I'm an absolute newbie. Help, please?

[Kohan]

As someone who's still active on FFXI, I've never had any desire to play WoW. To me, it wasn't aesthetically pleasing, and the Warcraft lore is meaningless because I'm not into typical "high fantasy" stuff. Ironically, I'm going to start playing WoW now for different reasons than I'd have ever expected, and because I've never read anything about it before, I have no idea where to start.

Because I trust you folks far more than I would random strangers on a shitty message board (e.g., Allakhazam, GameFAQs), I wanted to come here for advice first. Although I know that Google is my friend, there are a bazillion sources for WoW information out there, and I don't want to learn from a site that's actually very flawed. As a true newbie, I would not be able to tell the difference myself.

So, if you could help me with a good starter guide or two, it would be very much appreciated. Also, I have a couple general questions:

1. If you're going to be doing a lot of quests solo, is any particular job better than the others? (Fortunately, I do already know that WoW only lets you have one job per character, unlike FFXI, so I want to get started on the right foot.)

2. Does each of the expansions have beginner content, or are some of them endgame content only?

3. How can you tell each expansion's content apart? Can you pick a different area to start in, or does everybody start in the same spot and have to travel to the expansion areas?

Thanks in advance.

[Daydreamer]

1. EVERY class is useful somehow and good endgame, and ALL classes can solo...EASILY. Play what seems most fun and appealing to you.

2. Burning Crusade offered a new starting zone to go along with the new races they added, but other than that and a few little things (barbershops, the achievement system, etc...) most of the stuff is endgame.

3. "Old World" is the original WoW game, and consists of all areas (or nearly all, with the exception of a few instances and the starting zones mentioned in question 2) in Kalimdor and The Eastern Kingdoms. Burning crusade areas are The Outlands, which is reached primarily via the Dark Portal, and Wrath of the Lich King areas is the Northrend zone, which is reached via boat / airship.

[viperlasson]

From a noob to a noob, I play off and on, currently had a 6 month break from a 1 year break, so my answers might not be accurate but I like to help.

WoW is really easy to get into, you can solo pretty much anything and you have very little penalties. So, to answer your first question, any job is good at soloing, I would recommend jobs that have pets/demons like a hunter or warlock so you have something to take damage/do damage with you since you're just starting out. I've heard warrior is hard to solo since you really don't have anything that heals you and there would be a lot of om nom down time.

I think burning crusade has the only beginnger content, with the two new races you can chose, blood elfs (horde), and draenei (alliance). Each with their own unique level 1 starting areas. The area in BC is level 58+ so everything else is high level content.

I havn't tried the new expansion yet, but i'm sure that it is almost all end game with the northend being a place to level from 70 -> 80. And the new class requiring to have a high level character in able to pick it.

You can defiantly tell the expansion content apart, The Outlands (BC content) is almost another world, with it's spacey-theme, and required a portal to get to. While the northend (WoLTK content) is a contenient up north, snowy theme, and requiring travel to access well.

I'll probally pick it up again soon, I just don't want my grades to fall. My friend gave me the scroll of resorection and I began my "stay up till 4am" WoW routine and I just couldn't do that and college at the same time.

[Eaglestrike]

1. If you're going to be doing a lot of quests solo, is any particular job better than the others? (Fortunately, I do already know that WoW only lets you have one job per character, unlike FFXI, so I want to get started on the right foot.)

2. Does each of the expansions have beginner content, or are some of them endgame content only?

3. How can you tell each expansion's content apart? Can you pick a different area to start in, or does everybody start in the same spot and have to travel to the expansion areas?

Thanks in advance.

1) Hunter is probably the easiest all around class to quest with. You can kill stuff fast and you have your own personal tank with your pet. They also have plenty of tools to get away and free if stuff does get bad.

2) Only BC has low level "content". New professions added (Jewelcrafting for BC, Inscription for WotLK) do have lower level uses though. For the most part expansions clear the end-game slate and get everyone to move on to somewhere else and that's 95% of the focus. There are usually 2-4 areas you can exp in at any given time just on vanilla WoW zones anyway, so there are plenty of options.

3) Where you start is based on race. Trolls and Orcs have the same starting area south of Orgrimmar, Tauren start in Mulgore, Undead in Tirisfal, B Elfs in Eversong, Gnomes and Dwarves in Dun Morogh, humans in Elywynn, Nelfs in a forest and space goats on an island. Each race has a race-specific (mostly) area until 10 or so, then some of the races mix into another area for 10-20 and then things spread out again and you can go to a few different places.

But like it has been said, ANY class can solo. Healers solo "worst", they can take strong mobs better than some classes but they kill so much slower it's a hindrance. Tanks can now do good DPS now while maintaining defensive stats so they can grind pretty quick too. And just about all DPS have some form of defensive stat to fall back on. DK/warriors plate, rogues evasion and stuns, shamans heal and kite, etc. But even now I'm leveling my priest as healing spec and it kills fine after I have some nice gear, so it's not a big deal really.

WoW only lets you play one class at a time, but it's so easy to play different classes it's encouraged you try out a few to see how it goes. The only problem with this is a lot of classes get HUGE class changing abilities "later", rogues don't get poisons until 20, stuns until 30, warlock doesn't get Siphon life until 30, paladin no holy shield until 40, crusader strike until 50, etc. and a lot of those moves will really change how the class plays. But just pick what class you think you'll like and if you find another you really want to try...you can do it, no big deal.

Have fun!

[Correction]

Hunter is not a good class for someone completely new to the game. Just learning which pet to choose and the fact that you're forced to melee your targets to death for the first 10 levels of the game is pure agony.

Frost Mage or Rogue have the most 'oh shit' buttons from the very early levels of the game and are probably more suited towards solo questing. Frost Mages have more power to solo group quests than Rogues do.

Questions 2 & 3 are pretty obvious from the get-go but if you want the most beginner-friendly starter zones you'll want to roll either Human/Dwarf/Gnome on the Alliance Side or Undead/Blood Elf on the Horde Side.

[Lee]

1. While all classes have a relatively easy time leveling solo -- I will say that Warriors (and maybe other melee classes) have a bit of a tougher time if they get into a bad situation while leveling (lots of links/fighting elites). This shouldn't discourage you to play a Warrior though as these situations shouldn't happen if you're just a little careful and often the quests that are challenging to solo will have others looking for help too.

2. The Burning Crusade does have beginner content as 2 new leveling zones are introduced for each faction, as well as a new race. The recent WotLK doesn't have any content that I know of aimed at the starter players and the earliest you should buy it in my opinion is when you already have a level 55 character -- just so you could experience the lowest new content introduced, the Death Knight.

3. The expansion's content differences are also explained a little bit in Q2. Burning Crusade brought new leveling zones for each faction so people have a greater selection where to start in-game. BC also brought the 'only' leveling zones for 60-70, Outland. WotLK brought the Death Knight class which starts at level 55 in a unique leveling area only for Death Knights. WotLK also brought, which is the bulk of the expansion -- the new leveling areas for 70-80.

The leveling from 1-60 can be pretty diverse as there are thousands of quests and many many zones to choose from. It starts narrowing down when you hit the expansion content at 60-70 in Outland, BUT still there are lots of different quests to choose creating many different paths one takes to get to 70. The newest expansion looks like it brought much more choice and options to the table as some zones are pretty similar in level and with thousands of new quests it's very plausible that you can take a distinct leveling route to 80.


About the guides part - I don't know and didn't use any leveling guides but really it's not as necessary as FFXI as quests in zones are designed to create the easy transition to new leveling areas. I think you'll do great especially as an FFXI player, it's almost like entering paradise (when you start WoW) with the amount of patience that game produces.

Good luck and have fun.

[Kohan]

This is a lot of useful feedback and I greatly appreciate it. Thank you.

[Deejay]

I have a quick, kinda dumb question.

I've got a 50 Rogue on a low pop server. I'm planning on rolling a DK once I ding 55. Will that character be deleted if I switch servers with my Rogue? Also, will I be able to create a new DK on the server that my Rogue switches to or are they linked somehow?

Edit: Crap i forgot that I already switched servers recently. Oh well, still curious though.

[Noobta]

I'm pretty sure it won't be deleted.

[fantasticdan]

Hunter is not a good class for someone completely new to the game. Just learning which pet to choose and the fact that you're forced to melee your targets to death for the first 10 levels of the game is pure agony.

If you replace someone completely new to the game, with someone that's completely retarded, than yeah that makes some sense. If you've played FFXI, you can handle playing a hunter 1-10. Having to melee at the beginning isn't really a big deal, you can shoot the lowbie mobs to death before they get to you anyway. And learning what pet to choose is hard? Just get a cat. Really, hunter is by far and away the easiest (and fastest) class to level overall, followed by warlock (well and DK now). The hardest/slowest is definitely warrior.

As far as soloing group quests and stuff like that, hunters and warlocks have the easiest time, followed by paladins.

[Shuemue]

I've just done Paladin 1-22 in the last few days, it's really easy, much easier than the fire mage I played to 70 last year. Basically pick any class you fancy, they're all pretty decent in my experience.

[Correction]

If you replace someone completely new to the game, with someone that's completely retarded, than yeah that makes some sense. If you've played FFXI, you can handle playing a hunter 1-10. Having to melee at the beginning isn't really a big deal, you can shoot the lowbie mobs to death before they get to you anyway. And learning what pet to choose is hard? Just get a cat. Really, hunter is by far and away the easiest (and fastest) class to level overall, followed by warlock (well and DK now). The hardest/slowest is definitely warrior.

As far as soloing group quests and stuff like that, hunters and warlocks have the easiest time, followed by paladins.

There's just a lot of micromanagement and if I were new to the game I wouldn't want to fuss with keeping a full ammo bag at all times, making sure my pet has the right kind of food (fuck buying meat in darnassus), learning how to manage my pet in passive mode rather than let him aggro everything in sight and then of course the problem of constantly passing my pet in threat for the first 25 levels. It's not a hard class, as there is no real such thing in WoW, but it is by far the most attention-hungry. Nothing's worse than noticing your pet's happiness drop and finding out the nearest meat vendor is miles away, or running out of ammo at the worst time, etc. etc.

Rogues never run out of energy and don't need powders anymore.
Mages make their own food/drink.

I'm trying to think of which classes are most newb-friendly. Hunter doesn't fit that.

[Noobta]

I don't buy pet food anymore, pet has a chance to gain happiness on each hit. I don't think you can get that until the 30s though.

[Wintermute]

The 10 day trial should give you more than enough time to grind a couple of jobs to 20 (trial cap) to see which you like best.

You can't make Belfs or Dranei in the trial since it's Vanilla WoW but you can get a taste for all the classes.
If you roll to try stuff out go for a PvE server so you can try Shammy and Paladin on Horde and Alliance side respectively.

[Kohan]

I don't buy pet food anymore, pet has a chance to gain happiness on each hit. I don't think you can get that until the 30s though.

These are the kind of terms that are lost on me, as I don't know what "Happiness" is, or where to buy food, or any of those things. Thus, I can see why someone mentioned that Hunter may not be the best thing for a newbie. My having played FFXI--and numerous other games--is surely a benefit, but I still won't know a lot of the things that people take for .

I really am absolutely newbie-tastic. I am sure I'm capable of playing any class in the game once I have a firmer hold on general WoW knowledge, and that this will be due to my experience in other areas, but in the beginning I'm going to be totally helpless.

However, I appreciate the debate because that does give me a little deeper insight into WoW and the various opinions of the userbase. Also, looking at the word Happiness within the context of this discussion, I'm assuming it's a beast's hunger. Unfortunately I don't know any of the game-specific terms, or even details about the classes.

I will be getting the full game and all the expansions most likely, so I'll have access to everything immediately.

[fantasticdan]

There's just a lot of micromanagement and if I were new to the game I wouldn't want to fuss with keeping a full ammo bag at all times, making sure my pet has the right kind of food (fuck buying meat in darnassus), learning how to manage my pet in passive mode rather than let him aggro everything in sight and then of course the problem of constantly passing my pet in threat for the first 25 levels. It's not a hard class, as there is no real such thing in WoW, but it is by far the most attention-hungry. Nothing's worse than noticing your pet's happiness drop and finding out the nearest meat vendor is miles away, or running out of ammo at the worst time, etc. etc.

Rogues never run out of energy and don't need powders anymore.
Mages make their own food/drink.

I'm trying to think of which classes are most newb-friendly. Hunter doesn't fit that.

Have you even played a hunter, or even wow at all? Do you just have downs? You're making it sound far more complicated than it really is.

During my leveling hunter 1-70, I never bought pet food. Mobs will drop more than enough meat to feed your pet through-out the game, and once your pet can get the blood thirsty talent, you don't even need to feed it at all. And yeah, buying arrows/bullets while you're getting/turning in quests in a town is some real brain busting shit.

How hard is it to keybind /petattack to a mouse button? I don't think that even qualifies as micromanagement. You're also fine keeping your pet on defensive while leveling. Yeah, I guess if you're really fucking dumb and keeping turning your pet on aggressive for no reason you might run into some problems but uhh, don't do that?...

I never had a problem with pet holding aggro at low levels, did you even have growl turned on, or the newer rank growls learned? Not that it's even relevant now, since pets auto-learn all their skills since 3.0.

[Rivero]

These are the kind of terms that are lost on me, as I don't know what "Happiness" is, or where to buy food, or any of those things. Thus, I can see why someone mentioned that Hunter may not be the best thing for a newbie. My having played FFXI--and numerous other games--is surely a benefit, but I still won't know a lot of the things that people take for .

I really am absolutely newbie-tastic. I am sure I'm capable of playing any class in the game once I have a firmer hold on general WoW knowledge, and that this will be due to my experience in other areas, but in the beginning I'm going to be totally helpless.

However, I appreciate the debate because that does give me a little deeper insight into WoW and the various opinions of the userbase. Also, looking at the word Happiness within the context of this discussion, I'm assuming it's a beast's hunger. Unfortunately I don't know any of the game-specific terms, or even details about the classes.

I will be getting the full game and all the expansions most likely, so I'll have access to everything immediately.

I wouldn't worry if I was you, as an ex-FFXI player you will take one good laugh and say "man these guys have it easy". It's funny I always get a smile when I see people bitch about how hard leveling/money is in WoW and then I think about the nightmares I went through while playing FFXI.

You might make some mistakes like I did with my first mage (getting pure intelligence thinking it made your spells stronger..lol) boy was I wrong when I leveled a PvP server with 450 HP and 3000something MP. : p

But WoW is honestly nothing challenging yet it seems to be more fun than ever. You can take your own pace at the game and wind up doing better than rushing it. The feeling of traveling is so much greater since you always stop to admire the scenery or quest around it rather than the designated "camps" in FFXI.

And as many people stated, if you are an ex-FFXI player you'll pretty much dominate this game as you learn the ropes.

As far as classes go I'd say read each class and think about what appeals the most to you, if you don't like it you can always make a new character and learn from your mistakes. The second time is much much faster than you think, and the third one will be on auto-pilot. : p

Think if you'd like a companion to maybe help you with the work (Warlock/Hunter and Death Knight later on. : p) or maybe you want a jack of all trades (Druid) or a Hybrid which lets you decide which role you like most Healer/DPS/Tank or Melee in some cases (Paladin/Shaman) and maybe you want to straight up tank/slice shit with a giant two hander? (Warrior) Depends on your style really. Oh, and don't compare anything to FFXI either when it comes to choosing classes cause it could never even come close. : x

[Correction]

Have you even played a hunter, or even wow at all? Do you just have downs? You're making it sound far more complicated than it really is.

During my leveling hunter 1-70, I never bought pet food. Mobs will drop more than enough meat to feed your pet through-out the game, and once your pet can get the blood thirsty talent, you don't even need to feed it at all. And yeah, buying arrows/bullets while you're getting/turning in quests in a town is some real brain busting shit.

How hard is it to keybind /petattack to a mouse button? I don't think that even qualifies as micromanagement. You're also fine keeping your pet on defensive while leveling. Yeah, I guess if you're really fucking dumb and keeping turning your pet on aggressive for no reason you might run into some problems but uhh, don't do that?...

I never had a problem with pet holding aggro at low levels, did you even have growl turned on, or the newer rank growls learned? Not that it's even relevant now, since pets auto-learn all their skills since 3.0.

Would you mind not talking down to me for just one fucking second? I know WoW and would just as well not have this thread shitted up by people who don't understand simple things like context

The question asked by the OP was 'what's a newbie friendly class?'

Can you honestly say that hunter is more newbie friendly than a mage or a rogue, who push ONE fucking button from 1-50 to kill their exp mobs?

[Kohan]

You might make some mistakes like I did with my first mage (getting pure intelligence thinking it made your spells stronger..lol) boy was I wrong when I leveled a PvP server with 450 HP and 3000something MP. : p

Do you know anywhere I can read about how certain stats benefit characters? That's the kind of guide I'm looking for too. Really basic reference material. Or is all that in the manual and/or on the official website?

As far as classes go I'd say read each class and think about what appeals the most to you, if you don't like it you can always make a new character and learn from your mistakes. The second time is much much faster than you think, and the third one will be on auto-pilot. : p

Where is a good place to read about the classes? I'll hazard a guess and say that's probably Blizzard's site, too.

[Noobta]

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