Official channels and community ones serve different purposes, and mixing them up is why answers seem contradictory.

Short answer

Start with the wiki. It is maintained, dated, and wrong far less often than a two-year-old thread.

  • Distrust any guide that does not say which version it is for.
  • Check the patch date on anything you are about to act on.
  • Expect one number in every guide to be out of date; the method is what matters.

Twenty years of expansions mean half the advice online describes a version that no longer exists. The most useful community members are the ones who cite the patch they are describing. Wikis carry a patch version; forum posts usually do not, and that difference explains most contradictions.

How current the information is

Patch notes move numbers around constantly; the shape of the answer holds even when a specific value shifts. Subreddits reward strong opinions, which makes them good for taste and poor for facts. Official forums are read by developers rarely but consistently, which is why bug reports belong there. It helps to understand why a step exists, because then you can adapt it when your situation is slightly different.

Discord answers fast and disappears fast — nothing there is searchable a month later. Third-party trackers and log sites are excellent for numbers and useless for context. If you are coming to this after a long break, the terminology has probably moved on.

Contributing back

Anything with an advertising incentive will overstate how urgent a change is. Where something depends on your platform or region, that is called out rather than glossed over. There is usually a fast way and a reliable way, and it is worth knowing which one you are choosing.

  • Search before asking; almost everything has been asked already.
  • Use the wiki for mechanics, the subreddit for whether something is fun.
  • If a menu path does not exist for you, your build is older or newer than the one described.
  • Report bugs officially — nowhere else reaches the developers.
  • Ask in Discord when the question is "right now", not "in general".

Which place answers which question

Most of the disagreement you will find online is two people describing different builds. Nothing here assumes a particular playstyle beyond wanting the thing to work. World of Warcraft is not shy about hiding useful information two menus deep, so some of this is simply knowing where to look. If a step reads as obvious, do it anyway — the obvious ones are the ones people skip and then wonder about.

Treat anything stated without a version number as provisional. The community wisdom on this is roughly half right, and the half that is wrong costs the most time. A single check up front replaces a lot of guessing later.

Official channels

Do the cheap check before the expensive one — that ordering alone saves most of the frustration. Half the pages on this topic were written for a build that no longer exists, which is why they stop matching what you see. What follows assumes you are on a current install and have not modified it.

Where two approaches both work, the one with fewer moving parts is the one to keep. Everything below is framed around the current state of World of Warcraft rather than a launch-week impression. The awkward part is rarely the step itself, it is knowing which step comes first.

Reading community advice critically

Anything that behaves differently on console than on PC is flagged where it matters. There is no hidden trick here that the game is keeping from you. Screenshots age faster than text, which is why this describes rather than shows.

Where people go wrong

  • Skipping the prerequisite because it looked optional in someone else's summary.
  • Rushing the last step, which is usually the one with the actual requirement in it.
  • Ignoring the platform-specific note and then wondering why the steps do not line up.
  • Treating a rare edge case as the normal behaviour and planning around it.

WoW FAQ

Do I need any mods or third-party tools for this?

No. Everything described here works with the base game on any supported platform.

Is this still accurate after the latest World of Warcraft update?

The method is; individual numbers may not be. If a value on your screen differs, trust the screen and keep the sequence.

What if none of this works for me?

Then something in your setup differs from the assumption — version, region or platform. Check those three before anything else.

Does this work the same on console and PC?

The logic is identical. Menu paths and button prompts differ, and any real difference is flagged above.

If you only take one thing from this: the answer near the top is the part that matters, the rest is context.