WoW - What do I do?

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Pointer
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WoW - What do I do?

Post by Pointer »

Hi guys,

I asked this question in the Wow Open Beta thread but it kind of got lost in amongst everything else. I have never played an MMORPG before and really have no clue as to what I should be doing. I played for a few minutes tonight before they took the servers down for maintenance. I managed to create a nice Orc Warrior and get into the game. I ran around a bit and killed a couple of boars and even a big scorpion thing. Then I spoke to this man who was laying on the ground and he gave me a quest to kill a scorpion who had stung him so I accepted that but then the servers crashed.

What is this levelling that everyone speaks of? How long should it take me to get to Level 2?

Combat seemed a bit boring, I went up to a boar, hit a mouse button and just stood there swinging my axe. I didn't get hit once (at least my health didn't go down), is that because I am fighting a mere boar?

Pointer
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Gedd
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Post by Gedd »

What is this levelling that everyone speaks of? How long should it take me to get to Level 2?
Leveling is when you gain enough XP from questing and killing to move up to the next experience level. Every even numbered level you should head to your class trainer as you'll have more abilities/skills available which you need to train to access.

Leveling in WoW is pretty fast, especially in the first 10 or so levels. You should be able to reach 2 very quickly, but don't worry if you want to look around a little first, just be careful you don't get into an area with stuff that's a lot higher level than you are.

One of the things that's impressed me about WoW is how it basically keeps you in a certain area based on your level, and then just about when you're finished with all the quests in that area, you'll get a quest that directs you to another section of the game. If you sit back and let the quests guide you to new locations, you'll be doing just fine.

As for combat, at the beginning levels you'll only have a very few skills. As I mentioned before, leveling adds more skills to your skill/spellbook. Skills will not be automatically added to your hotbar in the lower-right corner, so when you train, press "P" to open up your spell book and drag any new skills (except the passive ones) into the hotbar.
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Odin
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Post by Odin »

Pointer,

You're in the newb area (The Den) of the orc region, and yes - it's not terribly exciting at first level. You should be hacking through everything in sight without a challenge - the goal is for you to familiarize yourself with the game's controls and mechanics.

The guy on the ground gave you a Quest. You can look up quests in your quest log and see what needs to be done and how close you are to completing them (close is relative - some quests require you to kill or gather a certain quantity of something, so you get closer to being done the more you kill/gather. Other quests have a single specific goal, so the quest is either complete or it's not).

The particular quest you mention is to kill a black scorpid named Sarkoth. He's the only scorpid in the area that will show as hostile (ie. his name will be red rather than yellow) and he appears on the little plateau above the tree where the wounded orc gives you the quest.

The learning curve with WoW isn't too high, but it does take time if you aren't familiar with MMORPGs. When I started a year ago, I'd say it took me a week (of 10-hour days) to get fairly comfortable with the game and probably 3 more weeks to really understand things like grouping, communicating with other players and crafting.

Stick with it and you'll most likely have fun.

Sith
fancydirt

Post by fancydirt »

You should be able to get up to level 10 in an hour or two. Leveling slows as you get higher up. It took me a week to get my current character to level 30, and now (at level 38) I'm getting about one level per 5 hours of gameplay.

Quests that involve kill such and such monsters to collect X amount of item drops you should do solo because bad drop rates will lead to you spending hours killing things with other people. Quests that involve killing named creatures or meeting an objective should be done with other people who are questing in the area. On the nameds, this will make it easier for you and be fair to anyone else who might need the kill so they won't have to wait on a respawn. Really, I solo almost all quests except for those or ones that are just too difficult for me at my level.

The quests are color coded in your log by difficulty. Red means you probably don't want to try them solo, orange means the quest should be difficult, yellow is easy to moderate and can likely be done solo, green should be done solo, gray means it's below your level and you won't get as much xp for completing the quest (I'll usually abandon these quests unless they have a good item reward or lead to other quests in a series). Others will also be tagged "Elite", this generally means you'll be figting elite mobs which are a lot tougher than what you kill for normal quests. You almost always want to group for elite quests (especially those in instanced dungeons :)).

Take up a trade skill like skinning, mining or herbalism. These all allow you to collect items you can sell on auction or use with other trade skills you may want to take up to craft items. As a Warrior, the crafting trades worth taking are smithing, engineering and alchemy. Pick your gathering trade accordingly (mining for smithing or engineering, herbalism for alchemy). Or just take two gathering skills and use them to make money so you can buy whatever you need, though most engineered items require you to be an engineer to use them.
fancydirt

Post by fancydirt »

One more thing... if you're having trouble finding an NPC in the world or finding a certain type of mob, http://www.thottbot.com/ is your friend.

In addition, once you get to Orgrimmar, take the zep over to Under City and quest out there. The undead starting areas (trisfal glades and silverpine) are better developed and make for nicer questing than the Orc area. Come back to the Barrens later on when you're running out of stuff to do in Silverpine but aren't ready for Hillsbrad.
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Meghan
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Post by Meghan »

Pointer, the Amazon Basin has a WoW guild. You might want to hook up with them. They've got a lot of good information and they're very friendly folk. They're also pretty strict - no cheating, stealing, lying etc. The nice thing is you can rely on them to treat you right in turn.

http://www.theamazonbasin.com/wow/
If I ventured in the slipstream / between the viaducts of your dream

aka merneith, aka kylhwch
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Peacedog
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Post by Peacedog »

Also, the NPCs with"!"s over their head are quests givers (those with "?"s are waiting for you to finish their quests). Fancydirt's (I'm never going to get used to calling you that on a forum. I smell forced name change. . .) color coding doesn't apply here (though I think it should), or didn't a few patches ago (Joeyjazz, if I'm wrong correct me).

If the ! is yellow, that means that person has a quest for you. If it is grey, that means he won't give you the time of day to give a quest (you're still too sucky - go level up some more!). So always keep your eyes peeled in any populated area. As someone else noted, the general design is to keep you in one area, then "move you on" to another.

Understand this: every race starting area is the same way. Super low level quests and then you get funneled to the next town. So if you get comfortable, you can journey to other areas and really load up on quests.

Remember that at most even levels you will be elligible to purchase a new class skill at a trainer. That's generally a good thing. More skills = you kick more rear end. So when you level to 2, 4, etc, make getting back to a trainer a priority.
Combat seemed a bit boring, I went up to a boar, hit a mouse button and just stood there swinging my axe. I didn't get hit once (at least my health didn't go down), is that because I am fighting a mere boar?
It's one of those generic MMORPG rules: you must suck at level 1.

Seriously, it will change as you level. You'll obtain abilities you can use in combat, so some tactical consideration comes into play. As a warrior, you start with the "strike" ability (you can check your skill log to veryfiy the name, I could be mistaken). It is a timered ability that relies on rage. It does extra damage, and is one of your "bread & butter" skills (you'll use it a lot). Timered means that once you use the skill, you have to wait a certain amount of time before you can use it again (you can observe this by using a skill, and then watching the graphic - it "darkens", and then it begins to slowly light up as it recharges). Rage is basically fighter mana with a twist. You start with none, but as you hit and get hit in combat it builds up. You need 15 rage to use this skill (you can generally get them in a couple of rounds of combat).

All skills tend to work like that. They cost rage/mana/energy (that's for thieves), and they are timered. Some have quick timers. SOme have very long timers. Costs vary wildly on the mana front. As a fighter, you'll get tons of skills. Many of your combat skills give you some tactical options. For example: hamstring allows you to slow an enemy for a period, so they have trouble fleeing (a good thing, believe me). Another ability causes "bleeding" damage - it periodically hurts the enemy for a time (say, 3 damage every 6 seconds, for 18 seconds). There are many more. Not all of them are things you use directly on an enemy.

My advice would be to obtain gold to purchase all the skills, and then read about them online if the skill description isn't helpful enough. Learn what they do and use then them in combat to see if you like them. Put the ones you do like on your quickbar, and use them with frequency.
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Grinfin
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Post by Grinfin »

Blizzard also put a knowledge base at http://www.blizzard.com/support/wowGM/ that is organized by various topics.

I'm not sure if it's new or they just reannounced it, but it looks to be very exhaustive.
Pointer
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Post by Pointer »

Many thanks for all the replies guys. I am having an absolute blast with the game. Even with all the lag it is the best game I have played in ages. It's just a shame that the open beta ends in a week or so's time and I won't be able to play again until February!

Pointer
fancydirt

Post by fancydirt »

Look at the bright side, maybe the game will be done by then ;)
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