Introduction to Warcraft Tycoon

Based on information from one of Azeroth’s most influential guilds, Warcraft Tycoon offers a concise guide to high value items that can be farmed or purchased for sale/re-sale on the Auction House.

The guide is said to be written from the advice of a leading guild master who taught one of his former guild-mates (the author) how to make up to 2,000g per day in WoW.

Accessibility

Warcraft Tycoon could be described as chaotic – there is very little structure to the guide. Rather than being a step-by-step introduction of farming techniques, the guide works more like a list of profitable farming locations, items and techniques.

For a new player, and even for experienced players who are new to gold farming, the guide can be a little intimidating. The information provided is filled with jargon and assumes the reader already has knowledge of many of the techniques that are described.

We advise new players, or those looking for a structured walkthrough of gold farming, to look elsewhere for a gold guide.

Ease of Use

Through our testing of this guide there has been some disagreement on the topic of “Ease of Use”. Some of us have found implementing the advice given challenging, as the structure often requires you read the whole thing through once to understand it. However others have found the conversational tone and chaotic very entertaining – so entertaining that the information has been absorbed much easier.

If you learn best from a humorous “notes-on-a-napkin” approach, then this is a good guide for you. If you prefer more structured, step-by-step learning, you may struggle with Warcraft Tycoon.

Value For Money

At the time of writing, Warcraft Tycoon sells for $47.00 with free lifetime updates for all major patches and expansion packs. Whilst we have suggested this is a reasonable price for other guides, the lack of detail in certain areas and the overall size of the guide (half the size of competing guides) makes this not as good value for money.

Warcraft Tycoon is a great guide for certain players, but we feel its current price makes it a little over-priced when compared to other guides.

Overall Effectiveness

The information given in Warcraft Tycoon is very useful if you can figure out how to use it effectively. It falls down in effectiveness by simply not giving full and detailed instruction on how to use techniques or even find techniques to achieve what it suggest.

The Auction House section of the guide is an exception, as it provides detailed analysis of the techniques used and outlines some great strategies to use with other content in the guide.

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Visit the Warcraft Tycoon web site to view sample chapters, read user testimonies and learn more about the guide.

Introduction to Secret Gold Guide

Secret Gold Guide is one of the newest gold guides to hit the market, produced after the launch of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. The author, Hayden Hawke, is a long time WoW player who felt frustrated with the amount of outdated and irrelevant information many other guides provided.

The guide is regarded as one of the best organized on the market, giving an overview of each gold farming method and then expanding to talk about how the techniques can be implemented.

Accessibility

To utilize the guide to its full effect, readers must already have a basic knowledge of World of Warcraft and some of the common terminology that is used. However, the guide assume the reader is a completely newcomer to gold farming and the techniques that are introduced.

The guide walks the reader through all the necessary techniques to become a proficient gold farmer, but the real value of this guide lies in the supplementary manuals – over 150 pages of extra material. These cover the gathering professions, fishing, cooking and crafting in great detail, leaving the reader in no doubt of how each area can be profited from.

The guide also has an interesting manual on “Dual-Boxing”, which is particularly useful for those who aren’t familiar with the term or practice.

Ease of Use

An absolute newcomer to World of Warcraft may struggle to figure out the terminology used in this guide, and implement basic techniques that the author assumes the reader to know. However, the guide does refer to additional online resources that can provide this information for first-time players.

The writing is conversational, making it very easy to read. The fact that the guide is so well broken up into different sections, and conveniently linked up with the guide’s chapter navigation, makes it ideal to browse through and pick up specific tips and techniques.

Value For Money

At the time of writing, Secret Gold Guide sells for $47.00 with free lifetime updates for all major patches and expansion packs. This is a mid-range price for gold guides today, with some less-detailed guides selling for $5-$10 less, and more extensive combo-guides (which include leveling and PVP info) selling for considerably more.

At over 350 pages (including the supplementary guides) this is a bargain for any World of Warcraft player looking to build up their pile of gold and enhance their enjoyment of the game.

Overall Effectiveness

As the guide has been compiled and published after the launch of Wrath of the Lich King, all the content provided is relevant and can be put into action. The guide covers all major aspects of gold farming, including a few unique techniques that aren’t explored in other guides.

The guide is ideally suited to a player with little existing knowledge of gold farming or trading via the Auction House. It provides an excellent foundation and supports development of your gold farming skills, to the point where you can be making hundreds of gold each week.

Those who have previous experience and want to explore the most advanced farming strategies may be disappointed with this guide, as it mainly focuses on intermediate strategies. Those who learn from this guide will become excellent gold farmers, but might not acquire the same knowledge from more advanced guides.

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Visit the Secret Gold Guide web site to view sample chapters, read user testimonies and learn more about the guide.

Introduction to Gold Secrets

Luke Brown’s Gold Secrets is a modular gold guide, made up of separate guides focused on different areas of WoW gold farming. Along with the update for Wrath of the Lich King, the guide now stands at 365 pages – one of the largest guides on the market today.

Accessibility

By breaking up each gold farming method into its own guide, Gold Secrets does a great job of taking the reader by the hand and guiding them from start to finish. This approach is great for those who want to isolate their learning to one key area, but can cause problems for new players who have skipped over vital, necessary information.

With that said, if you are willing to read the whole thing, Gold Secrets is a great option for new players as it gives comprehensive description and walkthroughs of each method used.

Ease of Use

As mentioned above, separating the guide into sub-guides has its advantages, but it also causes the major disadvantage of this guide; it’s not very easy to use. The guide is informative, but the reader can often become confused by the inconsistent organization of the guide and perhaps miss out on key details because of this. This might not be such a big issue for those who are willing to read page-to-page, but it does become an obstacle for those who want to learn and then practice right away.

The writing is clear, in a conversational tone. The author avoids using jargon or abbreviations too much, and the language is kept simple – ideal for a new player.

Value For Money

At the time of writing, Gold Secrets sells for $37.00 with free lifetime updates for all major patches and expansion packs. This represents excellent value for money; Gold Secrets is one of the most comprehensive guides on the market and priced $10 lower than its nearest competitors.

Considering the quality of the advice given, and the proven ability it has to make gold for players, we consider this to be the best value for money guide on the market.

Overall Effectiveness

The techniques Luke provides are solid, tried and tested gold farming methods that simply cannot fail in making piles of gold for the reader. His focus on only the most important and profitable methods means that players can skip filler information and go straight to what works now. This is even more so due to a recent Wrath of Lich King update to the guide, adding pages of new content to the guide.

The only limiting factor to the guide’s effectiveness is its lack of consistent organization, which can frustrate some readers. If you can deal with a slightly chaotic approach to learning gold farming, this guide really does provide it all and makes an excellent source to learn from.

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Visit the Gold Secrets web site to view sample chapters, read user testimonies and learn more about the guide.

Introduction to Ultimate WoW Guide

Dave Farrell (AKA Dugi) is a true veteran of World of Warcraft, with one of the highest play time ratings (last recorded at over 7,500 hours in-game) on any server. Dugi was one of the first gamers to produce a power leveling guide, a PVP strategy guide and, most recently, a gold farming guide. He now offers all guides, either separate or as part of a combo-deal, under the name Ultimate WoW Guide.

The Gold Guide

Dugi’s Farming Gold Guide differs from most other farming guides as it is presented as an interactive website and video series, rather than an eBook. This is a great method for interactive learning, and combined with the other tutorials, leaves you in no doubt of how to replicate the results.

New players will benefit from not only learning how to become an excellent farmer, but also an effective power leveler and PVPer (optional of course). This makes the combo-guide a perfect choice for new WoW players who want to improve their overall game and enhance their enjoyment of it.

Some of the techniques explored by Dugi are unique to this guide, but we found that some other essential farming techniques are not explored as fully in other guides. This is not to say that the guide misses anything out, but rather it might not benefit advanced farmers as much as other guides can.

The Leveling Guide

Ultimate WoW Guide offers an in-game leveling plugin for both Alliance and Horde players. Using a directional arrow and map customizations, this directs the player to the quests they need to accept and complete to level in the quickest way possible.

The guide includes many of the same features included in other popular leveling guides, but also offers additional guidance that is not. The In-Game Talent Guide, Class Gear Guide and Level 60-80 Instance Guide are examples of how the author has thought more about the needs of gamers, and provided for those needs through this guide.

Though the gold guide section of Ultimate WoW Guide can be criticized for not being advanced enough, the leveling guide is by far the most advanced in-game leveling system on the market today, and highly recommended to gamers of all levels.

The PVP Guide

We’ll be honest – we don’t really do PVP. We’re gold farming experts who know what we’re good at, and squaring up in the Arena is not what we’re good at.

So instead of trying to convince you that we know our PVP stuff, we suggest that you view this collection of information, video and testimonials to learn more about the PVP Strategy Guide.

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Visit the Ultimate WoW Guide web site to view sample chapters, read user testimonies and learn more about the guide.

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Introduction to Warcraft Millionaire

Warcraft Millionaire is the result of several months of study and analysis by Brad Johnson; a leading gold farming expert and first player to reach the character gold cap (214,748 gold 36 silver 47 copper). The guide became popular for it’s unique approach to gold farming, giving the player full knowledge of each gold farming method, but focusing highly on Auction House strategies.

Since its release Warcraft Millionaire has become one of the bestselling guides on the market, with many gamers boasting about the profitable and sustained selling/re-selling strategies they have developed through this guide.

Accessibility

Many players who are new to World of Warcraft, or who don’t have previous gold farming experience, have criticized previous guides for their lack of accessibility. Unless you knew the jargon and were familiar with practices spoken of, you would struggle to effectively implement the techniques described.

Warcraft Millionaire has addressed this issue by assuming the reader has no previous experience of WoW. This includes a “Newbie Guide” section to teach the reader the absolute basics of farming gold, but also to promote good overall gameplay.

This approach does not negatively affect intermediate or veteran gamers however. The guide is broken up into sections and can be read depending on what is relevant to the reader, making it easy to focus on a specific area of farming, or learn the guide cover-to-cover.

Ease of Use

Each section of the guide begins with an extensive contents list, each of which provides an anchor link to allow you to skip to the part of the guide you want. Breaking the guide up in such a way makes it easy to read and come back to regularly, allowing you to practice what is written in-game.

The writing is clear and in simple English, with not a spelling or grammar error in sight (which is rare for a gold guide). The only criticism we have is that after a term is introduced, it is used throughout the guide in its abbreviated form. This might require new players to skip back to check on the meaning, though the process of learning these terms is useful when in-game (where everyone will use them).

Value For Money

At the time of writing, Warcraft Millionaire sells for $47.00 with free lifetime updates for all major patches and expansion packs. This is the same price that all major gold guides are selling for, with the exception of combo-guides that include leveling and class guides as extras.

Given the amount of gold a player can make, and overall time they can save, within a short space of time, we rate this as very good value for money.

Overall Effectiveness

This guide has proven its effectiveness through both the success of its author and the widely documented successes of its users. At 200+ pages it covers every method of making gold you could possibly imagine, but the Auction House strategies are what makes Warcraft Millionaire really stand out.

The fact that the guide offer a no-questions-asked instant refund up to 60 days after purchase shows the confidence the author has in the guide’s ability to deliver – and we agree that it does.

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Visit Warcraft Millionaire to view sample chapters, read user testimonies and learn more about the guide.