NotAddicted

For those new to WoW*, I am providing a quick getting started guide, primarily geared towards those who want to jump in and start PvPing right away. Here goes.

*(WoW means World of Warcraft, I am not like saying “Wow, this is so cool!” or something.)

Race Selection

Unfortunately, just like in real life, skin color has a big effect on how others treat you. For the beginner, I recommend choosing either green or furry colored. I’ve noticed that those with green or furry colored skin are usually very happy. Once you are more advanced and make an alt you can make a blue or violet skinned guy, but it may not be as much fun. As you play you’ll notice that a significant proportion of the blue and violet skinned population are very unhappy. You don’t want to be unhappy do you? Whatever you do, do not make a character with pink or otherwise fleshy colored skin. This is a sure way to end up bored and unhappy.

Class Selection

Pick rogue.

On-Screen Elements

Here is a brief description of each of the most important elements of the WoW UI (user interface, I’m not French ok).

This is your map window. It is for finding your body when you die.

This is your life bar so that you know when you are dead.

This is your “punch that guy” button. I’m not sure why it looks like a sword. WoW is very buggy as you’ll see. You only have to click this once per guy, so it’s not as difficult as it sounds.

This is your guy. I’m not sure what he is for but mine is bugged at the moment. It says I have a red sword and red shorts. In fact, only my shirt is red. Hopefully the developers are working on that.

This is your chat window. It is for making friends of course!

The Game

If you are an orc*, you start out in a small town called Winterspring. It is very beautiful with big trees and plenty of snow. There are many fun things to do in Winterspring as well as many dangers. One negative is that there aren’t many monsters that you can kill at first, but in WoW, if you like to kill monsters, people call you a bluebie (blue as in sad), and that is a bad thing to be called, let me tell you, so don’t worry too much about that.

*at first I thought I was an Ogre. Luckily someone clued me in before I made an ass of myself.

One thing Winterspring has plenty of is PvP. I’ll give you a couple of tips to help you on your way to becoming a redbie. I’ve really just started though so you may want to ask some of the oldbies in the guild for some tips once you’ve outgrown this guide.

The first PvP move you need to learn is the face-punch. This entails running up to someone and punching them squarely in the face. This move works so well because no one ever seems to expect it.

The best time to do this is while your opponent is busy typing. Most of the other team are really bad typists and you can barely understand them sometimes, but they like to type a lot.

One I usually do understand is “laughs at you”. They type that to indicate they are ready to fight.

Variations on the face-punch include the back-of-the-head-punch, and the run-around-as-much-as-you-can-while-constantly-punching-from-all-sides. Since these are static pictures you can only see one damage number at a time but in the game it looks much more like this.

I get killed a lot but often I scare them so much that they begin quickly backing away. Then once they have regained some health they “laughs at you” to indicate they are now ready. Some get so scared that they immediately jump on their horses and run away. It is best not to chase them too far or a monster might jump in to help them. Probably by the time you get a horse you’ve got plenty of monster faction. (faction means friendliness) Besides, you’ve scared them off. That’s as good as killing them in my opinion.

Another thing I like to do is punch them right in the face while thy are drinking a glass of water. That makes them spill their drink and then they stand up all like "whaaa!"

In the beginning it is very hard to kill someone alone, so if you can get some friends to help you, go ahead. Group PvP is the funnest part of WoW. Don’t feel bad ganging up on someone as the other team will often need to gang up on you in order to kill you.

Whatever you do though, don’t step in the hot lava. It makes you die instantly and is usually how I die in group PvP.

Also I die a lot to tiny wizards, for some reason they are very trigger happy, and they never ever laugh. Keep this in mind when making your alt. Do not make a tiny wizard as you will probably not laugh and enjoy the game much. This might be related to the fact that most tiny guys are pinkish, like little pinkish Gary Colemans.

Another thing you need to remember is that if you punch people in the city the guards will punch you. If the person you punched punches you back, the guards punch them too, though usually not till you’re dead. The guards are very finicky about who they like most, so I just try to punch as many people as I can when I’m in town. It makes me get better at PvP regardless. My friends mostly think its cool when I punch people in town too. Often the people I punch hit me back almost like it was automatic. Then the guards chase them out of town where my friends are waiting. I make a lot of friends this way.

The most important thing to do in WoW is try to have fun while punching people and to make lots of good friends. I hope this guide helped!