noob
Latest
WoW, Casually: What is casual?
Robin Torres writes WoW, Casually for the player with limited playtime. Of course, you people with lots of playtime can read this too, but you may get annoyed by the fact that we are unashamed, even proud, of the fact that beating WoW isn't our highest priority. Take solace in the fact that your gear is better than ours, but if that doesn't work, remember that we outnumber you. Not that that's a threat, after all, we don't have time to do anything about it. But if WoW were a democracy, we'd win.Turtlehead wrote in wanting to know "what the heck casual is." This is a good question, but the answer seems to change according to the context. I learned long ago to explain how I'm defining casual for a particular article, or else face the wrath of my readers. When I write Wow, Casually, I define casual as a player with limited playtime and address my content accordingly. But there are many other kinds of players that could be called casual and we use the word to describe any or all of them. So, is it possible to define the word to please everybody? Probably not, but I'm going to try.
[1.Local]: Shoved into the deep end
Reader comments – ahh, yes, the juicy goodness following a meaty post. [1.Local] ducks past the swinging doors to see what readers have been chatting about in the back room over the past week.Yeah, we know you've already got Algalon on farm -- WoW.com readers are just uber that way. But for the rare handful of you still playing at a somewhat less stratospheric progression point ... How about those patches? Is the flow of new content keeping pace with your playstyle and interest?"The pace of new content is fine – ooh, shiny :)," wrote Julie. "What worries me is the rate at which old content becomes obsolete (which is way too fast). For example, I'm glad Ulduar and Emalon are out. I hate the fact you can't do Archavon without doing Emalon. I also hate the fact that there's no reason to go into Naxx (Pro-Drake, badges, etc.) or heroic five-mans, for that matter. Basically I'm ok with the new content coming out; not ok with being forced to move to the new content the moment it does, however. There should be some balanced incentives to keep doing older content."Is your guild working patiently through the existing content at its own rate, or has the addition of new content shoved you out into the deep end before you were ready?
Sunday Morning Funnies: Play me
Another Sunday has rolled around, and as always, some of the comics are talking about what's in the news, including the sale of BlizzCon tickets, the latest word to be officially adopted into the English language, and the BlizzCon pet! Check out the latest from Cru the Dwarf. Dark Legacy Comics: Donald the Explorer. Experience Points is inquiring into BlizzCon ticket prices, and /rolling for loot. Check out the latest from Flintlocke vs. the Horde. GU Comics: The Shedding. GU Comics: They're Haunting Me. GU Comics: Wait. Ted Said What?. Where do you stand on this issue? Personally, I'm going to take the opportunity to use it in an essay. Check out the latest from LFG. Massive Pwnage: Could be Worse. NoObz: Everything in Moderation. NPC: Payback and The Deal. Check out the latest from Teh Gladiators. World of Warcraft, eh? KHAAAAAAN! (That is my shortened version of the title).
Noob could be millionth English word
Every gamer, at some point, has been called a noob. It's almost a rite of passage and it's not unique to MMOs either. Indeed such is the power of this simple word, which is short for newbie, that it could well become the millionth word in the English language.MSN are reporting that the Global Language Monitor (we've never heard of them either) have predicted that at the rate the English language is growing, the millionth word will arrive at approximately 10:22am British Summer Time on June 10th. How they can be this exact we don't know but various British newspapers, including tabloids like The Sun, to more reputable papers like The Independent, have decided that word is going to be 'noob'. Personally I was hoping for a brand new word rather than one that's been around for so long but we shall see.
'Noob' among list of potential one-millionth English words, logic 'pwned'
Though we're just as befuddled as you likely are by the news, the UK's Daily Telegraph recently pointed out that at 10:22AM on June 10th, the English language officially inducts its one-millionth word. Still not befuddled? Candidates for this esteemed position are products of our social media-obsessed age: "defollow" and "defriend," each referring to the act of removing a friend or follower on popular social networking services Twitter and Facebook, respectively. Worse? The third "word" in contention for the position: "Noob." We'll just let that sink in for a second. Back? Okay, so, according to The Global Language Monitor, words must be "used 25,000 times by media outlets, social networking websites and in other public sources" in order to be considered for official inclusion in the English language. If that number accounts for online multiplayer participants across PC and consoles, we're willing to bet that the word "noob" was used more than 25,000 times today alone. Here's hoping the misspelled portmanteau gets "pwned" by logic and doesn't end up as an official English word. [Via VG247]
Breakfast Topic: The noob old days
We were all noobs once. Well, I certainly was, at least. My very first character was a Forsaken Rogue who used a white weapon way past Level 20. Wanting to better his equipment, I searched Thottbot for the fastest weapon, thinking that the more hits I got in, the better my damage would be. I found out about the Daring Dirk, a 1.6 speed dagger sold by vendors, and excitedly went to Stranglethorn Vale to camp it. I was so thrilled when I got it, a green weapon, I eventually dual-wielded them. A 1.6 weapon on my Main Hand. I felt powerful.That was just one of my many, many noob moments back then. When we first started the game, our very first MMO, my wife and I had no concept of tanking or the archetypal roles and group compositions. We headed into Sunken Temple with our friends, a Warlock and a Mage, and we thought that since my wife played a Shaman who wore mail, she should take the hits. Of course, she was also our only healer. Also with no concept of threat, we took about five hours to finish that instance, wiping numerous times. I look back on those days with fondness.
Breakfast topic: Of Newbies and n00bs
Amazingly enough, there are still many new players coming into the game that need some tutoring. I consider myself to be downright patient. If someone asks for help or advice, I'm there. If I don't have the answer, I point them to one of the many WoW resources that will assist them. At one point in time we were all rookies, and many of us still have many nuances of the game to pick up. I love to watch people learn and grow.Bear in mind that WoW has a variable learning curve based on familiarity with MMORPGs, time spent playing, coaches, and aptitude. There comes a time though, when folks should be pretty self-sufficient. The argument "I'm new" no longer holds water. For example, it goes without saying that hunters should always check their ammo supplies before going into instances and in general, clothies should let the tank pull.
Death Knight's Death Grip as crowd control
I haven't played a Death Knight on the live realms yet (I leveled one through the starting experience during the beta, and am only 79 so far on my main), but I have grouped with quite a few of them now, and the ability that real stands out to me and others seems to be Death Grip. A lot of the other Death Knight abilities are just new versions of other classes' spells, but Death Grip is a pretty new mechanic -- instead of charging or jumping away from a mob, you're bringing the mob to you. And with all new mechanics, players have found new ways to play with them. As you can see in the video above, Death Grip, when chained by a few Death Knights, can even be used as crowd control.I've seen it used in a few other wild ways, too -- it works great as an interrupt, and when combined with a Hunter trap, it's finally a reliable way to trap ranged attackers and casters. And most of the Death Knights I've seen use it for pulling -- they suck the caster in from a group, and the rest of the mobs come with, and group right up for AoE. And I haven't even been to any PvP matches with Death Knights yet -- I imagine the uses there are even more hilarious, not to mention that I'd be yelling "Get over here!" every time I hit it. Very fun mechanic for the new Hero class.Thanks, Michael!
Breakfast Topic: Back to square one
So I finally did it. I transferred my Hunter, once and for a long time my favorite character, from our original PvE realm to our new PvP home. It was the most excitement I've had about the game in a while. I giddily headed off to Hellfire Peninsula to begin journey to Level 70 before the arrival of Wrath. That giddiness rapidly turned to unease when, upon pulling, I realized that I had forgotten how to play a Hunter.I mean, I know my CTRL-1 and my Aimed Shot, which was instinctive to me... but I fumbled around for my Scatter Shot, forgot which bars I had put my traps on, kept pulling aggro because I had forgotten to turn Growl on, and realized that I didn't have a single key bound to this character. As decent as I might have once been, I was now clumsy, slow, and had to -- shamefully -- click on my abilities. Whenever I had to feed my pet I needed to open my bags to select the food because I no longer had a macro for it. Whenever I pressed my mount key combo -- which was standard across my other characters -- I would Track Beasts instead. After two years of not playing a Hunter, I was back to being... a noob. Have you ever had to start from square one? Are there characters you stopped playing for a long time and found that you'd forgotten how to play them? Or perhaps you took a long break from the game due to school or other RL concerns and started playing again only to get completely lost? I'm sure it's happened to all of us... right? Tell me I'm not the only noob in the house.
Breakfast Topic: Noob moments
I've been playing WoW, and writing for WoW Insider, for quite a while now. So it came as something of a surprise to me to learn that I could hearth, after a fashion, when my hearthstone was on cooldown. You see, on a post of mine a couple of weeks ago, someone introduced me to the concept of "ghetto hearthing": get in a group with any random person, zone into an instance, and drop group. 60 seconds or so later, you're automatically teleported back to your hearth point. The beauty of this is that Stormwind and Orgrimmar both have instances in them, so it provides very easy travel from those cities back to Outland, for those trips to respec or check the AH. Anyway, when I finally understood that I could hearth back from Stormwind any time just by popping into the Stockade, I felt like a big noob for having waited out all those cooldowns for the past year or two. Have you had any big noob moments recently?
Forum post of the day: No more newbies?
Malkavius of Korialstrasz posed an interesting question in the General Forums. Is it too late in WoW's life for new players? She told a tale of how a friend got frustrated soon after purchasing the game because of inflation and an inability to find groups. The responses were split. Vylaria of Ch'gall believes that it's not too late for a rookie to get their start. Gathering skills help to boost the personal pocketbook, and even veteran players that reroll face the same problems with finding a group. Cptobvious of Bonechewer believes that it is easier for folks that have played other MMOs than it is for online gaming virgins.
DS Daily: Ha, what a noob
We know Nintendo is about bringing people of all ages, shapes and sizes together to enjoy a quick round of screen-touching. Everyone feels great, Nintendo rakes in the cash and hardcore gamers are getting plenty of recognition. Embrace diversity with Nintendo.And yet ... it's still pretty funny watching non-gamers try their hand at even the simplest casual games and screw up royally. Sure, kindly old Grandpa and naive little sister are exactly the kind of people the DS attracts, but do you still feel slight twinges of amusement when they have trouble completing the most basic of tasks? We love the whole worldwide DS craze and all, but are the hardcore among us (that is, the hardcore that got so upset over a two-hour presentation) chortling silently, basking in gaming omnipotence when it comes to touchscreen prowess? Share your amusing anecdotes with the rest of us!
Ten things every new player should know about EVE Online
There are some valuable lessons learned as you progress in EVE Online, lessons which get pounded into you when making mistakes. There are so many things you wish someone had told you before you went out and made a noobish ass of yourself. Even with the much-improved Aura tutorial that's been implemented in EVE, there are lots of things that still cause players to scream something to the effect of, "Why didn't anyone warn me?!" This is often accompanied by frantically warping away from one's obliterated ship in an escape pod with a liberal amount of cursing. Of course, it doesn't have to be this way.
WoW Rookie: Keyboard shortcuts
WoW Rookie is brought to our readers to help our newest players get acclimated to the game. Make sure you send a note to WoW Insider if you have suggestions for what new players need to know.Accept this fact: to be good at playing WoW, you need to learn to use your keyboard at least some of the time. You don't have to bail on your mouse, but it's very helpful to learn some of the very basic keyboard shortcuts that will make your life in the game that much easier. (Easy is good, right?)Using the game interfaceThere are hotkeys for almost everything you do in-game. You can find most of them by just hovering your mouse over the icons that you click -- as no doubt you may have already noticed. Let's start with the button bar that you use to bring up your Quest Log, Spellbook and other things. You'll see that when I hover my mouse over the gold cup icon, a tooltip pops up. The L in parentheses after "Quest Log" means you can just press your L key to bring up the log instead of clicking the icon. (Don't worry that it's a capital L, just press lower-case L. When a keyboard command is capitalized, it's written as "Shift-L".) After the break, you'll see a list of keyboard shortcuts for the game interface.
Stuff talks WoW stuff
A story went up on stuff.co.nz about the World of Warcraft just yesterday, and I was pleasantly surprised by what it had to say. I tend to go into these things with a level of caution, because most news stories that attempt to introduce you to WoW do so very poorly, especially on sites that aren't specifically for WoW. I expected this to be largely the same, and it actually did start out that way. The phrase '10 million obsessed teens' made me cringe. Luckily, it got better. While the summary of what WoW is has inaccuracies, it certainly isn't anything that would matter to people who haven't played the game. It wouldn't affect their gameplay any. Only us obsessed teens would make a fuss over something like that, and the article isn't really for us.Overall, it's a pretty good summary of WoW for people who know little about it. It's definitely a social game, and if you don't want to be social or don't have time to invest social time into it, it isn't a game for you. I could have done without the partial endorsement of buying accounts, but... hey, whatcha gonna do?
Forum post of the day: Rookie Mistakes
Kemmeua of Emerald Dream decided to share some WoWhead love on the official forums. (And by the look of the WoWhead main page it needs a little love.) He shared some rookie mistakes that players have made. For example: Didn't know there were different Zeppelins, thought it was a triflight system so that if I stayed on long enough it would take me to Tirisfall then to Grom and back to Durotar was on there a long time. Didn't know they people were yelling at me to TANK better, I thought tanks plowed things and that's what I was doing Saw alliance in crossroads and thought, "OMG," so I go an whack 'em and get camped for a day yelling for help. Didn't know how to talk to people. Saw a hunter with dual weapons on a Kodo and thought "WOW!" Saw a raid group forming in Kargath for MC, asked them if I can join, getting told I cant roll with the big dawgs at 43. where do u get liferoot if you can't herb? stupid quest giver.
EVE Online creates guide to factional warfare
Factional warfare is the center of attention in most EVE Online news, given the changes affecting players in The Empyrean Age expansion. While these changes are new to everyone, they may not be terribly complex to seasoned players. However it's definitely a lot to grasp at once for newer players of the game -- much less those who are giving EVE a shot for the first time. CCP Games is trying to dispel some of the complexities surrounding the factional warfare game mechanics. In other words, they're answering the question: Where do I start? They've added a new section to the online player guide, which explains the main aspects of participating in factional warfare. The guide walks a player through enlisting in a factional militia, the consequences of being a combatant, territorial control, ranks, and everything in-between. They've also added new knowledge base articles related to factional warfare, such as explanations of ship restrictions in militia missions and battlefield intelligence. If you're interested in giving The Empyrean Age a go, but your head is spinning trying to figure it all out, these new sites are what you need to get a handle on it all.
You have rookie eyes: a first-timer's MGS4 experience
var digg_url = 'http://digg.com/playstation/You_have_rookie_eyes_a_newcomer_s_MGS4_experience'; I have a confession to make: this is my first serious attempt at playing a Metal Gear Solid title. Back at GDC 2007, my editor Chris Grant kept making references to the flash video Metal Gear Awesome. I was admittedly confused, and he thus dropped everything to show me the video. It took me a long time to appreciate all the humor.Cut to present day. Like war, a lot has changed. I tried playing the MGS remake Twin Snakes on hard mode, only to succumb to frustration two hours later. For today's Metal Gear Solid 4 release, I brushed up on Metal Gear lore, exhausted Wikipedia, and commissioned one of our writers to give me a crash course in the series. I got my copy last night, installed the game, and I was ready to play.This is Metal Gear Solid 4, through rookie eyes.%Gallery-23093%
Parents just don't understand WoW
Rufus Honker IV over at the World of Warcraft LJ has joined a very small, elite community. Like Amanda Dean and Blizzard staffer J. Allen Brack, Rufus plays WoW with his parents. Of course, the elder Honkers make some "newb" mistakes along the way. Mom's got an ammo pouch on her Warrior, and Dad's bags are packed with obsolete crafting materials, outdated quest items, and even gray vendor trash. Rufus's post isn't a complaint. It's more an endearing sigh that "Parents just don't understand WoW." He ends the post saying that they may be noobs, but they're his noobs. His parents look like they've embraced the game, and seem pretty cool to go on about their merry way in Azeroth. (I can't help but wonder if they have feelings on "welfare epix.") I think my own father would be even more helplessly lost in Azeroth, and would cause me no end of frustration. But, I'd gladly handle that to hang out with him that readily. Maybe it's my advanced age, but if you get to do something like this together, you should probably treasure it while you can. Rufus seems to be doing a good job of that.
Cinemassively: The Little Newbie
(This video contains some unnecessary language. You've been warned.)Koinup, a virtual world multimedia sharing site, recently held a Second Life music video contest. Yesterday, the judges, including Codebastard Redgrave and Tao Takashi, gathered to announce the winners of the contest. They picked two winners by jury, and the other was selected by the community.The Community Award went to a video, The Little Newbie, by Alienhearts. We previously featured the work of this talented machinimator back in November, with the first, and only, episode of NooB. The video highlights a moment we've all had in SL where we create something we think is beautiful, but turns out to be not so great. Set to a fast-paced electronic mix, it blends newbie gestures with cheesy group dance scenes typically seen in real-life music videos.[Via the Koinup Blog]If you have machinima or movie suggestions from any MMO, please send them to machinima AT massively DOT com, along with any information you might have about them.
