Posts with tag wow-rookie

In our continuing efforts to help players new to PvP get out there and blow up other players, we're focusing this week on Warsong Gulch. We'll talk briefly about the rules of the game and then look at common strategies.

Warsong Gulch is one of the simpler Battlegrounds in terms of raw strategy. It's essentially Capture the Flag. Each team has a base, and a flag that sits in that base. Your team's goal is to grab the enemy's flag and return it to your base without losing your own flag. Do that, and you score. Score three times and you win.

When you pick up the flag, you can't mount or use certain effects without dropping the flag. Notably, druids and shaman can engage their travel forms while carrying the flag, making them speedy options for what's known as the flag carrier. (Speedy does not imply superior; we'll get into that later.) The longer the FC holds the flag, the more damage the FC will take from player attacks. When you kill an FC, the flag will temporarily sit on the ground, waiting for someone to pick it up. If the friendly team does so, the flag returns to base. If the enemy team does so, they now have a new FC.

There you go. Those are the basics.

WoW Rookie is brought to our readers to help our newest players get acclimated to the game. Make sure you send a note to WoW Insider if you have suggestions for what new players need to know.

Accept this fact: to be good at playing WoW, you need to learn to use your keyboard at least some of the time. You don't have to bail on your mouse, but it's very helpful to learn some of the very basic keyboard shortcuts that will make your life in the game that much easier. (Easy is good, right?)

Using the game interface
There are hotkeys for almost everything you do in-game. You can find most of them by just hovering your mouse over the icons that you click -- as no doubt you may have already noticed. Let's start with the button bar that you use to bring up your Quest Log, Spellbook and other things. You'll see that when I hover my mouse over the gold cup icon, a tooltip pops up. The L in parentheses after "Quest Log" means you can just press your L key to bring up the log instead of clicking the icon. (Don't worry that it's a capital L, just press lower-case L. When a keyboard command is capitalized, it's written as "Shift-L".) After the break, you'll see a list of keyboard shortcuts for the game interface.

Some of the best rewards in WoW can only be achieved if you have the appropriate level of reputation with a specific faction. Whether you're a brand new WoW player or a freshly-minted level 70 dipping your first toe into the endgame, you need to educate yourself about reputation (or "rep" as it's usually called). Fortunately, here at WoW Insider, we have a lot of tools that can help you find your way through the rep maze to the piece of loot you desire.

For new players

WoW Rookie: Introduction to Reputation
New players should start with this article to learn what all the terminology means and how rep affects your gameplay.

WoW Rookie: Azeroth Reputations
This article is the next step in understanding rep and how it works for the world of Azeroth. Since you should start worrying about rep long before you hit level 40, this article shows you how to start preparing for getting your first mount -- especially if the one you hunger for is not your toon's racial mount.

Breakfast Topic: Reputation grinding
Here you can see what your fellow players have to say about what it's like to grind rep after level 60.

For new level 70s

Ask WoW Insider: Do you optimize your rep grinds?
Advice from us and other readers on how to streamline your rep grinds in Outland.

Faction frustrations eased in Wrath
A preview of how rep may change in the Wrath of the Lich King expansion.

Rep calculators

Here are a couple of rep calculators we've reviewed.

• Liquidor's rep calculator
• WoW Reputation Calculator

For extra credit

WoW Rookie: Pre-Burning Crusade engame reputations
This is a good primer on how rep worked prior to the release of The Burning Crusade expansion. Rep grinding in Azeroth after level 60 is not overly relevant now, but you may still be curious as to how it worked.

While our very own WoW Rookie column has a wealth of information specifically tailored to new players, this week's Insider Trader is going to go in-depth and personal with your profession choices to help make sure that you get the job you want.

Whether you are looking for a challenge, thinking ahead to your future, or looking to maximize your profit, you'll find the advice you need to make an informed decision. Have you already chosen, and are regretting it? Never fear, I'll walk you through backing out of the deal and finding something that really suits you.

Make sure not to skip the comments section, as input and personal experience will help you learn about the different outcomes you might face.

It's no coincidence (just in case you thought it was) that when you first log into the game, the first thing you see is an NPC in front of you with a golden exclamation point above their head. Quests are a fundamental part of this game, not just in terms of lore and story, but also in character advancement (and earning all of that gold and XP that you're going to be doing). A good part of the game (in fact, the major part of the game up to level 70) is just handling all the quests and tasks you've got to do. From FedEx to kill quests, and from huge multi-part quest chains to simple fetch quests, handling all of those tasks is extremely important from the moment you enter the world of Azeroth.

So today on WoW Rookie, we're going to give you a few tips on how to handle this most important of missions: figuring out where, who, and what's up with all the missions you get in the game. Keeping track of what you're supposed to do is sometimes just as important as doing it, and so after the jump, we've compiled a few tips for getting your Azerothian to-dos done.