For the mostpart, what defines the things your character is capable of is your class skills and talents. Choices for race and profession matter to a lesser extent, but a majority of the things you can do are dictated by the class you choose. Further down, there will be a list of the abilities you should know every class is capable of.

You can train every ability if you have the money and level to do so. Talents, however, are things not every member of a class will have - because they have to make a choice between them. (Some of the items in the trainer window stem from talent choices, but let’s not split hairs.)

Beginning with level 10, you will start getting a talent point every level. This means you will only ever have a maximum of 51. Starting with level 10, you will also have a talent menu that shows you the options you could spend them on.

The purpose of talents is to give your character a sense of direction. One rogue might want to play a strong-armed thug while another might want to play a slippery thief or a shadowy assassin. Talents let you emphasize a particular aspect of your class.

Talents usually only affect your abilities in a passive way - this spell is 10% more effective, you deal an extra 20 damage with that skill, the cooldown on that skill is half a second less, etc. There are some talents that actually give you a new ability though. Once “trained” from the talent menu, there will be an icon for that skill in your spellbook, and you can drag it to your hotkey bar like any other. These skills very often have higher ranks you can train at later levels to make them more effective.

For example, Aimed Shot, a hunter talent that could be acquired at level 20, deals 70 extra damage on a shot that takes extra time to fire due to concentration. At higher levels, the extra time and mana wouldn’t be worth 70 damage, but there are higher ranks of Aimed Shot that allow it to deal much more extra damage, making it still worthwhile later in the game.

Every class has 3 talent trees, usually representing three major aspects of your class. Druids, for example, have abilities to enhance their healing, their other spellcasting, and their shapeshifting. Hunters have trees related to improving their pets, their ranged damage, and their melee prowess.

Each talent tree has the abilities arranged to rows most people call tiers. There are only two trees on the first tier of a talent tree, and they are the only ones initially available. Once you spend 5 talent points on the items in the first tier, the second tier becomes available. (Obviously, this means that some talents can have more than one point spent in them.) After you have 10 points spent amongst the first two rows, the third row opens, and so on, all the way up to a row that requires 30 points spent.

Due to the 51 point maximum, this means you will never be able to get everything two different trees have to offer. You will need to make a conscious decision as to what you want your character to focus on.

Fear not! If you accidentally “waste” points by spending them away that you don’t like in the long run, it is possible to reset your talents completely. This costs money, however, so it is not something to be taken lightly. The intention is to allow you to correct mistakes in your talent design, not to reselect them completely based on your situation.

To reconfigure your talents, go to a class trainer and select the second options, the one regarding talents. Your trainer will warn you of the cost, and after you confirm your talent reset, you will hear a shattering sound. Open your talent window, and they will all be unspent again. It costs 1 gold the first time you reset your talents, 5 gold the next time, and eventually it will escalate to 50 gold. You can reset your talents any time after that for 50 gold.

OMG, What talents should I get??

Well, that’s up to you. Some are better than they sound and some aren’t. Some are also very much a matter of taste. For example, most casters have a talent that allows them to get a portion of their normal mana regeneration while casting, which is normally completely turned off during the cast and the five seconds after the spell. Some players feel this is extremely helpful to a character, while others feel that is total crap and the 5 points to get 15% of your mana regen back could better be spent elsewhere.

Keep in mind that there are also prerequisites beyond just the X points spent in tree requirement. For a priest to get Silence, in their Shadow tree, they must first spend 2 points in Improved Psychic Scream. Many non-PvP players aren’t terribly thrilled with Improved PS, but they spend the two points in that skill anyway just to get to Silence.

Generally speaking, look at your talents carefully, and consider the things that look like must-haves. Make a list of them, and how many talent points it would take to get to them AND GET THEM. A skill that requires 20 points to get and takes up to 5 points has a cost of 25. Now pick a combination from the three trees that adds up to no more than 51. The priest that gets Silence would be spending 21 points. If they decide they also must have Inner Focus, a skill in the Discipline tree that would force them to spend 21 points, they will have at most 9 points left. Of course, things that are lower in the Shadow and Discipline tree that they need can be had along the way, but that priest could not spend more than 9 points in the other tree, Holy, without giving up one of those two skills.

Blizzard has designed the trees very carefully so in many cases you can NOT get the combination of high-end talents you want. It is not possible to get the last talent in a tree, that takes 31 points, and get a talent in another tree that is in the row that requires 20 points.

Also, most (not all, but most) of the talent-generated skills come on the 10, 20, and 30 point rows, while many of the 5-point enchancement talents are on the “odd” rows. This means you can get one high-end ability choice, and then work up to one of the major enchancement talents, but not get two of the high-end ability talents.

You might find that an aspect of your class is not the one you would have thought you would have wanted to play. Most people that play traditional healing classes would pick a priest, and assume they should get the Holy talents that affect their healing spells, but later find that they appreciate the damage-generating Shadow talents instead. (Indeed, this has created a rift within the priest community.)

To this, all I have to say is, play what you want to play, and what makes the game fun for you, and don’t let anyone dictate how to play to you. Your warriors do not have to get defensive talents, your druids do not have to get restorative talents, your mages do not have to get arcane talents…even those these have come to be accepted as the most useful for a high-octane instance group. While some players you encounter might seem to disagree, you can play the game without these talents - without any talents, even. Remember,

TALENTS ARE SPECIALIZATIONS. THEY MOSTLY DO NOT DETERMINE WHAT YOUR CHARACTER CAN DO, OR INDICATE YOUR SKILL AS A PLAYER.

Playing the game effectively does require you to know a little bit about the other classes and what they ARE capable of though. In the very first section of this guide, there were very brief descriptions of the classes and what their usual roles are. This doesn’t tell you that a mage can remove curses though, and it might be some time before you learn this. Here is a partial list of what you should know about other classes:

WARRIOR

General: Warriors have three stances, that determine which skills are available to them at that point in time. They can switch stances at any time, but they lose all their “mana.” Warriors don’t actually have mana though, they generate rage as the battle progresses. Most battle skills require rage, or generate additional rage. Warriors can dual wield at level 20, but it is usually preferable for a warrior to use a shield or a two-handed weapon, depending on the situation.

Abilities:

Charge (level 4) - starts a battle by furiously running up to an enemy at a speed that rivals the Flash, and begins with a certain amount of extra rage. A good way to start a fight when there is no better alternative (and often there is.)

Dual Wield (level 20) - you miss 24% of the time while dual wielding, and there aren’t any specific advantages for a warrior to dual wield, but yes they can do it.

Hamstring (level - Makes the enemy unable to run at full speed, allowing you to run away, or preventing them from escaping.

Heroic Strike (level 1) - Deal additional damage with an attack.

Plate mail (level 40) - Warriors can wear the heaviest armor in the game, beginning at level 40.

Rend (level 4) - Creates open wounds that make your target lose damage over time.

Shield Bash (level 12) - Interrupts a spell and forces the caster to not cast that spell for 6 seconds.

Shield Wall (level 28) - Reduce all incoming non-magic damage to 25% for 10 seconds.

Taunt - while there is an actual “taunt” skill, I use this as a general term to refer to a number of different skills the warrior has to redirect attention to himself. This is, arguably, the warrior’s most important quality.

Talents:

The three trees are Fury, Protection, and Arms.

If you are actually a warrior, there’s a lot more to know, but for general purposes, there aren’t many specific warrior talents everyone should know. Mortal Strike is the best known warrior talent, that generates a large amount of damage on the target and also reduces healing briefly.

PALADIN

General: Where to start…paladins have been turned upside-down recently. Paladins are perhaps the most enduring of all the classes; these guys are just plain hard to kill. Warriors can take more damage, but paladins have other ways to keep themselves, or others, alive. They have…well, read abilities.

Abilities:

Rather than listing individual abilities, here are the general types of skills paladins get —

Auras - permanent effects that follow the paladin around. Anyone nearby and grouped receives this effect. Examples include Devotion Aura (bonus AC,) and Retribution Aura (reflects damage.) A paladin can only put out one aura at a time.

Blessings - these are short-term effects the paladin casts on others. A paladin can only bless a person one way at a time. Examples include Blessing of Wisdom (extra mana regen,) Blessing of Might (additional attack power,) and the oddball Blessing of Protection, that completely prevents a target from taking damage or making any actions for several seconds. Other blessings generally last for 5 minutes.

Seals: Paladins have self-only, one-at-a-time buffs called seals that last for 30 seconds. Seal of Righteousness generates health for the paladin per successful attack, and Seal of the Crusader makes the paladin swing harder and faster at the expense of damage reducing as the seal progresses, for example.

Judgements: Any seal can be released as a judgement using a skill called judgement. The effect then becomes a negative effect on the paladin’s target. Judgement of Righteousness (from the seal of the same name) makes everyone who attacks a target regain a few hit points. Judgement of the Crusader increases the holy damage taken by the target. All judgements last for 30 seconds, and the actual judgement skill to convert seals has a 15 second cooldown.

Other abilities:

Just about every other paladin skill is fairly significant. There’s too many to list. Paladins can heal, rez, stun, make a target invulnerable briefly, summon a horse, wear platemail, heal someone completely once per hour, among other things. Look at the class skill information on the site if you want to know more. I don’t want to make this longer than it has to be. (Believe it or not!)

Talents:

The three talent trees are Holy (divine magic), Protection (shield and armor skills), and Retribution. (offensive damage)

Everyone’s still learning talents as of this writing. Some of the abilities that seem important to many players include Holy Shock (ranged holy attack), Revelation (reduced LoH timer), Holy Shield (block percentage and damage shield for 10 sec), Improved Devotion Aura, and Consecration (AE holy attack). The seemingly most significant ability as of this writing is Blessing of Kings, which increases a target’s attributes by 10% for five minutes.

SHAMAN

General: Shamans are the Horde-only class, and while slightly less defensive than paladins, and perhaps slightly less offensively-inclined for melee, they are potent spellcasters as well. Their heals are considered powerful and flexible enough to allow them to be a main healer, but they also have many skills that make them able to tank, melee, or nuke as well. They are the truest hybrid class of the game.

Shamans function largely through the use of totems. At various stages, shamans get the use of totems of a new element. Earth totems are largely defensive, fire offensive, water restorative, and air general melee prowess. A shaman can use one of each class of totems at any point by casting it, and it plunks down on the ground and creates a local effect. Totems are attackable and generally die quite easily, but also are immune to AE attacks.

Abilities:

Rockbiter Weapon (level 1) - adds attack power to the shaman’s weapon, effectively making him hit harder. There is a weapon buff for each element, each with a different effect.

Stoneskin Totem (level 4) - Earth totem. Reduces the damage taken by nearby group members by a fixed amount per hit.

Earth Shock (level 4) - Instant nuke that also interrupts spellcasting for 2 seconds. There is a different “shock” nuke for each element, each with a different effect.

Lightning Shield (level - Creates a damage shield with 3 charges.

Ancestral Spirit (level 12) - Resurrection.

Ghost Wolf (level 20) - Turns the shaman into a wolf, that runs with an extra 40% of normal speed. (Level 40 mounts are 60%.)

Lesser Healing Wave (level 28) - fast-casting heal spell

Mail (level 40) - At 40, the shaman graduates from leather armor to mail.

Talents:

The three talent trees are Elemental, Enhancement, and Restoration.

The elemental combat tree focuses on magic damage, and is best known for the three shock talents, Concussion, Convection and Reverbation, that increase the damage on all four “shock” spells.

Restoration focuses on replenishing health and mana, and many shamans go deep into this tree just for Nature’s Swiftness and the chance to cast a nature spell instantly every 3 minutes.

The enhancement tree is critical, at least in part, for any shaman. With mana defensive talents, offensive talents, and a few general purpose skills, this tree overall is very important to consider. There is no one single stand-out talent. Rather nearly all of them are quite good.

HUNTER

General - Hunters are ranged combat specialists that keep their opponents at bay by siccing tamed beasts on their foes to keep them busy. Hunters can tame *most* creatures of type “beast”, and generally there are only stat differences. Some creatures start with abilities which the hunter can learn, and then teach other pets, but he can only have one active pet at a time, (and two others stabled.) Hunters are also competent at melee, although nowhere near a match for a warrior or a rogue.

Abilities -

Auto-shot (level 1) - The hunter is the only class that can shoot automatically the way most classes can turn on attack for melee. This ability activates after using most special shots.

Hunter’s Mark (level 6) - The famous Eat At Joe’s arrow from this ability makes targets more susceptible to ranges attacks, and is also useful for picking a target for the group to attack, (as silly at it looks for a hunter to mark his prey with a big bobbing arrow.)

Aspect of the Hawk (level 10) - One of the hunter’s “aspect” spells, only one of which can be active at a time, this effect gives the hunter bonus ranged attack power.

TAME BEAST (level 10) - Find a tameable beast, and use this skill before engaging in combat. If you can woo it for 30 seconds while it rebels against you (fights you,) you will tame it.

Feed Pet (level 10) - Pets leave if you don’t keep them happy. Initially a pet will be very unhappy. They slowly lose happiness on their own, but take a big hit after dying. Make sure you feed pets after you revive them. This also helps restore pet HP, but only works out of combat.

Mend Pet (level 12) - This is a *channeled* heal spell that works only on your pet.

Immolation Trap (level 16) - The first of the hunter’s traps, create this on the ground in front of you, and then lure a target through it. It will become encased in flames and take fire damage over time.

Scorpid Sting (level 22) - You can use one sting on a target at a time. Scorpid Sting reduces a target’s strength and agility significantly.

Talents -

The three trees are Survival, Beast Mastery, and Marksmanship

Aside from two aspect abilities, Beast Mastery is exclusively talents that increase the effectiveness of your pet, culminating with Spirit Bond, which gives you health for every hit your pet lands, which can be rather noticeable with some of the other pet talents.

Survival focuses on traps and combat skills, and includes Deterrence and Counterattack which, respectively, give a temporary dodge/parry boost, and allow you a special attack following a parry. (Hunters have one automatically following a dodge.)

Marksmanship is the default tree for most hunters since ranged combat is their strength, and ends with Trueshot Aura, a group effect that increases melee and ranged attack power.

ROGUE

General - Rogues are sneaky little, um, devils. Aside from being the masters of fighting dirty to gain any advantage they can in combat, they also can enter a stealth mode to approach an opponent without notice and backstab them or pick their pockets. Rogues in combat use a system of combo points: certain attacks give you a point, and you can store up to five against your current target. You lose them all when you either change targets or release them through the use of a few special “finishing moves,” that do absolutely nothing without a combo point. This is *vaguely* reminiscent of Diablo assassins, but it is definitely not the same thing.

Rogues have a mana-like bar called energy that has a maximum of 100 points, always, but refills very rapidly.

Abilities -

Sinister Strike (level 1) - basic bonus attack that adds a combo point

Eviscerate (level 1) - finishing move that deals extra damage per combo point. At higher levels, with the right talents, this can be one of the most damaging attacks in the game.

Sprint (level 10) - makes the rogue run really fast for a short period. Can only be done once every 5 minutes.

Sap (level 10) - Before combat begins, a rogue can sneak up on a humanoid target and bop them on the head, putting them out of commission for a little while as you get to work on his friends.

Ambush (level 18) - Attack made while stealth to start combat that does a large amount of damage and adds a combo point.

Poisons (level 20) - Rogues can poison their blades with a few different types of poison.

Vanish (level 22) - puts the rogue in a special super-stealth for a few seconds, automatically breaking any awareness anyone had of him.

Talents -

The talent trees for rogue are Assassination, Combat, and Subtlety.

Subtlety is good for being elusive, and has skills like Improved Sap, which gives the rogue a chance to not become visible after sapping a target. (He cannot sap more than once.) While Subtlety focuses on the sneakiness of a rogue, the difference between Assassination and Combat isn’t immediately obvious. Combat focuses more on “pure” melee fighting, with weapon masteries and increased chances to dodge or hit, whereas assassination dwells on ruthless, remorseless killing, increasing the damage on your abilities, such as Cold Blood that gives your next major attack skill a guaranteed critical.

DRUID

General - druids are natural spellcasters. While more flexible than a true cloth caster, calling them a hybrid is really only justified by their two animal forms that transform them into an effective warrior (bear) or rogue (cat). They also have a travel form (cheetah) and aquatic version of it (manatee) that do not really afford them any offense.

In caster form, druids are excellent healers, supposedly second only to priests. Their damage capability as a caster is not as good as the caster classes, but it is respectable. If all they want to do is damage, they can always morph into a cat.

Abilities -

Mark of the Wild (level 1) - general all-purpose buff that increases all stats, armor, and resistances. Dubbed by Blizzard the “best buff in the game.”

Rejuvenation (level 4) - heal over time spell. Druid heals focus more on HoT than priests’.

Moonfire (level 4) - combination nuke and damage over time

Bear Form (level 10) - go into warrior mode, as a bear

Regrowth (level 12) - combination heal and heal-over-time. Strongest druid heal as far as raw numbers go.

Hibernate (level 18) - puts beasts and dragonkin to sleep. Only one target can be hibernated.

Cat Form (level 20) - go into rogue mode, as a cat

Remove Curse (level 24) - I mention this only because nobody seems to know what classes can cure curses. Mages can too.

Travel Form (level 30) - special run-speed enhancement form

Talents -

Balance, Feral Combat and Restoration are the Druid talent trees.

Balance focuses on nature and natural damage, and while often overlooked, can just as often spoke attention for Omen of Clarity, a weapon effect that can give the druid a chance to gain a buff making his next healing or damage spell free, and for Shapeshifting, which reduces the delay after changing forms before the druid can use abilities again. Feral Combat focuses on those forms, with perhaps the most skills in any tree because many of them are bear- or cat-form specific. Restoration for the druid includes an Improved Mark of the Wild, as well as the same Nature’s Swiftness talent that shamans have.

PRIEST

General - the healing rival of the druid, the priest has a few extra tools to make them more capable as a healer, but not much more powerful. Priests can also deal damage through the use of dark arts and shadow words. It should also be noted that each priest race has two specific spells only they can cast.

Abilities -

Power Word: Fortitude (level 1) - stamina buff, effectively increasing max HP

Shadow Word: Pain (level 4) - instant-casting damage-over-time spell

Power Word: Shield (level 6) - this spell absorbs damage on the target until it reaches its limit. While this happens, the target is not taking damage, so their spells are not being interrupted. There is a recast timer per target on this spell. While this spell is not a very good heal substitute, it is a crucial utility skill.

Fade (level - Useless in PvP, this skill reduces your effective hate amount for the 10 seconds it lasts.

Resurrection (level 10) - as per name.

Psychic Scream (level 14) - AE fear, affects limited number of targets

Heal (level 16) - upgrade to the “lesser heal” line, this is the primary “strong heal” of the class that is complemented by flash heal.

Shackle Undead (level 20) - prevents an undead target from performing any activity, including moving, so long as it remains undamaged. Undead players are not considered undead for this spell.

Talents -

Priests get benefits in Holy, Shadow, and Discipline

Holy is the tree with all the direct healing talents, and one might expect that makes it the universal choice for priests. It does, after all, include Spiritual Healing and Improved Healing that directly increase the efficiency of heals. But not so!, for Discipline is a general all-around boost to various skills, such as a direct increase to mana pool (Mental Strength) or a reduction in the recast timer on Power Word: Shield.

The shadow tree is the polar opposite of the holy tree, giving priests increased damage output rather than their healing so they can be more self-reliant. The most notable skill in this tree is Mind Flay, a channeled damage/snare with high mana efficiency and very good synergy with the rest of the shadow tree.

WARLOCK

General - Warlocks are inferior damage casters to mages, however they look like more of a rival when a battle is extended across time, since they have many “over time” spells. Additionally, warlocks have utility de-buffs and, most importantly, demon pets. There are 5 different types of pets, Imp, Voidwalker, Succubus, Felhunter, and Infernal, each with different function. Warlock also need Soul Shards for some of their spells, which are generated from absorbing the souls of dying targets.

Abilities -

Immolate (level 1) - one of the warlock’s damage over time (DoT) spells. Corruption follows it at level 4.

Summon Imp (level 1) - summons an imp pet that nukes targets with you, and has a group stamina buff later in level

Curse of Weakness (level 4) - just the first curse in the line, only one can be active at a time. Weakness reduces the damage the target causes.

Life Tap (level 6) - convert health into mana

Summon Voidwalker (level 10) - summons a big amorphous blue blob of a pet that does little damage but serves as a decent tank for the warlock

Drain Soul (level 10) - gives the warlock a soul shard if the target dies while drain soul is being cast

Summon Succubus (level 20) - summons a pet with moderate melee damage and the ability to mesmerize targets

*Ritual of Summoning (level 20) - one of the biggest utility spells in the game, warlocks can bring a party member to their location if two other group members help the warlock in the ritual. Requires a soul shard.

Banish (level 28) - removes a demon or elemental from the game for 20 seconds…it can’t do anything to you, but you cannot do anything to it either.

*Create Soulstone (level 30) - the other major utility spell, target’s soul is stored for 30 minutes, and if they die, they can resurrect themselves shortly afterwards rather than returning to the graveyard

Hellfire (level 30) - very powerful AE attack that also damages the caster

Talents -

I’m afraid I know jack and squat about warlock talents. They haven’t been in the game long, and unlike the paladin and hunter, I don’t have direct personal experience to rely on.

MAGE

General - Mages make stuff go boom. They also summon food/drink, teleport, and “sheep” stuff. But mostly they just make stuff go boom.

Abilities -

Arcane Intellect (level 1) - increases target’s intelligence, effectively increasing their mana pool

Fireball (level 1) - basic fire attack. Ice bolt follows for frost damage.

Conjure Water (level 4) - just the first of many food and drink summoning spells. Conjured water helps mages replenish their own mana without buying large quantities of drinks

Polymorph (level - turns a target into a sheep unless (until) it takes damage. Only works on beasts, humanoids, and dragonkin.

Arcane Missiles (level - channeled damage spell that is arguably the most mana efficient single-target mage spell

Frost Nova (level 10) - all targets nearby take minimal cold damage and become rooted to the ground by ice, allowing the mage to back up to safety.

Remove Lesser Curse (level 18) - as mentioned under druid, so you know which two classes actually cure curses. Nobody ever seems aware that mages can do this.

Blizzard (level 20) - the most widely-known area effect spell, although Arcane Explosion is often more popular with some mages.

Teleport (level 20) - teleports the mage to a specific capital city.

Talents -

Mage talents are quite simple: fire, frost, arcane (aka not hot or cold)

Fire spells do the most damage. If you want to make stuff go BOOM instead of boom, look into Blast Wave, a fire nova attack that dazes opponents. Cold is the most defensive of the mage trees, focusing on slowing opponents down so you outlast them. Due to the recast timer on Frost Nova, the talent reducing its recast is useful to even mages that aren’t frost-focused. Arcane is the hardest to use, but the most mana-efficient, meaning you can do the most damage in a long fight. There are several must-have skills in this tree, and in particular Evocation is *the* mage talent. Moreso than any other talent, essentially every mage has this talent, because it turbo-charges your mana regenation to squeeze a minute-and-a-half worth of mana regen into 8 seconds, giving the mage usually at least half of their mana bar back.

Accounts

Ammunition and quivers

Attributes/statistics

Buffs and debuffs

Dual wielding

Durability

Etiquette

Five-second rule

Game clock

Inns and resting

Instance deaths

Level cap

Macros

Naming characters

Non-trade slot

Quest items

Reputation

Set items

Slash commands

Spell interrupts

Stacking (of items)

Tradeskill training

Unlocking chests

ACCOUNTS:

Your World of Warcraft account will support up to 8 characters per server, according to Blizzard’s website. While there are forced servers in the sense that only North American players are supposed to play on NA servers, US players will be free to play in any of the 4 time zones across the country. (International releases are coming!)

Accounts run 14.95 per month, have a free first month, and will include a 30-day trial period for a friend to try the game.

AMMUNITION AND QUIVERS:

Ammo adds damage to your ranged attacks. While you need *some* type of ammo to shoot, you can have the most basic type if you want to save on costs.

Quivers and ammo pouches are special containers that can ONLY hold ammunition. Possessing one increases your attack speed with a ranged weapon, however you do not need one to use a firearm. It is only recommended that hunters have one, as the loss of an extra bag slot is not justified for warriors or rogues.

ATTRIBUTES & STATISTICS:

Your characters have 5 major attributes, strength, stamina, agility, intellect, and spirit. Strength affects melee damage and blocking rates. Stamina affects max HP. Agility affects chance to dodge or parry, ranged damage, crit rates, and melee damage for rogues (split with strength). Intellect affects max mana and spell crit rates. Spirit contributes to health and mana regen.

In your character window are several other statistics. Alongside your character are 5 icons for different spell resistances. Below that is your character’s ability to hit with a weapon and the power with which he/she strikes your opponents. Mousing over this area will also give a DPS rating for your character, split into each hand if you dual wield. This section is repeated for your ranged weapon.

BUFFS & DEBUFFS:

When you receive a beneficial spell, it will go in one row. When you receive a detrimental spell, it will go in a second row. Spells that remove effects will ONLY affect debuffs on you, and buffs on your opponents. You cannot dispel your own stamina buff trying to remove a slow spell. Likewise, you will negate the heal over time on your enemy rather than removing the silence effect you just cast.

DUAL WIELDING:

Three classes can dual wield. Rogues learn to at level 10, and at level 20, warriors and hunters gain this ability. Since rogues have no other real option for their off-hand, rogues almost univerally dual wield, but warriors rarely do, and hunters often prefer a two-handed weapon.

The main issue with dual wielding is that there is a base 24% chance to miss, and the off-hand weapon damage is halved, meaning that for equal DPS weapons, a second weapon only adds about (.75+.375) = 12.5% damage increase. A hunter will typically prefer the extra damage a two-handed weapon, and a warrior will either want a 2H or a shield.

Rogues have talents that increase the effectiveness of dual wielding. Expect to be frustrated with miss rates though.

DURABILITY:

As you participate in combat, your equipment will slowly wear. If you die, your items all lose 10% of their max durability. If you use the spirit healer, they lose an additional 15%. So after dying several times, your items will eventually break if you do not return to town and repair.

Items that are broken are not gone for good. They merely stop working. Repair costs are a minor nuisance at lower levels, but at the higher end of the spectrum, they help keep inflation in check by being quite expensive.

ETIQUETTE:

Your reputation with other players is important. As such, try to be polite and considerate. There are any number of ways that this could be described, but getting into all of them would make this post a novel. Just remember that other people are here to enjoy themselves too, so don’t explicitly try to screw them, and don’t spam general chat with tons of stupid comments. If someone clears to an ore vein, don’t run up and mine it while they are fighting the last mob in the way. Don’t skin other people’s kills until they walk away from the corpse. Don’t rush to attack something just because you see somebody else going for it. If someone is waiting for a named to spawn, let them have it. I could go on, but I don’t want to actually write that novel.

THE FIVE-SECOND RULE:

When any class performs an ability that uses mana, with little exception, their mana regen does not function during the cast or for five seconds after it is finished. Blizzard was concerned with the potential for players with a pure spirit build to be able to effectively chain-cast whatever they wanted. Unfortunately this game has a tremendous impact on the low-end game for starting players, and often affects strategy in a rather negative way.

I try to be largely impartial writing these guides, but I have to come out with a personal opinion here: the five-second rule sucks, and doesn’t seem to really serve any benefit. Blizzard, if you’re reading this, please remove the five-second rule.

GAME CLOCK:

The timer in-game runs on a 24-hour cycle. When it is day in real life, it is day in the game. Night time does actually get dark, although depending on your gamma setting, it may or may not be very noticeable. The clock is based on wherever the server is located, so a West Coaster playing on an EST server after dinnertime hours will find it to usually be night in Azeroth. This aspect of the game is why shadowmeld works at any time of day - some people would never be playing at night.

INNS AND RESTING:

Inns serve two purposes. The first and more obvious is that they are the home points for your hearthstone. You can move that bind point to any inn you travel to.

The second is resting. When your character portrait is flashing yellow, this means you are resting. This sometimes occurs in other parts of a major city. While you are resting, a small notch appears in your experience bar in front of where your actual exp stops, and (very) slowly moves up the bar — to be specific, at a rate of one block (5%) per 8 hours. While you are considered rested, the experience you get from creatures will be doubled.

This effect remains until your experience catches up with the notch. Other sources of experience, like quests, do not affect your rested exp and will move the notch as well. The maximum amount of rested exp you can accrue is 30 bars, or a level and a half.

INSTANCE DEATHS:

When you die in an instance, you cannot run all the way back to your corpse. You will revive as you zone into the instance. While not everything in an instance respawns, some of it will, so you may not be able to simply pick up where you left off. If you are grouped with a player who is able to, they can resurrect you back to your corpse. This means it is rather significant to have a paladin, shaman, or priest in your instance group. (Druid rez is only once per half hour.)

LEVEL CAP:

The maximum level in World of Warcraft is 60. There are no plans in the near future to change that. Eventually hero classes will be added into the game to give you something to do at the level cap to further progress your character. Nobody knows anything about hero classes.

MACROS:

The macro window is in the options menu. It has very limited use. To make a macro, pick an icon and add the lines you want in the macro, and finish by giving it a name. You can drag the macro down to your hotkey bar from there.

Legitimate commands in macros include and slash command or using an ability (which you can add easily by shift-clicking the ability in your spellbook.) One thing you can NOT do with macros is add a pause command to chain commands together. This was done intentionally to prevent botting.

NAMING CHARACTERS:

Blizzard has a big long naming policy that a lot of players have protested as being fascist. Simply put, this is what the naming policy says:

Your name must be a *NAME* that *YOU* created.

Those that complain want names that are either unoriginal or not something you would name your child, even in an alternate world. If you really can’t come up with something, use the random name generator.

NON-TRADE SLOT:

In the trade window, there is a special slot for items that will not be traded. This is for performing services on that item, especially if that item is soulbound, such an enchanting, unlocking, or applying smithed goods.

QUEST ITEMS:

Items for a quest that have the specific heading “quest item” will only appear for people who actually need that item. If you do not have the quest, or you have finished it, you will never see the item drop. If someone else in your group *does* need that item, they will have the option to loot it, even if the rest of the corpse is your loot. These items become FFA among the people who need them.

REPUTATION:

Reputation hasn’t had a significant effect on the game in beta. As you perform acts for a given faction, they begin to like you more (or hate you more if you are killing them.) This can make a hostile group become neutral, or a neutral group regard you as friendly. Some factions won’t give you quests, or their merchants will give you better deals if you have good reputation.

If you perform in dishonorable PvP kills, you will lose reputation with everyone, which could leave you without a single place to conduct your affairs such as repairing your equipment or buying drinks.

SET ITEMS:

Some very rare items are parts of a set. These are almost exclusively from instances, and not many of them are very low-level. Items in a set will gain bonuses from wearing multiple pieces of the set. Set items are clearly marked as such, and will tell you the other pieces in the set.

XXX “of the Bear” or “of the Owl” is not a set item.

SLASH COMMANDS:

In addition to talking, there are a lot of commands that can be performed by typing slash-something. Most of these can be accomplished by other means as well. /sit can be done by pressing X, for example. Since there are alternatatives to these commands, listing them isn’t terribly important. /follow is the command I find myself actually typing out most often, although I could just right-click my group member’s portrait instead. A couple fun ones you might try are /dance and /train.

SPELL INTERRUPTS:

When a caster is performing a spell, their cast bar fills from left to right. If they become hit during this time, the bar jumps a bit to the left and continues from there. Usually this results in an extra second of cast time. Damage prevention abilities like Power Word: Shield and Blessing of Protection can prevent this.

Some special abilities actually completely stop casting, either by knocking the caster down or making them unable to cast in general. The paladin immunity skills are unaffected by these, but skills that absorb damage will not prevent these effects.

Casters can also fail to cast if, upon completion of the spell, they can no longer see their target because an obstacle is in the way or they moved behind the caster. In PvP, melee will very often circle-strafe behind a caster to try to avoid being nuked.

ITEM STACKING:

Some items stack. You will not be able to stack bastard swords, but you can stack smaller objects like herbs and pieces of cloth. Depending on the item, it might stack to a limit of 5, 10, 20, or 200. 200 is almost exclusively for ammunition.

To split a stack, shift-click on the item. Before you actually “pick up” the item, the game will prompt you for a number of them. Control-clicking will take a single item from that stack.

TRADESKILL TRAINING:

Tradeskills can be learned from any tradeskill trainer, and the most basic recipes can be learned from them. Note that you should start with a few recipes. (Ignore recipe comments for gathering skills.)

When you first take a tradeskill, you can only learn up to a maximum skill of 75 in it. When you reach a skill of at least 50, you can raise your training from Apprentice to Journeyman, which will make your cap 150. Apprentice trainers cannot teach you this, and you must be level 10.

Additional ranks of tradeskilling include Expert (new cap 225, requires skill 100 and level 20) and Artisan (new cap 300, requires skill 150 and level 35.) These level caps are imposed to keep a player from simply creating an alt or mule to do their third and fourth tradeskills. They are usually not terribly restrictive to someone actually playing that character and skilling up as they go.

At higher levels, there will be fewer recipes that are learned from trainers. Aside from the occasional rare bought recipe, you will need to rely on finding them as loot or buying them in the Auction House from people that find them. The non-profession tradeskills must be raised past journeyman through alternate means. (Expert requries finding a book somewhere, and artisan involves a minor quest.)

UNLOCKING:

Sometimes you will find a chest or door that is locked. Only rogues and blacksmiths can open locks. If one isn’t in your group, you might be out of luck. If the chest is small, i.e. lootable, you can take it to give to a rogue later. Use the non-trade slot so they don’t just steal the items inside!

Nevertheless, the quests in the game are what make the game interesting and keep the player feeling like they have a purpose beyond just whack this killer rabbit here, that single-celled organism there.

Many people at lower levels (pre-20) complain that the game is World of Solocraft. Ironically people at the higher-end often have issue with finding things they can do on their own besides just kill random mobs. The questing content in this game progressively switches from almost exclusively solo to largely group-based as you level.

Quests are sometimes marked “elite”, which means that the creatures involved in the quest are elites — much more difficult mobs than their level would indicate. (They don’t just raise the level because that level would make them harder to hit.) Elite quests are basically specially marked as group content. Does this mean you shouldn’t group for non-elite quests?

Not at all. However, unless it’s your playstyle, you shouldn’t *always* group either. There are times when it’s efficient and times when it’s not. For example, most kill X whatevers is done more quickly in a group. You kill individual whatevers faster and everyone gets credit. Win-win situation. However, quests to collect Y thingies tend to go much slower, because the amount of time you spend in combat is about the same…divided by the number of party members per fight, but the total number of fights is multiplied for each party member with the quest…but you spend more time between creatures looking for the next one. Don’t use this as a hard-and-fast rule though. In general, it’s easier to work with someone than against them, but at the same time you will get less experience from fighting in a huge group.

I don’t recommend you go through your first zone in a party, except for the quests you need it for. People that group their first zone learn their class more slowly, and also finish all the quests levels below where they should be. Later on, when traveling between areas is easy and this isn’t an issue, grouping is often more fun.

If you do have a decent group, and finish one quest, you might consider asking if any of them have some of the same quests you still need to finish in the area. Very often, at least one other person will agree to work on it.

The one annoying thing about grouping for quests is trying to move on to another quest and finding not everyone has the quest. Fortunately, there is a solution. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always work. That solution is quest sharing — if a person could have a quest but simply doesn’t, you can go into your quest log and press “share quest” to transmit it to them, as though they were talking to the quest NPC for the first time. But if the other person is too low to get the quest, or your quest is one of the later legs in a chain, they won’t be able to get it.

Still, this can be used to your advantage. People going to an instance together can share the quests for it before starting, which are often from all different corners of the earth. If you are agreeing to meet a friend in a new zone, and one of you gets there first, they can hunt for the questgivers until the other person arrives.

If you are forming a group in advance to try to do a particular quest (or other objective) because it is too difficult to do alone, you will probably want to consider class roles. 5 priests can do a lot, but one thing they can’t do is tank the mobs that come at them or do a whole lot to otherwise stop them. On the other hand, 5 warriors could survive a more fierce beating, but they’ll have to stop to eat after each fight, and hope nobody dies during the battle.

You can have five people in a group, and usually you will want at least one “tank” and one healer. Tanks are usually warriors, but can be anyone who is capable of standing up front and taking the blows from your foes. Main healers for groups need to be reasonably capable of keeping the group alive through all normal situations by themselves. Keep in mind that “normal” includes the rest of the group being accomodating and playing with good tactics. Mages take more mana to heal than the group’s tank, and if a mage is constantly drawing the attention of the creature, the healer will run out of gas much more quickly.

Other players generally fill the role of dealing damage. They may have secondary responsibilities, like being the back-up healer or tank, or performing crowd control. For this reason, mages are very popular in groups, because they can deal a lot of damage, and also CC by casting polymorph to remove one creature from the fight (assuming nobody hits it!)

Some players are very elitist in which classes they will take in their group, and others are overly forgiving in this regard. You usually want your group to be well-balanced, but you shouldn’t wait all day long and turn people away to get the “perfect” group. Every class brings something to the table.

One situation people will often look for near-ideal groups is for going into INSTANCES.

Instanced dungeons, or instances, are special areas that you enter through a portal, and arrive in your own special copy of that area. Only your group members will follow you into it; anyone else that tries will be in a second copy.

Instances are full of elite mobs that are worth more exp, generally yield better treasure, and lead to good teamwork to overcome higher difficulty. Most players find doing instances to be more fun than playing by themself, however they can also be EXTREMELY frustrating in an incompetent group.

There are almost no instances before level 20. Considering they make up the bulk of group content in the game, know what you have to look forward to. The Horde does have one low-level instance inside Orgrimmar. The first instance the Alliance can do is the Deadmines in Westfall, at no less than 18.

Some things you should know for a successful instance run:

Assist. Assist. Assist. By default, pressing F will give you the target of the person (or creature) you have targeted. It’s usually a better idea for everyone to attack the same creature to kill it faster, since you will normally not have one by itself. Being a hero and fighting something by yourself does NOT help the group in most cases.

“Pulling” is the act of getting a creature’s attention and bringing it to the group. Rather than charging ahead, let one person “pull” in an organized manner, and follow their lead. Most of the time this will be the warrior. (I’m going to assume you have a warrior tank.) Doing otherwise will often lead to unnecessary overpulls - fights involving more creatures than you really needed to take on at once and usually can’t handle.

Use crowd control as you are able. If a rogue can sap a target to start a fight, let them. Don’t hit the person the mage turns into a sheep and break the enchantment.

Control your aggro. Aggro is the MMO player’s term for the amount of hate your target has built up toward you. (The in-game terms refer to this as threat.) When you have more aggro than anyone else, you become the creature’s target. If you are not the group tank, this means something is not going the way it should. If you are a mage, don’t nuke your pants off from the moment the fight begins. Be aware of which skills generate a high amount of aggro (like Mind Blast and Distracting Shot.)

Know your role. Every player needs to consider the things they CAN do reasonably, and the things the group EXPECTS them to do. The group’s tank needs to concentrate his efforts on holding aggro. In other games, this has meant the tank has done nothing but devote themselves to this task. Blizzard has tried to make the game slightly less boring for the tank, but if you are a warrior, expect to have to use taunt. Similarly, the group’s healer needs to keep in mind that if they have the choice to cast one damage spell or one healing spell, that mana is usually better spent on a healing spell that keeps the group alive longer, because the extra time it buys usually lets the group outdamage your one nuke. Again, this doesn’t mean a healer should stand around placidly waiting for someone to heal, but don’t be reckless.

Keep your healer alive. There is one key exception to many of the rules above. Take whatever means necessary to keep people from dying. Since the group healer is largely responsible for keeping everyone else alive, it is the responsibility of the rest of the group to keep him or her safe. Keep in mind that the act of healing creates hate. If a priest casts a healing spell on whoever just pulled three mobs, even if they are actively fighting one, if they have built up no hate toward the other two by damaging it or using other abilities, they will make a beeline for the priest. A player being hit usually cannot cast spells effectively, so this means nobody else is getting healed, and since priests in particular wear cloth armor, they probably won’t survive being wailed on for very long. (I’ve been killed in one blow before.) On the other hand, if you are the healer, consider the strategic timing of your heals, and don’t yell to the group the split second something attacks you — they might be in the process of reacting already and a priest that says “Help me!” every three seconds gets annoying very quickly.

Discuss loot in advance. This can vary greatly depending on who you’re with - a group of friends might have one set policy, but when dealing with strangers you don’t know or trust, you might adopt a different policy. The group leader has the ability to change the way the game distributes items that drop, but that doesn’t make them the dictator of how loot works, nor does it explain all situations. See bosses and boss loot below. Round robin or group loot with an implied understanding of need before greed is the usual player standard.

Help first-timers. Make sure they know where a dungeon actually is, but also there are often nuances to dungeons that someone that has never been there would not know. Gnomeregan has an alarm system that sometimes needs to be deactivated before it summons a bunch of defense forces to drive you away. Some interactive objects cause events to occur that the group might not be ready for, and a curious player might unwittingly undermine the group’s efforts. Don’t talk down to your group, but make sure they’re on the same page.

Consider the group’s goals. Sometimes this is to finish a particular quest in the dungeon. Often it is to kill the major “named” bosses and collect their treasure. Make sure everyone agrees to the group for the same reasons.

Deal with bosses carefully, and deal with their loot afterwards even more carefully. Pre-battle strategy discussion is even more important on named. Moreso, the downfall of a great group is often a squabble over loot that keeps them from finishing the dungeon after one mini-boss. Items that drop from bosses are BIND ON EQUIP. You pick it up, you will be unable to trade it. If someone feels you stole an item, that won’t be good for your reputation. More to the point is the subject of giving items to people who need them. In a group with a rogue, a mage, and a paladin, suppose a nice dagger with a bonus to agility drops. The paladin is clearly out because he can’t even equip daggers. But the mage, although he *could* use the item, should let the rogue take it if it is an upgrade, because the agility does the mage little good and neither does the weapon damage, which to a rogue is everything. (If that rogue has a better item, they should abstain as well.) If you are a warrior in the upper 20’s, and you don’t have a head slot item, you should NOT claim a cloth item with an intelligence bonus for the *piddly* armor it has on it. If a leather item with agility drops, a paladin should not be the least bit interested in it unless there is something else special about it. The in-game need before greed loot system is not the standard, because it doesn’t consider such things. If nobody can use an item, the generally accepted practice is to roll for it by typing /random, with the highest roller winning. *MOST* groups work with an implicit understanding that once you win something, you do not take another item until everyone gets something. Whether or not they regard a loot item and a cash item as part of the same cycle or not depends on the group.

Help supply your groupmates. Within reason, of course. Nobody expects you to farm herbs for hours just to give away all your healing potions. But at the very least, a mage should give out free summoned food and drink.

Don’t get mad when you die. There’s only one truth about war: people die. While you may not like it when it happens, and you might have some choice words for a groupmate who did something stupid that caused that death, don’t throw a hissy fit. Shut up, run back or wait for your rez, and talk about it like a civil human being. “OMG WTF U GAY FGT N00b” is not going to help the issue, both because of the tone and message, and because half the people in your group won’t be able to understand you in the first place. Also don’t bail out just because you don’t like the way things are going. (If a group is completely worthless, make an exception, but give them a fair chance. If you don’t help them, they’ll never improve.)

Don’t be upset if someone has to leave. Some instances, like the Stockades, can be done in 45 minutes. Others can take much longer, especially if the pace of the group is slow. Not everyone can devote more than 3 hours at a stretch to playing an internet game. (It’s a strange concept to anyone still in school, but it’s true!)

Don’t join a group if you don’t have time. If you only have an hour, chances are you won’t be able to finish the instance. If you can *never* play for more than an hour at a time…I’m sorry. Instances are not for you. They are meant to be fast-paced high-challenge adventures for people with the time to devote to such an adventure.

So what about those times you want to have more than 5 people, and do something challenging, like take on a dragon?

That’s what raids are for. Under your socials menu, there is a tab labeled raid, and in it, the group leader can select the option “convert to raid” to allow him to invite additional people beyond the 5-person limit. They start filling additional groups until all 8 in the window are full. The raid leader can rearrange people from group to group as he sees fit.

Raids have their own channel, /raid, that works in addition to /party to just talk to your most immediate teammates. Besides that, raids work just like groups, with a couple key exceptions:

Raids cannot enter some instances as a whole. This would trivialize the content, as was found to be the case when raids were first put into beta, and 30 level 15 players formed a mob to simply zerg the Deadmines.

Raids cannot complete quests. If you form a raid in an outdoor zone to finish a kill quest for a large group, you will be disappointed. No kills are accredited, and no quest items will drop.

Raids, by their nature, can do things a mere 5-person group could not. This goes without saying — maybe a lone adventurer can’t kill a dragon, but an army probably could. To that effect, there are special instances that are designed just for raiding. This is almost exclusively max-level content, and is something high-end players look forward to.

There are two ways two classify items - function and quality.

Function is the obvious. What's this item for?

Equipment is something you wear. A sword. A piece of armor. Duh, no brainer here. Equipment says exactly what inventory slot it is used in, and any aspect of the text written in red means that you can't use it for that reason. (Mail would be in red for a druid, level 35 would in red to a level 30 character.) Equipment is the only type of item that quality truly applies to, although tradeskill items sometimes have one.

Consumables are items you use. Food and drink. Potions. Scrolls of stamina. You right-click them in your bag, they do something, and they disappear. (Arguably, ammunition could be consumable, but that isn't how you use it.)
 
Quest items are objects you acquire, usually but not necessarily from corpses, that specifically say on them "quest item", and are for the explicit purpose of completing a quest. You will usually not see a quest item unless you actually have the quest. Some items for quests are not marked as "quest item"s, which means they have an additional purpose. True quest items do nothing else, and cannot be sold to vendor.

Junk items, sometimes called vendor trash, is anything that does not fall into one of the preceding categories, and when you mouse over it, its name appears in GRAY LETTERS. Anything that meets this criteria is only meant to be sold for money when you get back to town.

Tradeskill items are anything that doesn't have an obvious purpose, but has a name in usually white letters, or sometimes one of the higher-quality colors. It may not be obvious what exactly, but it will be used in *some* tradeskill recipe. Obviously herbs, ore, and leather fall into this category. Tradeskill items often make a decent sum of money in the auction house, but if you can't figure out what it's good for or don't feel like wasting the time, it might be worthwhile just to sell the item anyway. (Chances are there aren't too many people looking for Zesty Clam Meat anyway.)

And there are a few miscellaneous items that don't fall into any category. Bags have a fairly obvious purpose. If you have a mount or a non-combat pet, you will possess an item that calls or summons it. (Nightsaber reins, bird cage, cat carrier, etc.) Skinning knives, fishing poles, and mining picks aren't really tradeskill items, nor do they do anything directly.

Additionally, most things you wear have an item quality, indicated by the color of their name. Most items you pick up initially will be gray, indicating the poorest of quality. White is one step up from this. Generally gray and white items have no properties to them other than just "armor 13" or "damage 5-8." Low-level quest rewards and very high-level whites are sometimes an exception. Green items and anything above that, for all intents and purposes, are magic items. They possess some additional benefit beyond protection or damage, usually a bonus to one of your attributes. Sometimes the bonus will be an effect, like an effect on a weapon that causes extra damage. Unlike white or gray items, these can be disenchanted. Blue items are much rarer than green. Usually greens only have one or two bonuses on them. Blue items often have three. All other things being equal, though, blue items have much lower required level than green for the effect. Blue items typically come as treasure from killing a boss in an instanced dungeon. Green items are sometimes randomly generated, a la the Diablo suffix system, but blue items are always the same. There are even higher qualities of item. Purple items are much more powerful than blue, and are extremely rare outside of loot from raid bosses. Beyond that is the almost non-existent orange category. Allegedly, some day, there may be red after this.

The item qualities do technically have names. Nobody uses them, and just refers to the color, which often makes item discussions sound like racial bigotry. If you want the "proper" terminology, gray is poor quality, white is common, green is uncommon, blue is rare, purple is epic, orange is legendary and presumably red will be artifact items. Of these, epic and legendary are the only names that get used consistently.

There is one other very important attribute to equipment - binding. An item that is soulbound belongs to you. Forever.

You can sell it to a merchant, but you cannot trade it to another player. Quest rewards are nearly always soulbound so you are forced to do the quest yourself. Most green items you find along the way have the status "bind on equip." This means that you can trade the item, but as soon as you equip it, it becomes soulbound to you. Most blue items are "bind on pickup," meaning the person that loots it will keep it forever. This is usually an aspect of boss loot, and it is important the group discusses who gets the item before you blindly pick it up. DO NOT JUST TAKE BIND ON PICK-UP ITEMS UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES WHATSOEVER. Don't make me enlarge and bold that. This is the reason why so many different loot options exist, but it is still best to discuss with your group what is to become of an item. Anyone who takes an item without consulting the group is frequently referred to as a "ninja", and often a bad reputation can follow from that.

There are various aspects to the looting system, but typically players leave loot on Round Robin so the corpses cycle, and the game makes an exception for items above a certain "threshold" — by default this is green items, but players often switch it to blue. Most people follow a policy of NBG (need before greed) that mandates that if you are a warlock and you could loot a really nice bow, it should instead go to the hunter in the party. For this purpose, "need" for cash and disenchanting are on an even plane, and squarely below someone wanting an item because they would use it themselves (on that character.) If an item above the threshold appears, all members of the party will get a pop-up window with the item, a time bar, and three options — need, greed, and pass. Need is the dice option, meaning you want to roll against the other people who claim they need it. The game will pick random numbers for each person who chose need, and award the item to the highest "roller". Greed is the coin, and works just like the need option, in case nobody picks need. The circle with the slash means you simply wish to pass on the item altogether.

Sometimes players use a different system, so make sure you're clear on what is happening ahead of time. Because the need-before-greed window has a timer on it, sometimes the group wants everyone to pass so they can discuss the drops. If you need to then roll for an item, type /roll or /random. Highest roll (from 0 to 100) wins.

Money in the game consists of gold, silver, and copper pieces. 1 gold is worth 100 silver, 1 silver is worth 100 copper. There are a few different ways to get money, and a few ways to spend them. Here are just a few.

Getting money:
Killing things. Some creatures have coin on them, while others have random junk to sell. This will cover most of your *basic* expenses, and probably nothing more.
Completing quests. This is fairly negligible, although sometimes you can't make use of the item reward and can sell it for decent money.
Selling items. It might sound backwards, since this doesn't actually create money and just shuffles it, but the best place to get money is from other players by using the auction house. (Read below.)
Tradeskilling. This actually falls into the preceding category, but deserves its own mention. I will be perfectly honest with you: you will probably lose money on production skills unless you are a very good businessman. However, the demand for tradeskill supplies is always high, and this includes leather, herbs, ore and gems.

Spending money:
Class skills. You'll need your abilities to proceed. A level 20 isn't *that* much better than a level 18 except for the new abilities acquired at 20. Extra HP and higher weapon caps are helpful, but so are your mad skeelz. For some classes, you might find that you have a lot of abilities you don't see reason to spend money. I *personally* advise you do, but many players don't. It is my opinion that your skills, even if only used on rainy days, are always important to your survival, and are never really replaced. (Higher ranks usually require the lower ones.)
Equipment. At lower levels, the vendor is handy, but past level 10, you'll probably find most of your equipment purchases in the auction house. I will extend "equipment" in this sense to anything you might make use of while adventuring. In that sense, larger bags and healing potions are also things you might purchase.
Tradeskills. At least for the first 150 points of tradeskilling, you'll need to purchase recipes, patterns, etc. to actually make the items. To actually make an item, you will usually need additional stuff besides just the leather, cloth or herbs, and this stuff usually has to be bought. Examples include alchemy vials, coarse thread, and iron buckles. (Iron Buckles are an example of an item you will need to buy from other players - blacksmiths make them, and they are used in some tailoring and leatherworking recipes.)
Repairs. Your items lose durability, especially when you die, and you will need to pay to keep them in good working order.
Reagents. Some caster spells now have a reagent cost. While most players sincerely hope Blizzard reconsiders this, higher ranks of most buffs and a few other miscellaneous spells take components to cost. (By the way, it's reAgent, not regent. A regent is someone who rules in the place of a king.)
MOUNTS. At level 40, you are *able* to purchase a mount that will enhance your travel speed. You can't do anything on a mount besides ride, but most players love their mounts. Please be aware that while this is the first level you could own a mount, it is by no means expected that you WILL be able to afford the 100G to purchase a mount. When you reach level 60, you will almost assuredly not have the 1000G to get the faster mounts. (It should be noted that warlocks and paladins get class-specific mounts, and will not need to buy the level 40 one.)
Bank slots. Your bank holds only so much stuff. In addition to the actual slots you have, you can also purchase bag slots for extra space. At low levels, 10s for a slot that you can put a 5s bag in for 6 extra slots might sound decent, but later on it gets rather expensive. I believe I heard the prices were changed recently, so I won't quote any numbers, but it is such that during beta most players didn't have more than the fourth bag slot.
Resetting talents. It costs 1 gold for the first time you reset your talent points, 5 gold the second time, and eventually goes up to 50 gold. You can continue to "respec" for 50 gold after that. So if you don't like your talent choices, you don't have to restart a new character completely, but it is preferable to find what you want early on. Plan well.
Miscellaneous expenses. Some stuff that isn't major and doesn't fit any of the above. Training a new weapon skill. Riding a gryphon. These costs won't usually make or break the bank past level 10. There are also random "flavor" items on some vendors that serve no purpose other than to make the game more interesting, like non-combat pets, flower bouquets, and fancy dresses. Those things CAN be expensive.

THE AUCTION HOUSE.

The AH, that you've surely heard so much about, is a giant flea market where you can buy and sell items you need (or don't need.) Anything from equippable items to potions to tradeskill supplies to rare non-combat pets and a few select quest items can be found in the auction house. Items are done on the basis of BIDS. When you wish to put an item up for sale, you talk to an auctioneer and pick a time length you want the auction to run for. You then set a minimum bid and optionally a buyout price. There is a small overhead charged to you based on the item's vendor value and the length of the auction. (Choices are 2, 8, or 24 hours.) If you are on the market for something, or just want to browse, the auction house interface search feature is fairly straight forward. If you want to specify an item by name, type it in the name blank. If you are looking for a general kind of item, use the tabs below to pick specifically that you want, say, a piece of armor, type leather, for the arm slot. You can filter things down by adding a level range or by only seeing items your character could presently use. Make sure you don't put a level range when looking for tradeskill supplies or other things that have no level requirements. =p

As you peruse the items that meet your criteria, you can either refine your search or look at the bid and buyout prices of the items and consider putting money down on one. Bids will take money out of your gold supply, and will be held until the auction finishes or you are outbid. If you win the auction, the item will be in your mailbox. It you are outbid, the money from your bid will be instead.

Buyout is the means to escape the wait of the auction altogether, and is preferable for almost anything that is not a worn piece of equipment. Buyout prices are always higher than bid prices, but in the act of putting your money down, the auction ends and you instantly have the item placed in your mailbox.

Auction houses for each faction are located in Ironforge and Orgrimmar, near the entrances of the two cities. There are also two auction houses in the goblin cities of Everlook, Booty Bay, and Gadgetzan which both factions can make use of - and this is the only way an item can reach the other faction - but they aren't widely used due to being less accessible and having a higher charge to list items.

A brief bit of strategy for the auction house, folks: when you are listing an item, you should nearly always use a semi-realistic buyout price. You don't actually need to put a buyout, but unless people are bidding on some high-ticket rare sword or whatever, they will often sooner spend 50 silver for their healing potion now so they can use it on their upcoming adventure, rather than put 5 silver down for a potion they will get in a "long" or "very long" time. OTOH, saying you should always have a buyout price doesn't mean you should put down stupid-high buyouts like 30 gold for one piece of linen cloth.

Trading items is done by either picking a player and selecting trade, or highlighting the item and "dropping" it on the player. A simple trade interface appears that lets you place several items in the trade window, as well as any sum of money you have, and consent to the trade. If both parties agree, without the trade changing in-between, the game swaps them.

You cannot drop items on the ground. You also cannot trade to opposite faction members. The only way to transfer items between factions is through the neutral auction house, but on a PvP server, you can't play both factions on the same server anyway.

If you want to transfer an item to another character, mail it. Mailboxes are outside the inn, or in some cases the bank, in every town through Azeroth. (There won't be one at your newbie village, but the main town in the starting zone will have one.) Mailboxes have a few different looks to them, but they should be easy to spot. When you click on a mailbox, you are given two options - look at your mail, or send your own mail. If you choose to send a piece of mail, you must choose your recipient, give the letter a subject, and optionally you can either type a message or attach money or an item to the letter.

You will know if you have mail by a small icon around your mini-map. As you receive a piece of mail, it will appear in your in-box, and remain there for 30 days. Mail with items or money attached will show that in their icon. Basic messages will be letters. Click on a piece of mail and (if there is one) you can click on the item at the bottom to detach it and take it with you. Items can be sent COD. If someone sends you an item this way, you will have money taken from you and sent to that person if you accept the delivery. Be careful of mail scams.

If you don't want a piece of mail any longer, or simply want to return it to sender, you can either select "return" or "delete". Mail from the auction house will delete itself once you take the money/item attached. Unviewed mail stays in your in-box for 30 days, and then return to sender.

First, modes of travel. Traveling by foot is a little bit slow. A few classes get ways to increase their running speed, (shaman ghost wolf, druid travel form, hunter aspect of the cheetah,) but the best-known way to run faster is to use a mount. Unfortunately, this will not be an option for you until level 40, and it is also very expensive unless you are a paladin or a warlock (who get free mounts.)

If you want to travel to an entirely different zone, there is air travel available. (This is not the Horde zeppelin.) The snag is you must have already been somewhere to fly to it. When you arrive at a new town, look for a "gryphon master" or "wind rider", etc., with a green exclamation point above their head. They will open that location for you to fly there, and then for a small fee you can use that person to purchase a flight to any connecting points. Even if you've been to the other location, if it is far away, you might not be able to fly directly there and have to make an in-between stop. Horde and Alliance have different flight types on each continent but they amount to the same thing, whether you are taking a gryphon, a wyvern, a bat, or a hippogryph.

If you want to actually leave the continent, though, you're going to need to use a boat. I use this term lightly because the Horde ride a zeppelin across the ocean, however the Alliance and the neutral goblin factions both use boats. Compared to the flights, boats are nice because they are free. You just step on. However, they are also not personal, and you have to wait on the dock for the (air)ship to arrive. If you miss a trip, you will be waiting about 10 minutes for the next one, as that is the round trip time. A healthy chunk of that is spent waiting for passengers, so really a boat ride is more like 3-4 minutes of actual travel time. There are Alliance boats in Auberdine and Theramore (Kalimdor) that connect to Menethil Harbor in the Eastern Kingdoms. The Horde has zeppelins from Orgrimmar that connect to the undead capital known as the Undercity and Grom'Gol in southern Azeroth. There is also a boat run by goblins that travels from Ratchet in The Barrens to Booty Bay in Stranglethorn Vale.

There are two other ways to travel. Mages can create portals that allow them, or eventually their groupmates as well, to teleport to the major cities of their faction. Warlocks can summon a member of their group from anywhere in the world, but the summoning ritual requires that two other group members be present.

Now for the more pressing question: How does my Night Elf get to the Human lands? Maybe your friend is playing a different race. Maybe you just don't like your starting zone. Either way, this is a common question, and it is most often asked by Night Elves because they are the most cut-off of the races. (Undead are also separated by continent, but the zeppelin for them travels right to Orgrimmar.) So here is a very brief outline of how to get around and from place to place in the earlier zones of the game:

Let's start with Horde because it's simpler. There is a zeppelin for Undead partway between their capital, The Undercity, and Brill. It goes directly to the Orcish city of Orgrimmar. Getting to and from the Tauren lands involves a little more running. The MAJOR second zone for the Horde, the Barrens, is simply huge, and lies between the Tauren and the Orcs. Traveling between the two is as simple as running along the roads. There is a big long straight line that runs down the middle of the Barrens called the Gold Road. The trip as simple as getting to the Gold Road, using it, and getting off it. The Tauren "exit" is by Camp Taurajo. The place to turn to reach the Orcs is the first fork to the east after passing through the Crossroads. There are signs along the way for Mulgore and Durotar.

The Alliance cities are Stormwind (human), Ironforge (dwarf/gnome), and Darnassus (night elf). Stormwind and Ironforge are connected by a subway system that runs from the Dwarven District of Stormwind to Tinker Town in Ironforge. There is also a flight that connects the two once you arrive. Traveling to and from Darnassus is not so simple. The connection to the Night Elves' continent is Menethil Harbor in the Wetlands, which is not near a major starting location. So this gets a little complicated.

To travel from Darnassus to Ironforge, you must first pass through the teleporter behind the bank. It's a weird pink glowy-thing on an island by itself. After you run through it, you will be near the water's edge in Rut'theran Village. Go down to the docks and wait for the boat to arrive. This is not "the" boat and will only take you to the mainland, at Auberdine. Auberdine is where the real boat is. The pier that the boats harbor at has two docks. When you arrive, simply run straight across to the other one and wait for that boat. That will take you to the other continent. Once in Menethil, talk to the gryphon master there, and then take the road out of town, and stay on it as it curves around to the southeast. This territory will be HOSTILE. The mobs here are all above level 20, and Wetlands is a popular PvP zone. Whatever happens, just keep running. If you die, run back and start running again.

When you reach the zone edge, you will reach a tunnel that leads to an upward path in the mountains called Dun Algaz. Passing through Dun Algaz leads to the Dwarven second zone of Loch Modan. Loch Modan's road system looks like the letter F, if you turn it around. There is a long north-south road, and two paths that lead off it to the west, one toward the north, and one much farther south. It doesn't matter which you take, so for the sake of argument, use the south one - run all the way along the zone, past the town of Thelsamar, until you reach the gates that lead to the southern pass. (You might stop in Thelsamar for the flight point there!) This is a tunnel that leads into Dun Morogh, the dwarven starting zone. Follow the road until it turns north about halfway through the zone, and look for a path up into the mountains off to the right. That will take you to Ironforge.

If you want to travel TO the Night Elf lands, simply run this route in reverse. Menethil Harbor is at the far west end of the Wetlands. Either way, make sure you know where your hearthstone is set before you use it, and make sure you pick up flight points along the way. If Blizzard allowed Night Elves to start with the Ironforge flight path, traveling there from Menethil would be far simpler.

More on mounts:

Your race mount can be bought at level 40. There is a second faster speed, often called the epic mount, that can be bought at level 60. Level 40 mounts move at 160% of player speed, epic mounts travel at 200%. (Compared to the run speed buffs which are all 130 or 140%.)

To purchase a mount, you must travel to a location related to your race's mount, and pay for a riding lesson and the mount itself. The combined cost is 100 gold, minus discounts from faction or PvP rank. Many people will say it costs 90 gold since nearly everyone is honored with their own race by level 40. The "epic" level 60 mounts carry a price tag of 1000 gold, which is more likely 900 or possibly 800 if you have both discounts.

You can only purchase your race's mount without doing an excruciating amount of faction work. You *can* purchase a mount of another race if you have exalted reputation with them. Here are the racial mounts and where to purchase them:

Human - horse, Eastvale Logging Company in Elwynn Forest*
Dwarf - ram, Amberstill Ranch in Dun Morogh
Gnome - mechanostrider, Steelgrill's Depot in Dun Morogh
Night Elf - nightsaber (cat), Cenarion Enclave in Darnassus

Troll - raptor, Sen'jin Village in Durotar
Orc - worg, Valley of Honor in Orgrimmar
Tauren - kodo, Bloodhoof Village in Mulgore
Undead - undead horse, Brill in Tirisfal Glades

*There are a few horse mounts sold elsewhere.

A few notes on the individual tradeskills, both professions and not…

Herbalism collects herbs from flowers, bushes and roots that spawn in the zone. When you take herbalism as a profession, you will get an ability that lets you detect herbs on your minimap. You will find that in the basic tab of your spellbook. Gathering herbs from a plant is as simple as right-clicking on it, but make sure it's safe nearby! You will get 1 to 3 of whatever herb comes from the plant you are picking. If you fail, you can try again at no penalty.

Mining is like herbalism, except that you gather ore, stone, and gems from ore veins. Again, you get an ore detection skill. However, you must buy a mining pick to gather any resources from an ore node. Those can be bought from any basic trade supplies vendor. You do not need to equip it. Ore is found almost exclusively in hilly areas and underground. If you are a Night Elf, be aware that there are ZERO ore deposits in Teldrassil - it is, after all, a giant tree.
Mining also includes the ability to smelt the ores you collect. Go to a city and find a forge, and you can convert copper ore into copper bars. Smelting does not affect the stone you quarry or the gems you find.

Skinning is collected from creatures you or others have slain. After looting a corpse of a creature that can be skinned — almost always a "beast" — the game will indicate that the corpse is skinnable. You must have a skinning knife in your inventory, also buyable from a trade supplies vendor. The creature also must be FULLY looted, which can make skinning in a group a nuisance. In general, skins are much more widely available than herbs or ore, but leatherworking requires large quantities of leather, so there is no direct advantage there.

Fishing is the most unique of the gathering skills. Find a body of water, equip a fishing pole (bought), and select fish. Somewhere in the water, a fishing bobber will appear and eventually it will make a small dip to indicate you've got a bite. Right click on it to try to reel in your catch. When you first start off, you will get easily frustrated at the amount of catches that get away, but once you get your skill to 30 or so, it goes MUCH more smoothly. Make sure you start in very low-level areas, because the skill level required goes up very quickly.

Those were the gathering skills. Here's what you can do with them.

Smithing uses mostly ore to make weapons and heavy armor, as well as a few other metallic odds and ends like skeleton keys, shield spikes, and sharpening stones. At higher levels, smithing can specialize into weaponsmithing and armorsmithing. Smithing requires a smithing hammer and must be done at an anvil.

Leatherworking produces leather armor and armor kits for slight improvement of the armor rating of equipment. Some leather items are not made wholly from leather and vendor items; you will occasionally need other random animal parts such as murloc scales, or an alchemy potion related to the item. At high levels, leatherworking specializes into Elemental, Tribal, or Dragonscale leatherworking. You can only pick one.

Tailoring creates clothing out of cloth. There is no gathering skill for getting cloth. Instead, one must gather it from humanoid creatures. Any time you kill a defias bandit, a furbolg, a scarlet crusade member or a venture co. miner, for example, you have a chance to get linen. Higher level creatures will eventually drop the more advanced types of cloth. If any gathering skill goes with tailoring, it would be skinning, since tailoring can also make bags with the inclusion of some leather. This is fairly minimal though. Tailors are generally free to choose any second profession they want, and many become enchanters since that skill also stands alone.

Alchemy makes potions from herbs. Potions take on two varieties - potions that give short term effects, such as a potion of agility, and those that give immediate effects, like a healing potion. Because the act of gathering herbs is more labor-intensive than many non-herbalists realize, the market for potions is not as strong as it could be, but there are select potions that consistently sell well to players. Some potions require non-herb components, usually in the form of oils derived from fish. Thus, alchemists will often take up fishing, but this isn't a necessity. Alchemy potions are also used in several recipes among the other production skills, such as an intellect potion being used for a tailoring robe intended for mages.

Engineering is the strangest tradeskill. Strange, because most of the items it makes require you to be an engineer to use. This makes it a popular choice among people who want to be able to do everything, since they can let somebody else do the work for other tradeskills. Engineering is especially popular among paladins who have no ranged attack and can lob the bombs it makes, and hunters who enjoy the benefits of self-made guns and ammunition. There are all kinds of other quirky items engineers can make though, from target dummies to gnomish shrink rays. Engineering also produces head slot items potentially before you could acquire one yourself, since head items tend to have at least a required level of 20. Engineered items primarily - but by no means exclusively - are made with mined ore.

Enchanting is the often-forgotten tradeskill because, to steal a company's tag-line, it doesn't make the armor you wear. It makes the armor you wear better. Enchanting is not a skill to take lightly: it is highly expensive. The components gathered for enchanting are created by the enchanter by DIS-enchanting other magical items. Generally speaking, this means items that have any stats on them besides just damage for weapons or just AC for armor, which you would ordinarily sell in the auction house for money, instead gets destroyed to make enchanting components. It is also thought by many to be the most powerful tradeskill because of the way it can enhance everything else. Since many tradeskilled items beyond the basic starter items have magical properties to them, an easy way to get items to disenchant is to take them from someone who is mass-producing a particular item to raise their skill level. Enchanters can freely take another tradeskill, so tailoring with its lack of gathering skill is appealing in this regard.

Cooking makes food from, well, foodstuffs. Killing creatures often gives some kind of meat or giblets or whatnot. Fishing gives fresh fish that can be fileted. Cooking can be very handy for a soloing warrior or a hunter that is trying to keep his pet fed. Sadly, food only restores HP and not mana, and there are only a few select recipes that don't just regenerate health beyond the "well-fed" buff that cooked food gives. (This adds some spirit and stamina to your character after eating cooked food, rather than bought or summoned food.) Cooking requires a fire to make items. There are fires in town or you can bring tinder to make your own on the road.

First Aid is another skill for non-healing classes. Cloth gathered from humanoids, rather than being used for tailoring, can be fashioned into bandages which can then restore a small amount of health. You can only apply a bandage to a target once every 60 seconds, and neither you nor the target can be getting hit during the bandaging.

So the question everyone always wants to know is, Which professions would be best for *me*, as a <fill in the blank>, to do?

Here are some of the common tradeskill combinations and who often does them:

Mining/Smithing: Warriors and Paladins for armor, sometimes Rogues for weapons
Mining/Engineering: Paladins for bombs, Hunters for ranged weapons and goblin jumper cables, everyone for the unique engineering-only items
Skinning/Leatherworking: Any leather-wearing class
Herbalism/Alchemy: Anyone who likes to use potions, often warriors or priests
Skinning/Tailoring: Cloth-wearers interested in being career clothiers and bag-makers
Tailoring/Enchanting: Enchanters looking for easy source of disenchantable items
Herbalism/Skinning: People who seek easy profit, since gathering skills have no overhead cost
Skinning/Mining: Same as above. Herbalism/Mining isn't normal since you can't have both tracking skills active at once.

Note that none of these include fishing, cooking or first aid since they do not count against your two profession limit.

As your skill increases through use, you will need to visit trainers periodically. Production skills can learn new recipes from trainers, and everyone will need to train to a new plateau at 75, 150, and 225. An apprentice trainer cannot teach you past the basic level, and will refer you to a journeyman. When you outlevel the journeyman's skill, they will suggest an expert, who will later suggest an artisan. There is only one artisan for every single tradeskill (per faction, anyway.) Enchanters in particular are a little screwed over because their artisan trainer is hidden in a dungeon rather than in a town!

Secondary skills are trained at the 150 point level by special books you have to buy from somewhere. For instance, the fishing book is sold in Booty Bay, and costs 1 gold. People often buy them for resale in the Auction House if you don't know where to go or don't want to go there.

Some recipes only drop randomly from creatures as loot, and some are sold from special "limited supply" vendors. Check the site's listing for each type of combine your skill can do. If it has a recipe listed, it does not come from a standard trainer.

Other general information about tradeskills:

You will NEVER fail a production combine. If you fail a gathering combine, you can simply try again, since the ore vein won't disappear until you harvest it.

Tradeskill difficulty is color-coded. Either the background of the item name in the production menu or on the tag of the item you are trying to harvest will be color-coordinated. Something that is an average challenge for you shows as yellow. Easy items you are unlikely to gain skill from are green, and gray are trivial. Challenge items you will almost definitely gain skill from are orange. Red items cannot be attempted. You'll note that this color arrangement extends to quests in your quest log, and to the level of creatures you have targeted, to a similar effect.

Any item that is not clearly part of a quest or a worn item, but has its name in a color other than gray, usually white, is used for *some* tradeskill recipe. Items you find on creatures such as large fangs and goretusk livers might not *seem* like tradeskill items, but their name will be listed in white because they are used for alchemy and cooking, respectively.

While you can only have two professions, you are not locked into them forever. You can abandon a tradeskill by pressing K to get to the skills menu, finding the profession on the list and clicking on it, and then clicking the small "no" sign at the bottom of the window to unlearn it. At that point you can pick up a new skill. If you ever return to that skill, you will have to begin from scratch, and this does not clear your specialization choices.

After two or three hours, and getting to level 5 or 6, it's probably time to move on. If you are a troll or orc, there might seem to be two choices, but use Razor Hill. For everyone else, it's as simple as traipsing down the road, albeit that road is mildly dangerous for dwarves and gnomes.

Your opening zone will effectively consist of four places:
1. The starting area, where you just came from
2. The first town, where you get your next batch of quests and various other stuff.
3. The capital, where all the real hustle and bustle of your race is
4. Everywhere else, where you will actually do your quests

There are several things you will want to do when you reach the main town for the zone:

Search for questgivers - there will be several new quests to get in the town and in the nearby areas. (If there is a nearby questgiver outside of town, there will usually be a mini-quest that sends you there, such as to Denalan, Sen'Jin Village, or Steelgrill's Depot. Don't always expect to be led to new quests, though. Explore!)

Re-set your hearthstone with the innkeeper - you probably haven't had incentive to use it yet, but your hearthstone is a valuable resource. You should try to keep it set to an area nearby to facilitate quick returns to town. Its intended purpose is to allow you to leave the game suddenly if you need to.

Consider getting started on tradeskills - you will need to train (nearly for free) the basics of a tradeskill in order to begin learning it. Not all tradeskills are going to be available to learn in the town, and you may need to go to your capital. If you talk to a guard in town, they can usually tell you if there is indeed a skinning trainer, for example. Since there is no ore anywhere on Teldrassil, a Night Elf will have to wait a bit to start on mining, blacksmithing, and engineering, but in any other case, you should consider getting started right away. If you need to go to the capital, it should probably be further down the road, but you might want to check the signposts…especially for Undead, since you'll actually need to double back from Brill.

Read below for more information on tradeskills.

If you want to train a weapon skill you don't have, first check (on the site) to make sure it is a legal choice for your class - no priests with guns or warriors with magic wands - and then go to your capital city to look for a trainer. Ask a guard for directions to find the weapon trainer. It may be that the weapon you want to train isn't offered in your starting city and you have to travel to another. This can be a nuisance, you may want to bear with it for now, but refer to transportation in a later section to get to the other cities.

Now that you're moving on with the rest of your adventures, a few concepts to be aware of.

Experience is gained from killing creatures or completing quests. Both are effective means of gaining experience, but there is a balance to be struck between the two.

Quest experience is intended to be a bonus to balance the fact that you had to perform a specific task rather than killing any random ol' creature. Quest experience alone will not gain you levels, so getting advanced help to finish every quest in your log quickly will often leave you below the level you would expect to be from finishing an area. If you finish all the quests in your starting area and you aren't level 10 yet, you either missed some or arguably you grouped too much and will need to go "grind" some or find another zone for that level range.

Experience from creatures, aka grinding, is a fixed amount per creature, divided by the number of people in your group, and modified a little by your level compared to the target. (At level 40, you will gain no experience for a level 10 creature. At level 8, you would get a slight bonus from that target.) If there is someone in your party that is significantly higher in level, this amount will be reduced. Also, you will only gain experience equal to the amount of damage you and your groupmates do the creature. If you are struggling against a monster, and get it to half before some helpful person comes up and rescues you by killing it quickly, you will only get half the experience. Your loot will be unaffected.

Only the person who attacks a creature first will get any experience or looted. When the first damage is dealt, that creature is considered "tapped". Where you have it targeted, the color of its name will turn from red or yellow to gray. If your target has a gray name, someone snuck in a hit before you. Perhaps you didn't even see them - this happens often with hunters. Don't be disappointed when you get nothing for killing it, although you may still have to defend yourself from it!

Be considerate of other players, though. It's very rude to quickly run past a mage charging a spell just to smack the creature with your sword before the spell can finish. The number one rule to playing an MMORPG is to remember that reputation matters. People remember who you are, and you can't avoid them forever like you might on battle.net by joining another game or changing your handle.

At some point you will get sent to your race's capital for a quest. If you get lost, read the quest carefully for a section of the city. If you look at your map in the main city, it will change to a local map that will help you navigate. For other points of interest, such as the bank, class and weapon trainers, or transportation centers, ask any normal guard for directions.

Every capital has a bank in it. These are nearly the only places there are banks, but they all share the same bank account - items you store in Orgrimmar will be in Thunder Bluff waiting for you. You cannot store money, but there is no need or incentive to. You don't lose money when you die, and nobody can loot your stuff in PvP.

To that effect, you've probably died once by now and have already seen this, but when you die, you will get an option to "release spirit" and become a ghost. You are given this option in case someone wants to resurrect you, or your group is in the middle of fighting a boss you want credit for killing, even though you are dead. After you release, you will appear at the nearest graveyard, and you have three options:

1) Run back. When you get near your corpse, you can restore yourself to life.
2) Be resurrected. Priests, paladins, shamans and druids can bring you back to life. You will return with resurrection sickness that lowers your stats for a few minutes, but you won't have to run back.
3) Use the spirit healer. In the graveyard is an angelic being known as the spirit healer, that is only visible when you are dead. If you talk to the spirit healer, she can resurrect you in the graveyard, for a price. You will receive an ailment called Resurrection Sickness, that will lower your attributes by 75% for a while. Your items will also lose 25% of their durability, which means they may break and need fixing. Don't use the spirit healer unless you need to. It's almost always better to run back!

(All deaths incur a 10% durability loss regardless of how you resurrect, but only to the things you are actually wearing. The spirit healer damages even the things in bags.)

Which leads to the next topic of durability. You might have had a diagram of a set or armor with one item in yellow or maybe red. This indicates that item has low durability. When the item reaches zero, the item is broken and will not work. It can be repaired and be fully functional again.

You can restore items to max durability by going to a vendor who sells some sort of weapons or armor, and selecting the repair option. At lower levels, this is a trivial cost, but it scales up with your equipment. However, if you use the spirit healer, which completely breaks all your equipment, including those in your bag, this cost might be more than you can afford.

When you repair, make sure you don't accidentally sell the item you wanted to repair. But if you do, you can click the tab on the vendor window that says "Buyback" and retrieve some of the recent items you sold.

Eventually you will finish all the quests in your newbie zone and have to say goodbye. *sniff* Refer to the section after the information on tradeskilling about transportation.

Type /wave, and press enter, for example. Your character will wave at the open air, and a message will say so. This is called an emote. It is one of but many kinds of slash commands.

So how do you talk to that person next to you? Type /say and before you hit enter, follow it up with a message. /say hi. (The /say will probably disappear after you press space, for reasons that will become clear later.)

There should even be a speech bubble that appears near your character, indicating that you are talking. /say is the command for talking to people immediately next to you, but perhaps you want to talk privately to someone. In this case, you can use /tell followed by the person's name, and the chatbar will instantly change to purple, indicating that you will send a private message to that person. Now whatever you type next will simply go to that person. As an alternative to "tell", you can use "whisper", or abbreviate to just a 't' or a 'w'. In other words…
/tell azuarc hi
/whisper azuarc hi
/t azuarc hi
/w azuarc hi
…are all the same thing. They will give azuarc a message of "hi".

OK, so most of you probably already know this stuff from playing other games. I'll cut to the chase. There are a bunch of other slash commands that you can put in your text bar by clicking on the speech bubble button by your chat window, and selecting them. The emote and voice commands bring up sub-menus that don't actually talk, but play around with them if you like.

What about that brownish text [1. General - Dun Morogh] that keeps floating by? That's simple. Start a message with /1. (/1 Hey everyone, I'm new here.) Anything you type in the /1 channel will go out to everyone that is in it, which will be basically everyone in your starting zone. Don't be a loser and spam everyone with useless crap, but don't be afraid to use it.

However, if somebody else is irritating you and you want to leave that channel, you can type /leave 1 (for channel #1, which should be general.) I recommend you do this for the two defense channels, numbers 3 and 4. If you leave general and want to come back, type /join general.

If you want to know if a particular person is on-line to send a tell to them, there are two things you can do. You can try to send the message anyway, and get an error message if they don't exist. Or you can check if they are logged in first by using the /who command.

Typing /who allakhazam would do a search to see if there was anyone on with allakhazam as their name. Partials also work, so you could also find Al by typing /who alla.

The who command also works for classes, level ranges, races, guild names, and a bunch of other stuff. There is a chance if you try it on something more general, like /who warrior, it will bring up the social menu.

The social menu is the button with the ! in a balloon that can be brought up with the O key. Under the who tab, you can do the exact same things as with the /who command. Longer lists will automatically go to this window though.

Also in the social menu are the friend and ignore tabs. In these submenus, you can make lists of people that you want to regard as friends or whom you want to block all message from. In general, don't put people on ignore unless they REALLY tick you off, and take them off later. If you want to add someone to your friend's list, it will tell you in this menu if they are on-line, where they are if they're logged in, and you will also get log-on and log-off messages in your chat window for them.

There are two other possible tabs in the social menu which you might not have, guild and raid. If you are in a guild, the guild tab will tell you who is on-line from your guild. Guild members also give log-on messages by default. The raid tab is simply a listing of the people and groups in your raid. (A raid is two or more groups linked together.)

Since we've mentioned all the other menus, we may as well talk about the last two buttons on the menu bar. The computer button is the options menu. It gives you a choice of options relating to video , sound, interface, or macros, plus the choice to log off or exit the program. The question mark button is the help window, if you need to petition a game master. (The window will explain when it is ok and when it is not to look for the help of a GM.)

One last thing about working with other players. If you want to get into a party with someone, target them, right-click their portrait, and pick invite. This will give them a pop-up window asking them if they want to join your group. (Or maybe they will invite you first!)

You can have up to five people in a group, and while grouped, you split experience and potentially the items that drop. Quests that aren't "collect" quests are usually easier in a group, so if someone is doing the same quest, invite them!

In a group, '/party' or '/p' will talk to your teammates. Note that once you've used this once, just pushing enter and typing will default to party. (Before, it would have been a 'say'.)

The group leader will have a crown next to his or her portrait. If you are the group leader, and you right-click your own portrait, you can set the loot mode for the group. "Group loot" means that everyone takes turns, but you will get a pop-up to roll for higher quality items. Round Robin is the same without the rolling. Free-for-all is no restrictions. The other options aren't as significant.

If you are in a group and a corpse is yours to loot, it will sparkle yellow. You're probably used to that by now. If it is not your's to loot, though, you will not get sparkles. Money is automatically split in a group, so under group loot.

If you want to leave a group, right-click your portrait and select 'leave party.'

The first thing you will witness is a brief introduction to your race, purely for storytelling purposes. The quests you do will often relate back to what is mentioned in it.

When you first look at the screen and all the shtuff on it, you might be a little bewildered. Let’s talk about what’s on the screen right now, and get into the menus a bit later.

In the upper-left corner is your character portrait, along with your health and mana bar. (or rage or energy, but I will continue to say mana.) If you were in a group, your groupmates’ display would appear below your’s, slightly smaller.

Next to your health is your target’s health. You will need to click on someone or something to get a target, but in the screenshot, the mage is fighting a Young Goretusk. The yellow namebar indicates that this is a neutral target - able to be attacked, but not agressive. Red indicates agressive, while green is a friendly target that you cannot attack. Player names are in blue. “Tapped” targets, which we’ll discuss later, are in gray.

In the upper-right is the minimap. It displays the name of your region (Westfall), clock - the sun gives an exact time if you mouse over it, an overhead view of the area with zoom in and zoom out buttons, and arrows along the edges indicating the direction of points of interest or distant groupmates. Groupmates and other things you are tracking appear as dots on the minimap. For example, there is a dot to the west that is the location of an herb. This is an old picture, but if someone is actively tracking herbs, ore, undead, treasure, etc., it will appear in a small circle by the minimap.

Just to the left of the minimap are active enchantments. The mage here has Arcane Intellect and Frost Armor both cast on herself. Negative effects get their own row beneath the positive ones.

Above the bottom bar are the two chat windows. The right one is for combat messages and the left one is for all other messages, such as communication with players. This is no longer the default setting, and you will probably not see the combat window by default, although it is easy to switch to by putting your mouse over the chat box and picking the other tab. (The current set up is refered to as “simple chat” in the interface options.)

Along the bottom, the left side of the bar indicates abilities that can be used at the push of a button, or you can click on them. You get six bars to work with, and there is no limit to memorized spells or anything like that. The only limitation is what you can fit on the screen, and some custom user interfaces create more bars of hotkeys.

The center region of the bar is the different menus you can bring up. The right side is your bags - you will start with just the backpack at the right end, and a quiver if you are a hunter. You need to acquire bags to begin with, and this is one of your first challenges in the game. The green bar between the options and bags is a lag-report, that gives you your ping if you mouse over it.

The long narrow bar divided up into 20 blocks above the toolbar is your experience meter. You can read all about experience elsewhere, but at low levels, it will fill very quickly. If you are considered “rested”, meaning your player is fresh from inactivity, you may find a notch in the experience bar. Until you reach that point, you gain experience at a higher rate.

The arrows or WASD keys will move you. Somewhere near you should be a person with a big yellow exclamation point over their head (!) If you are undead, you will need to leave the tomb you start in first.

If you move near that person and right-click them, they will begin to give you a quest. That quest will either be to kill some of the basic creatures nearby, or talk to someone nearby who will tell you to do that. Be sure to keep an eye out for other questgivers. While you have an active quest with an NPC, they will have a silver question mark over