WoW Rookie: Playing in a group
by Lisa Poisso 
Jan 7th 2009 at 6:00PM
You're madly in love with your new character. You've polished off the early zones and boast a couple of handfuls of talent points. Your professions are coming along nicely, and you've been spending a little time poking around on various WoW web sites to learn more about your class and the game. Yet you're still feeling a little insecure around other players. Shouldn't you be running instances with groups by now? How are you supposed to know what to do?
If groping towards grouping leaves you feeling a little intimidated – we've got your back. How to get into a group, what to do once you're in one, and how to conduct yourself (and what to expect from others) to make lasting friends who'll want to group up again and again ... after the break.
Let's get started with the very basics of grouping – Grouping 101, if you will. Be sure to skim the reader comments at the end of each post for tricks, tips and ideas that have worked for other players.Grouping basics
How to form a group World of Warcraft is a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) -- that means that at some point or another, you'll most likely have to group up with other folks. There is strength in numbers against monsters and enemy players. So have fun, group up and make some friends.
The polite invite There's almost nothing more confusing than receiving a random group or guild invite; it's just not something you want to do.
What's your job in a group? As you level up, playing your intended role becomes more and more important. There are three (or four, depending on who you ask) main roles in an instance: tanking (taking the heat of the monsters' damage), healing, dealing damage (DPS, or Damage Per Second) and crowd control (CC). The typical instance team includes a tank, a healer and three DPS/CC players.
Grouping in dungeons/instances Dungeons are special zones where players group together to fight tougher monsters than found in the usual outside environment. Dungeons are often called "instances" because each group enters its own, separate copy (or "instance") of the dungeon and will not interact with other players of either faction when inside. Instances offer tougher battles as well as better loot, experience and quest rewards.
Group etiquetteRolling for loot in a group You have already gotten this far, so don't spoil things by rolling like a noob. Here are some pointers to enhance your WoW looting experience in instances.
Group looting etiquette In short, no looting during combat: no "'lurting" allowed. That loot ain't going anywhere, and it's got your name all over it. Wait until all the sheep are dead and all the targets are down, and then right-click away and claim your goodies.
Is it ok to leave early? What's an acceptable limit for a "GTG soon!" announcement? Would you go into a dungeon knowing you had to replace a member part way through?
Resurrection etiquette Should the healer (who already spends more on the run than anyone aside from the tank, has a more stressful job than any DPS and makes sacrifices for people they do not even know) be forced to make all the corpse runs? Does the ability to resurrect automatically dictate this in the job description? If so, would you still choose to heal or to run PuGs?
When it's not working out When you're unfortunate enough to find yourself in a bad group, how do you know when to cut your losses and call it quits? Do you flee at the first sign of trouble? Hang in until the group leader calls it quits? Or do you have some other breaking point?
Come back for more
Build a pool of players to group with With some organizational work on your part and some planning ahead, you can arrange quick grouping for the long term. The key is to collect a group of players with similar schedules to play with regularly.
Meeting other players These are the people you want in your posse for the best possible experience in the game.
WoW Rookie feeds you the basics to get you off to a good start in the World of Warcraft. Find more tools you can use in the WoW Insider Directory and WoW Insider Leveling Guides. Filed under: Tips, Tricks, How-tos, Instances, WoW Rookie
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Niian Jan 7th 2009 6:16PM
Don't forget the good ol' Friends list.
Thanks to an update a while back you can now add notes without the need for an addon, which is immensely useful for adding things like "Awesome healer" to peoples names in the list. Great for remembering the people you'd like to get back into a group!
I just wish there was a Reject list along the same lines as friends list!
Kajira Jan 7th 2009 6:32PM
Amen on a reject list. Ignore doesn't quite serve the same function as what I need.
Right now, my shit-list is plain old pen and paper.
Leonardnimoy Jan 7th 2009 7:02PM
There's a small addon called "NotesUNeed" or something similar, that allows notes to be added to players. There are preset notes (i.e. ninja, or rankings based on **** points) plus you can customize your own notes per player. When you highlight this person in any way that brings up his tooltip, it will also show the NUN tooltip and what it says. So, for example, when I'm off questing or doing my own thing and an alliance comes and attacks me while I'm fighting other mobs, I make a KoS note. A couple days later, when the tables are turned, I make sure to Kill on Sight.
SaintStryfe Jan 7th 2009 6:31PM
Any wow newbie who is learning to group, there's a few suggestions I'd have:
1) be forgiving. People aren't perfect, and if you're learning, it's very possible they're learning too. Don't expect to be perfect, don't expect perfection from others.
2) Know your roles, abilities, and weaknesses. I mean it all - know what your class can do, when you can do it (don't be the noob who tries to CC a Dragonkin when your CC only works on humanoids or beasts - I just did that in a recent run with my new Hex ability I just got - it made me look like a complete idiot). If you're going to need a bit of room to gain threat as a tank, tell people to give a slow 5 count before DPS on, or give them a high sign then they should start.
3) Never be afraid to ask a question. The only thing worse then not knowing is not being forthcoming with that fact.
4) Read before you bleed - while your setting up your group, hit WoWhead and skim the boss strats, so you don't go in blind. Most of the time, these bosses have simple patterns which are easily handled. If you know them, you look better.
5) Most Importantly: Have fun. This is a game, don't be dour if you lose a loot roll, don't be grumpy if you have to make a corpse run, just enjoy the game and don't treat every defeat like the end of the world.
Amaxe Jan 7th 2009 7:20PM
These are good tips for the veteran players too
D Jan 7th 2009 8:51PM
I'd like to add that the "be forgiving" is something WoW veterans need to remember too. They're much more likely to start ranting "l2p nooob" than a beginner. Mistakes happen and are frustrating but if you're kind and helpful -- that "noob" you grouped with a few weeks ago may haven taken your advice, read a lot, played a lot and may well be a valuable player now.
It's good to remember we were ALL noobs once. :-)
SaintStryfe Jan 7th 2009 8:55PM
I put it simply - Be Excellent to Each Other.
/Greatest. Movie. Ever.
vazhkatsi Jan 8th 2009 12:45PM
another, its a startup tip too, if you enjoyed grouping with someone add them. people tend to level in waves, and you'll find that the people you group with at 20 are also people you can group with at 40, if you try to group with some people more than once you can build useful ties so that you'll have more friends to ask favors of at 80. its always nice knowing a healer or dps or tank you leveled alongside of, and asking them to join you, and its a lot better than some random pug.
Sorcefire Jan 7th 2009 6:46PM
Great article and helpful information for new players, but I've noticed a number of posts focused on how to play the game and new players in general. Is this because of a surge in new players? If so I don't think I'm experiencing this on my server (Drenden).
I don't mean to demean or derail this article, but I have to ask.
Anyone else?
Leonardnimoy Jan 7th 2009 7:23PM
I'd imagine so - Wrath just release and may have intrigued many people who haven't played yet. Obviously they can't do Northrend or a DK yet, so they have to start at ground zero.
Muse Jan 8th 2009 1:49AM
The new players tend to roll on the first server that comes up, ie the ones set to Recommended for the type of realm they want to be on. So once a server has more than a medium population, they wont see new players unless they deliberately pick it from the list.
AyaJulia Jan 8th 2009 2:46AM
I don't really understand it either. I realize there's likely a surge of new players, sure, but it usually takes a player quite a while before they start finding great resources like WowInsider, Wowhead, Curse, Wow-pro, and so forth.
I have to wonder how many truly new players stumble across these guides. I can't see it happening without a veteran giving them a link or something, and usually in that case the veteran can explain in person just as easily.
Not knocking the guides, just question whether anyone is actually getting any use out of them. :)
ChaChaTrevor Jan 8th 2009 9:04AM
Just responding to AyaJulia's comment. I just recently started playing WOW and find these articles as well as other sites like WOWhead and thottbot very useful. I find that having a hunger to learn more and be better at a game drives one to research and find out more. I've discovered a lot of information(thanks google ^_^), without having to beat people up to tell me about good sites. We Noobs may be ignorant but not entirely incompetent. we'll get there...eventually.
Sorcefire Jan 8th 2009 10:39AM
I am glad to see that new players are coming on board as many of us "veterans" are approaching burn out or apathy towards the game. Between the "noob" articles, class-specific columns, and patch notes there is a lot of good information. The posts about fan movies, machinima, or other superficial (subjective) information are less useful in imo.
zappo Jan 7th 2009 6:49PM
Is there a way to join LFG without actually looking for a group for something? I'd like to keep my ears open to people who need a tank, but I'm often too high level to actually get listed in a dungeon. And for that matter I often don't feel like tanking any instances that are listed for my level in LFG.
Rioriel Jan 7th 2009 6:56PM
I just change the dropdown to any zone and make sure the auto join isn't ticked.
Sayas Jan 8th 2009 11:29AM
Look for an addon appropriately called AllwaysLFG. What it does is always join you up onto the LFG channel so you'll see any posts that come up there.
monkeystick Jan 7th 2009 7:27PM
very important to check whether or not you're saved to an instance.. so many new players forget to check that and end up saving four other people to an instance with no bosses for the day..
..not that i've ever done that.. *cough*
Amaxe Jan 7th 2009 7:23PM
Also saves you the embarassment of finding out that once you finally got your group together, that you are not the one whose save hasn't been reset yet
Not that I ever did that on 25 man Archiverus once we finally got the group together and were ready to roll
Amaxe Jan 7th 2009 7:23PM
bleh "you are the one whose save has not reset"