I failed my will save and I'm joining the masses. Noob Questions

[Flood]

I disagree with the Alliance bias for ease of levelling.

I won't deny that statistically speaking there are probably more people where ever you may be as an Alliance newb, which I guess can equate to easier grouping.  However to say that simply picking Alliance over Horde will make you level faster is total horseshit.  I won't deny that some starter areas are laid out better than others for 1-10 (on both sides) but how much time do you (or should you?) be spending at <10?  An hour? 

Admittedly I have way more experience as a Horde player than as Alliance, but I have levelled both factions at least a dozen times to 30ish.  In my humble and respectful opinion the reason you get the "Alliance is laid out much better" arguement from people is that there are more Alliance players than Horde players >> Link<< 

Ergo you get more people saying that their side is "easier".  I can tell you from many long, boring, brown-filled hours of levelling that The Barrens is actually just as efficient as it's Alliance counterpart zones.  No disrespect to anyone here but there's a fair amount of egocentrism going on regarding what's "best".

For example as a new player I wouldn't want to start on an established server (well caveat knowing what I know now) because everyone is an alt that is probably a twink, and they tend to have little to no patience with anyone new that is just online to play and not level as fast as humanly possible to get into HIGH END RAID ENCOUNTERS, because you know the majority of fun in WoW resides in the post 60 game - everyone knows that. 

Just play and try and enjoy yourself, it is a GAME afterall.  Use the 10 days to see as much of it as you can, so you can determine of you want to the rest of the money to begin losing all your freetime heh.

[pants]

Yeah, and youre an Aussie arent you Comstar?  In that case, I suggest either pick Proudmoore (PvE) or Blackrock (PvP) as servers.  They are the 'unofficial' Aussie servers and have good populations in our peak times.

There are official Oceania servers - Khaz'Goroth and the like - but they are overpopulated I find.  7pm weeknights you can get 300-400 person waiting queues (yes, you have to sit and wait in line to log onto the server), and up to 700 on Saturday/Sunday arvos.

[Zetor]

Yeah, the levelling disparity isn't as bad as presented, but alliance DO have an easier time (I levelled horde toons to around mid-30ish, and alliance toons to 60). You can't really beat westfall or even darkshore for xp efficiency. Also, as horde you'll have better access to lower-level instances... you can visit almost all of them, while alliance can really only visit 2-3, as running past lv37-ish mobs in order to get to the barrens isn't exactly a good idea, even with the recently added Ratchet flight path. (there are NO pickup groups for any Kalimdor instance that's not ZF or Maraudon on my server) Of course, doing pickup instance runs might quickly sour you on the game, so this isn't necessarily a good thing. :p

As alliance you'll miss out on Ragefire Chasm (sucks except for quests), Razorfen Kraul (eh), Wailing Caverns (good), probably Blackfathom Deeps (not bad, a bit long), Shadowfang Keep (one of the best instances in the game imo) and Razorfen Downs (pretty good). Getting to Scarlet Monastery will be a royal pain too, but at least there are regular pickup groups going there.
As horde you'll miss out on Deadmines (very good), Stockades (horrible), and possibly Blackfathom Deeps, that's it. You can teleport to Gnomeregan from Booty Bay.

OTOH, with BC just around the corner, these instances will become less popular quickly.


-- Z.

[Lt.Dan]

Yeah, and youre an Aussie arent you Comstar?  In that case, I suggest either pick Proudmoore (PvE) or Blackrock (PvP) as servers.  They are the 'unofficial' Aussie servers and have good populations in our peak times.

There are official Oceania servers - Khaz'Goroth and the like - but they are overpopulated I find.  7pm weeknights you can get 300-400 person waiting queues (yes, you have to sit and wait in line to log onto the server), and up to 700 on Saturday/Sunday arvos.

I'm back in Australia and just started up again on Terenas (edited to correct server name) to try and play with some buddies.  I think they're all 50+ now so I'm just tooling around.  The ping times are painful (hello 400 vs 100 in the US) which gives occassional loot and combat lag.  A new Oceania server opened last month (on the Oceania tab) which might help that.

I'd avoid Proudmore since I've only heard bad things about it.  There are also a few Aussie players/guilds on Silver Hand which may be an option.

Dwarf/Gnome is a great starting area - really well put together, nice graphics and look, and interesting quests (kind of)
The Tauren area is also great, mainly because it's probably the most imaginative fantasy race in any computer game (IMO).
Undead aren't bad since there's some spookiness in design and it's an interesting twist on "hmmm brains" undead.
Elves are OK but be prepared to look at tree terrain for the next 30 levels.
Human is a total pass. 

[Azazel]

Proudmoore is fine. It's just another server. I'm on it and so are a couple of others here.

[Phred]

As horde you'll miss out on Deadmines (very good), Stockades (horrible), and possibly Blackfathom Deeps, that's it. You can teleport to Gnomeregan from Booty Bay.

I leveled an orc warrior on one of the reroll servers last year and managed to get a group to go to deadmines. I saw a lot of people looking for deadmines groups in chat and the guild I joined had groups going there a lot too. Maybe my server had a lot of ex-alliance rerolling as horde, I don't know, but not many ppl we asked were put off by the swim up from gromgul

Bllackfathom Depths is practically a horde only instance imo. Much less chance of finding alliance interested in going there. You could put together a full group of night elves from dark shore I guess but I haven't seen near as many as the horde side. Heck, you get sent to the nearest flight point to it as part of the go to ashenvale quest horde side.

I kind of like reroll servers up to 30 or so. Lots of people making fresh starts who already know how to play and a lot less bs over loot because they are used to doing pickup groups at a higher level. I hear the drama starts up around 50+ but I've never stuck around to see.

[caladein]

Thanks for the info everyone.

Dwarf Rogue and Human Hunter, I shall try.

You can't be a Human Hunter. Dwarves and Night Elves only (and soon to be Dranei).

Yes, South Park lied.

[Tale]

Proudmoore is fine. It's just another server. I'm on it and so are a couple of others here.

Yeah I'm another Proudmoore Aussie. But I've been out of WoW since July (lost interest, may go back for expansion). I agree it's just another server, but the downside to Proudmoore Alliance is that it's one of the most Alliance-heavy servers ... the Horde levelling zones feel very empty. That means more lag and competition in Alliance areas, and very long waiting times for BGs. However, Proudmoore recently had a major hardware upgrade (via a scheduled 36-hour downtime) so it should be performing well. My ex-guildies are complaining about weekend login queues again, but they're only around 200-300 people (queues in the olden days were over 1000). As the original unofficial Aussie PvE server (before there were Oceanic servers), there are still a lot of Oceanic players on Proudmoore. Multiple Aussie-based raiding guilds at every stage of the game, etc.

I'm also another Druid (healer spec, raided to mid-BWL, but did minimal instances outside raids and never set foot in a BG - which is wierd as I spent 18 months as a hardcore PvP raider in SWG). I would also recommend the Druid class because it means you don't really need any alts. You have most of the abilities of a warrior and rogue, with strong healing and OK nuking abilities. And you can spec and respec with a bias towards whichever is your favourite at the time. The downside to that is needing to maintain multiple sets of gear for each role, but your spec generally determines what you wear most of the time (I usually just ran round in my healing gear, with a handful of tank/dps items to switch out).

[squirrel]

Hey Comstar - I haven't read all the replies here so apologies if I excel at repetition. However as an EVE player and an ex-Windhund officer I think I might have more insight into what you're looking for than others. If not: oh well.

First - you seem dead set on Aliiance. Fine. But that's a mistake. For reference I have a 60 Tier 1 rogue and warlock Alliance/Stormscale server and a 60 Hunter Taranis Horde. Whether levelling is easier Alliance side is kind of irrelevant - levelling in WoW is pretty easy either faction. But even with the new clustered Battlegrounds Alliance characters can still have a 5-20+ minute wait while most servers for Horde are now insta-PvP. The better quest and zone alignment of Alliiance is all in the first 40 levels which really are irrelevant anyway IMO.

Second - Class. Rogues and Hunters are desireable in groups as much as any other class mostly - ignoring the tank and priests. The problem in most cases isn't demand-side, it's supply-side. In almost all cases in WoW - particularly 10 - 40 man instances - you want Hunters and Rogues. They're extremely useful. The issues is that they're also extremely common. It's much harder to get into a end-game raiding guild with a rogue or hunter not because they're less desirable - but because they're way more common.


Third - Timezone. If you are an aussie don't be fooled by the Oceanic servers. They may or may not be better for your time slot. For example I have 2 alts in an Aussie Alliance Guild on Stormscale called "Crikey" just because I play odd hours. There are many APAC guilds on PST/PDT servers just as most of the population on the Oceanic servers are PST/PDT folks.

Good luck and good hunting.

[Arrrgh]

Don't go into the Warsong Gulch battleground until you're at least 16. Level 10s get killed by rogue twinks before they can finish typing WTF?.

[Lantyssa]

Sell gathered materials, then buy gear on AH. It's both cheaper and more expedient to do so than trying to craft your own. Crafting is unfortunately a frustrating mess, with 100 different blueprints/recepies and about 3 that are worthwhile. You won't be able to keep up your crafting level to match your character level, so you will always be able to buy better stuff, either dropped or crafted, on the AH than you can actually make. Stay away from enchanting.

My crafting level (except for enchanting) always far outpaces my character level.  Every character I have had has been blocked by the level 20 and 35 skill caps, frequently within a few levels of passing the last one.  I have also made good money selling select wares, even at low levels.  Maybe not the massive amounts going herbalism would allow, but enough to get by.

Of course your milage may vary, but don't be afraid to go with a crafting class if you enjoy that sort of thing.

[Xanthippe]

I have a 60 nightelf hunter, a 60 human priest, a 42 human warlock on a pvp server, and a 53 undead rogue languishing on a pve server.  The rogue got boring for me.  I blamed it on the pve server, but left it before BGs came out.

For alliance hunter, Nightelf is a good choice because of shadowmeld.  So what if most hunters are Nightelves?  Sometimes the popular choice actually is the best choice.

Take skinning and mining for professions and sell it all on the AH for a cent less than what it's going for that day.  At 40, after you buy a mount, switch from skinning to engineering.  You'll want it so you can make ammo later, since you cannot buy the best ammo in the game from anyone but engineers.

(I recently switched from herbs to engineering because I couldn't find thorium arrows for less than 1g/stack at the AH.  Now, Thorium Bars run 1.8g to 2.8g/stack.  Dense stone runs 75s-2g/stack.  So I can make 10 stacks for 48s each if I buy when prices are highest, or I can stock up when prices are lowest and make them for 25s.  The next best ammo at 60 is the ice-threaded bullets and arrows from AV supplymaster at 40s/stack.  I sell arrows/bullets for 60s/stack, and sell between 20 and 40 stacks a day, paying for my own ammo as well. If they don't sell, though, then I have to eat 22s/stack.  This is the AH deposit for thorium ammo, and it's totally out of whack.  I think a stack of greater fire protection potions that sells for 10g has a deposit of only 12s or something.)

One problem with either a rogue or a hunter is that neither are in demand for groups pre-60, and they've very common - but that's because they are fun.  Post-60, rogues are probably more in demand.  Are rogues more gear dependent than hunters levelling up?  It seems so to me, but I was a poor rogue - not much of a dance/move around quick reflex kind of gal (I am improving as a hunter, at least).  I have enjoyed my hunter way more than my rogue; hunter fits my playstyle better.

With regard to pets and instances - pets should always be on passive or dismissed.  The "follow" command is not the one you want to use to get the pet off something, you want to set the pet to passive, then direct what it attacks.  (I bound shift-T to pet-attack, since T is bound to me attacking).

Beastmaster spec is great for levelling up.  Then switch to some kind of marks/survival combo probably.  You won't use your pet much at 60 but for farming/grinding, probably.  Or AV, which is a hunter's paradise.

Also, you might want to consider warlock.  I'm enjoying it more than I did levelling my priest, which didn't get fun until 40.  (She's a tailor alt, so I went to 35 so she could make mooncloth, then decided a mount would be nice, then it started getting fun so...).  I pretty much just grind rep and play bgs on her.  Shadow specced, but rarely go into shadow form in a bg.  I realized I was nothing more than a warlock-wannabe so I made the warlock.

[Comstar]

First night: Fun

Human Rogue. Fun, though there's no in game notes I can see that tell me how to use the "moves". I'm not sure I'm doing it right. I was epecting...some tutorial or something. Either I missed it or the game dosn't need it(?).

It will always be Night when I play right, unless I join a server in another time zone? I got on the new(?) Oceania one.

Got to Level 5..and I need a silver coin to train? Is that 100 Copper (couldn't find any mention of that on the WoW site).

Grouped up a bit with a warrior. Warriors look pretty boring.

I shall try a Dwarf Hunter later, perhaps on a server other people from here or I know are on. Thanks for the tips.


Fiannly: What's more fun till level 20, Horde or Allience? :)

[Morfiend]

Fiannly: What's more fun till level 20, Horde or Allience? :)

Alliance probably. Its defenetly faster. The most atmospheric zone is the Undead starting zone though.


As to the rogue, you will have combo moves and finishing moves. Sinsiter Strike builds your combo points (up to 5) and then eviserate uses those points, the more points, the more damage eviserate does. 100 copper is 1 silvers, 100 silver is 1 gold. Just pick up every thing the mobs drop and you should have eought to train ever 2 levels. You should get your first gold around level 10-12.

[stray]

First night: Fun

Human Rogue. Fun, though there's no in game notes I can see that tell me how to use the "moves". I'm not sure I'm doing it right. I was epecting...some tutorial or something. Either I missed it or the game dosn't need it(?).

Not much to explain that early yet. Just build up your combo points and Eviscerate. Fairly straightforward class until 20 or so (also, I recommend that you solo till 20. Then get into the Deadmines).

Moving around is more important to PvP.

Fiannly: What's more fun till level 20, Horde or Allience? :)

Instead of Horde or Alliance, I'd say the races of the Eastern continent are more fun in those early levels. This includes Dwarf and Gnome zones, Human zones, and Undead zones on Horde.

Night Elf and the Orc and Troll zones are boring.

Tauren zone, while on the Western continent, is kind of inbetween (but it merges with the Orc and Troll zones, i.e. the Barrens, at level 12).

[squirrel]

First night: Fun

Human Rogue. Fun, though there's no in game notes I can see that tell me how to use the "moves". I'm not sure I'm doing it right. I was epecting...some tutorial or something. Either I missed it or the game dosn't need it(?).

It doesn't need it. Read the tooltips of the special moves and soon you'll have a feel for it. Rogues are either all about positioned attacks (Backstab, Ambush) or sword attacks (Sinister Strike, Hemmorage). You use those to build Combo Points (the little red dots on a target) and then spend those points on finishing moves that either do big damage (eviscerate, rupture) or stun (kidney shot). The subtlety with a rogue comes in deciding what combo route to take - what opener to use on certain targets, such as Ambush for big damage or Cheapshot for the 2 combo points and the stun - and then what follow up routine. That depends on spec alot - but by the time you have the talents to make a difference you'll know what to do.

It will always be Night when I play right, unless I join a server in another time zone? I got on the new(?) Oceania one.

I don't think so - I believe they've modified the realtime day cycle somewhat. But it's still mostly aligned with realtime - i see a lot of night. Anyone know if this has changed?

Got to Level 5..and I need a silver coin to train? Is that 100 Copper (couldn't find any mention of that on the WoW site).

Yup - 100c = 1 s, 100s = 1g. If you're not twinking read the description of skills carefully, some aren't worth training until you have spare cash. The rogue skill "Gouge" for instance - it's a mez that also does a small amount of damage, but since the damage is trivial and the mez duration doesn't increase with skill rank you can leave it at rank 1 for a while because there's really no benefit to training it up past that if you're short on $.

Grouped up a bit with a warrior. Warriors look pretty boring.

At low levels Warriors are pretty auto attack - although not as bad as paladins. Once they start to get talents though - around lvl. 30 - they become pretty fun to play. Not as twitch or fast as rogues, but still fun melee class. Oh and Warrior's can currently output a tonne of damage at level 60 with good gear while retaining their defense. A very gear dependent class though due to the way they scale.

I shall try a Dwarf Hunter later, perhaps on a server other people from here or I know are on. Thanks for the tips.

Hunters are an awesome solo class - best in the game IMO. Warlocks are also good solo - but my hunter levelled faster than any of my other characters with the least amount of deaths. Great damage, strong pets, good utility (solo - feign death, traps). The problem with hunters is that there's a lot of them and they aren't really that great in raid level end-game content. That'll change with the smaller group instances in the xpac i think.

Fiannly: What's more fun till level 20, Horde or Allience? :)

In my experience (and i know you asked Fiannly - i'm verbose) Alliance is better 1 - 40. Better quest chains, less zone travel and above all no Barrens chat. Barrens is a low level Horde zone that is both a little dull visually and for some reason has the most inane global chat conversations anywhere. Really idiotic - no idea why the Barrens is afflicted with such a high noise to signal ratio whereas the equivalent Alliance zones (Darkshore/Elwynn Forest/Redridge) aren't.

[Kail]

In my experience (and i know you asked Fiannly - i'm verbose) Alliance is better 1 - 40. Better quest chains, less zone travel and above all no Barrens chat. Barrens is a low level Horde zone that is both a little dull visually and for some reason has the most inane global chat conversations anywhere. Really idiotic - no idea why the Barrens is afflicted with such a high noise to signal ratio whereas the equivalent Alliance zones (Darkshore/Elwynn Forest/Redridge) aren't.

Minor aside:  Barrens chat seems to be largely fixed now, at least on the servers I play on.  The population of the zone is lower, and most of the jackassery has moved to the "Looking for Group" channel, which is global.  So, regardless of where you level, stay the hell out of the LFG channel (unless you really, really need a group) if you value your sanity.

[Phred]

First night: Fun

Human Rogue. Fun, though there's no in game notes I can see that tell me how to use the "moves". I'm not sure I'm doing it right. I was epecting...some tutorial or something. Either I missed it or the game dosn't need it(?).

It will always be Night when I play right, unless I join a server in another time zone? I got on the new(?) Oceania one.

Got to Level 5..and I need a silver coin to train? Is that 100 Copper (couldn't find any mention of that on the WoW site).

Grouped up a bit with a warrior. Warriors look pretty boring.

I shall try a Dwarf Hunter later, perhaps on a server other people from here or I know are on. Thanks for the tips.


Fiannly: What's more fun till level 20, Horde or Allience? :)

The character should start with tutorial tooltips popping up above your right hotbar as exclamation marks. Unless you clicked don't show tooltips on one. If you did, hit esc, go into interface options and click on reset tutorial to get the tips back.

[Comstar]

Day 2...well...how can I put this...

The server is Down? ALL the servers are down? For 5 hours of maintance? WTF? Eve I can understand. Asteroid's have to placed. 30K players on one server and all that.

But Shessh. All the servers AT the same time!?!? For my work time, it means I'm not playing one night a week. BAH. I hate blizzard already.

[bhodi]

There's a reason why Lum made it a keynote in his rant. It sucks. It's down for half a day every week. Yep.

[Xanthippe]

And sometimes it doesn't take as long as they say it will.  My server's currently up an hour and 20 minutes before 11am.

But what is it that they do, I wonder?

[bhodi]

They run all the indexing/efficiency/garbage collection procedures on the database, run the procedures that caluclate and tabulate the honor totals, and do any hardware swapouts that need to be done.

[WindupAtheist]

Have they ever explained why they can't just have twenty minutes of downtime every night at like 4am?

[Rasix]

Have they ever explained why they can't just have twenty minutes of downtime every night at like 4am?

I imagine some of those database procedures take hours to run by themselves (other games like UO and EQ don't have to deal with this because they used a flat file system) and I'd imagine hardware replacement probably takes a bit more time than just hot-swapping a disk drive or controller card.  I'm not sure, but I'd guess the nature of the database work wouldn't be helped by portioning it out to 20 minutes a week and like bhodi said.. honor calcs.

Downtime has never really bothered me other than patch day (which can fuck up the entire day easily) due to living in the US and having a 9-5 job. I know for the couple of Aussie guilds on my server downtime runs straight over their scheduled raid times.

[Venkman]

It only gets me if Tuesday ends up being the only day that week I have time during lunch to actually have lunch (and play). Otherwise, yea, Tuesday Maintenance has never affected me really. Rather, it's them darned kids, since I don't play until they're in bed :)

[Rhonstet]

I was under the impression that the server maintenance today was a little unusual, since most of their outages haven't affected all servers for six hours. 

[pants]

As an Aussie, yeah Tuesday nights can be a writeoff - in winter the server goes down at 10pm Sydney time every week.  Summer aint too bad, its midnight.  Of course, this is when they have their 'normal' times of 5am PDT to 11am or whenever it is.  A lot of times they ahve extended downtime which invariably starts earlier - and that can write off Tuesdays completely.  Our guild just doens't bother scheduling anything on Tuesdays.

Its the rolling resets of servers that suck hard when they happen.  They reboot the server, so its only down for 30 seconds or so, but it resets any instances you are in.  That can suck.

[Calantus]

What server are you on comstar? I have alliance chars on 2 of the oceanic PVP realms and can throw you some gold to help you out if you like. Barthilas I think is the "new" oceanic server, as in the newest, so chances are you might be meaning that one. In which case it's my main server.

[Comstar]

Day...4?

Westfall sucks. Kill 20 of that. Kill 30 of them. Kill 500 of them to get the last furry donkeyball.

If the rest of the game is as bad as Westfall, I won't get past 20.

[stray]

Yep. Lots of quests start looking like that. The best you have to look forward to are the dungeons (and it's not like those are 'OMG it's so great!!' either).

If you're already 17 or so, I suggest doing Deadmines for awhile.

Either that, or go to Darkshore (Elf area....It sucks even worse) or Loch Modan (Dwarf area....But it's rarely populated).

[Tale]

If the rest of the game is as bad as Westfall, I won't get past 20.

Rest of the game is in two parts:
1. Levelling, which you are currently playing - a grind from 1-60 made more bearable by constant questing and Blizzard-style gaming. It's a relatively short grind by MMOG standards, but still long enough that mass media articles about WoW think levelling is the main game.
2. The much larger post-levelling game of acquiring upgrades, beginning at 60. It's so unexpectedly different to levelling that many people quit at 60 in shock, then return to the game a few weeks/months later to try it.

I agree about Westfall, it's less interesting to me than the Horde equivalent (The Barrens). However, I don't think I did Westfall with my night elf character - there's enough to do between Darkshore and surrounds that I didn't really need Westfall.

[Merusk]

The story in westfall wasn't all that interesting. Sure, Deadmines was a great story-dungeon but the quests leading up to it were just crap.  Every single one was "kill a different flavor of Defias!"  I liked Darkshore's overall story (investigating the corruption leaking in from Felwood, which in turn is coming from Hyjal), and Loch Modan didn't have one at all that I noticed.

Redridge is kind of meh. Lots of little stories, no real big picture.  Ashenvale wasn't too bad, though fighting all the Murlocs made parts suck.   

Overall best story zone was Duskwood.  It's worth pushing through to the 23+ range just to go there and do them. I wish whoever thought up all that was prolific enough to do most of the zones. 

[Bunk]

I''m guessing you haven't been to the Dwarf lands yet, and therefore haven't been to Ironforge. It's worth the trip.

I like the Dwarven lands a lot for early leveling, they tend to be less crowded and a little more diverse than Westfall, especially once you get around Loch Modan. Just come back to Westfall around 17 or 18 and look for a group doing Deadmines - it's a whole new experience over the whack a foozle of hunting outdoors.

Oh, and once you start getting a little money, hit the auction hall. Many newbs make the mistake of ignoring it at low levels.

[Modern Angel]

Duskwood is easily my favorite zone in the game, either faction. And Ironforge still wows me when I walk around in it. In fact, it's what sold me on the game (even though I went Horde at release); I remember being in beta and thinking, "Holy fuck, why didn't the other MMOGs I played look like this?"

[WindupAtheist]

Not that I'm a huge WoW-booster, but what they said.  Skip Westfall entirely and go to the equivalent-level zone in dwarfland.  Westfall sucks.