Behind the Curtain: Learn 2 Play

I should probably start this week's column by apologizing for missing last week. I won't, but I probably should. I'm sure your world kept turning despite a lack of my wittering on for 500-odd words, so let's crack on, shall we?

Assuming some of you managed to stay safe from the murderous robotic Santa this year, you may well have received gifts of new MMO games, and are sitting at home (unlike me) with your feet safely ensconced in new slippers, wracked with indecision over what new vista of unexplored gaming potential you should be delving into. Fortunately, my friends and family understand that my tastes in gaming are (relatively) more esoteric than theirs, meaning that they usually plump for the always welcome gifts of booze or vouchers. What this means is that I will finally be able to pick up Bioshock and the Orange Box – seriously, if I have to dodge one more spoiler for Bioshock or Portal, I may have to stab someone in the mouth.

But that's beside the point; let us get back on topic. With most of the big MMOs having been around for a good while now, the sheer amount of content available across these games is a daunting prospect – where do you start, how do you decide? Do you jump straight in and hope that you'll make it?

Have years wasted spent crouched in front of your computer honed your gaming 'skillz' to the point where you can jump headlong into a game with abandon, trusting that your whichever portion of your brain controlling hand/eye coordination kicks in automatically? Or do you take the time to do a little research first - thinking that forewarned is forearmed?

It goes back to a question as old as computer games themselves – do you read the manual or not? Personally, I've always read manuals. While I'm not a lore buff, I'm certainly a lore geek, and I've always taken the opportunity to learn as much as I can about the background to any game I've played. While games were in their infancy, this was obviously less of an issue – a half page insert in the cassette box of a ZX Spectrum game didn't exactly give much space for exposition.

There are of course, many places online you can visit to build up your knowledge of your chosen game. I'll give you all fair warning – World of Warcraft is the only MMO I play regularly, so if I miss any good sites out, or simply make a glaring mistake, drop me a line telling me so, and I'll be happy to add it in to the article, as opposed to simply trolling the comments below. That said, I'll try not to pass judgement too harshly on sites where I don't know too much about the game in question.

For WoW you have several choices. For all-round, general info, WoWWiki should be your first stop. For specifics, particularly quest, mob or item info, you really can't go wrong with Wowhead – pick up their Client while you're there and help out without even trying. Thottbot is still useful, although I've not used it since someone pointed me in the direction of Wowhead about a year ago. I'm also fond of Goblin Workshop, and I try to make a point of using them to search instead of using Wowhead all the time, just to mix things up. Also, some of you may be uncomfortable with recent revelations regarding the ownership of Wowhead, Thottbot and Allakhazam, so Goblin Workshop gives you an alternative.
Another site I can't recommend enough is a little site you may have heard of called WoW Insider - they do some great work over there, check them out, and once you're ready to take things a little farther, the guys over at WoW Radio will be more than happy to help you along.

EverQuest 2 has a wiki page as well, and while it looks a little bare and functional to my eyes, with over 25,000 articles at the moment it's certainly got quantity on its side.

Given that it's the 'new kid on the block', Tabula Rasa may not have the same size of a community the other games do, but the community it has is strong. As proof, TR has not one, but two wikis dedicated to it. Swing by TabulaRasa.org and TaRaPedia to see which one whets your whistle. I'd tell you to tell them that I sent you, but they won't care, so don't bother.

Just in case TR thought it was special having two wikis to itself, EVE Online has three wikis that I can find; EVEWiki; EVE online Wiki; and Grismar's EVE Wiki. Hopefully between the three of them you can find a combination of quality and quantity that satisfies you.

For Lord of the Rings Online information, you could do worse than visiting the Lorebook – an official database of pretty much everything in-game. It's still flagged as Beta, and I believe it's not complete at present, but it's still damned good. If the Lorebook isn't good enough for you (for shame!) then visit Lotro-Wiki.com and see if they can't hook you up.

The IGN network has a page dedicated to most, if not all, the major MMOs out there just now; EverQuest 2; Lord of the Rings Online; Star Wars Galaxies; World of Warcraft; Final Fantasy XI.

Allakhazam follows suit, with a matching page for almost every game; EVE Online ; EverQuest 2 ; Lord of the Rings Online ; Star Wars Galaxies ; World of Warcraft. Despite said revelations regarding the ownership, some people still swear by Allakhazam, so it's probably worth checking it out.

And last, but not least - another reliable site, and one of my favourites, is Ten Ton Hammer – swing by and have a look at their pages for EverQuest 2, World of Warcraft, and Tabula Rasa.

Of course, you could always visit the official pages for the various games I've talked about today - but seriously, who does that any more? It's almost as bad as reading the manual.