Has Zygor gotten lazy?

[kreelor]

Yes, I'm complaining again. But, it's justified.

This happens far too often in most Zygor quest descriptions. Zygor SELDOM, IF EVER takes the few seconds required to offer meaningful hints/steps to make questing easier for those who haven't done those same quests 10 times and learned them by heart!

For just one example (But, I could name 50!):

This quest, like most, says to "Talk to so-and-so at location xx,yy". That location is the same coordinates inside of a cave entrance on the ground. Yet, in actuality, the target char to talk to is 500 feet ABOVE the cave, on a ledge!
lame zygor directions.jpg
Why didn't you just say where he actually was?
Running around inside the cave looking for him (at YOUR COORDINATES!) was a waste of time.

Giving only coordinates does not tell the user where the objective npc is; it only indicates a vague, approximate local!! A few simple (meaningful, accurate) words would solve that issue.

It seems to me that since Zygor isn't making more profit from fixing all the vague textual instructions which would improve it as a useful guide, that John just doesn't care. The guide is quite often TIME-CONSUMING rather than being able to level quickly. It takes more time to figure out what in the hell is supposed to be done, and exactly where it's supposed to be done, than is necessary. Clarification shouldn't be that difficult.

It'll never get cleaned up.

[keeblar]

You say the guide is time consuming, try the quest without any guide. Use your head for something besides a hat rack. I always check outside the cave first and then go inside if I can't find the npc outside. I learned that after only one time running around inside a cave only to have the npc be outside.

[Cartman]

Simple rule: if the guide did not tell you to go into the cave before the target coordinates normally are not inside the cave.

[kreelor]

Simple rule: if the guide did not tell you to go into the cave before the target coordinates normally are not inside the cave.

Here's an example, quoted from a statement by Cabby 2 weeks ago about an identical issue:

The arrow in your screen shot is pointing to where you are standing inside the building. The arrow provides all the direction you needed for this if you follow the arrow.

Here's a post in the same thread as the one above. This one was from Zygor Admin who said this issue happened only once in 1,000 quests. Not true, since I seem to find them quite frequently (which is my MAIN POINT).

It is likely that our guide writers felt it might be obvious to users following the arrow that the item was inside the building. Clearly they were wrong and we will gladly add additional detail to this step, but like your other huge post I responded to, I can't help but feel like you're expressing a unusually severe amount of criticism over what could be considered a small thing. You seem surprisingly upset to find one step out of thousands that might not have been completely up to par. I'd like to get to the bottom of why you're so continually disappointed with our products and services.

Then, there's this post by another user who backed up my frequent observations and complaints based upon his own experiences:

Insulting your customers is not a good idea (see bolded text). The sarcasm (ie. 'CLEARLY') is very clear, implying your customers are stupid.

I have run into this problem on numerous occasions, often times having to look up information from external sources (I use an addon called Lightheaded that adds an additional window to the quest log which contains parsed data from WoWhead that includes all the comments people have left about the particular quest you have selected).

This is usually associated to locations that are inside a building or cave.

The only thing I can say again is that nobody at Zygor has had INDEPENDENT TESTING DONE BY SOMEONE WHO HASN'T ALREADY MEMORIZED EVERY IDIOSYNCRASY IN THE GAME'S QUEST STEPS. Yet, when I am playing the game (as a non-expert), I get accused of being lazy, negative, stupid, or just argumentative rather than someone pointing out issues that could be corrected easily by Zygor. I've been trying to help. And, this issue has been brought forward in these forums many times, yet they are never fixed by "the experts" who think it's a waste of time. For them, that may be true. Nevertheless, a guide with built-in, unnecessary confusion is less than complete; it could be better.

I love the Zygor Leveling Guide. It has helped me very much most of the time. But, when it fails to give simple, precise and complete common-sense steps (when x,y,Z coordinates are concerned), it defeats the purpose of "Fastest Leveling Possible".

[littlewierdo]

One of my chief complaints is that the addon is only minimally tested. Im trying to, for example, build my cooking and jewelcrafting and quite frankly, the cooking is absolutely useless into the MoP content and Jewelcrafting begins to become useless starting at Cata content, simply because they are not accurate or correct, to the point that, jewelcrafting for example instructs me to prospect ore to obtain a certain gem but I dont have the required jewelcrafting to prospect that ore yet. And this step is a required step to move forward in the guide, creating a 'catch 22'.

And dont get me started on the gear upgrade feature, its so amazing wrong, often times suggesting I equip weapons that my class cant even equip...

Having just leveled a toon from 1-90, 'most' of the leveling guide for the alliance is pretty spot on, with a few minor mistakes that I can live with.

What the Zygor staff far too often forgets is, these kinds of mistakes would be acceptable for a free or nominally priced product, but when you charge a premium price, we expect much more.

One of the quotes you posted was from me, which presents another issue, the customer coming first. Im not saying the customer is always right but making your customers sound like idiots and strong arming your point(s) is not the way to keep customers. I might also add, trying to sue your competitors out of business is also bad form.

I use the product because when it works, its super convenient. When it doesnt, I have to scratch my head and wonder why I spent $310, especially knowing I will get little to no break on the next expansion when I need to upgrade.

Based on what Ive seen, there also has been very little innovation in the way versioning is handled. There are plenty of products that would help with this, github is one such option that would allow multiple people to work on the same product code base without interfering, but, for whatever reason, they choose not to use something that would allow other people who might know how to fix a problem the ability to do so, instead, an archaic checklist system of 'future things to change' seem to be all theyve been able to come up with (my guess is that its a control issue).

Then we have the archaic 'shopping cart' system that they are using here. Its so bad that you cant purchase more than one product at a time. Sales 101, the more opportunities you give for a person to back out of a purchase (aka, the more steps involved with purchasing a product), the less likely they are to make that purchase. Take a lesson from Amazon's One'click system. While this one-click technique is patented, the ability to put multiple items in a shopping cart is not. And the fact that you havent contacted click-bank to fix the issue says alot. I know for a fact that clickbank supports multi item purchases (I know, I used to use clickbank). I also know that other merchant systems do as well and its an easy fix.

John Cook, the real name of the author of Zygor, does little to inspire product loyalty. There are plenty of posts around with his asinine comments, some of which can be found here these very forums, some over on the Dugi forums.

The real credit goes to Cabby who has and should be the face of the Zygor product. He (or she) has been amazing in building confidence with and building a bridge with the Zygor customer base in the last say 6 months to a year and my hats off to him (or her).

The best thing you can do is continue to post on the forums when you find issues and 50% of them will get fixed.

Unfortunately, the premium price isnt enough to do any sort of testing to keep the guides accurate, we the users are the ones who must test and make sure everything is working correctly.

[kreelor]

littlewierdo, I agree with almost everything you posted. You aren't exaggerating at all. It sounds like honest observation, to me.

I agree with you especially in your following quote:

The real credit goes to Cabby who has and should be the face of the Zygor product. He (or she) has been amazing in building confidence with and building a bridge with the Zygor customer base in the last say 6 months to a year and my hats off to him (or her).

[mzanker]

Yes, Cabby does a fantastic job.

With regards to hints for an NPC's location - back in WotLK, the guide had loads of descriptive steps that told you exactly where NPCs were located (e.g. "He's on the second floor of this building"). For some reason, round about patch 4.0, they were nearly all removed and they haven't made it back. I have to agree that sometimes it's not easy to find people or things.

Having said that, Dugi is no better. I used Dugi for a while but went back to Zygor because of missing quests, bugs that never got fixed, etc.

[Cartman]

I think the NPC hints disappeared because the NPC file is automatically created from some web site or database.
And most became obsolete with Cataclysm as all the 1-60 content was changed.

BTW, the Zygor team is looking for a guide tester. I would do the job but I'm living in Germany and run my own business.
But if someone else wants to help improve the guides Kreelor wants them to have check out this page:
http://zygorguides.com/jobs/tester.php

[cabby]

First I'd like to say thanks for the vote of confidence guys and/or gals.

I do know that most of the issues you have stated here are on the list to get fixed. I'll double check lists and try to add any that are missing so they'll at least be there for the team to see.

[kreelor]

You're quite welcome. To lighten the tone a little bit, here's a suggestion...

Create a "new list" and at the very top of it, put down ITEM #1: "Find the other list of suggested fixes which user's have been reporting over the last year." Apparently, it has been lost for 6 months or more; developers need to find it and use it.

heh heh

[andrewc73]

Overall, I'm incredibly impressed with the quality of the guides. They have increased my enjoyment of WoW immensely. Are they perfect? No, of course not. Nothing is. There are some places I do wish they did provide a bit more information, but in those cases, instead of bitching about it, it is far more productive to suggest changes to the particular step. Every time I have reported an issue, they have been resolved.

Considering they were off the ground running the day of the 5.2 and 5.3 patches, and have constantly updated to resolve any issues, I can't fault them for their efforts. I am glad I bought the guides, and if I can help to improve them in any way, I will keep making suggestions.

[kreelor]

I'm happy for you that you aren't finding the things I've found. I have pointed a number of things either wrong, missing, or confusing. And, I usually try to provide an attached graphic to help identify exactly what I'm reporting.

You said:

instead of bitching about it, it is far more productive to suggest changes to the particular step. Every time I have reported an issue, they have been resolved.

Well, I used to do that too. But, since I've found too many instances where a simple line of additional text would enhance the procedure of completing the step quickly and easily (instead of guessing, wandering around, or going to a 3rd-party website), that complaining ("bitching" as you call it!) about the lack of updates to such issues is more reasonable for me. I don't want to spend my life reporting every single time the step suggestions are vague and/or misleading! Frankly, there are too many of them. And, after reporting ("bitching") about it for months, I find that they still never get fixed. You must be lucky. I look at the Zygor LOG several times each day, but nearly 99% of the time, the only fixes I see are for their "other, paid-for guides" which I haven't purchased... I use the Leveling Guide. So, I don't update the LOG UNTIL I see something that will improve the particular guide I paid for.

Once again, I'm glad you are happy. I'm very happy with Zygor's Leveling Guide (for the most part). I'm unhappy that issues which I, and others report, are either never added to their list of 4,000 things to fix, nor are the particular ones I bring up added. Maybe some have, but after leveling far past the point where I noticed so many things, I usually don't go back to check to see if they are fixed or not. I usually encounter the same issues when starting a new ALT char. The LOG never tells me they've been fixed, since the LOG is so vague in its information. Ex: "Fixed minor issues in Leveling Guide." That tells us users absolutely nothing in particular!

I love the Zygor Guide and the support I get on these forums, but some important issues never get fixed. They are important to me, and probably to any NEW (or less-than EXPERT) WoW users, as well. Technical Writing (including User Manuals, Guides, etc.) should never be done by programmers or engineers. They are "too close to their own programming/engineering work and seldom see what end-users encounter." They are not Professional Senior Technical Writers (which is a PROFESSION unto itself) even though some often think they are. That may explain why the step text is often vague/misleading/obtuse, etc. A qualified Senior Technical Writer would catch and remedy nearly all of those troublesome issue before the product is released. Saves time and money for everyone. After all, Zygor's products are all "for sale" products, presumably with a profit gained.

[cabby]

So, I don't update the LOG UNTIL I see something that will improve the particular guide I paid for.

While I understand why you do this I would highly recommend that you update anytime you see there is a new version. There are many times that little things are updated but never make it to the update log. This kinda goes along with your last paragraph, the programmers don't think about the log as much as they do about getting the reported issues fixed. Also, code fixes for things like the guide viewer and arrow seldom make it into the update logs. Skipping an update because you don't see your problem listed might mean you are stuck with a buggy guide longer than needed. Just something to think about since it only takes a few seconds for the Updater to update the guides every day.

[kreelor]

Thanks. Will do, Cabby! Good tip.

[littlewierdo]

Overall, I'm incredibly impressed with the quality of the guides. They have increased my enjoyment of WoW immensely. Are they perfect? No, of course not. Nothing is. There are some places I do wish they did provide a bit more information, but in those cases, instead of bitching about it, it is far more productive to suggest changes to the particular step. Every time I have reported an issue, they have been resolved.

Considering they were off the ground running the day of the 5.2 and 5.3 patches, and have constantly updated to resolve any issues, I can't fault them for their efforts. I am glad I bought the guides, and if I can help to improve them in any way, I will keep making suggestions.

Without going into another wall of text, I would have to disagree. There are a plethora of simple issues that could have been resolved had someone just took the time to click through each step on the live server. Ive said this before, anyone remember Kun-Lai Summit? 75% of the guide had the same location marked as a waypoint, making Kun-lai summit useless.

And again, if we were discussing a significantly cheaper or free product, we'd be having a different discussion.