Be forewarned, this is a gaming related post, and particularly to do with WoW.
Dear friends and fellow gamers,

This is written because i am tired of logging into games to spend the first hour or so being a guild’s or a person’s personal PR manager or something along that line. Like everyone else, we pay 15usd a month to enjoy a game, not to be someone else’s bitch. Bear in mind this is written with about 5 years worth of gaming experiences under my belt, most of which belongs to being part of active guilds/clans and friends with many others enemy guilds/clans. And while I have only played WoW for the last year, this is what i have done to be able to justify what i am about to say next:

• I was started off with about 100g by a friend, who walked me through the first 30 mins worth of my WoW life. Thereafter, i was pretty much on my own. I found Thottbot by googling, and while i love WoWhead now, i will still attribute a large part of my learning process to Thottbot and WoWwiki. There were few questions, unless i wasn’t clear about something.
• With WoWwiki, and some other forums/blogsites that google turned up, i planned my gears ahead. I wasn’t always right, but it sure as hell made sure i learn real quick what’s right and what’s wrong.
• I pugged alot. and by alot, i meant to the point where i was honorary guild member to some guilds, i was exalted with Shattrath and revered with others, and done at least 180 hours worth of wiping Karazhan and Gruul. This, unfortunately, is nothing compared to what alot of other people have endured. And even though I am a healer, there were days where i could sit there for a whole day and i still couldn’t find groups.
• I didn’t get my flying mount till about 2 months after I have hit 70. Hell, i didn’t even get my 60 mount till i was half way to 70.
• I did do enough kara to realise though, that i suck at rolling on weapons and armors needed for my class.
• I didn’t have any mods till the week or 2 before i quit my server. So alot of things i have learnt after getting my mods were i was stupid.

To start off with, when you’re new to the game, even if you’re 70, bear in mind that most people have played this game for over 2 years. If they give you constructive advice, listen and play it out before dismissing it entirely. Infact, listen first, worry later.

Here are a few mods (direct download links) that i feel is essential to levelling without too much interruptions to playing, of course there are variance of these, but these are what i used:

• LittleWigs – this covers the bosses in instances that belongs in the outlands. It warns you when and what’s going to happen next, assuming you have read up on some of the bosses at least. Of course, if you haven’t, and something shines big, red and flashy, it’s time to run or shield up, and have pots up. basic survival instincts, darling.
• Lightheaded – from the first few quests (although seriously, if you need help for the first 5 quests ever, you shouldn’t be gaming) right through to end-game stuff, this add-on parses helpful comments from WoWhead. This includes: mob locations, strategies to soloing some of the more difficult mobs, mob levels, quest suggested levels and the xp/rep you get for completing the quests. The mob locations though, is best used with the next suggested add-on..
• Cartographer – One of the best map add-ons ever, you can even stalk your guildies with it! that’s if they have the mod as well. On the flashy side, you can even find attachments that help you farm plants, mines and what not – it can get a little overwhelming though. With this add-on, plus some add-on attachments and Lightheaded, it can pin point you to exact locations of NPCs, quest mobs and quest locations. It also saves trainer locations in towns, so all you have to do is to open the map up and follow the blue dot.
• Inventory – I have used a few bags/inventory mods, mostly so i can organise my bags well and know what i have. While this is not entirely necessary, it is less painful than what Blizzard has given us. And why is it useful at lower levels? it helps me to see, instantly in one window (and not like 50 windows) what i need to freaking vendor.
• Omen – This updates every few days/hours/mins but this is a very important add-on, espcially if you are into end-game raiding. It tells you your threat, and gets more accurate when more people have it. Between 60-70, your tank should be pulling the threat, not you. if you are, and you’re not a tank, then you should know what to do.

There are obviously more add-ons out there, but it can be overwhelming to get too much to start off with. Blizzard don’t hate add-ons, so it’s really ok to get them. Do get virus scanners though, since some of them can be laced with loving. If you don’t get anything else, at least get Lightheaded and Cartographer so you don’t have to alt tab and guesstimate to hell.

Levelling in WoW is very easy, what with quests and the huge amount of xp per mob we kill. The quests for alliances can be a bitch (tried and tested) while hordies have to endure a different pain of their own (Tarren mill offers more xp, but more Allies shoving shit up our asses). The trick is to find one comfortable Zone (there’s add-ons out there that recommend zones too), sit there for 5-10 levels, and then moving on. On a PVP server, it can be an ass because there are asses out there. I have just been camped by a Tauren for the past 30 mins myself, so yes, i know the pain.

If you choose to solo your way up to 70 though, bear in mind that soloing skills are different from grouping skills. Some people know that innately, some people have to be slapped around with it. If you really want to get to 70 quick and painlessly, by all means, don’t do instances. but do yourself and everyone else a favour: When you’re 70, run through at least all the instances in Outlands till you are revered with each related faction before you run through heroics/raiding.

Why is that important? Why are people being asses and checking armory on me? Isn’t being 70 and wielding a weapon enough?

no. The truth and simple fact of the matter is Progression is labelled as progression and made out of reach from fresh 70s (although not so much that way now) because right off the bat, you wouldn’t be able to survive it. Imagine being a fresh 70, with welfare epics, but have only soloed your whole life so far… and then wanting to hop into Karazhan with no clue or hint on how to play your class in a group scenario.

you can possibly wipe people. you won’t just be a deadweight, you will be a walking volcano if shit goes to hell.

The last thing people want to do, is to log in, throw together what they think is an okay group, and wipe on trash mobs. guess who has to pay the monthly fees? not you. Guess who has only, say, 3 hours to play after work? not you. Guess who doesn’t want to waste valuable time teaching newbies how to play their class and the bosses they would have to face? ALSO not you.

It’s not the fun people pay their money for, and soon, if they start disliking the game, it just might be because of you or the likes of you.

The most basic way you can have an idea what you can upgrade to, is to run to WoW’s Armory and click the arrow beside your current gear. This gives you a whole list of (whether you are specced for it or not) gears that you can upgrade into. Spend some time on them to decide what you need, where you can get them from, what to gem them and enchant them with. This is of course, complemented by the theorycrafts that you should have read and have an idea of what gears you should be looking at.

At the end of the day too, it is exceedingly necessary that one should have done instances to garner some of the purple items/gems that can possibly drop from heroics/normal instances to boost your gears. There are some trinkets that, while blue, can be extremely good like the hourglass from Black Morass. Once the instances have been farmed like there’s no tomorrow, you should be more than well prepared to start on raiding stuff post Kara (and that’s assuming you have been farming Kara and Gruul’s too).

Having Gold is an awesome thing. You may not be able to buy the best gears, but you can buy pretty good starting gears from Auction house (at a steep price) or from Reputation vendors. On top of that, if you have an easy abundance of them (considering the recent large spate of daily quests we can now do without too much pre-requisites), you should be able to purchase the gems you need to start off with AND enchants complete with the materials you need for enchanting.

These gold should not be spent stupidly upon:

1. an epic flying mount.
2. an epic 1k gold title
3. the epic riding skill for no particular reason.
4. Aesthetic stuff that contributes nothing towards your gear or progression

Of course, the above is always important, and part of the “fun factor” in the game. Epic flying skill is needed for netherwing quests, but if you don’t buy the mount right off, the point is moot. If your gear sucks, the point is even more moot. If your point of the game is so that you can have all the pretty and expensive stuff, then by all means, spend your gold on stupid shit.

go buy a soap on a rope too in the mean time, it adds to the shiny collection, no?

but if your intention is to raid, is to group up, these are supposed to be the last things to care for.

there are now a hundred and one dailies out there that doesn’t need your epic flying mount to be effective and still earn gold. Farming mines and herbalism does not necessary dictate that you fly faster than everyone and their mums to get to the node. If you are farming at some hours of the day, there’s no one but you flying at turtle speed to the node. so there is no excuse for “flying faster”. Hell, if you are going at turtle speed, chances are the node’s probably respawned by the time you fly there, even if someone’s ahead of you.

and the title thing? are you serious? How’s that useful? “i want to have fun raiding with everyone” but if you are a prot pally with 13k hp, and you want to tank SSC, that’s never going to happen with your shitty gears that you can upgrade with 1k gold worth of mats (aka the tankatronic goggles). even people with the gold to fling don’t necessarily give 2 shits about the ugly ass title. there’s better things to buy and show off your excessive wealth AFTER you have gotten the pretty gears to show off, like the Cenarion War Hippogryph which is actually an expensive, but USEFUL item.

So how do i learn my class, bosses, etiquettes?

- Etiquette
Different servers expects different loot etiquettes. Some of the most basic that you should know is: IF IT’S NOT MEANT FOR YOUR CLASS, DON’T BOTHER ROLLING ON IT! E.G if you’re a hunter, don’t roll on cloth stuff. I know we are all poor and stuff fresh at 70, but that doesn’t mean you deserve all the purples lying down.

The other important thing one needs to know is that every game is different. If people suggests that forums is how the whole Guild communicates, fully uitilise it. Learn your guild’s raid dates, and know that you have to turn up on those dates and hours, even if you aren’t raiding, and listen in on vent to see how they work. Don’t talk, don’t ask questions irrelevant to the raid at that time and definitely don’t spam chat channels. It’s rude, and you are definitely not a priority during a raid.

Please don’t whine about pugging as a , and how long it fucking takes. Hey Sweetheart, we have all went through that once upon a time. There are reasons why people pug, and people still pug. If pugs are hard, you would learn to treasure your raiding times. You would also learn how to save lives in the nick of time. You would also learn not to fuck around for 6-7 hours, because you understand how painful it is to wait for a group.

there are few reasons why I personally don’t pug anymore. I don’t have much time nowadays, not even to raid. So when i log on, i just do my dailies, which in itself can take upwards of 2 – 4 hours, since i do alot of random shit in between as well (not to mention the “oh my god, BGs sucks” factor). I just can’t find the time to pug instances anymore. but, i have done pugs before, i have wiped on trashes before i even met the first boss of even normal instances while in a pug, i have waited a whole day for a group once, only to lose random characters when the group is almost full… etc. So yes, i do understand it’s painful, but it’s a necessary pain to “grow and learn”.

Learn to use vent. Stop whining, stop spamming, and use vent correctly. Interact with your guild, and you don’t have to spam us with verbal tales of your mathematical calculations of how your shots were missing the head and headbox and how it should have been everidon’tknowanymore… just be real and considerate. really.

Stop asking help for everything. Google is your best friend, next is WoWwiki. LFG channel is wonderful, and in some servers, so is trade chat for groups. Help is of course often offered, but you need to learn that you can’t learn if you get help every step of the way. On top of that, people log in with intentions to do their own stuff. If you can’t be bothered to find things out yourself, then they shouldn’t be bothered helping you.

For a personal example… a friend offered to help me do my quests coz he was bored. All i had left in a certain zone was just group quests, so i didn’t mind the help. They were yellow, orange and red when he started. By the time he finished helping me, not only had i have no other quests left in that zone, or the other same levelled zones, i had only gained 2 levels. The next quest is only available 5 levels from then. I was royally fucked with that character unless i grind on mobs.

The rest, go figure it out yourself. by the time you can buy and support your own games, hopefully you have socialised enough to know what’s right and what’s wrong.

- Class

There are many compendiums worth of “theorycraft” or essays written on each and every class. googling can bring up some for you, and there are on-going blogs that discusses everything too. here’s a few from places that i do know:

Holy Priests – Elitist Jerks Compendium for Holy Priests.

Shadow Priests – Elitst Jerks again, because i am too lazy to google too much.

Protection Paladins – Elitist Jerk Compendium, Some Ideas on Prot Gears to look out for.
The Healadin – Elitst Jerk’s Healadin Thread.

BM Hunter – Ami Yuy’s Guide on WoW_Ladies: She also has links to other guides, like BigRedKitty and Elitist Jerk Compendiums. Not to mention, THE Godly spreadsheet on dps gears and talents – Cheeky’s Spreadsheet.

There’s alot more compendiums out there, on top of all the classes and talents available, than i really care to list here. The fact is, if you haven’t googled about your class or cared to find out more by yourself, than you have failed. and if you couldn’t care about your own character, why should someone else care about it for you?

Elitist Jerks have compendiums about everything though, so do flip through them, for both your class and profession needs. If you don’t understand what they mean by some terms or abbreviations, then you can ask.

- Boss Fights

And as to learning bosses? First, grab a Boss Mod of some sort. I am using BigWigs (thus LittleWigs), but i do know alot of people love DeadlyBossMod, which i think comes packages with an auto whisperer to tell people to fuck off coz you’re raiding. These mods tells you, basically, what’s coming up next in how many seconds. On certain bosses, they also tell you who’s afflicted with what.

But, before you can raid with these nifty things, you need to learn boss Fights. Each boss has his/her own fight and it changes with each “level” of health (to put it simply). The basic idea of each boss’s fight and strats can be found on WoWWiki, under their respective names. And then there’s Bosskiller, a site full of strategies, pictures and some videos i think. Even youtube would have some fraps of strats for each boss.

No one picks [ Insert Character’s class here ] up for groups!

Oh Em Gee. Let me surprise you with something – EVEN TANKS AND HEALERS GET IGNORED FOR GROUPS TOO! There are always a few reasons why, and one of the most unpleasant ones would be:

- you’re already known to be a dumbshit on that particular server

- Your class’s has always been known to have retards > intellectuals (reasons why the names Huntards and Retardins have sprouted).

But that aside, let’s look at the real reasons why:

- Group make-ups

At the higher levels, and especially for heroics, one has to be picky to ensure survival, less time wasted and doing the important things. You can’t say “i can’t afford it, i take whatever comes because otherwise i can’t get a group”. Unfortunately, then, you are just wasting your time and everyone else’s time because chances are, with a poor group set up, you will probably just wipe on trash.

you generally only need (5 men):

1 tank (Prot warrior, Feral druids or prot pally works fine)
1 healer (Priests are normally awesomest, but i am biased)
1 Crowd controller (Mage is wonderful, but so are rogues, warlocks and hunters who knows how to use their traps)

and the other 2 have to be dps-es. Druids can morph into cat form for DPS i guess, but someone once advised against it when i asked, mostly because it seems not many druids carry 2 gears.

Now, if you have too many healers (aka 2 or 3) then you are missing out on DPS. It can not only mean a wipe, but it also means a long painful wipe. The same is true for too many tanks. An unproperly specced healer or tank can mean less effective heals or not enough threat being generated – which can again lead to a long painful and wasteful death.

Perhaps, a suggestion i guess, what can help you get such effective groups is to be good friends with a good tank/healer, if you are a dps-er. This ensures group survival and therefore ensures people want in on the group. It helps saves time to look for a tank or a healer, and so you only have to focus on one necessary class – not that it’s entirely drama free either, but it does lessens the drama.

Heroics wise, i believe it’s great to have a healer whose +healing ranges around 1200 – 1400. a Tank should be around.. 450 i believe. That is one thing i can’t remember, since i have always trusted the tanks who have offered to tank to be good enough – and they generally are except for one poor sod. It is generally advised that DPS-ers are at least in blues or welfare epics.

now, if the group’s already filled up except for a CC, Tank or Healer, and your character’s class doesn’t fall in any of these categories or you suck at being a CC, then you don’t make the cut. Sad, but true. There can be few exceptions, but few would want to consider the repair bill for someone’s sake

- Gears Does not fit the casting call

The sad thing is, if you are lfg in Heroics/raids, you have to be geared right. If you aren’t you WILL fail the cut. And that is not an insult to you, but a direct hint that perhaps you shouldn’t jump the gun and hope to do heroics/raids before you are ready. People do armory checks on pugs because they don’t want to waste time wiping, or having you fly all the way to instances only to realise that you suck. Responsible groups would have checked you before you enter the instance, since the heroics resets only once every day or something stupid along that line, and raids resets every week.
Therefore, the only way to improve? don’t jump the gun. Do BGs, run normal instances, get better, and join heroics/pugged raids.

So there you go. This isn’t an exhaustive list of stuff, it’s just a reminder there’s a shitload out there to learn and read while playing the game. If people worked hard for their gears, to play their class, it’s only right that you do so so that you’re not a dangerous deadweight to anyone. I mean, we all play to have fun, and if your idea of fun is shiny pretty things, go ahead. But don’t be a detriment to someone else whilst you are doing it. that is not right.