The world of Azeroth can be more fun than the poverbial barrel of monkeys if you avoid a few common mistakes.
Since it's release back in the dawn of time (aka 2004 aka The Day My Life Ended), WoW has been constantly massaged, tweaked and modified by Blizzard. Despite it's polish and overall quality, that boxed version of WoW you bought way back when was but a wee fetus compared to the pubescent teenager the game has become. Soon it will undergo that magical change that truly lets an MMO know it has become a MAN: It's very first Expansion Pack. But let's not focus too much on that. I've already stretched a metaphor to it's limits, and combined with the name of the expansion pack (the Burning Crusade), I'm actively regretting using that particular metaphor.
So, all topics of anything Burning aside, let's take a hard look at the gangly teenager. The WoW of today bears little resemblance to it's initial incarnation. Classes that were laughably weak have become more powerful than they could ever have imagined (Warlocks), classes that were nigh on unkillable have become little more than an irritation (Paladins) and I think they've almost managed to get Arcane missiles working (a Mage ability. Yeah, I'm referencing inside information in a review the uninitiated might read. I'm a baaaaad reviewer.)
New dungeons have been added, World Events have been had, Battlegrounds have been conquered, talent trees have been tweaked, re-vamped and tweaked again. All of this is perfectly normal in the lifecycle of any MMO and Blizzard has done an amazing job balancing everything and getting enough new content in there to keep the game interesting (despite what the trolls on their forums might say). Is there a blunder or two? Yes, of course. When you've got 6 million plus subscribers testing and looking for exploits the second you put an update live, they're GOING to find (and probably break) things the dev team and testers couldn't have ever found.
All of that is a bit inside baseball (as Scott Johnson would say) though, isn't it? Here's the quick and dirty overview for everyone who has never played an MMO. You click on things, then push buttons to cast spells and use various abilities to kill those things (I'll be calling them Mobs from now on, 'cause that's MMO speak for stuff you kill). Not unlike a digital pinata, once the mob is dead, you click on it AGAIN to see what items/money/etc. you get (aka Phat Lewts). You then have many options. You can sell these items to various NPCs for money, you can wear some of them to improve your stats, or you can use other in different "Proffessions" to create NEW items that can then either be sold, worn or used to make OTHER items.
As with all MMOs, WoW uses the Holy Trinity class concept. You have a Tank (called a Warrior in WoW), a Buffer (the Priest), and a DPS (the Mage). Tanks have a large amount of life (HP) and armor, but do little damage. Buffers have primarily healing abilities, and abilities that improve (or Buff) the stats of those around them. They have a very low armor rating and few HP. The DPS (Damage Per Second) class is basically a glass cannon. They can pump out a lot of damage in a very short time, but if you hit them once, they're dead. WoW takes this basic formula and improves on it by adding hybrid abilites to the basic classes, creating entirely new classes by mixing and matching abilities, and having 3 "Talent" trees per class that you can assign points into (you get 1 point per level, starting at level 10) to modify existing abilities and gain new ones..
The Priest class is an excellent example of all 3. They can, of course, buff and heal like any normal buffer. However, they also have several fairly powerful damage spells they can cast., and you can use the talent tree to improve those damage spells to the point where the priest does almost as much DPS as a Mage. This improved DPS comes with a price though. By putting so many talent points into DPS, the Priest becomes a much less effective healer and misses many of the abilites on the other 2 trees. To avoid getting even more bogged down in details, here's a quick run down of the available classes, and a short description of how they fit into the holy trinity:
1) Warrior - Tank (can be made more DPS using talents)
2) Priest - Buff/Healer (can be more DPS with talents)
3) Mage - DPS/Some Buffs
4) Rogue - DPS (and that's about it)
5) Hunter - DPS (but you can have a pet that acts a mini-Tank)
6) Warlock - DPS (another pet class, but with more varied pet abilities)
7) Druid - Heal/Buff/DPS/Tank (can shapeshift to perform various jobs)
8) Paladin - Tank/Healer/Buff (Alliance only class)
9) Shaman - DPS/Healer/Buff (Horde only class)
Before I get angry hate-mail telling me I'm over-simplifying, I'll admit that's exactly what I'm doing. For brevity's sake, I've left out all the crowd-control (CC) abilites of the various classes and tried to just focus on their primary and secondary jobs. Yes, a Mage can turn an enemy into a sheep to keep it from attacking, but at the end of the fight, he's still got to kill it. Have a huge issue with my descriptions? Write me a nice long email, print it out, tuck it away in a drawer somewhere and read it in 20 years. I gaurantee whatever is on it won't matter, and probably won't even make sense anymore.
So you've installed the game, chosen a class, and entered the world of Azeroth for the first time. Now what? Well, thanks to the hybrid nature of the classes you CAN play by yourself all the way to 60, but this is an MMO, right? Massively Multiplayer means you're never alone. Ever. Even if you want to be. The social aspect of the game is as or more important than anything else. Grouping into a party will not only make you level faster and provide entertainment through some of the long, boring runs from one place to another, but much of the really good content in WoW can't be done without a group of 5 of more. The best items for your level are usually found in large instanced dungeons (shortened to just "instances" most of the time). You'll need to put together a good, balanced group and use at least some small amount of teamwork and strategy to complete them.
Once you've reached the level cap at 60, this becomes even more important. These larger, harder instances (Molten Core, Blackwing Lair, Zul"Gurub, etc) require large groups of 20-40 players to complete, and require much more organized teamwork and co-ordination. You really need to be a member of an organized and fairly large Guild at this point, or you'll probably never go. This is probably the biggest single major flaw with the game, and more than a few players (myself included, until i came back) have quit playing out of frustration. Blizzard has said they'll address this problem in the Burning Crusade, but for the moment that's just the way things are.
There are other things to do at 60 though. You can grind reputation with various factions for better items and money, or you can go into Battlegrounds and try to get up in the PvP (Player vs. Player) rankings. The more kills you get, the more "Honor" you recieve, and at the end of the week, the player with the MOST honor on each server becomes either the "Grand Marshal" (alliance) or "High Warlord" (horde) and is able to purchase items that are unavailable to any other players. Writing that sure makes it sound easy, doesn't it? It's not. There are 15 ranks in total. The first 10 are manageable by someone playing 4-5 hours a night. The last 5 require you to quit your job, sell your girlfriend/wife/children into slavery for extra cash and play non-stop 24-7. But I'm getting ahead of myself. For the player who's thinking about playing WoW, or the player who's just begun, here's a couple of tips:
1) DON'T ROLL A ROGUE. I have nothing against Rogues as a class, but they are severely overpopulated. There's just too dang many of 'em. What does that mean to you as a player? It means that it's going to be very hard to find a group, especially once you get to the end-game content. Rogues are not nearly as useful in a group as many of the other classes, and there's a very good chance you'll end up like the poor kid in gym class who was always picked last at everything and then spent the whole time warming the bench. Rogues are a very fun class to play, especially in PvP, but as your primary character they can be very frustrating.
2) Know someone who is already playing WoW? Make sure you get on the same server. Even if they're level 60 and you're only level 1, knowing somebody can make all the difference in the world. They can help you out with information, maybe toss a decent item or two your way and it just generally makes life in-game much more pleasant. It can be very lonely those first few months if you're all alone surrounded by jaded, angry 60s.
3) If you ARE all alone on your server, roll one of the Holy 3 classes, especially a priest. Priests are vital to team play, and on most servers they're very under-populated. This means that they're in high demand for groups, and people tend to be very kind to the guy who keeps 'em from dying. If the priest doesn't strike your fancy, try a Mage or a Warrior. Both of these classes are in fairly high demand as well, and have very different play-styles.
4) Don't over-research. There is a LOT of information out there on the web about WoW. Everything from how you should play your class, what talents you should get, strategies for boss battles, you name it. Avoid it if you can. A lot of the fun in WoW is in discovering new things, playing with your talents to find a combination YOU like (even though it may not be "perfect" by others' standards) and just exploring the world. If you get stuck on something, THEN go look it up. That said, I do recommend playing with the talent trees on www.worldofwarcraft.com. Once you've placed a point in a particular talent, you have to pay money (in-game, not in real life) to move it if you don't like it. That can get very expensive very quickly.
5) Remember it's just a game. This is key. World of Warcraft will suck up every minute of your life if you let it, and this makes it seem more important than it is. There are countless videos of people losing their minds over an item getting stolen from them or a boss fight going wrong. Don't be one of those. At the end of the day, none of it is real, you don't get to walk away with anything once you quit playing, and life goes on unchanged by the events in Azeroth.
6) Don't buy gold. I can't emphasize this enough. There are various companies out there that are profiteering off of WoW and other MMOs. "Farmers" and bots run by these companies, while fun to mess with in game, can eventually ruin the experience for everyone. The extra gold influx ruins the in-game economy, the bots can make quest running frustrating and overly time consuming by killing necessary mobs over and over again, and on top of it all, if you get caught, you get banned. It's just not worth it.
And that's about it. Oh, wait, the generic stuff. The graphics, audio and pretty much everything else in WoW are absolutely top notch. This is THE defining MMO of our era. Nothing else even comes close. To all the other reviewers who gave this game less than a 10, I say shame on you. What are you saving that point or less for? There has never been an MMO that even approaches the balance, detail or gameplay of WoW. I'll be the first to say it has flaws, but reviews have to be relative to the marketplace, and there's NOTHING out there like WoW.
Happy grinding people, and maybe I'll see you out on the barren sands of Sithilius.
r
P.S. What about crafting you say? Well? What about it? Yeah, I glossed over it completely. That's because 99.9% of the stuff you can make is either pointless or worthless or both. Yes, it's entertaining and it's something to do while you wait for your instance crew to get together, but that's one of the areas that needs some serious work. When I can make epic weapons with my blacksmith, FR pots that last more than one hit from Rag with my Alchemist, Robes that are better than tier 1 with my tailor, etc... THEN I'll say that it's worth the hours and weeks it takes to level up those skills. Until then? Be an Engineer. At least you can make some nifty toys.
P.P.S. Why is the learning curve 4+ hours you ask? Because you (meaning me as well, back in the day) don't have a clue what you're doing until around level 20, and even then I wonder about some people. If they had an option for 4+ weeks, I'd use that insted.