shattrah are not mentioned - even though there is a graphic for them!!

The really valuable information - like sorting out the new factions and key/attunement quest lines, giving a good balance on chosing Scyer or Aldor - are either omitted or plain wrong.

Etc, etc.

In other words, this guide should simply not have been published. Shame on the VPs that gave the green light to it when it was clear the team was way behind schedule. There is a clear role for good printed resources to supplement the in-game help and the online databases and wikis. This guide does not fulfill that role.

The comment from the intro in the guide reveals the attitude: "anything else that we could fit between the covers". Indeed.

Well, I was enthusiastic about this because I thought "Finally, I'll have the scoop on where things are and where to go and what to do". Nope. This book is 80% useless. It has maps of the instances which are 1/16th of a page. It doesnt have drops for the instances WITH the instances. It DOES Have a listing of EVERY weapon in WoW. For no good reason.
My biggest beef was that the layout had no rhyme or reason. Quests were given in alphabetical order, rather than in the chains they appear in.
They should offer this product as a database as well as a book. They had to make one anyway to make the book, and it would be better than the paper version.

I bought this book when I bought WOW: The Burning Crusade. The layout is very similar to the original BradyGames WOW strategy guide. It does have well-drawn maps and information on Outland, but has very little information on the rest of the game. Another nitpick, like the original guide, it gives general information on areas and characters, but lacks specificity.

Overall, it is worth getting if you will use it right away in Outland and need general guidance.

First, although the maps are fairly good renderings, they have made them too small for easy use. The pages they saved by NOT making each map a full page makes them pretty useless.

Second, stringing all the talents for each character type together -- again saved paper but made it more difficult to get where one ended and the next started.

Third, stringing each of the new starting zones quests together back-to-back with text in between was an interesting idea--that imo sucked.

NO INDEX???? what's that all about. Very, very disappointing--except the item tables, that was nice.

I bought this book along with my copy of the Burning Crusade. It was not until I got home that I realized that about 90% of it is completely useless. I used the tiny 2"x2" map to figure out where the new flight paths were on the first day, and a short tutorial that explained that if you wanted the maximum reputation from each of the 15-odd new reps that you should kill mobs first till' you stop getting rep THEN do the associated quests.

99% of this information is available online for free. Not only that - since the guide was published BEFORE the Beta was finished, some of the content in this printed guide was changed before the final release. The Rep rewards vendors list has items that were removed from the game for game balance. It spends about 20 pages listing not NEW equipment but equipment that is pre-BC for some reason mixed in with BC new gear. The quest list is nearly useless since it gives a one line description of the name of the quest and the zone/quest giver but no description of the rewards. About 30 pages are devoted to the new talent trees - who cares?

Save your money - [...] and WowWikki are free and are constantly updated by fans.

The information in this book is:
1. Hard to find
2. Not completely accurate
3. Easier to find on thottbot or allakhazam

I purchased this in the hopes that it would be a good read and maybe offer some tips for BC. There are a few boss fight tips that are so painfully obvious that reading them was of little value. This book is just a very large ad for WoW, which is funny because you'd think most people reading it would already own WoW.

The art work is great, the quest info is passable, but the price is too much and the return on value is non existant.

this guide is supposed to cover all of the BC expansion; the main part which is the new zone: outland.

the guide is a decent guide but it's not the guide it needs to be. all the basics are here; a section on the new mechanics, on the classes, on the new "races" , the armor and weapons, the quests, the dungeons, and the new zones. but those are the only things the guide manages to accomplish.

unfortunately the guide has some serious flaws;
most notably an ENTIRE section of outland is missing the section in question is shadowmoon valley. all the other sections are displayed with large maps but there is no map for shadowmoon valley.

also the guide only covers four of the new dugeons in outland.
I'll give them a "pass" on a few them; becuase you are required to complete certain quest lines to get into them.
however, there's still no excuse for omitting the dungeons in auchindoun(terokkar forest) and the tempest keep dungeons(netherstorm).

other then that its a functional guide, but when you compare it to the other world of warcraft guides the brady games has published, it seems to be the "black sheep" of the wow guide family.