Questions about starting WoW

[Xerlic]

So, I'm thinking of starting WoW due to its longevity and I'm a fan of the lore of Warcraft having played the RTS games and read all the novels. Plus, I have many friends from college and FFXI who play. I had a couple of questions before taking the plunge..

First off, what's a good race/class to start off on to learn the basics of the game? I definitely plan to play Horde and was thinking Forsaken, but unsure of what class to play. I'd like something that has applications both in endgame and PvP, but wouldn't mind starting a char to learn the basics then rerolling a char for endgame. I don't want to end up picking the PUP or WoW.

Second, how is raiding done in WoW? Pickups or Guilds? Do people still do the older raids or do ppl only focus on new content nowadays? Is it going to be hard playing catchup after starting after the game has been around for 4 years? For example, I feel bad for all the people who start playing FFXI now and need CoP missions done. Would I be in a similar situation?

Thanks.

[Ksandra]

Pice any race/class tbh. FFXI creates a bad impression for other MMOs imo when it comes to pupclasses. There is no class that isn't needed endgame. If one falls out of need, blizz finds a way to put it right back in. I guess you could say tanks and healers tend to be needed the most, but meh, I was hunter and never had problems getting into raids and getting gear as a DD. And races really are asthetics aside from one racial, and the only one that I think is probably op is Draenai (gives 1% hit rating to everyone in pt).

Since you seem to wanna focus on one char for the time being, I would suggest Paladin or Druid (neither forsaken though iirc). Reason being is because of talent trees both classes can be a tank/dd/or healer, depending on how you spec. You can have 2 out of those 3, and you can keep changing them if you want (though costs gold). That way you can decide which roles you want to play.


All are easy to solo grind to 80 btw, even priests (once you hit shadow form).

As for raids, mostly raids are done both with guilds and pickups. The nice thing, is most raids are weekly or daily. If your guild isn't scheduling a particular raid for that week/day, it's usually easy to find a group that's doing it if you want. It is a good balance.

And no it's not hard to catch up. Usually when new raids are introduced, heir gear outdates the old raids, so withing 4-5 months you'll probably be in the same boat as everyone else.


Also...I miss wow. D:

[Rokku]

First off, there's two major reasons not to worry about race. Racials are all imbalanced atm and they're getting overhauled in Cataclysm, and it's primarily aesthetic anyway.

If you're going to roll Horde and you want to experience and understand as much as possible, either roll a Tauren Druid or BE Paladin. They've got the widest range of roles that one class can play, so you'll end up learning a lot from them.

Raiding is done either through PuGs or guilds, just depends on your preference and availability. I would suggest though that if you don't have enough time to commit to a guild but still want to experience endgame that you do some research on servers, there are some that have a very good environment for pugging, and others that are just putrid.

And just to back up Ksandra's comment about playing catchup, there's really no need, Blizzard makes it pretty easy to get up to speed with current content.

[Correction]

PvP = Forsaken in my mindset, if only for their ridiculously good racial. Yes yes, racials are being rebalanced in the next expansion but that's at least a year out so you'll have plenty of time to bring up an alt if you're not happy with the announced changes by then. Also if you're rolling on a PvP server it's good to have that racial to escape the occasional gank attempt. Assuming you're on a server with the aforementioned IRL friends it'll keep you alive until backup arrives.

Class near as it stands doesn't matter, you'll find yourself often underrepresented and in demand given a large enough server (do not roll on Low pop servers for your own sanity). Flavor of the expac has been DK so there's a glut of those at endgame PUGs but if you also happen to have a tank set you'll stand out in the crowd. Beyond that just stick to what you know you'll enjoy from prior MMO, be it DPS, tanking or healing. You're seldom relegated to 'Stun bitch' at endgame events, so what you do from 1-79 is absolutely what you'll be doing vs Boss level encounters.

Older raids are dead, and only occasionally run by PUGs or very bored guilds. I have seen more Molten Core raids than Black Temple raids in the last two months, so if you're rolling WoW hoping to get a tour of the dusty old endgame content you're out of luck unless you roll on a server where the population count will favor more frequent old school raids. Likewise, you're unlikely to get groups for Azerothian (1-60) non-raid dungeons because nobody takes the time to ride out there anymore. That may change once flying mounts become possible in older zones but for now don't even dream about running crap like Blackrock Depths or Stratholme, nobody bothers.

On the bright side, you save yourself some travel time to said instances and it's not exactly ZM8; you're never locked out of vital content ahead of you just because you can't find help with older content (hi2u FFXI Missions).

[omgaggrohelpme]

Starting up in WoW is simple enough, alot of things about the game are learned by trial and error but you can also save yourself sometime if you just read before hand. I do suggest Shaman, Druid or Pally as a class to start out with as they all have a variety of roles that they can perform. to help with your leveling and such I suggest you pick up Mining and Herbalism to get a flow of cash into your character. Endgame wise, all 3 of those classes are looked for as they can be very useful. If you start out and don't particularly like PvP, I suggest you go with a Non-PvP Server as when I first started I hated when higher levels would just beat down on me for no reason.

[Guyverarmor]

Any race is really just for looks as people mentioned, but I love my Tauren Warrior D: (currently @ 70).

And it's easy to get your character up to raid-ready due to fact blizzard makes it easy for you. Run some heroics in a pick up group for a little bit then ready for some PUGs if you don't have the time to join a regular raiding guild. That's possibly the best thing I like about WoW over FFXI. Granted I love the fights more in FFXI, but it's easier to do them in WoW.

A lot of the older instances are not ran as much as they used to be...but if you offer a 5g tip to run a level 80 will get you through

Making money in WoW is easier to make as well. Good combined is Mining/Skinning or Mining/Flower Picking. Make bank in no time, especially on Flowerpicking since WoTLK brough in Inscription and makes use of herbs to make ointments.

[Kaylia]

First off, what's a good race/class to start off on to learn the basics of the game? I definitely plan to play Horde and was thinking Forsaken, but unsure of what class to play. I'd like something that has applications both in endgame and PvP, but wouldn't mind starting a char to learn the basics then rerolling a char for endgame. I don't want to end up picking the PUP or WoW.

You can't make a wrong roll really. Some racial are slightly better than other, but no combo are game breaking. Personally,I would go for a job with multiple functionality endgame, to be able to try the different roles (paladin and druid come to mind since they can be tank/healer/dps).

The 2nd thing you have to think about is the esthetic, do you want to have a pretty face when you zoom in the camera, or do you want to have huuuuge gears. Tauren arent sexy, but the gears look so awesome on them (especially shoulder and 2h weapon).

Personally, I rolled Paladin Blood elf, and never regreted my choice. With all the "invincibility" move, high def, healing, the game will be a lot more forgiving while you level up. I'm not saying other classes are hard to play, but let's just say you can't always run in head first with clothies job.


Paladin is also one hell of a soloer. There isnt many class (if any) who can solo as many old instances, and quests that no one want to do anymore. I do think it's the best choice to explore old content if it's your thing.

Second, how is raiding done in WoW? Pickups or Guilds? Do people still do the older raids or do ppl only focus on new content nowadays? Is it going to be hard playing catchup after starting after the game has been around for 4 years? For example, I feel bad for all the people who start playing FFXI now and need CoP missions done. Would I be in a similar situation?

Once you reach 80, complete a few quests for decent equip, gem/enchant your gears, you're set for 5men instance, which is the first step in endgame. After 2-3 weeks, you should be able to move to bigger instance. Aside from the lack of experience, you should be fine to get into a guild within 2 months, if you want to farm seriously (personally, I prefer dealing with pick up and play casually when I feel like playing)

Finding pickup party is generally easy, only take a few minutes if you seek for multiples instance at the same time (especially on tank/healer).

Now, the only problem is that many kids arent forgiving to new people. They will kick you if you have the courtesy to mention you're new, and they yell a lot if you screw up inside.
It sucks, but you will learn to deal with it.

[Toxictaru]

I started as a Hunter myself, but found that no one wanted me at all in BC. With a bitter taste in my mouth as I finished it up in LK, I stopped raiding on it entirely... its basically a mule at this point in time.

I tried a DK for a while, but the game is so full of them now its not even funny.

Then I finished my pally. Its... easily the most fun I've had on this game, and it REMAINS fun now. Its multiple functionality is great, and it really is an excellent class to solo on and especially to level fast (I took mine from 44 to 80 in less than two weeks, playing mostly evenings).

Druid is also good because it can fill those roles, but it can be a bit disheartening at first because it starts off slow. If you can deal with that, you'll be fine. If you want to rush to 80 and try end-game, something like paladin is probably better.

Really though, you can get a decent feel for whether or not you're going to like a class pretty quick. And once you do get 80, you're not going to be totally behind the loop as Blizzard has recently made it incredibly easy to get good gear fast.

As far as raiding, its been said, if you have time to commit, a guild is probably a better way to go. If you don't, pick a higher population server as it probably has a better community for pugs. The only real problem with that is very high potential for loot drama. If you can past that, no big deal.

Even though WoW has been around for a few years, it is far more forgiving to new players than FFXI is. This is entirely because Blizzard has no problems making older content obsolete, unlike FFXI where people are still camping kings.

And good choice on Horde

[[Cookies]]

It depends on what role you want to play really (if any in particular).

If you plan to play a healer i'd say go with a Priest. Druid is a very strong healer but I find that it's less fun to play than Priests. If you want to play a more simplistic healer go with Paladin, Shaman is second most complicated and Priest is the third. As a priest you can either heal a tank (with Disc) or the raid (with Holy). Priest has a wide range of spells to use and it's a pretty fun class, although out of the four it's the worst to level.

If you plan to play a DPS there are plenty of classes to choose from.

If you like pet classes and want to be at the top end of the dps play a Hunter.
If you like something more complicated go with an Affliction Warlock/Feral Druid/Shadow Priest/Retribution Paladin/Death Knight (frost is a bitch)/Enhancement Shaman.
If you like more simplistic dps classes go with Mage/Destro Warlock/Balance Druid/Warrior/Elemental Shaman.
I honestly don't know too much about Rogues but the Combat rotation seems fairly simplistic and they are also at the top end of dps at the moment.

At the moment i'm leveling a Hunter and they are very easy to level, a little boring but most classes are once you've leveled to 80 once already. The fun comes once you start raiding.

If you plan to play a tank then personally i'd say go with a Protection Paladin, they're the best AOE tankers and their tanking rotation is simple. Death Knight's have a harder rotation but to be honest tanks are fairly balanced.

And finally, if you want to play a hybrid go with Paladin or Druid. You can dps, tank and heal with one class. Keep in mind though that WoW endgame is a lot harder than FFXI, healing is definitely the hardest role to play.

Here's a good example of one of the fights in Ulduar (my personal favourite) from the POV of a priest.

YouTube - Frequency vs Mimiron (Ulduar 25 man)

Keep in mind they're not doing the hard mode, which is of course harder.

As for races, pick whichever you like the look of, my personal favourite from the horde are the Forsaken and Orcs (ferocious green pigs ftw). For leveling I do prefer the Alliance quests and leveling areas but once Cataclysm comes a long a lot of the Horde zones will look a lot less bland. Definitely go with Horde.

Second, how is raiding done in WoW? Pickups or Guilds? Do people still do the older raids or do ppl only focus on new content nowadays? Is it going to be hard playing catchup after starting after the game has been around for 4 years? For example, I feel bad for all the people who start playing FFXI now and need CoP missions done. Would I be in a similar situation?

Both, although pickups tend to suck tbh. I've never been in one that has managed hard modes but sometimes you get lucky I guess. A few people do the older raids but it isn't necessary. WoW has a Badge system. Once you reach level 80 you can do heroic dungeons (similar to Assaults) and you can do each once a day. From these dungeons you get badges which can be used to purchase some of the gear that came from older raids. At the moment you can get full tier 9 just by running the daily heroic quest, it'll take a while though. It's a lot easier to get geared up and find a guild than FFXI, having experience from FFXI will help with that.

Sorry for the wall-o-text and good luck if you decide to start WoW. Make sure you download TourGuide, Informant and TomTom from Curse.com - WoW Addons WAR Addons Gamer Blogs Forums, it'll make leveling your first 80 a load easier.

[Boyiee]

Druid is such a great starting class, it levels by far faster than the others mentioned (besides hunter) and can play all 3 end game rolls - although the DPS part can be a little complicated since it relys on timers for your bleeds.

Really, you can't go wrong at all. I have 2 80's and 2 more upcoming, because of how raiding works and everything, my alts get geared out faster than my main did.

[Falaras]

So, I'm thinking of starting WoW due to its longevity and I'm a fan of the lore of Warcraft having played the RTS games and read all the novels. Plus, I have many friends from college and FFXI who play. I had a couple of questions before taking the plunge..

First off, what's a good race/class to start off on to learn the basics of the game? I definitely plan to play Horde and was thinking Forsaken, but unsure of what class to play. I'd like something that has applications both in endgame and PvP, but wouldn't mind starting a char to learn the basics then rerolling a char for endgame. I don't want to end up picking the PUP or WoW.

Second, how is raiding done in WoW? Pickups or Guilds? Do people still do the older raids or do ppl only focus on new content nowadays? Is it going to be hard playing catchup after starting after the game has been around for 4 years? For example, I feel bad for all the people who start playing FFXI now and need CoP missions done. Would I be in a similar situation?

Thanks.

There really is no wrong class to pick for WoW, though there are certain races that are better for certain classes. Like tauren for tanks, undead for PVPers, humans for PvPers.

Raiding can be done by a guild or by pickups, older raids are done sometimes, youll see alot of Ulduars and some Naxx, and then achievement runs for 60 and 70 raids. Catchup is easy don't even worry about it.

[Rokku]

If you like pet classes and want to be at the top end of the dps play a Hunter.
If you like very complicated rotations go with an Affliction Warlock/Feral Druid/Shadow Priest/Retribution Paladin/Death Knight (frost is a bitch to play :D)/Enhancement Shaman.
If you like more simplistic dps classes go with Mage/Destro Warlock/Balance Druid/Warrior/Elemental Shaman.
I honestly don't know too much about Rogues but the Combat rotation seems fairly simplistic and they are also at the top end of dps at the moment.

Just to elaborate and clear up a couple things on this note, the only DPS that actually have complicated rotations are Feral Druid and Enhance Shaman.

Most of those other mentioned complicated classes DPS with a grand total of maybe 4-5 buttons. If watching DoTs or Diseases is an issue, get an addon or something of that nature.

I would caution that in terms of DPS, while hunters are able to perform at high levels they aren't top end DPS as much as they are at the higher end of the spectrum. If you want top end at the moment, those spots belong almost exclusively to Feral Druid/DK/Rogue/Lock/Mage/Ret Paladin.

When it comes to DPS just play whichever one looks interesting if that's your aim. With the exception of enhancement and feral no DPS class is particularly demanding or complicated. For an idea of what you'd be in for as a cat, please refer to the following flow chart.

http://img242.imageshack.us/img242/1687/catdps.jpg

[Plow]

The only major mistake you can make starting out in WoW is to not pick a high pop server.

[Rokku]

The only major mistake you can make starting out in WoW is to not pick a high pop server.

That or pick one that still hasn't beaten Algalon or Uld25 hardmodes.

[[Cookies]]

Just to elaborate and clear up a couple things on this note, the only DPS that actually have complicated rotations are Feral Druid and Enhance Shaman.

Most of those other mentioned complicated classes DPS with a grand total of maybe 4-5 buttons. If watching DoTs or Diseases is an issue, get an addon or something of that nature.

A couple of those only become complicated when handling more than one mob. Affliction warlock has 5 DOTs to handle on one mob alone. How can you say Enhance Shaman is complicated but not Ret? They both use FCFS.

Frost DK: PS - IT - OB - BS - PT - FS -> OB - OB - OB - FS - FS > OB - OB - BS/PT - PT/BS - FS > OB - OB - OB
Enhance Shaman: 5xMW LB - ES (SS) - SS - LL

I would caution that in terms of DPS, while hunters are able to perform at high levels they aren't top end DPS as much as they are at the higher end of the spectrum. If you want top end at the moment, those spots belong almost exclusively to Feral Druid/DK/Rogue/Lock/Mage/Ret Paladin.

I was talking about single target fights btw, in which case Hunters/Ferals are towards the top end of the meters. For AOE fights it's DK > Rogue > Lock/Mage/Paladin > Feral, etc.

[Rokku]

Trying to say that any spec of DK has a complicated DPS rotation couldn't be further from the truth. And I haven't ever been beaten by a hunter since pre-Ulduar. We could argue it back and forth all night though, and my point was simply that calling any DPS short of Feral druid was a complete misnomer.

Suffice to say this is completely off topic though.

[[Cookies]]

Perhaps saying that all of those specs are "very complicated" was a bit of an exaggeration, still, they are the harder classes to play when compared to a Mage for example.

[Rokku]

I'll concede to their difficulty when compared to a mage.

[Correction]

Blizzard has done a lot to simplify DPS over the last few patches for everyone but Druid though. They're not kidding about "John Madden" (it came up at Blizzcon) and it looks like it's going to continue to trend in that direction. I'm sure Druids would applaud any simplification of their DPS routine, I can't say the same for a lot of other classes.

[Kaylia]

Complexity in WoW come from the environment more than your class imo (react quickly to adds, aoe, gimmick). Some job have more shit in their rotation than other, but it's never anything complex.