WoW Guide Part I
I'm redoing my World of Warcraft guide. Mostly out of boredom, but also because the old one was outdated and a lot of the information on it was wrong. Most of the information found in this guide is based on my previous experiences with the game, and also on things I've heard about changes since I last played.
Hopefully this will give you a good idea of what game play is like in World of Warcraft. It will probably be rather long and image heavy. I will be covering as much as possible.
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Getting Started
The first thing you need to do is purchase the game. You can either buy the game at a retail store, or buy it online through battle.net
The WoW Battle Chest (includes vanilla WoW, Burning Crusade, and Wrath of the Lich King) costs $19.99. The Cataclysm expansion is also $19.99, and the Mists of Pandaria expansion is a whopping $39.99. So you're looking to spend a good deal of money just getting the game. I think you get a month of free game time for every expansion you buy. After that subscription is $14.95/month.
Once you have the game you'll need to register an account on battle.net This will be your log in and password for the game and for posting on the Blizzard forums and buying items from them and such.
Alright, we have the game, we've waited through the download/install, we've updated patches and now its time to log in. Since this is your first time logging into WoW, you will be met with a window like this.
This is the realm/server selection. This is where you choose which realm to play on.
Type - This is the type of realm (ie; Normal, PvP, RP, RP-PvP) We'll go over this later.
Characters - If you're new, this will be blank. This displays the number of characters you have on that realm.
Population - How many players are on a realm in total. Low population means good loading times and few players. High to full means slow loading times and tons of players.
At the bottom there are tabs and each tab has different servers in it based on that area of the world. The US servers will be all English speaking, while the Latin American servers will likely have a lot of Spanish speaking players.
Normal - Standard server for starting out. Game play is pretty casual, PvP is optional, there are no strict rules to follow.
PvP - Player vs Player combat is not optional. Entering certain areas (known as Contested Zones) will automatically flag you for PvP.
RP - Roleplay servers. Much like Normal servers where PvP is optional, but has stricter (albeit unenforced rules) Names need to be realistic to the setting and you're supposed to be in character most of the time.
RP-PvP- A combination of an RP server and a PvP server.
Part II