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Tips For All World of Warcraft
Players
Tip 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!
Tip 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!
Tip 3 - Every trade skill in World of Warcraft
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.
Tip 4 - The Num Lock key is your auto run.
This should be obvious, but you'd be surprised
how many players forget to use their auto run.
Auto run 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!
Tip 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.
World of Warcraft Alliance Player Tips
Tip 6 - 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.
Tip 7 - 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.
Tip 8 - 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.
Tip 9 - 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!
Tip 10 - 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.
World of Warcraft Horde Player Tips
Tip 11 - 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.
Tip 12 - 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.
Tip 13 - 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.
Tip 14 - 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?
Tip 15 - 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
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