Top 15 Things Every World of Warcraft Player Should Know:

Keep this checklist handy - it could save your life (or at least have you doing less frequent corpse runs).
By Allen Rausch | Nov. 30, 2004


OK. You've gone and done it. You've bought yourself a copy of World of Warcraft. You've installed the game, set up you're account and watched the super-cool opening cinematic. If you're new to MMO's or even if you're an MMO veteran, though, you're probably saying "Now what?" Well that's where your friends at GameSpy are stepping in to help. For this week's Top Ten, we've compiled a list of hints, tips and pieces of information every player needs to know. In fact, we're even giving you a little bonus. Because there are two main sides, we're giving you the Top 15 things World of Warcraft players need to know - 5 each for Alliance players, Horde players and 5 that apply to everybody!

The Alliance

1: Looking to solo? Get yourself a Night Elf Hunter or a Warlock.

While there isn't any one particular character template that works perfectly for soloing, this is about the best that there is on the Alliance side. First, there really isn't any equal level monster in the game that a properly tricked out Hunter can't tackle one-on-one without breaking a sweat. While Warlocks are a bit more fragile, they have an excellent complement of damage dealing spells that will let them survive - albeit while taking more damage. Unfortunately, many creatures will attack in groups if they notice one of their buddies getting pounded on (Elite creatures are particularly nasty with this).

That's where pets come in, Any "Pet" class can use their animal (or demonic) companion to do what's called "crowd control" - basically pulling one creature away from a group and a time and killing it. The Warlock's Void Walker is particularly good at this. Night Elves quest lines at low levels are also pretty self-contained within the geographically isolated Teldrassil, meaning you never have far to run to reach a quest destination or to retrieve your corpse.


2: Gnomes have the best (worst) dancing emotes.

Trust us on this one. Simply typing /dance into the game while playing as a gnome will show you what we mean. Gnome dancing is the most offensive thing in Azeroth - rumor has it that the Horde offers 10 gold pieces to anyone who can actually manage to kill a Gnome in PvP during a dance. Therefore it makes Gnomes perfect for role-players who want to annoy other players and have a good laugh.

3: Everyone loves a Human Priest.

This is the perfect class for players looking to group. Humans' racial talents help a Priest hold his or her own in combat and there isn't a group alive that isn't thrilled when a Priest shows up just before heading into an Elite dungeon or an instance. Priests are also pretty rare in the game, there aren't really all that many players who enjoy taking on the social/support roles, so your skills will always be in demand - and you'll level pretty fast.

4: You don't have follow the quest lines for your own race!

One of the biggest misconceptions that new players have about World of Warcraft is that quests are restricted by race - in other words, that if you're playing a Human, you must take the "Human" quests in Elwynn Forest when you start out. That's simply not true. Players can take any level-appropriate quest regardless of their race. For Alliance players looking to level up a bit faster, there is a bit of a shortcut. Simply head to the hub cities of Ironforge or Stormwind as soon as you're strong enough to get out of the newbie zone (around level 5). From there, find the passage to Teldrassil, the Night Elf homeland and start collecting quests. Teldrassil is very small, contains the hub city of Darnassus that offers every service, and players rarely have to run far to complete quests. You'll find yourself at level 10 or even higher in no time!

5: The Alliance means more content, but more people.

For whatever reason, the Alliance races as a whole (Humans, Night Elves, Dwarves, and Gnomes) are more popular with players. This can often mean severe crowding in popular regions along with what we like to call "mass extinction events". That basically means that several quests in the area that require players to kill a particular animal may make it hard to find that animal for a while - and that you may be racing other players who are standing around waiting for them to spawn. The good news is that the Alliance has a lot more quest-based content than the Horde. While this isn't noticeable at the earlier levels, many Horde players often find themselves running low on quests around level 25-30 and being forced to just "farm" random creatures for experience.


The Horde

1: You will end up in the Barrens - accept it.

Throughout the beta process, the one zone that everybody complained about the most was the Barrens, a level 15-20 zone that is quite literally in the center of everything for the Horde. As a result, this zone has the dubious distinction of undergoing almost constant revisions. The good news is, it's much better than it was - the bad news is, it can still be long and tedious. The thing is, most Horde quest lines eventually send players to the Barrens and it contains access to one of the neutral towns where Horde and Alliance players can get together, so the place is absolutely crawling with players. While that can be good for making friends, it's also the place that's the most hunted and overcrowded on the Horde side. Unfortunately, the Barrens is just a fact of life for Horde players - better to go, do what needs to be done, and get out.

2: Want to get to level 10 quickly? Visit dead people.

More accurately, visit Undead people. Since Quests aren't race specific, players can accept any level appropriate quest regardless of their race. That means that Horde players have access to a slight shortcut to level 10 similar to the one enjoyed by Alliance players. In the Horde's case it means hightailing it to the Orc hub city of Orgrimmar as soon as you can survive the trip and catching a zeppelin ride to Tirisfal Glades. Head south from the zeppelin tower to the Undead town of Brill and start looking for quests. Like Teldrassil for Night Elves, the quests in Brill are a bit easier and can usually be solved without a tremendous amount of traveling, significantly shortening your trip to level 10.

3: The Horde has the best and worst hub cities in the game.

Both sides in World of Warcraft have three hub cities designed for players to congregate, buy and sell items, and deal with NPC vendors and trainers. The Horde is blessed with the best and cursed with one of the worst hub cities in the game. The best city to do business with NPCs in is the Undead Undercity. If you have a choice of heading to one hub city, this is the one to pick. It's the smallest major city, meaning you don't have to do a tremendous amount of running to get to the shops you want. The city is also basically a circle - meaning it's almost impossible to get lost. Orgrimmar, the Orc hub city, on the other hand, is incredibly confusing, with twisting paths that sometime loop back on themselves. Orgrimmar means a lot of running and it's all too easy to get lost. It's also kind of the center of the universe for Horde players, so you really do need to learn it if you hope to use the auction or make new friends.
4: Tired of fighting for elbow room? Join the Horde!

For some odd reason, players seem to choose to play as Alliance characters far more often than as Horde characters. The good news for Horde players, though, is that fewer players mean fewer people jockeying for resources. Even the Barrens, probably the most crowded Horde region, never see the problems with "mass extinction events" that routinely plague the Alliance. If you're interested in questing and not interested in hanging around with ten other people (at peak hours) waiting for a monster spawn, why not join the Horde?

5: The Undead are just psychotically cool!

While everyone has their own opinion, ours is that no World of Warcraft race gets as many "coolness points" as the Undead. First, the character models are just a riot with hairstyles that literally defy physics and a facial customization options straight out of the Velvet Dungeon. The designers also clearly had a ball putting the Undead lands together because every area and storyline within the Undead zones is filled with clever asides and subtle (and not so subtle) humor about the Forsaken's unusual situation. Role-players will also enjoy playing the Undead since they're as close as any World of Warcraft race comes to being "evil". True - they are an oppressed minority, but they're also planning universal genocide, so you make your own call.


Everyone!

1: Read your Quest Journal!

Now we hate to snipe here, people, but the "L" key on your keyboard opens up your Quest Journal. This handy-dandy little item contains literally all the information you need to solve whatever quest your given. Check it early and check it often because if you're cluttering up the "General" chat channel asking "Where's the Wailing Caverns?" 47 times not only will you learn all sort of new Azerothian insults, but when you eventually find the place, it's not going to win you any friends when you then start looking for a group to explore with. Your Quest Journal has directions so precise they make MapQuest look vague to avoid precisely this situation. Read your Quest Journal! Read your Quest Journal! Read your Quest Journal!

2: The City Guards are your friends - use them well.

This is kind of an adjunct to the whole "Read your Quest Journal" thing, but the other thing that clogs up the general chat channels is people asking for directions in the hub cities. Fortunately Blizzard has come up with a simple solution - just ask a city guard! They'll give you directions to everything in the city and even provide you with a little flag in your mini-map! You know, the employment situation in Azeroth must be pretty bad when you consider that most of these guards are level 75 or so and can easily wipe out virtually every monster in the game and they're taking the time out of their busy schedule to help you. The least you can do is avail yourself of their services. I don't even think they get paid!

3: Every trade skill has a complement.

Players can only learn two "professional" trade skills (Fishing, Cooking, First Aid and a few others don't count). Be aware that with the exception of Enchanting and Tailoring, every trade skill has a "gathering" skill and a "crafting" skill. Blacksmithing, for example, requires raw materials that can only be retrieved by Mining. Be sure you select the appropriate skill; otherwise you will end up buying raw materials at auction or trying to trade your raw materials for finished goods.

4: The NumLock key is your autorun.

This should be obvious, but you'd be surprised how many players forget to use their autorun. Autorun is your best friend, though. During long runs you can be checking your quest log, futzing with your inventory, or chatting with friends. Use it!


5: Control your Pets!

This, of course, only applies to pet classes (Warlocks and Hunters), but if we had a gold piece for every Warlock and Hunter who left his pet on "Aggressive" we'd - well, we'd have a lot of gold pieces. Your pets are tools. They're used for very specific purposes. Putting them on Aggressive lets them attack indiscriminately and can draw a lot more monster attention than your group is ready to deal with. All too often a pet on the loose means death for the group and a long, boring corpse run.

What is a Realm?

With millions of people playing World of Warcraft, it is simply impossible for everyone to play together in the same place. This is the reason why the different "realms" were created. A realm is a game world that exists only for the few thousands of players within it. Each realm is exactly the same as any other in terms of the game world, but each realm has its own player characters who are tied to that particular realm. You can interact with all the players on your realm but you cannot interact with players on other realms. Characters also cannot normally move between realms.

Realms are defined by name and type. Choosing your realm is the very first decision you will have to make before playing World of Warcraft. In any case, you can speak with, search for, and group only with other players that have created characters of the same faction (Horde or Alliance) and on the same realm as you. Players on opposite factions cannot talk, group, or trade with each other on any realm; their most meaningful interaction will be on the battlefield.

Gameplay mode vs. realm type

World of Warcraft includes both player vs. environment (PvE) and player vs. player (PvP) gameplay. In PvE gameplay, you can do quests, fight monsters, speak, trade, gain experience, learn skills, and advance levels as you would in any other massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). In PvP gameplay, you are fighting other players in the wilderness or in special places called Battlegrounds. Sometimes these two gameplay modes can intersect, for example, when a player is attacked by another player (PvP) while fighting a monster (PvE).

Because players may prefer one type of gameplay over the other, there are different realm types that emphasize or deemphasize certain gameplay elements, such as PvP. However, the core game will the much the same for any realm regardless of type. The differences between the realm types are detailed below.


Realm Types

The two basic realm types are Normal and PvP. The main difference between the two types is the extent of control over which a player can exert on his player vs. player gameplay, and the resulting change to the feel of the game world as a result. In addition, there are special role-playing versions of both realm types for those seeking a more immersive experience in the world of Azeroth. All realm types will have their appropriate appellation (Normal, PvP, RP, and RP-PvP) displayed next to their name on the realm list screen.

Normal Realms
On Normal realms, the focus of the players tends to center on player vs. environment objectives, such as defeating monsters and questing in the world. Normal realms offer a more accessible way to experience the player vs. environment content of World of Warcraft. On Normal realms, you engage in PvP combat when you choose to. You can activate a PvP option in your character menu, which will indicate your willingness to participate in PvP. This will allow you to participate in world PvP and will automatically be toggled on when you enter a battleground, attack an enemy town guard, or enter an enemy city. Your default state will be with PvP toggled off, meaning you can not be attacked by enemy players. You can think of Normal realms as "truce" realms, where faction vs. faction combat is something that is engaged in voluntarily.


Features
You can create both Alliance and Horde characters (but they won't be able to send mail or otherwise interact with each other).
There are no "contested" zones in the game; the zones that don't belong to a faction are called "neutral" zones.
PvP mode is activated differently than on PvP realms
Things to consider before choosing a Normal realm:
You can concentrate on quests, harvesting materials, and battling monsters in the world without worrying about being attacked by other players.
However, you can't engage in world PvP unless your intended target is also flagged for PvP.
The main outlet for PvP experiences will come in the form of battlegrounds, which are self-contained PvP battles consisting of multiple players.
Summary: On a Normal realm, you can choose when and where to engage in player vs. player combat.

Player vs. Player Realms

Player vs. player realms have the same PvE objectives and content as Normal realms, but have the added element of perpetual faction vs. faction combat in most of the world. Outside of capital cities and starter areas, the various regions of the world are considered contested areas, meaning PvP combat is possible at any time. That is why you can think of the Player vs. Player realms as "war" realms. On PvP realms, you are in a constant state of war against the other faction.

Features
You can create only Alliance or only Horde characters on a Player vs. Player realm - not both.
Some game policies are specific to Player vs. Player realms. You should read them before playing on a PvP realm.
Each zone of the game has a PvP flag color that shows its PvP status. There are no "neutral" zones.

Each time you enter a zone on a Player vs. Player realm, the name of the zone will appear with one of the following color-coded designations:
= Friendly territory (allied with your faction - Alliance or Horde)
= Enemy territory (hostile with your faction - Alliance or Horde)
= Contested area (for both factions)
= Sanctuary (PvP disabled for both factions)

Things to consider before choosing a PvP realm:
If the thrill of constant danger in the world is what you seek, look no further.
You will have a much easier time finding opportunities to fight other players.
It is harder to fight monsters and to complete some quests in contested territories. Thus, the PvE game can be more difficult on a PvP realm.
If you want some safety from other players while gaining experience, you will have to do instances.
Summary: On a Player vs. Player realm, you may be attacked by other players everywhere at any time, except in friendly (green) territories and in dungeons (instances).


Role-Playing Realms (RP and RP-PvP)

If you enjoy role-playing (RP) and would like to imagine that you are an inhabitant of a fantasy-based world, then a role-playing realm may be for you. Players who choose to play on an RP realm should abide by the Role-Playing realm policies and remain in-character at all times. Role-Playing realms give players the chance to develop characters with a backstory who do not simply progress from quest to quest, but instead assist or hamper the efforts of others for reasons of their own. As far as game mechanics are concerned, there is no difference between a Role-Playing realm and any other realm. You don't get special benefits or special hindrances other than the behavioral rules you agreed to when joining a Role-Playing realm.

Role-Playing realms can either be Normal realms or Player vs. Player realms. Role-Playing realms in the Normal ruleset appear simply as RP realms in the realm list; all game mechanics are the same as on a Normal realm. Role-Playing realms in the Player vs. Player ruleset appear as RP-PvP and again, all game mechanics are the same as on a Player vs. Player realm (for example, on an RP-PvP realm you still cannot attack members of your own faction even if it would sometimes make sense from a role-playing point of view).

Things to consider before choosing an RP realm:
Please read our Role-Playing Policy before you start playing on an RP realm.
If you want to create a "real life" for your character, a Role-Playing realm gives you the best opportunity to do that.
You can count on many other players to support you by role-playing their characters too.
There are no automatic game rewards for role-playing, and no game mechanics are altered (if you give a rose to a dire bear it will still try to eat you).
Not everyone on an RP realm will "stay in character."
Summary: If you choose to play on a Role-Playing


Player vs. Player (PvP) Activation

The main difference between Normal ("truce") and Player vs. Player ("war") realms is the way PvP gameplay is activated. No matter how PvP has been enabled for a character, the PvP mode will remain in effect for five minutes after the last action that triggers the PvP mode activation.

To see whether or not your character is in PvP mode, check your character's portrait. If a shield appears next to your portrait, you are in PvP mode.


Horde PvE Horde PvP Alliance PvE Alliance PvP


Color Coding
To determine the status of other players, check the color of their character name (the one that appears over the character's head).
Green - Friendly character, PvP mode enabled.
Blue - PvP mode disabled; you cannot attack this character.
Yellow - Enemy character, PvP mode enabled; this character cannot attack you unless you attack him first or activate PvP mode in another way (see below).
Red - Enemy character, PvP mode enabled; this character can attack you, and you can attack this character.
PvP Mode Activation: Any Realm
On all realms, actions that will trigger PvP mode are:
Attacking a player character (PC) of the opposite faction who is already in PvP mode
Helping a player character (PC) of your own faction who is already in PvP mode, by using a beneficial spell or ability on them
Attacking a non-player character (NPC) guard or civilian of the opposite faction, such as a town guard
Entering a battleground
Entering an enemy capital city
Entering a special PvP area, such as Gurubashi Arena in Stranglethorn Vale - this will activate a free-for-all PvP mode where you can even attack members of your own faction!
The PvP mode will stay enabled until five minutes after the last action that triggers the PvP mode activation.


PvP Mode Activation: Player vs. Player Realms
The following additional actions will also trigger PvP mode on PvP realms:
Entering a contested zone
Entering an enemy zone
The PvP mode will stay enabled until five minutes after the character has left the zone or battleground.


PvP Mode Activation: Manual Activation
By typing /pvp, you can activate PvP mode for your character manually. Note that PvP mode will stay enabled until you manually turn it off by typing /pvp again. After you manually deactivate PvP mode, you still need to wait five minutes until your character reverts back to PvE mode.


Choosing Your Realm

After you've decided what realm type is best suited for you, the next step is choosing which particular realm of that type to start your adventuring career on. The Realm Status page has a list of all realms, with the type and population of each realm displayed next to their names.
Another consideration when selecting your realm is which Battlegroup your realm is part of. This is a concern if you intend on participating in PvP with the honor system or arena system. It's advisable to do some research to make sure you're happy with the mix of servers in your destination Battlegroup. Some Battlegroups have more Normal servers while others have more PvP servers. A few of the Battlegroups are very challenging and are known to have intense PvP with top players.

Remember that your character will most likely spend his or her entire career on the same realm, so choose wisely! (You can later transfer off the realm using Paid Character Transfer if you really need to.)

If you are familiar with the Warcraft universe you will also notice that the names of the realms usually reflect the philosophy of their realm type.

Normal realms are named after heroes, neutral characters or known places.
Player vs. Player (PvP) realms are named after demons and warmongers.
Normal Roleplaying (RP) realms are named after beneficial organizations.
Player vs. Player Roleplaying (RP-PvP) realms are named after evil organizations or cults.

Realms F.A.Q.

Where am I safe on a Player vs. Player realm?
If you are in a friendly territory and you don't attack any enemy players who might be passing through, they won't be able to attack you. And of course, you are safe in instances as they are private places created only for your group of players.

Am I safe if I am on a Normal realm and I enter an enemy town (not a capital city)?
Enemy players won't be able to attack you but the city guards will. And if you fight back you will activate PvP mode, making you a target for enemy players at that time.

May I make friends of enemy faction players on a role-playing realm?
You can try to make friends with some enemy players so they will not attack you. But that will not stop other opposing faction players from attacking, and the NPCs certainly will not become friendly. Area effect spells from "friendly" enemies will still do damage to you if you happen to be in their range.

Is there any place that allows full PvP, meaning attacking even players from my own faction?
You can do that only in very special restricted areas. In Azeroth, only the Gurubashi Arena, in Stranglethorn Vale, and the arena in Dire Maul allow that. No realm type allows complete free-for-all PvP gameplay.

World of Warcraft Features

Four years have passed since the aftermath of Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, and a great tension now smolders throughout the ravaged world of Azeroth. The battle-worn races have begun to rebuild their shattered kingdoms over the last two years, but new threats, both ancient and ominous, arise to plague the world once again.

World of Warcraft is an online role-playing experience set in the award-winning Warcraft universe. Players assume the roles of Warcraft heroes as they explore, adventure, and quest across a vast world. Being "Massively Multiplayer," World of Warcraft allows thousands of players to interact within the same world. Whether adventuring together or fighting against each other in epic battles, players have formed friendships, forged alliances, and competed with enemies for power and glory.

A dedicated live team has created a constant stream of new adventures to undertake, lands to explore, and monsters to vanquish. World changing events such as the opening of the Gates of Ahn'Qiraj have led adventurers to exciting new foes in Silithus. The most recent Scourge invasion led to the opening of the Necropolis Naxxramas in the Eastern Plaguelands. This comittment to content ensures that the game will never be the same from month to month, and will continue to offer new challenges and adventures for years to come.

Adventure together with thousands of other players simultaneously.
Explore an expansive world with miles of forests, deserts, snow-blown mountains, and other exotic lands.
Choose from four realm types and find the one best suited for your own playing style: Normal, Player versus Player, Role-playing, and Role-playing Player versus Player.
Join the Horde or the Alliance as one of 8 playable races.
Alliance: Dwarves, Gnomes, Humans, Night Elves
Horde: Orcs, Tauren, Trolls, Undead
Select from 9 classes, including holy Paladins, shape-shifting Druids, powerful Warriors and Mages, demon-summoning Warlocks, and more.
Classes include: Druids, Hunters, Mages, Paladins, Priests, Rogues, Shaman, Warlocks and Warriors.
Encounter many familiar and new Warcraft characters and monsters.
Learn the continuing story of Azeroth by completing a wide variety of challenging quests.
Journey through an epic world filled with dungeons of different styles and depths.
Explore 6 huge capital cities, which serve as major hubs for the races inhabiting them.
Ironforge: Dwarven Capital
Stormwind: Human Capital
Darnassus: Night Elf Capital
Orgrimmar: Orcish Capital
Thunder Bluff: Tauren Capital
Undercity: Undead Capital
Practice various professions to help locate reagents, make and enhance custom items, acquire wealth through trade with other players, and more.
Professions:
Herbalism: Gathering components for Alchemy
Fishing: Gathering raw ingredients for Cooking and Alchemy
Mining: Gathering material for Blacksmithing and Engineering
Skinning: Gathering material for Leatherworking and Blacksmithing
Alchemy: Production of alchemical potions
Blacksmithing: Production of weapons and armor
Cooking: Production of food and drink
Engineering: Production of guns, ammo and various devices
Leatherworking: Production of leather armor
Tailoring: Production of casual attire or cloth armor
Enchanting: Service providing enhancements to weapons and armor
First Aid: Service providing bandages and healing to the wounded
Purchase tickets for travel along a number of air routes flown by creatures such as Gryphons and Wyverns. For global transportation, travel by Boat or Zeppelin.
Gryphons: Alliance – Found in: (Eastern Kingdoms) Refuge Point/Arathi Highlands, Nethergarde Keep/Blasted Lands, Morgan’s Vigil/Burning Steppes, Darkshire/Duskwood, Light’s Hope Chapel/Eastern Plaguelands, Southshore/Hillsbrad, Ironforge/Dun Morogh, Thelsamar/Loch Modan, Lakeshire/Redridge, Thorium Point/Searing Gorge, Stormwind/Elwynn, Booty Bay/Stranglethorn Vale, Aerie Peak/Hinterlands, Chillwind Camp/Western Plaguelands, Sentinel Hill/Westfall, Menethil Harbor/Wetlands
Hippogryphs: Alliance – Found in: (Kalimdor) Astranaar/Ashenvale, Auberdine/Darkshore, Nijel's Point/Desolace, Theramore/Dustwallow Marsh, Talonbranch Glade/Felwood, Feathermoon Stronghold/Feralas, Thalanaar/Feralas, Nighthaven/Moonglade *druids only, Cenarion Hold/Silithus, Stonetalon Peak/Stonetalon Mountains, Gadgetzan/Tanaris, Rut'theran Village/Teldrassil, Everlook/Winterspring, Marshal’s Point/Un’Goro Crater, Talrendis Point/Azshara, Ratchet/The Barrens
Deeprun Tram: Alliance – Found in: Ironforge and Stormwind
Wyverns: Horde – Found in: (Kalimdor) Zoram'gar Outpost/Ashenvale, Splintertree Post/Ashenvale, Valormok/Azshara, Shadowprey Village/Desolace, Brackenwall Village/Dustwallow Marsh, Bloodvenom Post/Felwood, Camp Mojache/Feralas, Orgrimmar/Durotar, Cenarion Hold/Silithus, Sun Rock Retreat/Stonetalon Mountains, Gadgetzan/Tanaris, Crossroads/The Barrens, Camp Taurajo/The Barrens, Freewind Post/Thousand Needles, Thunder Bluff/Mulgore, Everlook/Winterspring, Marshal's Refuge/Un'Goro Crater, Ratchet/The Barrens
Bats: Horde – Found in: (Eastern Kingdoms) Hammerfall/Arathi Highlands, Kargath/Badlands, Flame Crest/Burning Steppes, Light's Hope Chapel/Eastern Plaguelands, Tarren Mill/Hillsbrad Foothills, Thorium Point/Searing Gorge, Sepulcher/Silverpine, Grom'Gol/Stranglethorn Vale, Booty Bay/Stranglethorn Vale, Stonard/Swamp of Sorrows, Revantusk Village/The Hinterlands, Undercity/Tirisfal Glades
Zeppelin: Horde – Found in: Orgrimmar, Grom’Gol, Undercity
Boats: Alliance and Horde – Found in: Ratchet, Booty Bay, Menethil Harbor, Theramore Isle, Rut’theran Village, Auberdine, Forgotten Coast, Feathermoon Stronghold
Once a certain level has been achieved, players can choose to purchase permanent personal mounts.
Horses: Alliance, Human
Nightsabers: Alliance, Night Elf
Rams: Alliance, Dwarf
Mechano-Striders: Alliance, Gnome
Wolves: Horde, Orc
Kodos: Horde, Tauren
Undead Steeds: Horde, Undead
Raptors: Horde, Troll
Warhorses: Paladin Only
Felsteed: Warlock Only
Establish a guild, purchase a custom guild tabard, and promote or demote recruits to different ranks within the guild.
Mail gold, items, or messages to other players, or send them to your own characters for easy muling.
Sell your items or search for items for sale via the automated auction house
Locate and engage other players with easy-to-use features and tools, including chat channels, friends lists, and animated and audible character emotes.
Customize the game’s interface via XML, or download one of hundreds of player-made interface addons.
Enjoy hundreds of hours of gameplay with new quests, items and adventures.

What is World of Warcraft?

As a massively multiplayer online game, World of Warcraft enables thousands of players to come together online and battle against the world and each other. Players from across the globe can leave the real world behind and undertake grand quests and heroic exploits in a land of fantastic adventure.

World of Warcraft draws heavily upon the lore of the Warcraft universe. Long-time fans of the Warcraft games are finally able to step into the world from a player's perspective, and experience the universe firsthand. People, places, and units from the strategy games are brought to life in World of Warcraft.
You can visit such places as the Burning Steppes, where Grom Hellscream fell in battle against the demon lord Mannoroth, and Ironforge, where the dwarves make their home below the mountain. Legendary heroes, such as Thrall, Cairne Bloodhoof, and King Magni Bronzebeard, are also in the game, presiding over their respective peoples as leaders in their race's capitals.

Guards in the human city of Stormwind look just like footmen from Warcraft III, peasants in the human town of Hillsbrad look exactly like their counterparts in the strategy games, and orc peons shuffle about the farms of Go'Shek in the Arathi Highlands. Night elf players can even see gargantuan Ancient Protectors patrolling the elven lands of Teldrassil, while a towering Ancient of War waits to greet all visitors to Darnassus.

World of Warcraft has as friendly a user interface as possible to make the game accessible to all players.
To ease players into questing, the game makes it easy to identify quest givers by the yellow exclamation marks over their heads. It is also easy to keep track of your quests through the quest log. You can always refer to this interface window to view all your accepted quests, the goals you still need to accomplish, and where to go to turn in your quest. When you return to a quest giver for your reward, a yellow question mark will replace the exclamation mark to tell you that your quest can be turned in.

World of Warcraft's interface allows you to determine from a quick mouse-over what something is and how you can interact with it. Your mouse pointer will turn into a context-sensitive icon when you are pointing at something you can interact with. For example, NPCs such as quest givers will turn the default pointer into a chat balloon when you mouse over them to let you know that you can talk to them. Trainers, who teach your characters new abilities and spells, turn the pointer into a book icon. If you can harvest a resource from the world, your cursor turn into an appropriate action icon when you mouse over them. If you can harvest a plant, your pointer turns into a flower. If you can mine ore, you get a mining pick pointer. In this way, the game tells you immediately and intuitively how you can interact with the world.

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World of Warcraft allows players to play the game at their own pace, whether it be a few hours here and there or entire weeks at a time. The quest system also provides an enormous variety of captivating quests with story elements, dynamic events, and flexible reward systems. World of Warcraft also features a faster style of play, with less downtime and an emphasis on combat and tactics against multiple opponents.

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World of Warcraft is an online role-playing experience set in the award-winning Warcraft universe. Players assume the roles of Warcraft heroes as they explore, adventure, and quest across a vast world. World of Warcraft is a "Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game" which allows thousands of players to interact within the same world. Whether adventuring together or fighting against each other in epic battles, players will form friendships, forge alliances, and compete with enemies for power and glory.

Character Creation

Creating your character


There are two things you need to decide when creating your character. You will need to choose a race/class, but first you will need to pick a server to start on. Assuming you don’t have a friend on a server that you want to play with, the decision to be made is player versus player (PvP) or non-PvP. (This is called normal by the game, and PvE or player vs environment/enemy by players.) There is also a third type of server called RP (role-playing) where people are supposed to be more intent on playing as their characters, rather than merely playing their characters. An RP server is usually just a special type of PvE server, except for one or two “RP-PvP” servers.


There is PvP content on the PvE servers. Don’t think you’ll be completely missing out. However on the PvE servers, if you’re an orc and you run across a human, you can’t fight him unless he agrees to fight you. There is a “PvP mode” you enter and at that point anyone on the other side can attack you (and thus enter PvP mode themself.) In other words, PvP is consentual on the non-PvP servers.


On the PvP servers, you can attack the other faction at any time. If you want to, you can be a level 50 player and go kill level 15’s. The absolute newbie zones are protected, but everywhere else is “contested territory” where it’s open season. However, killing someone close to your level will earn you honor, while killing a trivial low-level player will not. There is never a direct penalty for fighting someone, and you must be prepared to have that happen to you at the most inopportune times.


PvP adds a certain element of realism - it puts the war in warcraft. However, if you are not a fan of being at the whim of other players, you might be better off playing PvE. PvE servers are, in fact, the majority of the servers.


The other obvious dilemma in starting the game is choosing a combination of race and class. Not all combinations are available. I recommend choosing a class first, and then a race to match, because some classes may suit your playstyle more than others, and overall it is the much more significant decision.




A brief run-down of classes:


Warrior:
races - all
tanking - highest, damage - decent, utility - low, healing - basic


Warriors are the guys up front in plate armor. They can take the blows, and are expected to try to keep anyone else from taking them if they can. They certainly can deal damage though, and have three battle stances to reflect their balance of offense and defense. Rather than having mana, warriors generate rage to activate their special abilities as the battle goes on, and have quite a few combat skills to use, not all of them available in every stance.


Warriors wear mail initially, later plate, and can use nearly all weapon types. They start with a one-handed sword and shield.




Paladin:
races - human, dwarf
tanking - decent, damage - low, utility - high, healing - decent


Paladins are the Alliance-only class. Paladins have virtually no genuine combat skills. Instead, they have a few other abilities to juggle. First, they have auras, which are permanent effects around the paladin (armor bonus, damage reflection, etc.) Second, they have “blessings” that are short term buffs on their teammates which fairly potent effects, only one of which works at a time. Third, they have “seals” that are self-only effects that last for 30 seconds. Seals are both strong in nature, and can also be released as a “judgement” that then becomes a status effect on their target. (A seal that gives the paladin life per hit becomes a judgement than gives anyone hitting that target life per hit.) They can also heal and rez, although they probably aren’t the best choice for a main healer.


Paladins can use mail armor, plate later on, and can equip many non-ranged weapons. They start with a two-handed mace.




Shaman:
races - Tauren, Troll, Orc
tanking - decent, damage - decent, utility - high, healing - decent


The Horde’s answer to the paladin, the shaman is a true hybrid that can function as melee damage dealer, magic damage dealer, tank, or main healer. While a shaman can potentially do any one or two of these things, it really is up to the shaman to choose a style that fits them, based on their talent choices. Shamans also have the ability to lay totems, which create local effects. The totems each have an element (fire, air, earth, water) and only one of each type can be used at a time. The totems are attackable, and most only have a few hit points, but are immune to AE effects. Examples of totems are a healing spring totem that gives nearby party members health over time, an earthbind totem that roots nearby enemies, and a fire nova totem that detonates after a few seconds in a fiery explosion.


Shamans can wear leather armor, learn mail later, and start with a staff.




Rogue:
Races - all but Tauren
tanking - moderate, damage - highest?, utility - moderate, healing - basic


Rogues are perhaps the masters of combat damage. However, they can not take damage anywhere near as well as a warrior can, despite having an exceptionally high dodge rating. Rogues are also able to stealth and sneak up behind opponents, with special skills to initiate combat from hiding, including the ability to sap an opponent, stunning him for a lengthy period of time. Rogues do not use mana, but rather energy that drains as they use it, but fills very quickly on its own. Unlike mana pools, a rogue’s energy pool is always out of 100. Some skills the rogue performs adds a “combo point” to that target, and other skills are refered to as finishing moves, and have a stronger effect based on how many combo points are on that target. The points become spent when the rogue does this, and cannot be transferred to another target.


Rogues wear leather and can use most one-handed weapons and ranged weapons. They start with a dagger.




Druid:
Races - Tauren, Night Elf
tanking - decent, damage - low, utility - high, healing - high


Take those traits above lightly: druids are able to shapeshift into two animal forms, a bear and a cat, that make the druid behave like a warrior or a rogue. The bear can tank, the cat can sneak and deal melee damage, or the druid can remain in caster form and be a potent user of nature magic. As a caster, druids have arguably the best buff spell in the game, and various healing skills at their disposal. Compared to the priest, the druid’s spells focus more on being over time. Druids can also nuke to some degree, although not as potently as the true caster classes.


Druids wear leather and can use daggers, one-handed maces, and staves. They start with a staff.




Hunter:
races - Night Elf, Dwarf, Troll, Orc, Tauren
tanking - moderate, damage - high, utility - moderate, healing - low


Hunters are the masters of ranged combat, dealing damage more effectively with a bow or shotgun than anyone else. While their emphasis is on their ranged combat, they are also capable at close range, and are skilled survivalists that use traps and the beasts of the wild to their advantage. In fact, hunters can tame beast-type creatures to be their pets, and after building a degree of loyalty with that pet, teach them skills that make them effective at dealing damage or tanking for the hunter while he shoots his target. Hunters have a line of buff spells called aspects, of which they can only use one at a time, and which mostly only affect the hunter. Hunters are especially known for their mark ability that highlights a creature and puts a big floating arrow above it to indicate a target for others, as well as increasing ranged damage against it.


Hunters begin with leather armor and can learn to wear mail, and can use almost all weapon types. They usually start with a one-handed axe and either a gun or a bow (with ammo pouch or quiver.)




Priest:
races - Night Elf, Human, Dwarf, Troll, Undead
tanking - low, damage - moderate, utility - decent, healing - highest


Priests are the stereotypical holy healers of the game. They are NOT clerics, though. These guys do not walk around with a shield and plate armor. Instead, they have two sets of magical spells - one divine and the other of darker “shadow” magic. Generally, the divine spells are more healing-oriented and the shadow powers deal damage and manipulate powers of the mind. Priests are known for their spell “Power Word: Shield”, which is a short-term buff that absorbs a certain amount of damage before it fades, which allows the priest a sort of last-second heal or helps the priest channel spells while under attack.


Priests can only wear cloth armor, and can use daggers, wands, one-handed maces and staves. They start with a mace.




Warlock:
races - Human, Gnome, Undead, Orc
tanking - low, damage - decent, utility - decent, healing - low


Warlocks are not the masters of dealing damage quickly, but they can generate a lot of it over time with the use of “damage over time” spells. They are the users of dark magics, and draw their powers largely for demonic arts. To that end, warlocks are able to summon one of five different demon pets to fight for them. Warlocks have the ability to summon players from anywhere, so long as two group members assist with the ritual. They can also create soulstones that auto-resurrect a player with just a few HP and mana shortly after they die.


Warlocks can only use cloth armor, and wield staves, daggers, wands, or one-handed swords. They start with a dagger.




Mage:
races - Human, Gnome, Undead, Orc, Troll


Mages are the blasters of the game, able to deal heavy amounts of magical damage in a very short period of time. Aside from being masters of frost, fire, and arcane arts, they can summon their own food and drink, as well as create teleportation portals to major cities. Mages are also widely-known for their use of polymorph, a spell that turns a target into a sheep for a period of time as long as it remains undisturbed, effectively removing it from combat.


Mages wear cloth, and wield staves, daggers, wands, or one-handed swords. They start with a dagger.




All listed non-starting weapon proficiencies must be trained.




Race is a bit less of a decision. There are some bonuses to race, which I won’t outline, as they are only intended to have minor effect and add flavor to the game. Use the sidebar to read up on races if you like. While some races’ attributes are more helpful to some classes than others, like the Orc’s command that adds 5% to pet damage being better for hunters and warlocks than non-pet classes, or the gnome’s Expansive Mind that adds bonus intellect to mages and warriors alike, the important thing is to play the race that you most see yourself playing (if it is available for your class.) Also keep in mind which races are Horde or Alliance, if that should matter to you. Picking the right class is much more important, as is being happy with your character even if some geeky person considers it to be “sub-optimal” just because you don’t have War Stomp or whatever.


You do have some minor options to adjust your appearance with things like skin shade, hair style, facial hair, etc. This isn’t going to impact your gameplay, and both genders are equal in all ways, so just pick whatever looks prettiest to you or whatever.


Enter your name - something NAME-LIKE and moderately original, or you run the risk of having it changed - and press create. You’re ready to start.

The First Five Minutes

If you’re reading this for information, I will assume you haven’t actually started playing yet, so refer to this screenshot for a basic layout of the user interface.

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 their head, and it will turn yellow when you have finished. (A silver exclamation point means that person has a quest you are too low in level for.)

You might have noted when you put your mouse over the questgiver to talk to them that your cursor changed to a talk bubble. Any time your cursor changes, there is something special you can do by right-clicking. Talking to people, looting corpses, mining ore, opening chests, and attacking monsters are all different examples.

Find a nearby creature, and walk up to them. You’ll notice that the game tells you what level they are. Expect a tough fight if it isn’t level 1 or 2. Target it and attack by either right-clicking the creature, clicking on the attack hotkey at the left end of your ability bar, or by pressing one to activate that hotkey. (You can also press T to do this.) Your character will attack automatically until the fight ends. Your skill with your weapon will probably go up some, and when the creature dies, you can then loot its corpse.

Find another creature, but this time, try using one of your abilities to start combat. If you are a melee character, such as a rogue, it will turn on auto-attack by itself. If you cast a spell or fire an arrow with autoshoot, you will need to turn on attack on your own when the creature gets near. You can also use your skills during combat, of course - a warrior will have to since he starts a fight with no rage and has to attack normally at the beginning (for now.)

After you’ve picked up some stuff, click on your backpack to open it, or press B. You might have picked up something you want to equip. You’ll also have a few things you started with - some food and drink, your hearthstone, and a note from your class trainer. Food and drink restore your health and mana out-of-combat, and the hearthstone will teleport you to the last place you bound it to, (usually an inn,) with a one hour re-use timer. Right-click on the note (it might not be a piece of paper) and it will start a quest simply to find your trainer.

Press C now to open the character window. (This is the button with your face on it at the menu bar.) Here you will find the items you are wearing and the mostly empty slots you can equip for. You’ll also see your basic stats and some notes about your weapon damage.

Go to your backpack and pick up an item you want to try equipping. One of the boxes in the menu should turn blue. Click on that box and your character will equip that item. (If the armor type is in red, such as mail for a priest, nothing will happen because you can’t wear it.) If you replaced an old item, like your shoes, it will go where the new shoes were in your backpack. You can also right-click to quickly equip items. If you were lucky enough to get a bag of some sort, *drag* it to one of the other inventory slots in the bottom right.

There are two other tabs at the bottom of the character menu, reputation and skills. Ignore reputation. Skills will tell you the things you are capable of (weapon proficiencies, for example,) and how skilled you are at them out of your potential. Your potential will increase each level.

Press escape to close the windows you have open, and press M for map. This will bring up a map of the nearby area you are in. Not much of it is showing since not much of it is explored, but at least this should help you a little bit from getting lost. If you right-click on the map, it will zoom out to show the whole continent, and you can look at any other map you have explored.

Kill a few more creatures, and then go back into town (or whatever settlement you have) and find a merchant - any merchant. If you put your mouse over an NPC, it will say their name and their profession. Generally anyone that isn’t a guard or a class trainer in the starting area will sell things. (If a person has a big name floating over their head before you target them, that is another player.)

Right-clicking on a vendor will open up a sell window. There might be things you want to buy, but hold off for now. Find a couple items in your backpack that you can’t use at all, such as random body parts of creatures you killed, and left-click them to highlight and then left click in the list of goods to sell it. You can also right-click to sell quickly.

When you’ve sold everything you can’t use, close the window and look around for your class trainer. They should appear as a yellow dot on your minimap when you draw near, but some might be a little tricky to find. (Night Elf druids and hunters: there is a ramp around the left side of the tree by the guard that leads up to where your trainers are.) Assuming you haven’t already, you will finish your first quest by talking to your trainer. Right-click on them and pick complete quest. Voila, a couple free exp. (Next to none, but other quests will give far more.) When completing other quests, you will often get a choice of rewards at this screen.

In any event, talk to your trainer again, and tell them that you wish to train. There will be a very short list of abilities showing that you can train from them. (Your skills up to level 6, to be specific.) One of them will be green, meaning you can learn it now. Click on it and click train. Congratulations, you just got a new ability.

Now you will want to open your spellbook to make a hotkey for it so you can use it. Click on the book at the bottom of the screen or press P. The spellbook has 4 tabs - one for basic general stuff like attack and tradeskills you might have, and three for different class skills. One tab should be glowing. Click on it, find your new skill, and drag it to the toolbar.

Look around town for any other questgivers there might be. You should find at least two besides the very first one and your trainer. If you aren’t sure how many quests you have or if you’ve completed one, you can look at your quest log by pressing L, or clicking on the chalice button in the menu bar. This will give you a list of all your quests, and give you the text of the one you have highlighted with your progress at the top. It also tells you who to report to when you finish.

Any quest you have finished will have its line ending in “(completed)”. When you get higher level quests, they will appear in orange or red, rather than yellow, to indicate their difficulty, or if you let a quest grow old (by outgrowing it in levels,) it will turn green and eventually gray.

That should just about do it for your first five minutes, or more likely a tad bit longer than that.

Interacting With Other Players

You might have seen players walking by and not known how to communicate with them. You might have also seen lines of text whizzing by in the general chat channel for your starting area. In general, any action you want to take that isn't done with the mouse is a "slash-command", meaning it starts with a front-slash.

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.'

Basic Concepts

Every starting area begins with a simple kill quest, has a quest to collect groundspawns, at least two distinct themes of quests, and eventually sends you twice into a nearby cave. Try to do them all, if you can. When you've finished all this stuff, you'll be given a quest of great importance to the next town over, which will serve as the focal point for the rest of your time in your first zone. (Press M to look at your map, and you'll see you haven't even scratched the surface of it.)

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.

Regarding Tradeskills

You are entitled to two "professions." No more. However a few skills are not considered professions. Fishing, Cooking, and First Aid are all considered "secondary skills" and don't count against your two. The actual professions can be divided into two groups: gathering and production. Almost every production skill has a gathering skill necessary to do it…you don't *have* to be an herbalist to do alchemy, but you're going to be buying a lot of herbs from other people if you don't.

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 , 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.

Transportation and Getting Around

There are two obvious aspects of travel - how to do it in general, and specifically how to get to where you want to go.

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.

Items Inventory and Money

If you've read this far, you know there's a lot of different items in the game. This site exists largely to chronicle the knowledge of equipment in games of this genre.

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.