Shokz Guide Review

For a long time, this website's primary form of income was advertising for the Shokz Guide. While the Shokz Guide was (and may still be) a decent Starcraft 2 guide, I can no longer recommend this product.

Full disclosure: I am now a competitor to this guide with my own product, The Osiris Method. You may think I am a bit biased due to this fact and perhaps I am - I would be worried about the quality of a product if the creator did not brag about it! Rather than take my word for it, I am prepared to defend my assertion that The Osiris Method is a far superior product to Shokz Guide (or any other Starcraft 2 strategy guide).

I created The Osiris Method for 3 reasons:

• To create an effective Starcraft 2 strategy guide;

• To provide a cheaper alternative to the Shokz Guide and other premium products;

• To unlock the full potential of my own Starcraft 2 website.

Effectiveness of Shokz Guide vs The Osiris Method

The major problem with Shokz Guide (and all other Starcraft 2 strategy guides) is they are guides that contain a lot of strategies, without actually containing practice drills.

Other Starcraft 2 strategy guides discuss theory and provide tips, but they do not actually provide you with practice regimens that you can use to reliably increase your skill.

To clarify, training for the sport of tennis makes a good comparison. Imagine a tennis guide which only included the rules of tennis and the general strategies used in a match of tennis. While it is helpful to know the general rules and strategies, would reading such a book make you a tennis pro? Of course not, you need to practice all aspects of the game like your serve, your forehand, your backhand, hitting on the move, changing direction, and so on.

It is no different with Starcraft 2 strategy. As many players have experienced first hand, reading about a pro-level strategy and understanding it is much easier than actually replicating it in a match! The Osiris Method is designed to help players improve their in-game skills as a primary focus with strategy as an ancillary strategy.

Price of The Osiris Method vs Shokz Guide

The other problem with Shokz Guide that a lot of players have complained about is the price. When Shokz first released, it was a $27 product. Within a few months, this was increased to $37. While this was a bit expensive, such a high price point may have been necessary given the steady addition of balance patches that caused the guide to require constant updating.

Fast forward to today, and now the Shokz Guide is now split into two parts. The original text-based guide is $37 while now there is an additional $15 month fee if you want access to the video content! A copy of the text guide and a year's subscription to the video guide would run about $200! Talk about expensive!

Alternatively, you can pick up the text copy of The Osiris Method at its launch price of just $17. Additionally, you can get all our video content for free on this website, The Osiris Method's blog, and by checking out our YouTube channel. $17 and free is much more affordable than the $200 you can spend on Shokz Guide!

Releasing the Breaks on My Free Guide

Another big problem I had with The Shokz Guide is that it "competed" directly with my free website. Even though I was advertising the Shokz Guide on my website, the two were both offering the same thing: Starcraft 2 strategies and walkthroughs.

The problem here was that if I gave away too much free information on my website, there would be no reason for people to purchase the Shokz Guide. Advertising revenue would fall to zero and I would no longer be able to dedicate time to the website. Additionally, if my free guide ever surpassed the Shokz Guide in value (which I believe it currently has!), it would no longer be worth purchasing.

After all, what differentiates the guides and walkthroughs in other premium Starcraft 2 strategy guides from the free content on sites like mine or on YouTube? Other paid guides are broken down into sections on strategy much like the free strategy site you are on now.

This was not really fair for anyone involved. The users of my site were not getting regular updates because updating my website actually reduced my income. With reduced income, I had to spend time working on other projects. It was a vicious negative cycle that led to the previous deterioration of this website.

The Osiris Method gets around this because the primary topic is not strategy. Rather than providing a variety of independent strategies, it is nearly 300 page (and growing) training program. It is meant to be read start to finish and does not focus primarily on specific strategies or tactics.

Thanks to the nature of The Osiris Method, I am now able to freely write as much strategy and provide as much value as I possibly can for this website. The better my content, the more people will visit and the more people that will pick up The Osiris Method. The more people that pick up The Osiris Method, the more time I will be able to pull away from other projects of mine and use to update The Osiris Method as well as this website! This positive feedback loop will result in major improvements and a significant increase in the free content provided by this website - a win for everyone!

Don't take my word for it though - over the past few months I have added over 100 video guides in our Starcraft 2 Wings of Liberty Campaign Guide and Heart of the Swarm Campaign guides. While the campaign guides are solid, I definitely realize that the rest of this website needs a major overhaul, update, and general improvement. These are the improvements I hope to make over the next few months, and switching from Shokz Guide to The Osiris Method has made this possible.

If you really want the best, most effective method for increasing your Starcraft 2 rank, get The Osiris Method. Not only do you get a fool-proof training program to improve your ladder rank, but each and every sale directly results in more time spent creating new content and updating strategies on this website.