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WoW Rookie: How to gear up for Raid Finder
The Raid Finder's been out for a week now, leading hundreds (perhaps thousands, millions?) of players to finally get their own, personal bite-sized piece of endgame content. This week, Raid Finder groups are now able to lay low Deathwing himself. It's a very exciting time. Of course, for players who are just coming back to the game, gearing up alts, or just now considering the idea that they can finally take part in a raid, there's a single obstacle that must be overcome. In order to take part in a Raid Finder group, you must have achieved an item level of 372. That number isn't terrible. It's somewhere just shy of Firelands gear, though it's well above the drops you'd get from Blackwing Descent and such. The number is high enough that just randomly doing all the things won't get you there; someone who's hit item level 372 presumably has some idea of what the hell they're doing.
Tips for great success in the Raid Finder
The Raid Finder is now live and active. This tool is probably the single greatest boon to casual and solo players added to WoW since ... well, I'd have to struggle to think of something more exciting. If you can't commit to a raid night or more than one raid night in a single week, the Raid Finder means you can still participate in the raiding game. Sure, your item level may be a few steps behind players involved in traditional 10-man and 25-man raiding. But now with the glorious Raid Finder, you can actually take part in the story. Of course, for newer players, using the Raid Finder can be intimidating, especially if you've never spent any time in PUG raids before now. Grouping up at random with 24 other players is intimidating. You can't just ignore that; jumping into a raid group that has expectations and demands about you can be a scary thing. With that in mind, here's a handful of tips to make sure your Raid Finder experience goes as smoothly as possible.
6 reasons you should care about patch 4.3, even if you don't raid
Patch 4.3 is cruising down the lane toward us. It won't be too much longer before we all get to update our mods and game clients, all the while cursing the inevitable server interruptions and instability. But when we weather that troubling Tuesday, we'll all have the gift of patch 4.3 to keep us entertained for many moons. The question is, why should non-raiders care about patch 4.3? After all, another raiding tier just isn't exciting to folks who prefer 5-man dungeons, solo questing, and a little side PvP. The good news is that patch 4.3 contains huge stacks of cool stuff for casual players. In many ways, this new content patch is the most exciting addition to the game for non-raiders since Cataclysm itself was released. Let's talk about all the things patch 4.3 offers players ... even if you don't happen to raid.
WoW Rookie: How to fight the doldrums and not get bored
New around here? WoW Rookie points WoW's newest players to the resources they need to get acclimated. We featured Wowcrendor's How Not to Be Bored in WoW. Like most of Wowcrendor's work, the video had plenty of satire and community introspection. It also managed to kick off some unexpected discussion. Both patch 4.2 and Cataclysm as a whole are getting a little long in the tooth for some players. If you've been playing WoW long enough, you may find yourself getting a little bored. Short of enumerating all the reasons for that, it's simply fair to say that people sometimes need a little help getting through the doldrums. We have some tips to help you get through those blues and keep enjoying the game.
WoW Rookie: How to pick a good name when all the good ones are taken
New around here? WoW Rookie points WoW's newest players to the resources they need to get acclimated. Especially on old servers, it can feel like all the good names are already claimed. Creating a new character with a strong, iconic name is one heck of a challenge, especially if you want to avoid joke and parody names like McDoomChicken. You can give up your dreams of finding real-world names like Stephen or Michael; the only way you'll grab a straightforward name is to grab it on a brand new server (and we're fairly unlikely to see a brand new server any time soon). With Mists of Pandaria careening toward us with all the excitement of a monk rolling along in a fuzzy ball, now's the time to get your unique snowflake name reserved. Rest assured that every variation of Jack Black you can create has already been taken. Let's talk about how you can create a unique, interesting name without resorting to all the special font characters WoW will allow.
WoW Rookie: How to choose your realm type
New around here? WoW Rookie has your back! Get all our collected tips, tricks and tactics for new players in the WoW Rookie Guide. WoW Rookie is about more than just being new to the game; it's about checking out new classes, new playstyles, and new zones. Picking a realm is the first choice you will make after installing World of Warcraft on your computer. Folks have plenty of different opinions about which realm type provides the best WoW experience. It's almost a personal religion for some players. The final decision about what you prefer will, of course, be up to you. In World of Warcraft, there are four different kind of realms for you to choose from: PVE, PVP, RP and RP-PVP. Confused? Don't worry, that's why we're here to help. You can choose to play all four ream types, if you'd like, although each character can only belong to one realm at a time. Plenty of players have characters on multiple realms; these players go to a PVE realm when they're in that mood and flip over to a PVP realm when they want a tussle.
WoW Rookie: So you know nothing about raiding
New around here? WoW Rookie has your back! Get all our collected tips, tricks and tactics for new players in the WoW Rookie Guide. WoW Rookie is about more than just being new to the game; it's about checking out new classes, new playstyles, and new zones. We talked last week about what WoW is like for someone who's never touched the game. The subject can be surprisingly confusing, after all. Think about the complexity of questing, grouping, PVP, playing with other people, and all the whizzbangs and whirligigs that go into making WoW so darn special. There's a lot to talk about, and it can be tough to compress all that information into a few sound bites. But say you do that. You manage to convey the infinite complexity of WoW to someone who's never seen a Draenei before now. Then you want to take the conversation to the next level, so that you can explain the idea of raiding. Giving a good and accurate impression of raiding isn't much easier than just talking about WoW; after all, raiding doesn't have any real counterparts outside of the MMO genre. How do you explain the notion to a layman?
WoW Rookie: So you know nothing about WoW
New around here? WoW Rookie has your back! Get all our collected tips, tricks and tactics for new players in the WoW Rookie Guide. WoW Rookie is about more than just being new to the game; it's about checking out new classes, new playstyles, and new zones. With BlizzCon 2011 only a little more than a week away, we got hit with an odd request. A reader is bringing a completely non-WoW -playing friend to the Reader Meetup. This is awesome; we'd like to see friends and family of all shapes and sizes at the meetup. But still, this friend knows nothing about the game. She knows the game exists, of course, but she doesn't know anything at all about it. So the question of the week is: What is WoW from a complete and total noob's perspective? Let's start at the most basic of basics. WoW is World of Warcraft, an MMORPG based off Blizzard's hit series, Warcraft. Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games allow thousands of players to share a gaming experience, interacting with one another while they pursue the game's goals. This engenders a sense of community and camaraderie with fellow players.
WoW Rookie: Guide for the BlizzCon rookie
New around here? WoW Rookie has your back! Get all our collected tips, tricks and tactics for new players in the WoW Rookie Guide. WoW Rookie is about more than just being new to the game; it's about checking out new classes, new playstyles, and new zones. Is this your first year at BlizzCon? Don't worry if it is -- we're here to help you. BlizzCon is a huge event, and Blizzard fans from across the nation gather to get their game on. While it might seem like a big, confusing mess, BlizzCon can actually be broken down fairly simply. What the heck goes on at BlizzCon? As we get started, let's throw a shout-out to the Friday night WoW Insider & Wowhead Reader Meetup. It's not an official BlizzCon event, of course, but we've been doing it for a few years, and everyone knows where to go. The pre-party itself is a fantastic time when we all get together at the Anabella (right near the convention center), drink, play some contest games, take pictures, hobnob with celebrities, and enjoy a little show. The party's so good, we stream it! If you're anywhere near Anaheim Thursday night, come enjoy a good time with fellow Blizzard friends.
WoW Rookie: Why you should care about patch 4.3
New around here? WoW Rookie has your back! Get all our collected tips, tricks and tactics for new players in the WoW Rookie Guide. WoW Rookie is about more than just being new to the game; it's about checking out new classes, new playstyles, and new zones. All the news in the last week has been about patch 4.3. Understandably, we've all been going through a lot of excitement. Heck, we're even going to fight Deathwing soon. Amidst all the hubbub, though, casual and rookie players must be asking, "What's in this patch for me?" Huge content patches don't always mean anything new for rookies and casuals, since new raid tiers are often so busy with new 10-man and 25-man bosses that non-raiders can be forgotten. This is not the case in patch 4.3; for that matter, 4.3 might be the most exciting patch for casual players in a long time. Let's count the ways in which patch 4.3 will be awesome for the rest of us. Spoiler warning: Behind this here cut, there may be spoilers, not like the racing kind that hold tiny little cars down to the ground, but of the might-give-away-content sign. Thou hast been warnethed.
WoW Rookie: Getting into Firelands PUGs
New around here? WoW Rookie has your back! Get all our collected tips, tricks and tactics for new players in the WoW Rookie Guide. WoW Rookie is about more than just being new to the game; it's about checking out new classes, new playstyles, and new zones. Chris wrote in to me with this question: I haven't been able to get into successful Firelands raid groups very often, because I only have a 5/7 achievement on Blackrock, where almost everyone either demands a 6/7 achievement or gives up after repeated wipes. On my old server, Stormscale, it was even worse -- Firelands PUGs were practically non-existent. No successful raiding guild seems to have space for a mage, and when I stepped in as leader for the second raid group in my current guild, people stopped showing up! How can I find a guild or PUG that'll take me as I am, and where I'll have a decent chance of killing Domo and Rag? I don't want to switch to playing a tank or healer as my main, since it'd put me back to square one in both skill and gear. While this level of raiding is a bit beyond the standard rookie level, it's definitely a problem that many rookies face while trying to get into raiding. I wanted to cover it here instead of having someone field it in Ready Check, because I think this is the kind of information and strategy that will be important to new players trying to get into progression. (Note that I don't mean imply that Chris is new or anything like that; sounds like he's totally on the good part of the curve. But still, this is good advice for rookies.)
WoW Rookie: Understanding item levels and gear decisions
New around here? WoW Rookie has your back! Get all our collected tips, tricks and tactics for new players in the WoW Rookie Guide. WoW Rookie is about more than just being new to the game; it's about checking out new classes, new playstyles, and new zones. Last week, I talked about a handful of tips intended to be helpful to folks leveling up and getting started in the game. These aren't tips really suited for folks who rock out with advanced tools, nuanced spreadsheets, and extensive experience. I was aiming at people who largely play the game in-game and rarely visit outside websites. (Yes, I know, it's not like WoW Insider is piped into the Dungeon Journal, but we're trying.) One of my tips was that item level counts. Rightly so, commenters pointed out the huge gaping flaws in the statement. A lot more goes into your gear choices than just item level or even quality color. And while my advice is true, going simply by item level is so simplistic as to almost be misleading. So let's talk a tad more about why I say item level counts and how you can use that as a rough guide to making basic gear choices. Caveat reador: if you're at the point you're deciding between two endgame items at 378 item level, you've left the realm of simply going by item level. Even some 359 items trump 378. But at the point you're rocking endgame raids, you've probably got a grip on looking up your character stats.
WoW Rookie: 8 tips the veterans use in their gameplay
New around here? WoW Rookie has your back! Get all our collected tips, tricks and tactics for new players in the WoW Rookie Guide. WoW Rookie is about more than just being new to the game; it's about checking out new classes, new playstyles, and new zones. WoW's a big game, and it features plenty of nooks and crannies for everyone to explore and tuck away favorite tricks. With millions of players and years of development behind it, the World of Warcraft is a lot for a new player to grasp all at once. Even after playing on your own for a while, a player who isn't plugged into the community can miss little techniques that veteran players take for granted. These little hidden features aren't obvious if no one tells you or you don't read about them on fan sites or news sources. Without further comment, let's dive into 8 tips the veterans use in their gameplay. They might help you out. 8. Get some addons. Addons are an obvious go-to method for improving your gameplay, but you'd be surprised how little documentation exists about them inside the game. Essentially, addons allow you to customize your game, change the UI, and otherwise tackle difficult tasks a little more easily. Addons can do many, many different things, so you'll have to experiment and explore. Addon Spotlight is a good place to start. As a note, I'd caution you not get too reliant on addons and let your skills atrophy; addons are useful, but don't let them become a crutch.
WoW Rookie: How to get by the summer blues
New around here? WoW Rookie has your back! Get all our collected tips, tricks and tactics for new players in the WoW Rookie Guide. WoW Rookie is about more than just being new to the game; it's about checking out new classes, new playstyles, and new zones. We're in the full swing of summer, complete with the lurking shadow of a new school year that begins any time now. As guilds plunge headlong into the Firelands, raid rosters get tighter and tighter as faithful raid members eschew the game in favor of playing in the sun, having river shenanigans, and soaking up the heat before it's gone for the year. August and early September are frequently lulls for many players. This downpoint isn't quite the same as "expansion blues," since it's a normal yearly phenomenon. After all, it's awfully pretty outside; who wants to wipe on Rhyolith all night when you could be outside in the pool? While raid leaders yearn for their missing raid members, the players themselves struggle with balancing outside time and game playtime. How can you manage to keep up with the game, even while the summer winds are beckoning you? Here are some tips.
WoW Rookie: How to deal with disruptive players and hate speech
I received this letter from a reader last week. It made me stupid-happy but also incredibly sad. You'll see why immediately, I think: My 9 year old has medical conditions that keep him from having many friends or going outside to play. He has to be homeschooled. For entertainment and to give him a feeling of exploration and adventure, we play warcraft. Other people can be very cruel in real life, so warcraft is a nice escape from that. But wow has gotten nearly as bad. you can't hardly be in Tol Barad or Orgrimmar without hearing "ni$&@!," '$#%," and other hateful language. using the LFD tool is just as bad if not worse. My son plays a prot paladin/holy paladin so that any group he gets in will have a healer or a tank as needed. But the number of "fag elf" accusations we've seen in LFD is discouraging. I'm not even counting "noob" and "you suck" in all this. We're really thinking about moving on if things don't get better. What can we do about this? hope you can help, a mom You can see the happy and the sad in that -- happy that our beloved game can help a family; sad that we as players can have such a negative impact. My initial reaction was to hope this was being blown out of proportion. After all, I tend to get riled about slurs and hate speech myself and do so very quickly. Maybe A Mom was being oversensitive? While it's fair to say maybe kids shouldn't be in the game, families absolutely have a reasonable expectation that they can play together.
WoW Rookie: How to record game footage on a Mac
New around here? WoW Rookie has your back! Get all our collected tips, tricks and tactics for new players in the WoW Rookie Guide. WoW Rookie is about more than just being new to the game; it's about checking out new classes, new playstyles, and new zones. World of Warcraft has a particularly cool feature on Macs that doesn't exist on its Windows PC counterparts. If you play WoW on a Mac, you can record video in the game itself without the help of any third-party program. This isn't a fancy, complicated video, but it's a great first step toward making your own machinima, instructional videos, or fun films to share with friends. Recording game footage through your Mac isn't difficult. When you're getting ready to create video, make sure you have your game set up the way you'd like it. Are the graphics right? Are all of your addons in order? Trust me: People care about your UI setup when they see game footage, and it will matter to them. Once you have those things in order, it's time to get started.
WoW Rookie: How to learn about raiding through heroics
New around here? WoW Rookie has your back! Get all our collected tips, tricks and tactics for new players in the WoW Rookie Guide. WoW Rookie is about more than just being new to the game; it's about checking out new classes, new playstyles, and new zones. We all know that you should do heroic 5-mans before you start raiding. It's more than just a maxim or saying; you need the gear, experience, and practice. But a reader recently mailed me and asked: I've only been trying to do endgame for the last few months, since I didn't have time while working a full time job. Now, I am trying to learn how to raid by doing heroic dungeons. It's going pretty rough and I'm getting some pretty good gear but I have a question. Ignoring the gear itself, what am I getting out of these dungeons? Do raid bosses actually work anything like heroic bosses? It's a fair question, and I can see how someone new to the endgame might feel frustrated at not being in the "real" game. The bad news is that raid bosses often do work a little differently; some tactics and maneuvers that exist in raiding have no correlation to 5-man dungeons. For example, you never swap tanks in 5-man instances because you only have one tank at a time. But all is not lost. It might actually surprise you how many raid boss tactics mirror 5-man encounters. Let's take a look at some of the T11 bosses and which 5-mans might help prepare you for them. (We're looking at T11 bosses because, admittedly, you shouldn't go straight from 5-man heroics to the Firelands.)
The Classifieds: Civilized leveling while wearing top hats
The Classifieds brings you weekly news from around the WoW community, including our famous Random Acts of Uberness shout-outs to players who make your WoW sessions memorable. People constantly seek new and interesting ways to level up. The idea of leveling as a unique snowflake is attractive, and finding a particular quirk for your own gameplay adds a lot of depth to the game. We have another entry to the tome of interesting leveling: I decided I wanted to do something similar with my 9th character I'd level to 85. I made a Warlock named Seduceyöu on my main server, Khadgar, and leveled it all the way from 12 (when i got the worgen top hat) to 85 with the hat on the whole time. Was wondering if I was the 1st one to ever do this, or if there is a way to find out if I am the 1st to do this? Well, intrepid readers, how about it? Do any of you know someone who leveled wearing a top hat the entire time? I find this particularly interesting, since I'm one of those folks who consider worgen who earned their top hats to be the true Gilneans. In other news, WowDataTooltip is putting together an exciting internet gadget for WoW fans. Using the new API release from Blizzard, the tooltip displays character information when you hover over a link to Battle.net. That's some pretty exciting stuff for the future.
WoW Rookie: How to look up your character online
New around here? WoW Rookie has your back! Get all our collected tips, tricks and tactics for new players in the WoW Rookie Guide. WoW Rookie is about more than just being new to the game; it's about checking out new classes, new playstyles, and new zones. If you're anything like me, you like to take a moment here and there to check out your character online without actually logging into the game. Maybe you're on a break at work, just doing background research into gear, or otherwise just goofing off on a computer. Essentially, you'd like to look at your character without getting in the middle of the game. The Armory was a common way to share information about your character with other people. All of your official forum posts link automatically to your Armory profile, and it's easy to post to a link to your Armory on unofficial forums and emails. Over its existence, the Armory has continued to become more powerful. It can help you find potential upgrades, find out where gear dropped, and more. Along the way, of course, the Armory also became more complicated. While Blizzard is transitioning away from the classic Armory, most of the functionality still exists just fine on the Battle.net WoW site. Here's a walk-through of some basic things you can use the Battle.net Armory to do.
WoW Rookie: How to buy someone a gift from the pet store
The Blizzard pet store was introduced nearly two years ago, giving players the opportunity to drop a handful of dollars on fun, interesting in-game pets. Yet the pet store has always been fairly controversial. Paying for in-game content, no matter how little effect that content might have on gameplay itself, simply runs counter to the beliefs of many long-time WoW players. To me, however, the pet store seems like a exciting new opportunity for gift giving. After all, noncombat pets are only $10, and even mounts are only $25. That's a perfect price range for a "thinking of you" gift, making pets and mounts wonderful little nothings to give to a loved one. If you've not given a gift from the Blizzard Store before, the process can seem a little intimidating. Here's a simple guide on how to buy someone a gift from the pet store.
