Customer Reviews

World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Official StrategyGuide (Official Strategy Guides (Bradygames))

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

This guide fails at almost every level. It's incomplete (missing many instances, and no information on raids or heroic settings), it's horribly laid out and in some cases it's just wrong.

90% of the book really just feels like a file dump of a game manual. Lists of every skill (old and new) with nothing more then their icon and description for example. Thanks! I certainly can't get that in game by say... talking to any class trainer. Professions are even worse with the name, level and mats listed but not what the skill creates. Trying to decide which profession to level first? Hope you can figure it out based on names of the items alone.

The layout makes the book almost unreadable. The lisst of much of the loot tells you the stats and type, but not where it's worn. Some you can figure it out from the name ("Spaulders of..."), but come on. Beyond that the stats of an item are laid you as a sentence. Like this, "Leather. +40 AGI, +33 Critical, +32 Hit, +44 STAM" Just like that, line after line. Even incomplete the lists might have been useful if they were better laid out. As is, they are unreadable and useless.

I've only read parts, but even skimming I came across a blatant error. They seem to have confused the introductory quest lines for the Sholazar factions with the actual method for changing allegiance. Since this is like to be asked endlessly in chat you'd think they'd get that right at least.

The Dungeon Guides Brady did for WoW and TBC were very good. They suffered from a little of the bad loot layout, but they were accurate and readable. This guide is simply a rip off. It tells you almost nothing, is incomplete, hard to read, and simply wrong. Go to wowwiki or anywhere and print the pages out. You'll end up with a 100x better guide.

I got the book but I can't find the strategy guide.

I was expecting maybe a list of new talents and items (and quests that reward them) that would be helpful for a fury warrior, for example. You know, things that would GUIDE me in developing a good STRATEGY.

All I can find is a sort of table of contents for the game. A list of zones, a list of quests, a list of talents, etc. It tells me what's there but not how to use it. It doesn't categorize it in a way that would be useful in developing a good strategy.

This book is absolutely useless. I can't think of any reason why I will ever pick it up again after having reviewed it.

Wait! I just found it! On the cover it says: TAKE YOUR GAME FURTHER. Those are the only strategy-related words I've found. Unfortunately I was already doing that so the book is still useless to me.

This book looks ok but leaves much to be desired. I bought it specifically for the info on dungeons. It has a very basic walkthrough of a few of the 5-mans but is missing tons of information. The TBC guide had much more useful info in it. When looking up Blood Furnace or Shadow Lab(whatever) you could see what each Boss's health was, their spells, hp, loot lists etc. It was a great 'book' style preview for those about to go in there the firs time. This leaves all that out and just gives you written walk through of the fight with no numbers and no loot lists. Much better to just go to wowwikki, wowhead or any of the many sites giving this info for free. Visually appealing but ultimately disappointing.

This guide is quite large, but it's filled with an enormous amount of unnecessary/easily found information. For instance, it gives gigantic lists of the spells and talents of each class. This is very unnecessary, as it is just a waste of space on information that can be found in the game or online. This portion of the guide occupies pages 33-129 out of a total of 345. While this can be useful *OCCASIONALLY*, this is hardly the case. The rest of the guide is almost as disappointing. The crafting section is poorly put together and also cumbersome, and the maps aren't all that helpful. It does, however, give a very detailed description of the Death Knight starting zone and the quests there. This isn't as useful as it sounds, because the starting zone, as indicated by the name, is easily navigable and not all that confusing. The pictures and illustrations, where there are any, are clear and highly detailed. The dungeon guide is also very nice, but there aren't any for raids yet, which is expected, I guess. I would have to say the biggest disappointment for me was that there is really no guide for the questing and leveling content of the game. The majority of the information is side information (spells, talents, professions) that isn't all that crucial to strategy. There is a gigantic list of all the quests in Northrend, but this is of minuscule importance in helpfulness. I suppose it's a bit much to ask the guide to have a detailed walkthrough of every quest, like they did for the Death Knight starting area, but they could at least give a general guide to a good place to start, which quests to do first, and some strategies to doing them. But that isn't here. Overall, if you have the money to waste, go ahead. Or if you really like guides, you might like it. Otherwise, it's a waste.

I'm a soldier deployed in Iraq for another 6 months. I'm addicted to WoW, but cannot play often or reliably due to satelite internet issues. So I bought this book to help get my fix for the new content.

I read the book cover to cover a couple times and I did find useful information, but what struck me was how much of the book is wasted pages. Best example of this is 40 pages listing all the achievements you can get. If you actually have the game, all you have to do is log in and hit the 'Y' key to see the list. Similar with the PvP and PVE badge gear lists. They have dozens of pages that are not well organized giving information that the gear vendor in game will easily tell you.

The first 4 dungeons in the Xpac have walkthroughs and boss fight strategies. This is the content I was interested in. But only the first 4 dungeons out of 10 and no coverage of the new raid instances.

The death knight starting quests are well covered with many screenshots. Would have been nice if they did that with other of the new quest zones instead of just a useless list of quest names in each of the new northrend zones.

I think the problem with this guide comes from the fact that they were trying to release it so early. Their information comes from a couple people who were in the beta-test and thus they could only level up to a cap of 77 before hitting the printing press.

So I would say this guide is designed for people interested in the new WoW expansion, but who are not active playes. If you already have a lv70 character and have bought the expansion, you'll find nothing here of use to you. [...]

Talk about all over the map! Is Brady loading this review list up with fake reviews in order to keep this item listed favorably? If so, shame on you! Personally, I have friends who have purchased this guide and they all agree with the negative reviews. A bunch of worthless information that is easily attained from within game.

I picked this up as an impulse buy when I got up my anxiously awaited pre-ordered WoftLK expansion. I was wishing I'd pre-ordered the Special Edition and thought I'd console myself with buying SOMTETHING extra... Pretty much, this guide is a dud. I did find some of the maps of the different areas useful and I've used the zone quest listings a couple times. But, Wowhead or Wowwikki are just as good for that, better for everything else, and FREE. I doubt I'll ever buy another "guide" by these folks.

Why Blizzard continues to use Brady games for their strategy guide publishers still confuses me. This manual is bad! The Borean Tundra maps are labeled completely wrong and certain areas are not where they say they are. Other important quest areas aren't even listed on the map. I mainly buy the strategy guides for their maps and am really disappointed in this.

Use the internet, it's cheaper and far more accurate.

Only four, count 'em, FOUR of the loads of new instances and raids were covered in this weak excuse for a strategy guide. This is by far the most useless strategy guide Brady has ever published. They didn't even touch anything past the initial four instances - no Naxxramas at all, not even the basic level 80 non-raid instances.

In a word, useless.

Don't buy this book. Lovely pictures, completely worthless reference. Possibly the worst Bradygames Strategy Guide yet. Do yourself a favor and buy the a month of WoW (giftcard), or take them to McDonalds. At least you'll get something for your money instead of wasting it on this book.