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When a new MMORPG World of Warcraft (WoW) was released in 2004, myself and a group of my online friends jumped ship from EverQuest and started playing WoW, we only looked back on EQ to reminise about past battles, adventures and the content we had missed out on due to playing on a PvP server.
World Of WarCraft was just draw dropping visually combared to EQ and was a much easyer game to play, we knew at that point WoW would overtake EQ in popularity and player base, and it has 1000 fold!
We natrualy joined a PVP server, Lightbringer and started out adventuring. PVP! you ask? back then servers where Player V Player (PVP Alliance or Horde) or PvE but now they have merged and have battle mode and dedicated areas for PVP. We started out as Allience untill lvl 70 but then decided to swicth to Horde and leveled new characters to lvl 80.
I play the same format i always do, Tank (Pally or Warrior) as my main with Hybrid healer (Druid) as my utility class. Since early EQ days i have fealt this to be this best combonation for me when boxing (Boxing is for another post)
World of Warcraft is now (May 2020) the No 1 MMORPG in the world with 80+Million subscribers ranked according to MMO Populations and 3+Million daily players with WoW Classic ranked at No4 with 1.5+Millioan daily players. Thats almost 5 Million people currenlty online playing right now, with these numbers the odds are that you know someone in RL that plays but thay havent told you, maybe a work collegue.
I would now consider this game to be the benchmark for MMORPG and its going to be a while before another game comes even close to the WoW the player base. Even after 10 year break i have revisted WoW and played the new content, it realy is a game that is hard to fualt and so much fun to play.
Is WoW Free to Play?
WoW is Free to Play upto level 20 and you can Download World of Warcraft from the offical site. Beaware its about 60GB and can take a while to download but does have a nifty feature that lets you play the newbie zones after about 20% download.
Free to Play does have other restirctions like your characeter is not allowed to send post, use some items with in the game or group with other players
I would recomend you make up a few characters classes to play with untill you decide on the final one that would be considered your main, this would be your character you will play to end game. You can skip levels and instanatly have one of the generated lvl 50 characters but i feel you will miss so much of the great low level content, its best to play from level 1.
There are 12 Classes to chosoe from in World of WarCraft and 12 races you can play, 5 of these need to be unlocked on your server before your side (Alliance or Horde) can play them. I just love these touches that have been introduced into the game to make things more interesting and so keeps the player base alive and coming back for more.
Once you have played your toon upto lvl 20 its time to venture further and for this you will need to start the monlthy subscribtion. There are a huge selctions of payment choices with even the ability to pay 167,000 in in-game gold for 1months play time.
How to start playing WoW
With the WoW Free to Play option and so many players now online with a lot of them in the free to play level 20 newbie zones, it can get a bit busy. At time the servers can be busy so check the Server capacity when you choose your server to join.
These are a few things i would recommend doing as a new player to help you get started in WoW
- Play the game as it was entended – The newbie areas are designed to hook you in and keep you playing, they offer the fastest way to learn the game
- Follow the quest path offered to you – Its been setup in a way to introduce you to the game and is often the best XP
- Buy some bags soon as you can, the more you can carry, the more you can sell to vendors and so make more gold faster
- Once you have bags, try and get a nice main melee weapon – At low level even casters can melee
- Chat to people but dont beg for stuff, explain you are stuck or new and need help. Most players are friendly and will help you out
- Hit Points are King – Increasing your HP will increase your chances of staying alive
- Asking other players for a few buffs will always help you out, but offer some coin even if its just coppers
While this is not a guide on how to play but more of a reference guide. Here is information that I had to look up from time to time to help me progress through the game.
More MMORPG World of WarCraft Guides
- WoW – Chat Commands
- WoW – Essential Combat Commands
- WoW – Emotes
- WoW – Group Leader Commands
- WoW – Guild Commands
- WoW – Lesser Arcanum of Constitution Quest Guide
- WoW – Shortcut Keys
- WoW – Slash Commands
- WoW – Voice Emotes
And something i found funny Lord of the Rings meets WoW
If you feel we need to add any additional information or we have incorrectly listed something, please drop a comment