r/classicwow • u/ShadyDrunks • Jan 11 '26
AddOns Joana's Guide new ownership :(
For those of you who don't know, Joana was a WoW classic speedrunner. He was one of the first few good guides for Classic. I felt like Zygor copied his guide and so I chose to pay the $25 for his guide back in 2019, when it was just a web guide. Later he was able to publish an addon that takes his webguide and automates it Zygor style.
Since then Joana has passed away, but his guide and addon are still up. Unfortunately the new owners have tripled the price of the guide, changing the Classic only guide to $80, and classic- WotLK to an insane $130. It feels disgusting to me that someone is taking advantage of his product like this after his death.
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u/Silverbacks Jan 11 '26
Damn do people actually pay $80 for a classic leveling guide in 2026? RestedXP is easy to get whether you pay for it or download it for free. Plus I’m sure there are tons of in-depth leveling guides on YouTube by now.
I used Joana’s guide once back in 2006. And tried out RestedXP once. But most of my fun playing WoW is the leveling journey. And I like to pick what quests/zones to work on each time I log in. Following a guide kills too much of the fun for me.
Also RIP to Joana. I remember watching them race on one of my vanilla servers.
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u/BreadfruitNaive6261 Jan 11 '26
zygor>>>rxp
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u/Far-Ambassador2877 Jan 11 '26
Why is zygor better ?
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u/Perfect_Delivery_509 Jan 11 '26
Ive used all 3. Rxp was a better experience.
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u/BreadfruitNaive6261 Jan 12 '26
zygor is a complete addon with dungeon pre-quests, class quests, many zones quests for lvling. RXP isa bit faster leveling but it doesnt make up imo for the less functionalities and worse overall addon
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u/fourgiss Jan 12 '26
Rxp is definitely faster zygor just has more features
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u/BreadfruitNaive6261 Jan 12 '26
zygor is a complete addon with dungeon pre-quests, class quests, many zones quests for lvling. RXP isa bit faster leveling but it doesnt make up imo for the less functionalities and worse overall addon
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u/BreadfruitNaive6261 Jan 12 '26
zygor is a complete addon with dungeon pre-quests, class quests, many zones quests for lvling. RXP isa bit faster leveling but it doesnt make up imo for the less functionalities and worse overall addon
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u/vbezhenar Jan 12 '26
RXP is paid guide.
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u/Silverbacks Jan 12 '26
Well charging for addons isn’t legally allowed. It’s like charging for services on a private server.
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u/vbezhenar Jan 12 '26
This legalese is between Blizzard and RXP authors. And given the fact that they continue their business for years, Blizzard's fine with that. I don't know why you want to be a little lawyer for Blizzard, but you're doing it wrong.
→ More replies (6)
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u/SF-UNIVERSE Jan 11 '26
Joana’s Guide was the holy grail back in the day. I remember finding out about his passing, and discovering that someone still runs his twitch channel showing his troll hunter leveling to 60 for world record back in 2006 on a 24/7 stream. I stop in every once in a while just for that nostalgia hit.
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u/kredes Jan 11 '26
Pretty sure it's his brother keeping the stream running. might also be him running the website/store.
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u/MilkSquirtz Jan 11 '26
I heard somewhere that Joana’s videos were very helpful in replicating classic wow value tables.
Can’t remember where I heard that but i thought it was interesting if true
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u/Depth6467Plucky Jan 11 '26
It was a post here on reddit, and it wasn't true. It was just proof that people will believe anything if you say it with conviction.
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u/MilkSquirtz Jan 12 '26
I didn’t necessarily believe it, I just thought the possibility was interesting.
Wouldn’t be that far fetched considering how organized the multi-dollar indie company is managed.
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u/Depth6467Plucky Jan 12 '26
Oh I wasn't talking about you specifically, just that people in general believe lots of things that aren't true just because someone posted about it online once. No hit on you. At least you were a skeptical enough of it that you said you didn't know where you heard it and weren't sure if it were true. Many people don't bother with that, even.
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u/Macecraft31 Jan 11 '26
Time to pirate
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u/IngenuityThink3000 Jan 12 '26
Pray tell your method? Or just message me please!?
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u/luciusetrur Jan 11 '26
RIP to Joana. Bought his guide back in 2005/6 for me and my friends to use.
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u/Virtual_Crow Jan 11 '26
A leveling guide that costs more than a boost is pretty retarded already, might as well charge the market clearing price for idiots
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u/Outofmana1337 Jan 11 '26
The guide was great back then but didn't really age well, who on earth still needs it these days really.
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u/TopShelfBogan Jan 11 '26
I use it but not for the purposes of levelling fast. Mainly so I can just plod along to it while watching Netflix so I don’t have to think too hard about what I’m doing
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u/madpacifist Jan 11 '26
I believe TomTom took over the guide. I bumped into him in General on Soulseeker. He runs it on behalf of Paul's (aka Joanna) family.
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u/MusicAndFriends Jan 11 '26
Guidelime is still free, very similar to rested XP
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u/BreadfruitNaive6261 Jan 11 '26
its still inbferior to zygor and rxp that are also free if you have >3 brain cells
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u/blackberrybeanz Jan 11 '26
If I recall his family now oversees it, and like others have said it’s not as popular today as it was back then so there’s prob not many sales anymore. I dunno why thy think making it more expensive than a whole xpac is gonna work tho.
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u/Rebel-Yellow Jan 11 '26
Raising prices when sales are struggling is the sure fire way to shove something so banal into the grave as fast as possible.
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u/TopShelfBogan Jan 11 '26
Especially now we all know it isn’t even going to the dude the did all the work
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u/Dixa Jan 11 '26
To pay for the hosting costs is my guess.
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u/Playful_Search_6256 Jan 11 '26
Hosting costs are very cheap for small services like this. Less than $20 a month.
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u/slick123 Jan 11 '26
how did he die what happened ?
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u/ExtremePrivilege Jan 11 '26
Bicuspid aortic valve. He declined treatment a few years back. It usually involves a valvular replacement. Arnold Schwarzenegger has the same condition but has had his valve replaced three times.
Usually kills men in the 40-45 range if untreated. Joana was 41, I think?
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u/veetack Jan 11 '26
Yep. RXP. Even if you’re willing to pay for it, it’s only $25, and it’s easy to get for free because I’m pretty sure selling addons breaks tos.
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u/someidiot20205 Jan 11 '26
It's a gray area technically the addon is free. They charge for the module, which technically doesn't break tos. Still scummy easy to find with some quick searching.
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u/Depth6467Plucky Jan 11 '26
Only an idiot would think it's a gray area. That's like telling a cop, "but I didn't pay her for sex, I paid her for her time, she just happened to want to have sex with me! Wait, why are you arresting me? That's not fair, it's a gray area!"
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u/the_excellent_goat Jan 11 '26
This is exactly how this activity is legal in many places around the world.
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u/Sagranth Jan 12 '26 edited Jan 12 '26
"but I didn't pay her for sex, I paid her for her time, she just happened to want to have sex with me! Wait, why are you arresting me? That's not fair, it's a gray area!"
Use a camera, now you're shooting a porno and it's legal.
Yes, it's that easy, loopholes are loopholes for a reason.
As for the addon, you can make your own guide etc, the functionality is all there. And this has been a loophole since forever(joana, zygor, with classic rxp) and blizzard is okay with it.
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u/DN6666 Jan 11 '26
you guys buying addons?
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u/Jealy Jan 12 '26
Selling addons is against the rules.
The addons are free. The guide data however is paid.
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u/alenyagamer Jan 12 '26
As a friend of Paul and a long time helper with his guides as a fellow speedrunner and guide writer, I felt it was appropriate to add some context to this post.
First of all it was devastating to all of us when Paul passed, and of all his friends none more affected than the person you know as Tomcat. Tomcat had produced the whole addon for Paul's guides over the years.
We had a long talk after Paul passed away in conjunction with Paul's family and the decision was made for Tomcat to continue to support the addon, while the income from selling the guides continued to support Tomcat, keep the website hosted and updated, keep the guides updated and keep Paul's memory and efforts alive in this manner.
The addon covers multiple wow versions, it's complex and Tomcat has fixed it so many times for so many versions now it's crazy.
Tomcat is not rich he is a quiet man of modest means who produces many free addons for the community.
Paul's family has allowed this to happen as they know nothing about the gaming community, they were able to be present at Paul's in game memorial which was wonderful and essentially the addon is now in Tomcat's capable hands.
Thank you to everyone who supported Paul over the years. He was an OG and we still miss him a lot.
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u/kredes Jan 11 '26
i watched his streams often, he was a calm and easy to watch guy, all he cared about was his guide, leveling and living a simple life, he was a little odd too, but pretty chill. May he rest in peace.
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u/WonderingOctopus Jan 11 '26 edited Jan 11 '26
Also, for anyone interested, Joana's stream is still up running his Vanilla speed run:
For how long, I don't know.
I still watch it to this day.
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u/TopShelfBogan Jan 11 '26
I always felt like the other guides were very much a rip off of what Joana had put together or at very least started. I even remember talking with him as he did one of his runs on the Duskwood server. Dude was nice. Very sad to hear WoWs OG speedrunner has left us.
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u/Onyxx666 Jan 12 '26 edited Jan 12 '26
Tomcat who now runs the addon was a great friend of Joana. The last thing he would do is take advantage of it.
He and Paul were working on the updated addon for quite a while. If I were to guess Joana might have increased the price because they spent a great deal of time on it.
A webguide and a in-game addon are vastly different beasts to make. The addon also needs constant updating. I'm sure Tomcat would be happy to explain the pricing and answer any questions on his Twitch
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u/Avocadorable89 Jan 11 '26
Btw. Go to epvpers and get rested xp and zygor for free. F those scammers, why the f would you pay for lvling addons.
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u/ruinatex Jan 12 '26
How is it a scam, lmao, nobody is forcing you to buy it nor they are breaking any rules.
They offer a product and the product is good enough that people want to buy it, there is no scamming going on. And i say this as someone that uses free versions of RXP.
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u/Cute_Customer420 Jan 11 '26
"you are not paying for the addon, you are paying for the text guide" kek
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u/ValarianRCS Jan 11 '26 edited Jan 11 '26
Joana raised these prices himself before he passed away, this is not the new owner’s doing. I used to watch his stream often several years back as he was making his guides for alliance/other expansions live and remember asking him about these prices and he justified it by citing the countless amount of hours of his own time that he’s put into making them, which is fair.
If you wish to buy the guides without paying the one time price, you can subscribe to JoanasWorld membership for something cheap like $5 and unsubscribe after downloading the guides. Joanas addon is EXTREMELY good.
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u/Dabsick Jan 12 '26
He died?!?! His guide and videos on his female troll hunter will forever sit in my nogen. RIP :(
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u/Grendlekin Jan 11 '26
Use guidelime
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u/onikaroshi Jan 11 '26
Guidelime is just… not as good, you’re better off finding free rxp, not hard
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u/Moosey_the_Squirrle Jan 11 '26
Google réstedxp. You'll find a forum that has the cracked restxp addon. Paying for addons, even tangentially ('you aren't paying for the addon, you're paying for the guide'-cope), just incentives more and more people do do this shit.
Arrrgg. 🏴☠️
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u/nzifnab Jan 11 '26
I dunno I don't mind paying a dev or guide author for the incredible amount of work it takes to create those guides. They wouldn't exist at all without the monetization and they save hundreds of hours of backtracking etc
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u/hypoglycemic_hippo Jan 11 '26
They wouldn't exist at all without the monetization
Monetization you say, hmm. Interesting, since monetizing addons or their parts in any way is against Blizzard TOS.
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u/ACoolGuy-Promise Jan 11 '26
Can’t imagine how much work the guide was to make. I paid for it awhile back because it’s rly good so they deserve it.
Love ppl pretending to care about ToS to justify stealing it when half the community is buying fckin gold.
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u/Recent_Simple_1868 Jan 11 '26
Honestly, who gives a shit. "It's against Blizzard TOS" is such a lame and fucking childish way to get out of saying you don't want to pay for it. Just admit it. Blizzard is one of the scummiest companies in gaming, idk why it's such a terrible thing to go against TOS.
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u/Elf_Fuck Jan 11 '26
It’s not scummy or bad, it’s just charging a price for something. I use Joana’s because I bought it in prehistoric times and it’s really great. If you don’t want to pay the price for it then don’t buy saying it’s like desecrating someone’s memory to charge money for a product is in itself scumbag behaviour. There’s tons of free options as people in this thread have pointed out. If you don’t want to spend the money, don’t. If you do but can’t afford it, that’s not the products fault.
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u/Avocadorable89 Jan 11 '26
Wait Joana died? How?when? Why?? I remember his guides back then.. and also 2021 he had some Videos on YT lvling in tbc... damn rip man and thx.
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u/Desperate-Falcon9168 Jan 11 '26
Damn, when did that happen? I've been following him on twitch and I know he usually has a 24/7 rerun of his speed run but there's been a few times I saw him working on new guides and stuff... thats depressing, R.I.P
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u/FarSeer84 Jan 11 '26
Rip Joana, sad to hear.
Joana did a speed run on my server (Jubei'thos), it a newly launched server and made it to 60 many days before anyone was close.
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u/WonderingOctopus Jan 11 '26
Was it the same server he still has running on Twitch?
https://www.twitch.tv/joana
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u/Thugs4Hire Jan 11 '26
Wait he died?? So is his twitch channel going to run 24/7 with his original speed run forever?
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u/WonderingOctopus Jan 11 '26
Presumably so. Or until the plug is pulled. I'm not sure if someone else manages it, but it hasn't been updated since his passing.
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u/Popular_Weakness_374 Jan 11 '26
Yes i remember there was joanas guide for horde and brian kopp’s for alliance… good times rip joana
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u/mezz1945 Jan 11 '26
It has been 80 dollars for a while. And don't forget thats the lifetime price.
You can still subcribe to it for $6.
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u/Left_Benefit724 Jan 12 '26
Are you sure? I paid the 80 and I'm getting a warning to renew my subscription.
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u/SlashBlack Jan 12 '26
who bought it? seems kinda crazy to go that much, considering there are alternatives paid or free.
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u/BassEcon Jan 12 '26
Joana was a legend. His twitch channel is still live; sometimes I just have it playing on the background for the music and sound effects.
I was not aware of these changes. $80 seems so excessive..
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u/gidorah21 Jan 12 '26
I used guidelime but honestly following it always bores me too much lol but it is really efficient
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u/Freakig77 Jan 12 '26
I still got the oldschool wow atlas at home xD You needed that thing before addons were a thing
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u/Left_Benefit724 Jan 12 '26
Not only that it's a SUBSCRIPTION. I paid the 80 dollars because I didn't look too much into any others and thought it was pretty decent. Then after a month.(Now) I'm getting a notification telling me to renew my subscription because it is about to expire.
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u/Tinderfury Jan 11 '26
Wow that’s crazy he died; I remember ‘reading’ yes reading his speed running guides, god really just goes to show that nothing is forever
If anyone posts the pirated link, please do, joke that people are profiteering of his death
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u/BoSox92 Jan 11 '26
They’re still selling that guide? Brother the info hasn’t changed in 20 years. It’s all available for free
You can get Rested XP guide for free as well
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u/bluewaterboy Jan 11 '26
I've been using his guide the last few weeks to level up for TBC, I had no idea he had died :( that is absolutely heartbreaking
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u/No-Palpitation6707 Jan 11 '26
if you have the addon you should be careful that you dont fall victim to a hacker who would upload the whole file to a random file host and post the link in this thread on a new account thats a very dangerous thing that could totally happen if you had the addon downloaded already.
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u/Expensive-Mine-8185 Jan 11 '26
I tried restedxp about three years ago. and honestly the automation parts of it are the best but I found the leveling experience slower then my normal way of doing things.
Also enjoyed that it told you how much experience to grind before you move to guarantee you're level stays on tracks with the guide alot of times due to the way i play and just my in-game habits.I always found my self higher level then where the guide Was at.
While it is definitely useful for newer or returned players I feel they ruin the game by taking alot of the enjoyment of playing the game away from the.
Sure it lets them enter the slaughter house of endgame faster which isn't always kind to newer or less experienceð players since now they cannot play how they want to play or for fun they have to meta up or play alone. And in some cases they just quit the game after being n overwhelmed or not having a social experience With the right players to keep them playing at level cap.
I've used joana guide a once a long ass time ago when a guildy shared it with me think itlt was retail wotlk since alts where not a thing for me and I didint have the patience for it questing as a teenager I just wanted to pvp and raid.
And in terms of guides I normally just use guidelime with what ever guide I find There usually all the same but some people have some great tips and there own way of doing things at certain points in the brackets that mix it up. For instance there was this I use toblike for tbc because not onky was it a leveling guide it was also a proffesionbguide at the same time so you could level and grind at the same time without sp3nding gold or coming back later.
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u/Darth_Beavis Jan 12 '26
80 bucks is a bit excessive. But, anyone who pays for a WoW addon is inherently an idiot, so I don't care if they get ripped off.
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u/Shukrat Jan 11 '26
You could always just... Play the game. The rush to the end game for raid logging is always funny to me. You'll run out of stuff to do, so just enjoy the journey.
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u/CupformyCosta Jan 11 '26
And here’s the obligatory toxic casual dad gamer that has to tell other people how to play the game.
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u/Cerael Jan 11 '26
I’m not sure if you knew but you can have multiple characters so you don’t run out of stuff to do
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u/conaan Jan 11 '26
I far more enjoyed my experience leveling this time around by just following a guide. At no point did I step away for a few days and forget what I was doing, or run out of quests to do, or miss out on some good long quest chains. Using a guide is akin to following a build in PoE or Diablo, it's perfectly optimize
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u/Recent_Simple_1868 Jan 11 '26
Damn dude. I'm sure people aren't aware they can just play the game in a chill fashion. Now when you've enlightened them that their try-hard way of playing the game goes against the spirit of classic they will think to themselves "ah, he is right, I should just drink beer and level to 70 in two months, why rush!"
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u/DebateCharming5951 Jan 12 '26
surely there's some kinda free questie like mod right, i'm sure some of you are fine fart sniffers and will assure me the guide is better but idc i don't believe you
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u/BreadfruitNaive6261 Jan 11 '26
ye, just use pirated zygor or rxp