Post by Mark (newsgroups)Carbonite has apparently been discontinued since Blizzard chose to ban
addon writers from requesting donations. You can probably find a
working version around though and I recommend it over the alternative
which is QuestHelper. This does a similar thing without the map addon.
You can at the same time follow a leveling guide for improved quest
finding, but with these addons I don't think it;s totally necessary.
Carbonite hasn't been discontinued; they just switched from a
subscription model to a donation model.
Carbonite, QuestHelper, etc, are good at the individual quest level -
if you're looking for 8 koala bears for a kill quest, they'll show you
where to go.
A levelling guide (hopefully) groups quests into optimized circuits to
minimize the running back and forth so you can quest as efficiently as
possible. Instead of getting a quest to go to Foobar Mountain to find
a rock from quest hub A, then 3 hours later, going to Foobar Mountain
to meet a troll for a quest from hub C, you'll make one trip. Quest
Helper, from what I recall, will build an optimized path for the
quests you have, but it obviously can't take into account any quests
you don't have, yet.
I've had a great deal of success with the wow-pro guides. They're now
(mostly) available as in-game guides written for TourGuide. Between
TourGuide, TomTom, LightHeaded, and the WoW-Pro guides, you can make
pretty good time.
All that said, with the guides, you're almost playing by rote. After
going through zones a few times, I'm pretty much over the lore and the
atmosphere; I'm mainly interested in working my way toward 80 as
efficiently as I can. On a first character, that may not be a
tradeoff you're willing to make. If you're trying to catch up with
raiding friends, it may not be a big deal. Just something to think
about.
-Brent