Newbie guide

If you've never played a Massively Multiplayer Online Game before, relax: World of Warcraft is very easy to get started in and to have fun with. If you're a MMOG veteran, this guide should help get you up to speed quickly. If you aren't, this guide should help give you a general idea of what to expect as you begin playing.

If you're finding some of the terminology a little daunting, there's a glossary which should help explain some of the more common terms.

If you have any comments, questions, or suggestions, feel free to add to the discussion of this page.

If you are looking for a German guide, you can download one here: GERMAN WoW Beginners Guide --Bl4ckSh33p

Editing This Guide

As this is a Wiki, anybody (even you) can edit this page or any other. If you see something you disagree with, feel free to change it or add your own information. If you'd like to write a general comment about the page itself, click the Discussion tab at the top of the page. Don't forget to add a signature at the end of your comments by adding --~~~ with the time and date, if possible (so older comments can be addressed first).

Picking a Server

There's a few things to keep in mind when you pick a server to play on.

Where are Your Friends Playing?

Your character cannot change servers unless your server is a very high traffic server and Blizzard wants people to leave it to lessen the load. Even then, Blizzard will only allow transfers between two specific servers, not to any server. That means if your best friend has a level 40 character on one server and you have a level 40 player on another server, you cannot play your characters together. This may change in the future; Blizzard announced in their "Battleplan Volume 2" about future planned development of the game that they will eventually implement a way to transfer characters between servers, for a fee. However, nobody knows when this might happen yet.

What's Your Time Zone?

This isn't as important. But playing on a server with a time zone similar to yours means more people will be on around the time you're going to play (if you play in normal hours). This can be good--more people to party with, more buying and selling going on, more activity in the Battlegrounds; it can also be bad--more opposite faction players to attack you if you're on a PvP server, higher prices in the auction house at peak hours, and more competition for resources out in the wild.

What's the Server Population?

Each server has a population listed on the server selection screen. The categories are New, Low, Medium, High, and Full. You cannot create a character on a Full server unless you already have characters there. Some High population servers have wait queues during peak hours (see timezone discussion above). This means you cannot sign in at all to them until other people are done playing. New status means the server has just been put online and characters will be lower levels on average and the population starts very low of course. This means less resource competition and also a small economy so the AH will cost/bring in less money. Also, the Tuesday morning the server goes live, everyone on the server is 1st level, so for a few hours there will be intense competition for the lowbie quests, which will ease off over time as the fast levelers move on to the higher zones. Of course after a month there will be many people at the level cap and things will pick up from there. At all the server load levels the notes about timezone are magnified by the overall population on the server. Low pop off hour access will mean easy mining and High pop peak hour access will mean almost no mining nodes can be found, for example.

What is the Horde/Alliance Breakdown?

In some servers the ratio of Alliance and Horde players is uneven. Often there are more Alliance than Horde. This can be an issue for PvP, grouping up, or just trying to complete quests since sometimes you have to wait for quests to respawn.

Some people say one reason for the Alliance bias is the fact that the Alliance quests and areas are more polished than the Horde quests/areas. Other than that, some choose to play characters that are more appealing to the eye, or more similar to traditional heroes of fantasy literature and games. From there, the choice between Alliance and Horde would obviously depend on taste.

What Kind of Experience Are You Looking For?

This is probably the biggest choice you have to make while playing World of Warcraft. There are four types of servers.

• Normal/PvE (Player vs. Enviornment) - These servers are considered the "easy mode" by some people, leading to the term carebear for players who are on PvE servers, so you're not likely to get much respect from people who are into hardcore PvP. But in these servers, you don't have to worry about other players killing you since the only way they can kill you is if you choose to let it happen. This is the least stressful gaming experience especially if you are new to the game, because of this it is good idea for your first realm to be in a PvE server so you can learn how to play as well as enjoy the story of the game. You can PvP if you want, but you don't have to worry about it if you don't want to. In many of these servers, most or all PvP takes place inside the Battlegrounds; in some PvE servers there is barely any cross-faction fighting at all, while others have very active PvP populations.
• RP (Role Playing) - If you are more interested in being immersed in the game world than leveling up or getting cool items, these servers are for you. In these servers, you don't have a character to power-up. You ARE your character. You're expected to talk like your character (however you choose to make him/her speak), your expected to act like how you think your character should act. In this server you also don't have to worry about PvP since you can only be killed by other faction players if you so choose (like Normal servers). You are much less likely to get griefers on this server. Also, character name rules are stricter and out of character speech on public channels or in /say or /yell can earn you a visit from a GM who will require you to behave, etc.
• PvP (Player vs. Player) - Hardcore gamers will tell you that Player vs Player, or PVP, is the only way to go. In some ways, it is the most rewarding experience. In other ways it is the most frustrating and annoying experience. PvP brings an additional thrill and sense of excitement in the game. Also it opens up so much more of the game since most of the time you have to watch your back. Factions feel more tightly knit and players on your side will frequently jump in to save you (if they can) at first sign of you struggling or give you warnings and other helpful stuff. Of course this also means a potentially frustrating experience such as if you're level 25 and trying to explore an area and having level 50s come by to gank you.
• RPPvP (Role Playing Player vs. Player - The newest type of server, RPPvP servers have the elements of all-out PvP combat, but with the constraints of the RP ruleset. This is the type of server to choose if you are interested in being able to act out a character as truly as possible, by having him/her being able to attack members of the other faction at any time.

Basically it comes down to:

• If you want the least frustration, play on a Normal server.
• If you want the most immersive world, play on a RP (role playing) or RP-PvP server.
• If you want the most excitement, play on a PvP server.
  And as some advice, if you want to solo (play alone) often, play on a Normal or RP server. PvP servers will be frustrating for you since by level 30 you will be in areas where quite a bit of enemy contact will occur. There's a good chance that higher level enemy players or groups of enemy players will find you and kill you, especially on higher population servers.

Character Creation

There is a very slight (+/-3 points) stat difference based on race; starting stats are determined mainly by your class. Your race choice determines your Faction allegiance (either Horde or Alliance), your starting area, and your Racial Traits. See the Race and Class pages for discussions of the different race and class options. As your character increases in level, these differences become negligible with the exception of certain racial traits, which can be strategically useful in some situations. Therefore, play the race that you find most interesting and don't sweat the little differences.

Can't decide what class to play? Make one of each that sound interesting (you can have up to 10 characters per server), play them up to level 5 or so, and decide then. It only takes an hour or two to get the first few levels, and then you'll have a much better idea of what it's like to play each class. Alternatively, start with the jack-of-all-trades -- a druid. Druids can heal and resurrect like a priest, cast damaging spells like a mage and through their animal forms they can tank like a warrior (bear form) and be stealthy like a rogue (cat form). Thus after 20 levels you get a taste of most of the classes in the game. However, if you want to play a druid, you can only choose Tauren or Night Elf as your race.

An important factor to consider when choosing a class is whether there's going to be much demand for characters of your class in groups, and whether it is going to be easy for you to solo ( to play alone ). Most classes provide one or the other, but not both. Generally speaking, classes with clearly defined functionalities ( Warriors, Priests, Mages, Warlocks ) are in higher demand, but less viable solo, than hybrid classes ( Druids, Paladins, Shamans, Rogues, Hunters ). It is easiest to find a group if you're a Priest. Nearly every serious group will need one, and there simply aren't that many around. Grouping's considerably harder for Hunters and Rogues - these classes are quite common and their roles in PvE groups are non-essential. You can learn more about race and class statistics at the Warcraft Realms site.

One important note: The Alliance vs. Horde distinction is a very important one, as you will only have very limited interaction with those on the opposing side, outside of combat. If you're playing on a server with friends, you all want to be on the same side so that you can chat, etc., so make sure you all either select Horde races or Alliance races. Also know that on PvP servers you may only play one faction, Alliance or Horde, per server.

Can't decide on a name? Try BehindTheName.com

Intro Fly-thru and Starting Areas

Intro Fly-thru

After you choose the starting details of your character, you will be given what looks like an in-game movie based on your race with a voice-over giving some background history of the race. This is actually a real-time fly-thru in the game and you will see actual players moving around if you look carefully. The fly-thru usually starts at a capital city and flies through parts of the country-side to your starting area.

Starting Areas

Depending on your race, you will start in 1 of 6 starting areas:

Template:Horde Quest Horde:

• Orc: Valley of Trials, Durotar, Kalimdor. This area is dry and rocky, mostly consisting of reddish desert.
• Tauren: Camp Narache, Mulgore, Kalimdor. Mulgore is lush and green, with large lakes, grassy plains, and mountain valleys.
• Troll: Valley of Trials, Durotar, Kalimdor. (Same as Orc.)
• Undead (Forsaken): Deathknell, Tirisfal Glades, Eastern Kingdoms. Tirisfal Glades is a dark forest over-run with the mindless undead of the Scourge.

Template:Alliance Quest Alliance:

• Dwarf: Coldridge Valley, Dun Morogh, Eastern Kingdoms. A snowy area with mountain paths and frozen lakes.
• Gnome: Coldridge Valley, Dun Morogh, Eastern Kingdoms. (Same as Dwarf.)
• Human: Northshire Abbey, Elwynn Forest, Eastern Kingdoms. A low, forested region with various human settlements in it.
• Night Elf: Aldrassil, Teldrassil. A huge, ethereal, twilight forest that perches entirely on top of a colossal World Tree to the northwest of Kalimdor.

Note: The Night Elves are the only Alliance race to start on Kalimdor, the western continent, and the Forsaken are the only Horde race to start in the Eastern Kingdoms. For many players, this means you don't see quite as many of the other races in your faction for the first dozen levels of the game.

Levelling and Experience

Getting Experience

Quests and killing mobs are the primary way of getting experience, but you can also get small amounts just by exploring new areas.

Depending on your race you will start in a different geographical region with some common quests and some race/class-specific quests to start gaining experience. These often include killing low-level creatures in the area or speaking to one of the nearby NPCs.

You can identify quest giving NPCs from the ! over their heads. Talk to the quest giving NPC to get the quest. The quest giver of a quest you have yet to complete will have a silver ? over its head. When you complete the quest by meeting its requirements, the quest giver will have a ? over its head.

The first monsters you kill will not attack you until you attack them, but before long, monsters of later levels will attack you automatically when you get within a certain range. Friendly NPCs will have green names when you mouse over them, neutral creatures (those that attack only when attacked) will have yellow names, and hostile creatures (those that attack when near enough) will have red names. Neutral creatures become hostile when attacked, but will revert to neutral if you go out of attack range for long enough. Players of the the same Faction and their pets will generally have blue names; if they have their PvP flag up, their names will be various colors depending on the difference in level. Players of the opposite faction that have their PvP flag up will have yellow names and they cannot attack you; if you have your PvP flag on also, then they will have a red name and they can attack you.

Most of your first 10 levels will come from newbie quests and from monsters you kill as a part of doing quests. If you find yourself in a group that wanders around killing non-quest monsters and doesn't seem to be working towards a quest, it would be better to go questing alone. But a good group is a very good thing. Most frequently, groups involving different classes are much more effective than groups of only one class, or being solo. Also, in groups, players can share quests with one another so that all of them can be doing the very same quest, and if the quest involves only killing monsters, each monster killed contributes to everyone's quest.

For more class-specific tips when starting out, see the "Starting" guides from the Class section.

Obtaining Wealth

You gain money in World of Warcraft by completing some of the quests (some of them have no monetary reward associated with them), killing mobs and looting their corpses, selling excess inventory items to the merchant NPCs, or learning one or more Professions. As you go up in level, both the quest rewards and the money from mobs increase, as a general rule. Also, it has been my experience that the humanoid mobs drop loot for more cash per looting than any of the beast type mobs who aren't quest-related.

As for learning a profession and selling the product of your labors, that all depends upon how glutted the market is with that tradeskill and/or those products. If the market is glutted at the moment, hold onto your products and maybe they will be more in demand later. Alternatively, you might wish to travel around and check the local markets of other towns. Just because one town is glutted with a product doesn't mean all towns have that product. There might be a market untapped out there you would not otherwise have known about. Note that very often, you can get more money by selling raw materials (skins, ore, gems, and herbs) than by selling finished products (armor, weapons, potions, and other gadgets).

In addition, there are always the Trade Channel (only in cities, generally) and the Auction House (early on, only in Orgrimmar and Ironforge) where you can hawk your wares.

Rest

While in an Inn or a major city (such as Thunder Bluff), your player portrait will begin to glow and your level in your portrait will be replaced with the letters "ZZZ", indicating that you are resting. If you log off here, you will continue to rest while offline. When rested, your XP bar will turn blue, and a notch will appear indicating exactly how rested you are. You will earn double XP from killing monsters while rested until your XP bar fills to the notch.

One bubble of rested XP is earned for every 8 hours spent resting, up to a maximum of one-and-a-half full levels. In other words, you can leave your character resting in an inn for up to ten days without playing before you earn the maximum amount of rest state.

You also become rested while logged off in the wilderness, but only at 1/4 the normal rate. Be sure to log off in an inn whenever possible!

When you are about 5th or 6th level, you will receive quests to go to another town area. This town is where the first Inn available to a new character is placed. Or put another way, until you get your first 5 or 6 quests out of the way you will not happen across an inn and so you will have to 'camp out' when you logout.

Training New Skills

As you progress and gain levels in the game, you will be able to learn many new and exciting skills (abilities) and spells. These are all learned at your class trainer, profession trainer or weapon master in the various cities. If you're having troubles locating a trainer, just ask a city guard. The class trainers will offer you more skills and spells at every even-numbered level. The profession trainers will offer you more recipes as you increase your skill level.

Fighting and Dying

Combat

Some quests require you to kill mobs to meet their requirements, but you can also just kill mobs for XP, their drops or to skin them. Either way, you will have to fight.

You can attack any hostile (name written in red when selected) or neutral mob or mobs (name written in yellow when selected) and they will fight back. Combat can also begin by entering a hostile creature's aggro radius and they will attack you automatically. A neutral mob will ignore you unless you make any kind of threatening action toward it.

To kill the mob you must reduce their health to zero. If the mob reduces your character's health to zero you die.

To reduce a creature's health you can attack in a number of ways:

• A weapon to attack (usually by right-clicking the creature or moving close enough and pressing T or clicking the weapon's icon on the interface bar):
  • Melee weapon such as a axe, dagger, hammer, mace, staff or sword.
  • Ranged weapon such as a bow, gun or thrown axe or dagger.
• A spell:
  • Direct Damage spell such as Smite (priest), Wrath (druid), Shadow Bolt (warlock), or Fireball (mage).
  • Damage over Time spell such as Immolate (warlock), Shadow Word: Pain (priest), or Moonfire (druid).
• An item:
  • Thrown dynamite (engineer).
  • A targeted rocket.

Once you kill the creature you may or may not be able to loot and gain some treasure.

Using combat skills will increase your weapon skill and defense skill.

Player vs Player (PvP)

You may fight players of opposite factions if their PvP Flag is turned on. You will know since their names will be written in yellow (you can attack them but they can't attack you) or red (you can attack them and they can attack you). Players of opposite factions can only attack you if your PvP Flag is on (read the PvP Flag section).

You can fight players of your own faction in duels. Duels will not affect the status of your PvP Flag and they do not end up in death. "Death" will cause the duel to end but the loser will be left alive with almost no health.

Recovery

Health and mana (or energy as a Rogue) will slowly (or rapidly, depending on what you're used to) recover over time. If you sit down or sleep, the recovery rate will increase. If you are willing to sit down, you can eat food to recover health faster and imbibe a drink to recover mana faster. You can eat something and drink something at the same time (use one then the other) which regains health and mana in one break period. You cannot eat or drink during combat.

During combat you can use potions or spells to recover health or mana during combat. Some special items also allow recovery with effects similar to spells. Potions generally act instantaneously and recover a fixed amount of health or mana. You may only drink one of these poitions every 2 minutes and drinking one precludes drinking the other for the full time. Spells can be instant, but most have a casting time which can be delayed or interrupted by combat. Bandages can also be used to recover health during combat, but the recovery is incremental and can be interrupted.

Rogues have some special abilities, potions or foods that can increase the recovery rate of energy, but most are only available at higher levels, so somewhat beyond the scope of this guide.

Warriors use rage which is generated by specific actions, so recovery is not really an issue.

Death

Upon dying in World of Warcraft, all of your equipped items immediately take a 10% durability reduction (this applies only to items equipped when you died, not to items in your inventory). You have a few minutes in which to be resurrected by a player, or you may release yourself to the nearest graveyard as a spirit. While in spirit form, you can run back to your corpse and rejoin it for no additional penalty by selecting the "Resurrect Now" button when you come within range; you come back to life with half health and half mana. Run speed is increased while you are a spirit (Night Elves have a special racial ability called Wisp that gives them even more speed) and you are able to walk on water.

A spirit healer is also present in each graveyard who can bring you back to life immediately, saving you a trip to your corpse. However, doing this will cause all of your equippable items to take an additional 25% durability hit; this applies both to equipped items, and to items in your inventory. In addition, you will suffer from resurrection sickness. This sickness decreases all of your attributes and damage dealt by 75%, and has a duration that varies depending on your level:

• Characters from level 1-10 are not affected. (However, they still take the additional durability decrease)
• Characters from level 11-19 will suffer from one minute of sickness for each level they are above 10. For example, a level 12 character would be sick for two minutes, while a level 18 character would be sick for eight.
• Characters level 20 and up suffer from ten minutes of sickness.

Note: If you are killed by another player in PvP combat, you do not take the initial 10% durability hit. This means that if you walk back to your corpse or are ressed by another player there is no adverse effect at all, except the time to make the trip to your corpse due to a PvP death. However, you will always take a 25% hit and suffer from ressurection sickness if you are resurrected by a spirit healer no matter how you died.

Travel

Wyverns, Gryphons, Bats, and Hippogryphs

The most common form of transportation in World of Warcraft is a Gryphon, Wyvern, Bat, or Hippogryph. Gryphons and Hippogryphs provide for the Alliance, while Wyverns and Bats are aligned with the Horde. Many settlements have a flight path, with an NPC who will allow you to travel to various connected points for a fee. Before you can use a flight path you must travel to it on foot and "learn" the path by clicking on the flight path NPC who will have a green ! above their heads. Flight paths are fixed; you cannot control the creature you are on, so sit back and enjoy the view.

Zeppelins and Boats

Travel between the two continents and to locations more remote than are accessable via flight path is done via large Zeppelins, Boats, or similar. These cost nothing to use, and operate on a fairly rapid schedule. The Zeppelin between the Horde cities of Orgrimmar and The Undercity is one example.

Inns and the Hearthstone

Each player receives a Hearthstone in their inventory that can be used for instant travel back to whatever inn they are bound to. Binding at an inn involves speaking to the innkeeper and selecting the "Make this inn my home" option. The Hearthstone can only be used once every 60 minutes, though some classes receive spells with the same effect but with a much shorter timer.

Personal Travel

Certain classes, such as Mages, Druids, Hunters and Shamans, have different means of personal travel which help them get places faster. At level 40, all classes can purchase mounts. These are generally quite expensive, but provide a faster means of transportation than traveling everywhere by foot.

The Tram

The Deeprun Tram provides free transportation between Stormwind and Ironforge. The entrances to the tram are found in the Dwarven District in Stormwind and in Tinkertown in Ironforge. The tram comes every few minutes and is a very fast means of free travel between the two major Alliance cities in the Eastern Kingdoms.

Items

Item Quality

Items are ranked by their quality in World of Warcraft, identifiable by the color of the item's name.

For equippable items (weapons, armour, etc.), gray names indicate Poor quality, white names indicate Common quality, green names are Uncommon, blue names are Rare, purple names indicate Epic items, and orange names are Legendary. As of right now, Epic items come mostly from high-level bosses and there are very few Legendary items in game.

For non-equippable items the colors are the same. Gray named items that you can't equip generally have no use in the game, and should just be sold to vendors for cash. The exception are 'collect x of x item' quests, which may occasionally require gray items.

Item Binding

Some items in World of Warcraft can become permanently attached to one particular person, making it impossible to trade them or sell them to other players. There are two types: those that will bind when first equipped, and those that will bind when they are looted or picked up. You will get a warning dialog telling you that looting the item will permanently bind it to you when you either equip or loot such an item. Once an item is bound to you, it will say 'Soulbound'. You can sell soulbound items to vendor NPCs. Destroying these items, selling them to a vendor, or disenchanting them (if you are an enchanter) are the only ways of getting rid of these objects; you cannot mail them, trade them, or sell them in the auction house.

Acquiring Items

Items are acquired in several ways:

1. Whacking monsters
   • Note that named monsters often have a high chance of dropping the same item over and over again. They are often marked as Elite monsters.
2. Completing quests
   • Items are often the reward for completing quests. Usually, the quest giver will tell you the reward, so you can try to only do quests with reward items you can use.
   • If you do quests, you are sure to end up with a "good" set of equipment. Whacking monsters can provide extra-special items, but since quests give both items and XP (well, most of the time), I recommend doing the quests.
   • I recommend that you use quest-items as a "baseline" - getting all items by tradeskilling or whacking monsters is hard.
3. Getting them from other players
   • The typical way is the Trade window.
   • This includes via mail from other characters or your own characters (if they are on the same server).
     • Mail with an item in it takes about 1 hour to arrive.
     • Mail with just a message and/or money arrives within a minute usually.
   • It also includes buying them from the Auction House.
4. Making them yourself
   • Tradeskills provide items that are one notch above equal-level quest items, but (at the time I write this -Sarf) with more time required to create the tradeskill item. However, you can send items you make to your other character (and to other players) or sell them to vendors or auction them at the Auction House, so consider investing one character into the tradeskills. Besides, it's fun. :)
5. Buying them from vendor NPCs
   • Most vendors sell stuff appropriate for the level area they occupy. It is easy to buy stuff, but most items cost more than can be found in the Auction House (see below), but usually are in infinite supply. Some vendors sell a limited number of certain items and the number available appears in parentheses (#) on the item's icon. Vendors rarely sell Uncommon quality or better items, but if they do the price will be much higher than other sources.
6. Buying them from an Auction House
   • Currently, Orgrimmar (Horde), Ironforge (Alliance) and Gadgetzan (any faction) have auction houses. Assuming you can get in the door, talk to an auctioneer, search for an item, and make a bid on it. If no one makes a higher bid before its time expires, you will receive it in the mail. If you get outbid or the auction gets cancelled, you will recieve your returned bid amount in the mail.

Item Attributes

Most items in World of Warcraft have one or more attributes. Depending on what class you chose to play, some attributes become more important than others.

Quests

Obtaining and Completing Quests

Quests are the core of the World of Warcraft experience. You will almost always have at least a dozen active quests in your quest log.

Quests are obtained from NPCs, from items in the world, or shared from party members.

Quests from NPCs

There are a few indicators that appear above NPC's heads when they have a quest to offer you:

• A gold ! means that the NPC has a new quest that they can offer you.
• A silver ! means that the NPC will have a new quest for you soon, after you gain a level or two.
• A gold ? means that the NPC wants to talk to you as part of a current quest you're on, usually meaning that you've completed the requirements for the quest.
• A silver ? means that the NPC is waiting for you to complete a quest, but you haven't finished the requirements yet.
• A blue ? means that the NPC has a repeatable quest that they will offer you over and over again. These types of quests are usually for faction, a minor coin award, a gift package with items inside, or a combination. There are also repeatable quests for Battlegrounds.

NPCs can offer you more than one quest; when talking to them, you'll get a window giving you the option to select which quest you wish to talk to them about, using the same symbols as appear over their heads.

Quests from Items

Occasionally as you adventure in Azeroth, you may encounter dropped or fixed items that will give out quests when right-clicked. Most of these quests will not be sharable, since they apply only to the player who right-clicked the item first, but a few will.

Shared Quests

As you group up to complete some of the harder quests, you and your fellow party members should check the Quest Log to see if you can share quests. The Quest name will have a number to the left of it which indicates how many other members of your party, which are near you, have the quest, so you can quickly select quests which everyone can work on now. Some you might be able to share, some you may not be eligible for or the player you try to share with may not be eligible for, but if you can, this is a quick way to be working on the same quests.

See the Sharing Quests section under Quest for more detail.

Tip about Quests

Most of the quests in World of Warcraft are single-step, but there will often be multiple followup quests that turn into a long quest series.

Try to get and finish all the quests in a given geographic locale before moving on to a higher-level area with new quests (i.e., the Anvilmar area, the Dwarf starting town in Dun Morogh). The reason for this is that other quests may send you in different directions and into other map areas. By the time you get back to the original quest track, the quests have gone gray. They can still be accomplished, but any items received will be below your current level, the XP will be much less helpful, and the cash, if any, will be small change compared to the amounts you are currently bringing in from looting and selling vendor trash items.

For a list of zones and their corresponding levels (or at least the levels of the mobs in the zone), see this chart.

Quest Levels and Types

Each quest is assigned a level denoting how difficult the quest is.

• Grey - This quest is considered too easy for your character. The mobs you will fight during this quest will likely also be listed as grey for you meaning you are unlikely to gain any experience killing them and the experience and reputation awarded for completion of the quest will be drastically less.
• Green - This quest is slightly easy for your level. From this quest level and up, you will gain full reputation and experience from the quest.
• Yellow - This quest is around your level (perhaps slightly higher).
• Orange - This quest will be difficult.
• Red - You should not do this quest yet. Unless you have a lot of help from other players, it is highly unlikely you can complete this quest.

There are two special types of quests

• Elite - Quests listed as "Elite" denotes that at least one of the mobs you must defeat is an Elite mob. For some "Elite" quests, every mob in the area is Elite, in others only one mob is. Most of these quests are intended to be played with a full party and the color code reflects that. This means playing a Green level Elite quest alone is likely to be much harder than an Orange quest alone.
• Dungeon - These usually refer to quests inside of an instance dungeon. Many mobs inside an instance are Elite so these also are intended to be played with a full party. To do these quests alone, you will likely have to be much higher level and these quests will turn Grey by that point.

Quest Items

Quest items are random drops per player. This means that you are not competing for quest drops with others in your party. Some quest items, such as those that you need to bring back to prove that you killed a particular monster (for example, "Head of Arra'Chea") will drop for all members of the party. See the looting section for more information on how loot works.

Quest Rewards

Quests will usually result in a decent chunk of XP, and some cash or an item (or two). Quests will always show you the reward that you will receive before you accept them (other than xp), and if there is a choice between different results, you must choose one when you complete the quest.

The completion of quests will also impact your reputation with particular factions, which can have further beneficial effects such as cheaper prices at vendors and access to special vendors such as mounts.

Abandoning a Quest

You can abandon a quest at any time using the Abandon button in the Quest Log. There is no penalty in abandoning a quest, and you can go back to the quest giver and get the quest again. Some quests are timed, and a timer window will appear telling you how long you have; if it's not a convenient time to do the quest, you can abandon it and do it later. Abandoning and reacquiring a quest is also a good way to restart a quest step if you think there is a problem with the step. When you abandon a quest, be sure to delete any quest items you may have if you wish to free up inventory space. Keep your quest items if you wish to go back and get the quest later.

Many quests that involve escorting an NPC through an area full of mobs can be quite difficult to do alone. "The Defias Traitor" quest in Westfall is one such example, as is the Undead quest in Silverpine Forest "Escorting Erland." The NPCs of those quests are suicidal hotshots who engage each enemy within a 10 yard radius despite your directive to keep them alive, leaving you to save them from themselves as well as all the other mobs attempting to eat both of you. Failing these quests occurs commonly, so you can easily abandon it and start over. Or, in some cases, if you find yourself overwhelmed during quests like these, abandon the quest and run away as far as you can, and try it again when you are at a higher level or have some backup coming with you.

Parties

See Category:Partying for more information and tips on what your role in a party will be. Many classes are hybrids and you can fill (some to a greater, some to a lesser extent) two different roles. Everyone should know what role they play in any given party, and also how to play that role well.

Joining and Leaving Parties

You can select any player and right-click on their portrait in the target window to invite them to a party or to trade with them. If they are already in a party, you cannot invite them — instead, you may wish to ask them if they can invite you to join their party.

It is considered rude to invite somebody into a party, especially if they have not asked for a party, without first speaking with them. --Sta'rus

To leave a party, right-click on your own portrait icon in the upper left and select Leave Party. To remove someone in a party you lead, right-click on their portrait icon in the upper left and select Uninvite.

Note: You can invite friendly characters into a party from anywhere on the server by using the /invite <name> command.

Looting

Looting and loot drops in World of Warcraft are fairly straightforward. If the corpse of a monster has gold sparkles on top of it, it means there's something on the corpse that you can loot. Once you loot a corpse, if you don't take everything off it, everyone else in your group will have the option to loot.

There are a few different looting types in parties that can be set by the party leader by right-clicking on his own portrait in the upper left. Two of these types are affected by the loot threshold, also set by the leader (the threshold can be set to Uncommon, Rare, or Legendary).

Money loot is always shared in a party regardless of loot type. However, if a party member is out of range when a monster is killed, and so did not contribute to the kill, they will not receive a share of any gold found on a corpse and will not be able to roll for any special items found.

Free for All

Anyone can loot any item off any corpse killed by the group.

Round Robin

Group members take turns looting corpses as they are killed; they are allowed to loot all items from a corpse.

Master Looter

Only the designated master looter (set by the party leader by right-clicking on any member's portrait) may loot corpses first. For any item that is of the same or better type than the threshold, when the master looter attempts to loot it, he will see a dropdown list of all the party members' names. He can select a person from that list to assign the item to them.

Group Loot

This is the default type for a group. Looting takes place the same as in Round Robin looting. However, for any item that is of the same or better type than the threshold, all members in the party will get a rolling window with the item and three buttons. There is now a 'need' button and a 'greed' button (patch 1.7) and the close button. The member with the highest roll will get the item automatically placed in their inventory. The 'need' group is rolled first and the item awarded, but if no one clicked 'need' then the 'greed' group is rolled, and if everyone closed (ie no one rolled), then the item can be looted by any party member who clicks the corpse. It is often recommended that the group set out guidelines for what to roll on and what not to roll on when using Group Loot. A general rule-of-thumb is to not roll on something you can't equip but someone else can.

Need Before Greed

Similar to Group Loot, only this mode follows a system of only allowing party members to roll on an item if it 'can be used' by them. There are flaws with this system, both in the code itself and with regards to limitations of the system itself. It is recommended that you use 'Group Loot' in lieu of Need Before Greed, and simply clarify to people what they should and shouldn't roll on beforehand.
I find that even with it's flaws, Need Before Greed works pretty well and reduces extra chatter and trading when folks pick up stuff they can't use or see someone pickup something they can't use, but someone in the party can use. If people just want stuff to junk later on, use Group Loot. -- Fandyllic

Note: There are some bugs currently with this system; in particular, the loot icon will appear even when you are not allowed to loot that corpse. The game will let you know in no uncertain terms that it's not for you to loot ("That would be stealing.").
This was fixed in a recent patch and is no longer a problem. --Mpipe

In addition to the loot rules that can be set up to run automatically Many groups have additional rules that they add in. Some that are likely to be encountered in Pickup Groups are:

1. Pass on all BoPs
2. Greed on everything except BOPs

In non PUGs a Dragon Kill Points system is more likely to be used.

Raids

Raids are a set of 2-8 groups of 5. These are primarily used for large-scale PvP combat, or for raid-specific instances and zones. You can convert your group into a raid group by accessing your 'Social' Panel, selecting 'Raid' and choosing 'Convert Group to Raid'. From then on, anyone you invite will join your raid group.

Keep in mind that Raid groups do not receive quest rewards. This is to prevent people from creating infinitely large groups in order to do normal quests that do not need raid groups to complete. You also receive an experience penalty for any killing you do in a raid group. Again, this is to prevent people for using raid groups in situations where normal groups should be sufficient. (Anyone know the actual formula for raid exp penalty?)

Instanced Dungeons

Group Encounters

Instanced Dungeons (or "Instances") are where the fun really begins. These are not the sort of places you'll want to do alone. Unlike many random areas of the game where you may easily get by as a solo player, Instances and Dungeons are designed to challenge whole groups of players. Most instances and dungeons will require at least 4 people to complete successfully. They usually contain many Elite monsters. Examples of instances include Shadowfang Keep of Silverpine Forest, the Deadmines of Westfall, Gnomeregan of Dun Morogh, and so on. The Deeprun Tram is also an instance, though there aren't any monsters there and it's just for transportation purposes.

Instances are great for groups to go and get experience and loot (the Deadmines in particular is known for dropping good items for the 18~24 level range), though they may often present quite a challenge. It is ideal, therefore, to construct well-balanced groups that include members to fill all party roles, like having a Paladin or Warrior for tanking, a Hunter for melee, ranged support and pulling, Mages for damage and firepower and combat control, and Priests for healing, buffing and resurrecting. Resurrection is probably the most important function to include (while a good-level Paladin or Druid will suffice, the Priest Excells in this area), followed by healing. Instances are both sources of excitement, and of dread.

A place for you and your group only

In the regular world, monsters exist and walk around doing whatever it is monsters do when the players aren't there. Anybody can come along, kill them, get the loot, skin them or whatever, and move on. If one player kills a monster, obviously it can't be killed twice. That means other players have to wait until that monster respawns, which occurs regularly (within 5~15 minutes depending on which monster is in question). Some monsters are quest targets which need to be killed by any player attempting to complete that quest (a simple example is Goldtooth in the mine south of Goldshire, for humans starting out). You may find yourself waiting for Goldtooth to respawn before you can kill him again. You may even be able to kill the same monster any number of times, as long as you wish to wait around.

In instances, it doesn't quite work the same way. Each group that goes into an instanced dungeon gets their own version of it -- their own instance of it, hence the name. This means you will never be inconvenienced by another group going in and killing all of the monsters and getting the loot before you do, but you will also never have the possibility of having another group or player come along and saving your hides from an ugly battle! Each group gets to go through the whole place on their very own.

This can mean some good loot and experience as a group progresses through an instance. Furthermore, the monsters in the area tend not to respawn until after some kind of scripted trigger- such as killing the head boss mob. In the Deadmines in Westfall, the Goblins and Defias Miners (of various types) stay dead. The wandering Defias Enforcers and Taskmasters are the only ones that respawn regularly (just to keep things interesting). However, as soon as the Head Boss Edwin Van Cleef is killed, the Dungeon respawns with monsters, and it may end up being a bit of a fight to get back out without using your Hearthstones (or you could just head off the other side of the boat and leave through the tunnel).

Death and Resurrection in Instances

If you die in an instance, your spirit need only find its way back to the entrance of it. As soon as you re-enter the instance, you are resurrected as normal. However this can mean that you may have a long way to run before you catch up to the rest of your group. In certain cases you may end up fighting your way back to your group (or they may end up fighting their way back to you!). The benefit of this is that if every member of your group dies in a battle, you don't need to go walk around looking for you corpses. You just need to to re-enter the instance, and everyone gets revived at the same point.

If it has taken your group some time to get to a point in an instance you want to avoid having to fight your way back in again. It's smart to try to allow characters with resurrection abilities, such as Priests, Paladins, Shamans or Druids to survive a difficult fight even if other characters must sacrifice themselves in the process. If these particular classes are to survive a disaster that kills the rest of the party they can eventually ressurect the whole party. Thus allowying you to begin again at the point you were up to and avoid a long fight on the way back in.

Chat and Interface

Channels

World of Warcraft has a chat channel system to allow players to create their own private chat channels. Use the /chat command to get a listing of chat channel commands. You will automatically join chat channels "General", "Trade", "LocalDefense", "WorldDefense", and "LookingForGroup" when you create your character.

To send a message to a chat channel, type "/# (message)" where # is the number of the channel you would like to send to. 1 is always the "General" channel, and 2 is the Trade channel when in a city. (Type /chatlist to see a list of channels you are currently on.)

Item links can be sent by shift-clicking any item, but they won't work in any "numbered" chats other than the Trade channel, which only appears in large cities. Links will work in party, say, and guild chat. (This was done to prevent item/trade spamming in the General chat channel; unfortunately, it also means that you can't share item links with friends in private chat channels.)

Configuring Windows

By default, you don't see the Combat Log window. If you hover over (move the mouse onto) the chat window, two tabs will appear (General and Combat Log). You can drag the Combat Log tab out to create a new window; right-clicking on the tab will bring up a menu with more chat configuration options.

For further customization of the user interface, check out Cosmos. -- Goldark

The Mail System

For a price (Template:C), you can send in-game mail to other players. This can be sent when other players are offline or online. An icon will appear near your minimap indicating if you have new Unread Mail. To read your mail, visit the postbox outside any inn. You can also send items through mail to other players as "attachments". Sending mail is instantanous, unless there is an item attached, in which case the message will take one hour to be delivered. Attachments are returned to the sender if the message goes unread for 30 days, or if the recipient does not remove the item from their mailbox within 3 days of reading the message.

Author(s)

Original guide written by Rustak; hopefully contributions by many more. Intro Fly-thru, Starting Areas, Combat, and Recovery sections added by Fandyllic.