Beginner's Guide

Last Edited: 14 Jun 2008

Beginner's Guide

(Your First Day)

The Object of the Game

The game is simply one of growth. You grow by gaining experience. As you gain experience, you eventually reach the experience required for your level. There is an "Experience Bar" near the bottom of your screen above your "ActionBar". As you gain experience this bar grows fills in with purple. You simply need to learn how to gain experience ... that is the object of the game. When your experience bar fills to the end with purple, your next experience will cause a great yellow flash with rays shooting skyward from your character accompanied by the best sound in the game. Your experience bar is now empty, but you are one level higher.

You gain experience by killing "stuff", by exploration, and by completing quests. You could just run around killing stuff you would gain experience (as long as its level is not too low for you). Just running to somewhere new will give you experience. Quests are the real way to gain experience and "level" your character (take your character to the next higher level). They normally involve killing stuff and exploring, but when you accomplish the goals of the quest and turn it in ... huge amounts of experience are awarded to your character. So the game involves completing quests that have you collect items or kill stuff. Normally you have to kill stuff to collect items. The quests are done in areas that are often new and unexplored by your character. You are an adventurer that travels around exploring, collecting, and KILLING stuff. To do this you need to get the best weapons and armor that you can afford, and you must keep it repaired. You must learn to navigate, to use vendors, trainers, and the Auction House. But for now you are level 1 and wearing rags. You must learn to play (gain experience) with the game.

Now that is what this game is about!

Realm Selection

Before you begin your adventures in the World of Warcraft, you should select your realm carefully. PvP realms are Player vs. Player environments. If you are a young rude and poorly spoken young man, this is the place for you. On these realms you can torment other players and make their lives miserable. If you are not an experienced player, Do Not join a PvP realm, unless you want your game time interrupted by rude aggressive young people. If the PvP realm is your "cup of tea", you should probably learn to play this game elsewhere.

PvE (Player vs. Environment), and RP (Role-Playing) realms are in every measurable way the same. I was surprised to see that younger players tend to avoid the RP realms. Folks that like to immerse themselves in imaginary roles and interact in a friendly manner with others, tend to be a bit older and more mature. RP servers do not require Role-Playing and become a normal PvE realm for those that enjoy playing the game as it was originally intended ... Players against the computer generated environment. Make a new character on a PvE, or RP realm to start your adventures. I play on the realm named Silver Hand. It is a United States RP server. Later, I will discuss using your chat box, and in that discussion I will give you a chat channel where you can join to ask for help. I will monitor that channel and help when I am online. If others use the channel, then we can have folks that have been at it a bit longer than yourself use the channel for help with playing the game at your level.

The [Esc] Key
(and the Modifier Keys)

The [] notation will be used to show that I am talking about a key on your keyboard. The key for letter "A" would be addressed as [A], the control key on your keyboard would be [Ctrl]. The three modifier keys are [Shift], [Alt], [Ctrl]. These keys do nothing on their own, but they modify the way another key is perceived by the game when one or more of them is held down while a non-modifier key is pressed. You are familiar with this from the everyday use of your computer. When pressing the [A] key, the letter "a" will be printed. When holding down the [Shift] key and pressing the [A], the letter "A" will be printed. This would be written as ... [Shift]+[A]. In a Microsoft Windows environment, you press [Ctrl]+[Alt]+[Del] to bring up the task manager, or to soft boot the computer. Your World of Warcraft (WoW) game will automatically start in full screen mode. In order to minimize the game window and do other tasks, such as reading this primer, you would press [Alt]+[Tab]. It is aesthetically pleasing to many to run the game in full screen mode and use [Alt]+[Tab] to minimize the window when necessary. I prefer running WoW in the "windowed mode" so I have access to other programs on my task bar. The way to set this mode is discussed in the following paragraph concerning the [Esc] key.
The escape key, [Esc], is an important key for World of Warcraft. The first time you press it, it will remove anything that is being targeted and "escape" from (cancel) any activity that is currently underway. The second time you press it (first time you press it if there is nothing to cancel or escape from), you will be given an options menu.

This is the menu where you set all of the options for playing your game. It is central control. Most importantly, this is where you "Logout" from the game. We won't discuss much about these options at this time, but it is important you know about this menu and how to Logout of the game. In the bottom, just right of center on your screen, is "MicroButton Bar". The MicroButton Bar looks like:

And the "Options Button" (highlighted in the MicroButton Bar picture), will open the same Main Menu or "Options Frame" as the [Esc] key. Now it is time to get the game running, once inside you can hit [Alt]+[Tab] to minimize the game and view the next page. On the next page we will set up the "Options" which will facilitate our learning the game most quickly. Click on the link titled "Setting Game Options" to open the next page in a new window.

Setting Game Options 14JUN08

Here are the links to the next sections, in the order you should study or read them. They will open in a new window. You can keep multiple windows open while playing in the Windowed Mode, and refer to the various topics as needed:

Moving Your Character 09JUN08

The Cursor 09JUN08

The Character Frame and your Armor/Weapons 12JUN08

Oh no! I died (your first death) 10JUN08

Your First Kill (Melee) and Loot! 09JUN08

Making a Ranged Attack (Using your Spells) 10JUN08

Your First Quests 13JUN08

The Vendor (Selling, Buying and Repairing) 14JUN08

Training! 14JUN08

The Chatbox (and Interacting with Other Players) to be continued

Your first Addon (and Interacting with Other Players) to be continued

Drea's World of Warcraft