StarCraft2Forum.org Reviews Shokz StarCraft 2 Guide

​

In the somewhat long and varied history of StarCraft2Forum.org, we’ve tried our best to bring you knowledge of StarCraft 2. Within our limited scope, we’ve provided tips on gameplay, opinions on balance, and as the beta has progressed, we’ve started to give you winning strategies and guides (mostly for Terran since that’s what I play).


It’s become pretty clear that there’s no way that I can be an expert on all three races. I like to think that I’m a very knowledgeable and talented Terran player, but in order to keep my level of play high with one race, I have to skip the other two for the time being.


That has left a gap in the knowledge I can provide to our users. That’s why I’ve always taken the suggestions of various community members to hear when they’ve asked me about guides. I’ve heard a lot of guides downplayed because they were useless, and I’ve even taken a look at a couple (Joana’s Guide and Star2Pros) and completely disregarded them because they were ridiculously expensive for what they provided.

​

So last week when Shokz approached me about a review I was a little apprehensive. But hey, I’m willing to give anything a shot once. After reading the guide and talking with its owner, I’ve been convinced that it is a useful tool in any StarCraft player’s arsenal. While I don’t necessarily recommend the use of guides in general for more advanced players (because you become reliant and more of a copy-cat player) I would definitely suggest a guide for new players who are just starting out with StarCraft 2 or are new to the RTS genre in general.


The Shokz guide covers the basics, and does it well. There is a large amount of material that is presented in an easy to understand format that is improving as we speak. I was particularly impressed with the Unit Guides in which Shokz outlines the strengths and weaknesses of each unit in the context of other units it will encounter on the battlefield. This is often the area which is the easiest to learn but some players are slow to pick up to the point where they can detect the correct counter in situations where it will win them the game. His collection of build orders and unit-specific tricks are also very helpful (I even learned something—who knew scanning instead of getting MULEs could hurt you so bad? I’m also going to start using his Barracks trick for scouting).

​

So what’s my advice here? If you’re new to the Starcraft universe (that includes WarCraft 3 players) I would suggest taking a look at his guide. Whether it’s worth the $37 lifetime subscription is ultimately up to you, but it couldn’t make you worse, right? Good luck out there!


Click this link to take a look at the Shokz StarCraft 2 Guide!

 

Know much about that portion of it?

 

One of my main critiques of his site were the spelling mistakes. He's promised to fix those.

 

Thanks for the post. I bought this guide, it's pretty good. What do you think about other guides like those? Especially Joana's Guide. Please share thoughts on that.

I also researched about such guides and found out that there are like 4-5 guides. Difficult to know about each of those but Starcraft 2 Strategies has kind of reviewed each and ranked each of those.

Can you also post such a review for Joana's guide?

Edit: Hurry up guys its 27$ right now and going to be 37$ soon lol..

 

I actually just went ahead and bought the guide because of your review and it is great so far, I can't wait for tonight to use some of the things I've learned!

And Funk909, I had purchased the Joana's Starcraft 2 Guide a couple weeks ago and did not care for it. It is just a big Unit guide telling you what units are good against one another and the Shokz Guide has a unit guide on top of all the other content.

I like how Shokz lets you request and vote on what new strategies he will put out next so I hope my strategy requests get put out soon!

 

Well, I bought the guide when it was $27. It was decent, but I wouldn't say it was worth the $27. The request a strategy may be useful, but I've yet to see any strategies I've requested posted. So far, here's basically what's included in the guide (don't trust the on-site information):

Beginner Tips
Mission 1 of the Campaign
General guides (map control, scouting, hot keys, etc.)
Unit vs unit strengths/weaknesses

It also includes a few build orders and tips from all three races, but nothing standard. Basically, it shows you how to cheese. The only standard build on there is for Terran and it came off this site.

All in all, well put together, and if it gets better than it is now, it may eventually be worth the current price of $37. But as for now, there's nothing exciting that you couldn't find elsewhere. The "secrets" they promise is all hype.

 

A friend of mine who is completely new to starcraft got the guide and shared it with his brother, and its funny how the results turned out.

My friend was a complete newcomer to SC, and he basically learned how to cheese from the guide.

His brother though had played a bit beforehand and it actually helped him out a good amount.

Since it was two of them that split the cost, they say it was worth it but I think that people should be wary of it because it looks to me like it shows specific strategies rather than skills.

Although I really liked the unit summaries, much better than what blizzard provides in the "help" section

 

Apparently he's planning on offering replay analysis for people who have purchased his guide as well in the future. He contacted me about helping him with some Terran strategies. I don't see why not!

 

How much has he made off of these guides? Must be controlling a rather large sum of money by now.

 

Enough to be sponsoring our tournaments and such.

 

As someone who has never played SC before, I was a little disappointed in the guide. I was looking for a beginners guide that tells me why I should build such and such and give me a baseline understanding of the ideas behind strategies. I was looking for ground up information so I could get an understanding of the tactics faster, basically the fundamentals of the game. The guide did not provide quite what I was looking for. It does have a bunch of information and general strategies and unit guides. So it does help give some understanding of the game.

Shokz claims it will be updated regularly. He also claims to have a 60 day money back guarantee. I found these forums due to his sponsorship with this site. If I would have stumbled upon these forums first, I would not have paid the $37 for the guide as I think there's the same or more info here as well as the Youtube replay channel.

I dont know, as of now I wish I didn't waste the $37 but I'll see how the site develops over the next couple of weeks as SC2 is only officially a week old. I don't know, we'll see how I advance and if I end up using key info from his guide. If not, I'll test out his money back policy and let you guys know if it's for real.

 

Hey there! New here. Was wondering whether to purchase Joana's guide for SC2. I had the WoW guides and they helped me A LOT. I'm a big fan of SC and wondered if it's worth it. Seems to have good reviews which is not common for video game guides.

 

In the end I gave in and bought the guide. How much it will improve my game? I'll post in a few weeks or maybe after a month. This review was really good as well!

 

I've read Joana's and decided not to do a review because it wasn't very good. :-\

 

I agree. Shokz is the man. He pretty much covers everything imaginable, hence he is in my sig file .

Joana is a little weak, plus she is probably not going to add as many updates. Shokz already has tons of updates coming for every new patch and expansion. I'm pretty excited

 

I'm not gonna defend something that isn't mine, but I will defend my review of it.

Shokz Guide is the ONLY one of all the guides on the market (most of which are crap) that is at least helpful and informative and isn't filled with garbage to make it look like it has content.

Shokz is even purchasing articles from our writers and players who have gone through our tournaments and from our recommendations.

If you're willing to spend money to improve your play, buy the Shokz Guide. If you don't want to do that, don't. You can certainly learn StarCraft 2 by reading our guides or talking with our members.

This particular guide isn't a fake (and his profile isn't photoshopped, it was taken during beta), and it's the reason I agreed to review it in exchange for sponsorship.

And by the way, in case you haven't noticed. These are the premiere StarCraft 2 forums. Who else provides coverage and strategy review in an unbiased manner that benefits all levels of players?

 

Apart from the flame-fest, i would like to note that i bought the Shokz guide like a week ago and so far i don't think it's been worth almost $40. I do recognize the helpfulness of the guide and appreciate that Shokz IS updating it and adding new strategies and information that is a great aid for beginning players. There is a section of the guide where "members" can vote on new content they'd like to see and Shokz is responding positively. I think the site itself needs some work, I don't particularly like the layout and it would be seriously enhanced with the addition of a members forum.

All in all, I think that Shokz has been very enterprising in this guide. I'll reiterate, at the moment I really don't think the $37 price tag is justified. It wouldn't take a whole lot of work to improve this guide and maybe in the future the price will be justified a little more, but for now I think that most of the information can be found for free.

 

@ Jenna,

This is not the original image that I had thought was in question. This image itself does appear to be fishy. Does anyone have the original image or a ladder posting of this from beta?

Originally my understanding was that SC2Armory had claimed his profile image was photoshopped which I had determined to be legit.

Not fair to be putting up false claims.

And as for the posts above, I'll be removing them as they're off-topic and, well, pointless. I don't approve of outside and newer members showing up with a high sense of morality about how I run my site and what services I provide.

I still endorse Shokz Guide because of it's content. Whether his images are authentic or not is not my place to determine, but I will say that the image Jenna posted is definitely of concern.

@ Hubrid,

I thought you had a good experience with the tournament. Just because I don't put up with trolls shouldn't sully your opinion of the site

 

Well, on the website, it does promise that the guide has sufficient content for top-level play (provided the application is good enough). My question to anyone who has purchased and studied the guide is...is that statement true?

I paid 50 bucks for the game and I'd gladly pay that once more to be good at it, just so long as I'm sure it's money well-spent

 

In my opinion any player can become "top-level" (whatever that means, pro? or just good?) by themselves. But that's going to take you months, years. You'd have to bumble around on your own and find forum articles like some of the ones I've posted, but no site is going to have a comprehensive guide.

For instance here we specialize in theorycraft and general counters, but we don't have a giant unit list. And since I only specialize in Terran play it would be impossible for me to teach anyone to play any of the other races, meaning I only reach 1/3 of the audience.

So if you're starting from scratch (or haven't ever really been THAT good at the game) the Shokz Guide is a good place to start if you can afford it. The $37 is definitely steep, but sometimes you get what you pay for.

So if you can justify the price tag to make yourself better at the game, and don't have tons of time to sort through and learn it properly, Shokz Guide is the way to go.

Again, I don't necessarily recommend guides in general but this is the one I endorse.

P.S. - Just in case anyone was wondering, the image Jenna posted WAS photoshopped for the Shokz Guide, which IMO is a ding against it, but the content is still great and apparently the image hasn't been on the site since May. Just thought I'd toss out the FYI.