Question is in the topic.
Personally, I don't. I used guides on a few of my games, but, eventually, I realized it was no fun. It was like reading a long instruction manual; basically, they suck the fun out of it for me.
I use a guide if I need to. For example, if I'm playing Game A and I'm completely stuck at Point A, then I will use a guide. However, with 99% of games, that doesn't happen. It's more the open-ended RPG-style games that get me in a situation like that. I never sit through a game with a guide, though.
If I'm stuck then yeah I'll look it up online.
If it's a single players game like HL or something no, I'll go at it until I win or give up. If it's something like WoW... http://wowhead.com , here I come!
You need a guide for wow no dount. I am sorry but you need to look up alot of shit like drop rates and other stuff that blizzard's default UI just dont help you with so you go to a thottbot or wowhead.
The only thing i use guides for is when I am stuck, like on the puzzle games like Zelda.. Sometimes it gets sooo confusing
Only time I used a guide was when I wanted to find all the Golden Skalutas in Zelda.
Yeah, like everybody else if I'm stuck. But depending on the game (ie, more so if I really like it), I'll bash my head against the wall for a couple hours before looking at a guide. I'll spend a lot of time going over everything over and over before I finally look at the guide.
For example, in "Quest For Glory: So You Want to be a Hero?" you have to collect some green fur, and the obvious place is from the meeps. So if you ask the green moop about fur, he responds "yep, it's green, cool, eh?" and if you ask "get fur" it says "he doesn't look like he wants to part with it". So I spent a long, long time wandering around to other places trying to trigger getting the fur. Finally I looked at a guide and it turns out you had to ask him about "green fur". That was a big waste of time.
Another time in that same game, I went through a door in an Escher-style room and ended up in "the void" -- I was unclipped, walking around outside the level. No matter what I tried, I couldn't figure out how to get back. I probably spent an hour trying everything. Finally I checked the guide, and it turns out that was a bug, I'd left the level and there was no way of getting back. So I had to go back and restore an old save. But that's besides the point, I wasted a lot of time on that.