Posts with tag beginner

Truth is, I enjoy World of Warcraft's lore, which is why I write about it for the site alongside Anne Stickney. But I understand why a setting that's been around since the original Warcraft: Orcs vs. Humans can be daunting to new people trying to understand what's going on. Why does the human king have scars on his face, and why is this orc with giant tusks on his shoulders so upset about everything? Never fear, it's really not all that complicated. Here, we're going to discuss some ways for people who haven't really had a chance to get invested into the lore to start figuring out who those people are and what they're on about.

My first suggestion to you is, when you're playing WoW, start clicking on books. There are books all over the game world, in various dungeons, out in the open, hidden away in corners in inns and cities. If you see one, click on it. Hidden in all these books are stories about the world of Azeroth. You can get surprisingly caught up on the basics just via this exercise. Also try to click on plaques on statues and in structures. The statues in front of Stormwind have small plaques on them that tell you exactly who these are statues of and why they were placed there.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aims to show you how to make money on the auction house. Email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail!

Aaron wrote in the other day to say:

Despite having played WoW for years I'm a complete gold-making newbie and my characters are all dirt-poor because of it. I decided it was time to start playing the gold-making meta game so I've been reading through issues of your Gold Capped column, and while I've really enjoyed what I've read I'm afraid I'm still at a loss as to where to get started. Obviously I don't have a lot of upfront capital to jump-start my endeavor, either. I was wondering if you've ever written or would consider writing an article for complete, absolute beginners such as myself.

Unless you started the game with rich friends, this is something that everyone has to go through. People getting into earning gold from scratch often don't have any clue where to start, and they often have a bunch of incorrect ideas about what they need to get going.

The new World of Warcraft community site has, in my opinion, been a marvelous success for Blizzard. It's gorgeous, informative, and updated regularly. We've always wanted this type of outreach from Blizzard, and we got it in spades. And now, Blizzard has expanded the site with the new World of Warcraft Game Guide.

The Game Guide features four illustrated chapters detailing what World of Warcraft is, getting started with the game, basic game mechanics, very detailed visual representations of game and chat etiquette, and an entire section explaining the late PvP and raid game. It is truly a sight to behold, and the people in charge of visualizing and explaining some nebulous concepts have gotten it right in a simple and aesthetically pleasing way. It's really awesome. But the game guide doesn't stop with describing the game alone.

The new race and class pages up the ante on player race information, detailing the story of each race, capital and starting cities, faction leaders, and the story so far. Each race's page is lovingly crafted with gorgeous artwork and awesome story bits. The class pages are just as robust, with lore on the various classes, role descriptions, and more. Blizzard had a lot of fun making these pages, and it shows.

Are you planning on rolling a spec that you've never tried before when Cataclysm hits? (Shadow priest, perhaps?) Well, good news -- Blizzard is introducing a new feature into the game called "beginner tooltips." This optional feature, which you can toggle on and off through the interface menu, reduces the complexity of the information in tooltips.

While most of these new tooltips have yet to be implemented, the few that have been provide a basic level of instruction aimed at new and younger players. For example, the tooltip for the druid tanking ability Growl normally reads, "Taunts the target to attack you, but has no effect if the target is already attacking you." With the beginner tooltips feature turned on, the tooltip suggests it be used to "protect friends with less health and armor than you."

Want to crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of their women? Blood Sport investigates the entirety of all-things arena for gladiators and challengers alike. C. Christian Moore, multiple rank 1 gladiator, examines the latest arena strategy, trends, compositions and more in WoW.com's arena column.

Listening Music: 15 Step, by Radiohead. If you liked it, check out the full set -- it's fourteen tracks, and they don't stick to just In Rainbows! Myxomatosis and Where I End and You Begin (a personal favorite) are included.

Last Week: Beginner's guide to arena, part VI. A glossary of arena terms is important for any starting arena player. We went over some of the more interesting and often confusing terms PvPers like to use in casual conversation. Get acquainted with some gladiator jargon.

This Week: We'll be discussing some helpful tips for finding arena partners. Everything from trade chat to recruitment forums and more. We're gonna do this quasi-chronologically. You might shift around the order a bit, that's cool.

1) Get as much PvP gear as possible.

Do Vault of Archavon 25-man and 10-man each week. Grind heroics for badges to buy PvP main pieces. Grind battlegrounds for off-set pieces. We talked about ways to gear up in Part I of our beginner's guide series. Having a lot of PvP gear will help you to win games, which helps to get skilled PvPers to notice you.

Want to crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of their women? Blood Sport investigates the entirety of all-things arena for gladiators and challengers alike. C. Christian Moore, multiple rank 1 gladiator, examines the latest arena strategy, trends, compositions and more in WoW.com's arena column.

Listening Music: Royksopp's Remind Me. We were emailed last week by Kohl, who politely recommended some listening music for Blood Sport this week. I was planning on featuring another kind of chill electronica, but Kohl just happened to recommend Royksopp among Hybrid and Kosheen -- so enjoy the beats, Kohl. If you'd like to contribute listening music to the column, please make your recommendation in the comments below. If you want to reach me on a personal level, you can hit me up at colby <at> wow.com.

Last Week: We discussed how to improve our play. We talked about humility, the myth of luck, practice, team hopping, and having fun. These are all important aspects of a winning player's attitude and belief system. However, as a commenter or two mentioned -- last week's article is helpful if you're already into arena, but what if you're just starting out and have never really played arenas seriously before? That article will help you out a lot. Err, it will...kind of. Maybe? Okay, probably not. Sorry for jumping the gun. Advice for how to improve can definitely be beneficial for the beginning arena combatant, but it's not going to help in comparison to an arena start-up guide.

This week, we'll nickel and dime arena for fresh blood. We haven't talked about tangibles in the past two weeks. That's gonna change now. Prepare to get your pumps primed.

That sounded dirty. Interested? Check out the arena starter guide after the break.

One of my favorite WoW blogs, HoTs and DoTs, has a great post up about Dungeon Groups 101 -- the very basics of running instances. You may think that there's nothing more basic to the game than getting in an instance with four people and taking down a few bosses and trash, but you'd be surprised. Even in a social game like this, one of the first hurdles newbies have to deal with is joining a group to play together. They worry that they'll do things wrong and that other people will make fun of what they're wearing or playing, and that worry keeps them from enjoying my absolute favorite part of the game.

Cassandri's writeup is an excellent read for anyone who feels that way (and feel free to pass on this post to any friends or relatives you know who've been too leery to join an instance yet). She does do some basic knowledge stuff in there, just hints on the classes and what they can all do -- and our WoW Rookie posts will help out with that stuff too -- but more importantly, she says what lots of new players need to hear: that messing up in an instance isn't that big a deal, and that playing together with others (which is the reason why we're all playing an MMO rather than a single player game in the first place) is more than worth getting past any anxiety around joining a group. I've read a lot of comments like the one Cassandri quotes in her post, too, and I'm here to tell you: if you haven't run an instance yet, it's time to stop worrying about what it'll be like and give it a try.

Hi there, new player -- welcome to WoW and the WoW Insider family! WoW Rookie helps you get off to a great start with all sorts of crunchy bits and nuggets of wisdom. Here's our spin on all the nuts-and-boltsy tips you won't find in the box or in the game.

One note: If you've already begun your journey through Azeroth and run across something in game or in our resources below that makes you rethink your approach, don't be afraid to make a fresh start. Blizzard makes it easy for today's new players to zip through the early levels. It's much better to make adjustments early on, before you've invested significant time and effort in your character.

Each week Matthew Porter contributes The Creamy GUI Center, a column aimed at helping you enhance your WoW experience by offering an in depth guide to addons, macros and other tools we use to play WoW, along with commentary on issues that affect how we all play.

Welcome readers to this week's The Creamy GUI Center. With the expansion's release imminent and the new Recruit a Friend system creating buzz and attracting new and returning players, I thought this week we'd get back to basics with a look at addon essentials. Don't worry UI enthusiasts, in the coming weeks I'll be taking a look at more advanced addons, and what to expect from interface enhancements in Wrath. This week we'll look at addons that help new players and are considered "must haves." So if you're a new player or just want to take the first plunge into the addictive world of addons and UI enhancements, this one's for you.

There isn't a web site on the planet that loves it's readers more than WoW Insider does. So when Brenda from Florida wrote to us and told us how much she loved World of Warcraft, and asked us for opinions on what "essential" add-ons she would need to get started, there was no choice but to respond and offer up this recap of addons for beginning players.

There are hundreds of add-ons out there, and as your journey progresses through the game you will find new ones you like. This is just, as Baloo from The Jungle Book would say, the simple bear bare necessities.

Lightheaded - Since they inflated the experience benefit in the last patch, using Lightheaded to quest brings experience so quickly it will make your head spin. Lightheaded adds quest information from the comments on the Wowhead.com database site to your quest log. All the information you would have to tab-out for is at your fingertips. I heartily recommend using Doublewide in concert with Lightheaded, which will put your quest log in two panes instead of one to make it fit more easily on the screen. It's like peanut butter and chocolate, two great tastes that go great together. If you want to learn more about Lightheaded check out this awesome article (with accompanying awesome screenshot) from our own David Bowers.

Cartographer - You need Cartographer. Cartographer is essentially "the" map add-on as far as I'm concerned, You'll find all the great features of Cartographer on the page I linked, but the most important Cartographer feature to a new player (who uses Lightheaded) is that when you click a set of coordinates in Lightheaded, it will show you a floating arrow on your screen that points the way to your destination. (As a free tip, I will also mention that you can ditch the arrow and clear all waypoints by typing /noway. Yes, I know you can do it with the mouse, but... I'm one of those weird keyboard people.)