Editing This Guide
As this is a Wiki, anyone can edit this guide (with all changes tracked). However, please try to avoid removing sections or information; instead, add your own comments in a new paragraph, and add a signature at the end of your comments by putting two dashes followed by three tildes at the end, like this: -- ˜˜˜. You can also click the Discussion link at the top of the page to write general comments about the page itself, on the discussion page.
If you disagree with any part of this guide, great! Hit the edit button, put in your comments/disagreements in, usually as a new paragraph right after the part you disagree with. -- Rustak
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.
If you're finding some of the terminology a little daunting, there's a glossary which should help explain some of the more common terms. -- Goldark
Character Creation
There is a very slight (+/-1 point) stat difference based on race; starting stats are determined mainly by your class. Your race choice determines your allegiance (either Horde or Alliance), your starting area, and your Racial Traits. See the Race and Class pages for discussions of the different race and class options. As your character increases in level, these differences become negligible with the exception of certain Racial Traits. Therefore, play the Race that you find most interesting and don't sweat the little differences.
Can't decide what Class to play? Make one of each that sound interesting, play them up to level 5 or so, and decide then. It only takes an hour or two to get the first few levels, and then you'll have a much better idea of what it's like to play each Class.
One important note: The Alliance vs. Horde distinction is a very important one, as you can't interact with those on the opposing side outside of combat. If you're playing on a server with friends, you all want to be on the same side so that you can chat, etc., so make sure you all ether select Horde races or Alliance races. Or just make a character in each.
Levelling and Experience
Getting Experience
Most of your first 10 levels will come from newbie quests and from monsters you kill as a part of doing quests.
If you want to level as fast as possible, try to avoid getting trapped in bad groups that aren't trying to finish quests. It's faster to just solo through your quests if your group is running around trying to grind through fancy-looking monsters. You should be able to get to 5 very quickly and be able to get the feel for the character race/class. Levels 5-10 should go fast too, but they usually involve larger distances so it's easier to get distracted. In my opinion, most of the class fun starts once you get past this early stage, and you will be far more mobile. -- Mark
For more class-specific tips when starting out, see the "Starting a ..." guides from the Class section. -- Goldark
Obtaining Wealth
You gain money in World of Warcraft by completing some of the quests (some of them have no monetary reward associated with them), killing mobs and looting their corpses, selling excess inventory items to the merchant NPCs, or learning one or more Tradeskills. As you go up in level, both the quest rewards and the money from mobs increase, as a general rule. Also, it has been my experience that the humanoid mobs loot for more cash per looting than any of the beast type mobs who aren't quest-related.
As for learning a profession and selling the product of your labors, that all depends upon how glutted the market is with that tradeskill and/or those products. If the market is glutted at the moment, hold onto your products and maybe they will be more in demand later. Alternatively, you might wish to travel around and check the local markets of other towns. Just because one town is glutted with a product doesn't mean all towns have that product. There might be a market untapped out there you would not otherwise have known about.
In addition, there are always the Trade Channel and the Auction Houses where you can hawk your wares. -- Arath
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.
You can tell at a glance if you're rested or tired (if one is using the default UI (user interface)) and not a player mod. There will be an experience meter/bar/graph, whatever one wishes to call it, running the width of your display just above the button bar. This bar will be blue if one is rested. It turns purple as one becomes fatigued over the course of hunting and what not. -- Arath
Training New Skills
As you progress and gain levels in the game, you will be able to learn many new and exciting skills and spells. These are all learned at your class trainer in the various cities. If you're having troubles locating the class trainer, just ask a city guard. The class trainers will offer you more skills and spells at every even-numbered level. -- Teek
Death
Upon dying in World of Warcraft, all of your equippable items take a 10% durability reduction. You have a few minutes in which to be resurrected by a player, or you may release yourself to the nearest graveyard as a spirit. While in spirit form, you can run back to your corpse and rejoin it for no additional penalty by selecting the "Resurrect Now" button when you come within range; you come back to life with half health and half mana. Run speed is increased while you are a spirit, and you are able to walk on water. A spirit healer is also present in each graveyard, who can bring you back to life with an additional 25% durability reduction and with decreased stats for the next x minutes. The x starts at 1 minute, and is increased by 1 minute every time that you use the healer in the graveyard. It's best to not use the spirit healer unless absolutely necessary, or the decreased stats are going to last for a very long time when you are a higher level character.
Travel
Windriders, Gryphons, Bats, and Other Flying Creatures
The most common form of transportation in World of Warcraft is a Gryphon, Windrider, Bat, or other similar creature. Many settlements have a flight path, with a NPC who will allow you to travel to various connected points for a fee. Before you can use a flight path you must travel to it on foot and "learn" the path by clicking on the flight path NPC who will have a green ! above their heads. Flight paths are fixed; you cannot control the creature you are on, so sit back and enjoy the view.
Zeppelins and Boats
Travel between the two continents and to locations more remote than are accessable via flight path is done via large Zeppelins, Boats, or similar. These cost nothing to use, and operate on a fairly rapid schedule. The Zeppelin between the Horde cities of Orgrimarr and The Undercity is one example.
Inns and the Hearthstone
Finally, each player receives a Hearthstone in their inventory that can be used for instant travel back to whatever inn they are bound to. Binding at an inn involves speaking to the innkeeper and selecting the "I seek a place to rest" option. The Hearthstone can only be used once every 60 minutes, though some classes receive spells with the same effect but with a much shorter timer.
Personal Travel
Certain classes, such as Druids, Hunters and Shamans, have different means of personal travel which help them get places faster. At level 40, all classes can purchase different means of personal travel. These are generally quite expensive, but provide a faster means of transportation than traveling eveywhere by foot. -- Jat850
The Tram
The Deeprun Tram runs for free between Stormwind and Ironforge. The tram entrance on the Stormwind side is found in the Dwarven District. The tram comes every few minutes and is a very fast means of free travel between the two major Eastern Kingdoms cities. -- Jat850
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. Once an item is bound to you, it will say 'Soulbound'.
Acquiring Items
Items are acquired in four ways:
- Whacking monsters
- Note that named monsters often have a high chance of dropping the same item over and over again. They are also often harder (noted as Elite) than normal monsters.
- Completing quests
- If you do quests, you are sure to end up with a "good" set of equipment. Whacking monsters can provide extra-special items, but since quests give both items and XP (well, most of the time), I recommend doing the quests.
- I recommend that you use quest-items as a "baseline" - getting all items by tradeskilling or whacking monsters is hard.
- Getting them from other players
- This includes your own characters (if they are on the same server).
- It also includes the Auction House.
- Making them yourself
- Tradeskills provide items that are one notch above equal-level quest items, but (at the time I write this) with more time required to create the tradeskill item. However, you can send items you make to your other character (and to other players), so consider investing one character into the tradeskills. Besides, it's fun. :)
Item Attributes
Most items in World of Warcraft have one or more attributes. Depending on what class you chose to play, some attributes become more important than others. -- Sparkz
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.
Try to get and finish all the quests in a given geographic locale before moving on to a higher-level area with new quests (i.e., the Anvilmar area, the Dwarf starting town in Dun Morogh). The reason for this is that other quests may send you in different directions and into other map areas. By the time you get back to the original quest track, the quests have gone gray. Not that they still can't be accomplished, but any items received will be below your current level, the XP will be much less helpful, and the cash, if any, will be small change compared to the amounts you are currently bringing in from looting and selling Vendor trash items. -- Arath
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 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.
The completion of quests will also impact your reputation with particular factions, which can have further benificial effects such as cheaper prices at vendors and access to special vendors such as mounts.
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 your own icon in the upper left and select Leave Party.
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.
- 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.
- 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. It is often recommended that the group set out guidelines for what to roll on and what not to roll on when using Group Loot. A general rule-of-thumb is to not roll on something you can't equip but someone else can.
- Need Before Greed
- Similar to Group Loot, only this mode follows a system of only allowing party members to roll on an item if it 'can be used' by them. There are flaws with this system, both in the code itself and with regards to limitations of the system itself. It is recommended that you use 'Group Loot' in lieu of Need Before Greed, and simply clarify to people what they should and shouldn't roll on beforehand.
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.").
Raids
Raids are a set of 2-8 groups of 5. These are primarily used for large-scale PvP combat, or for raid-specific instances and zones. You can convert your group into a raid group by accessing your 'Social' Panel, selecting 'Raid' and choosing 'Convert Group to Raid'. From then on, anyone you invite will join your raid group.
Keep in mind that Raid groups do not receive quest rewards. This is to prevent people from creating infinitely large groups in order to do normal quests that do not need raid groups to complete. You also receive an experience penalty for any killing you do in a raid group. Again, this is to prevent people for using raid groups in situations where normal groups should be sufficient. (Anyone know the actual formula for raid exp penalty?)
Dungeons and Instances
Write me.
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 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.
For further customization of the user interface, check out Cosmos. -- Goldark
The Mail System
For a price, you can send in-game mail to other players. This can be sent when other players are offline or online. An icon will appear near your minimap indicating if you have new Unread Mail. To read your mail, visit the postbox outside any inn. You can also send items through mail to other players as "attachments". The mail system is not instantaneous, but it is very useful for communicating with someone you know to be offline or in faroff lands. -- Jat850
Sending only coin is instantaneous. Mailing items takes 1 hour. -- Sigpaos
Author(s)
Original guide written by Rustak; hopefully contributions by many more.