Introduction
If you've never played a Massively Multiplayer Online Game before, relax: World of Warcraft is very easy to get started in and to have fun with. If you're a MMOG veteran, hopefully this guide will get you quickly up to speed.
Character Creation
There is no base stat difference between the different races; it's entirely determined by your class. Your race choice determines your allegiance (either Horde or Alliance) and your starting area. See the Race and Class pages for discussions of the different race and class options.
Levelling and Experience
Getting Experience
Most of your levels will come from quests and from monsters you kill as a part of doing quests.
Rest
When you leave the game while in an Inn, or anywhere in a large city (such as Thunder Bluff), you gain rest. While you are rested, you earn xp from killing mosters at twice the normal rate. The amount of rest you have is shown by a little notch on your xp bar near the bottom of the screen.
Items
Item Types
There are a few different types of items in World of Warcraft, identifiable by the color of the item name. For equippable items (weapons, armour, etc.), gray names indicate low quality, white names indicate normal quality, green names are uncommon, blue names are rare, and purple names indicate legendary items.
Item Binding
Some items in World of Warcraft can become permanently attached to one particular person, making it impossible to trade or sell them. There are two types; those that will bind when first equipped, and those that will bind when they are looted. You will get a warning dialog telling you that looting the item will permanently bind it to you when you either equip or loot such an item.
Quests
Obtaining and Completing Quests
Quests are the core of the World of Warcraft experience. You will almost always have at least a dozen active quests in your quest log.
Quests are obtained from NPCs or from dropped items in the world. There are a few indicators that appear above NPC's heads when they have a quest to offer you. A gold ! means that the NPC has a quest that they can offer you. A silver ! means that the NPC will have a quest for you soon, after you gain a level or two. A gold ? means that the NPC wants to talk to you as part of a current quest that you're on, usually meaning that you've completed the requirements for the quest. A silver ? means that the NPC is waiting for you to complete a quest, but you haven't finished the requirements yet.
NPC's can offer you more than one quest; when talking to them, you'll get a window giving you the option to select which quest you wish to talk to them about, using the same symbols as appear over their heads.
All quests in World of Warcraft are single-step, but there may be multiple followup quests that turn into a long quest story.
Quest Items
Quest items are random drops per player. This means that you are not competing for quest drops with others in your party. Some quest items, such as those that you need to bring back to prove that you killed a particular monster (for example, "Head of Arra'Chea") will drop for all members of the party. See the looting section under parties for more information on how loot works.
Quest Rewards
Quests will usually result in a decent chunk of XP, and some cash or an item (or two). Quests will always show you the reward that you will receive before you accept them (other than xp), and if there is a choice between different results, you will be able to choose one when you complete the quest.
Abandoning a Quest
You can abandon a quest at any time using the Abandon button in the Quest Log. There is no penalty in abandoning a quest, and you can go back to the quest giver and get the quest again. Some quests are timed, and a timer window will appear telling you how long you have; if it's not a convenient time to do the quest, you can abandon it and do it later. Abandoning and reacquiring a quest is also a good way to restart a quest step if you think there is a problem with the step.
Parties
Joining and Leaving Parties
You can select any player and right-click on their portrait in the target window to invite them to a party or to trade with them. To leave a party, right-click on
Looting
Looting and loot drops in World of Warcraft are fairly straightforward. If the corpse of a monster has gold sparklies on top of it, it means there's something on the corpse that you can loot. Once you loot a corpse, if you don't take everything off it, everyone else in your group will have the option to loot.
There are a few different looting types in parties that can be set by the party leader by right-clicking on his own portrait in the upper left. Two of these types are affected by the loot threshhold, also set by the leader (the threshoold can be set to Uncommon, Rare, or Legendary).
- Free for All
- Anyone can loot any item off any corpse killed by the group.
- Round Robin
- Group members take turns looting corpses as they are killed; they are allowed to loot all items from a corpse.
- Group Loot
- Looting takes place the same as in Round Robin looting. However, for any item that is of the same or better type than the threshhold, all members in the party will get a rolling window with the item and two buttons. Party members can press the dice button to roll for the item, or the red slash to pass on the item. The member with the highest roll will get the item automatically placed in their inventory.
- Master Looter
- Only the designated master looter (set by the party leader by right-clicking on any member's portrait) may loot corpses first. For any item that is of the same or better type than the threshhold, when the master looter attempts to loot it, he will see a dropdown list of all the party members' names. He can select a person from that list to assign the item to them.
Note: there are some bugs currently with this system; in particular, the loot icon will appear even when you are not allowed to loot that corpse. The game will let you know in no uncertain terms that it's not for you to loot ("That would be stealing.").
Useful Info
Chat and Channels
World of Warcraft has a chat channel system to allow players to create their own private chat channels. Use the /chat command to get a listing of chat channel commands. You will automatically join chat channels
Item links can be sent by shift-clicking any item, but they won't work in any "numbered" chats other than the Trade channel, which appears in any large city. They will work in party, say, and guild chat. (This was done to prevent prevent item/trade spamming in the General chat channel; unfortunately, it also means that you can't share item links with friends in private chat channels.)
Configuring Windows
By default, you don't see the combat log window. If you hover over (move the mouse onto) the chat window, two tabs will appear. You can drag the Combat Log tab out to create a new window; right-clicking on the tab will bring up a menu with more chat configuration options.