So, you’ve found yourself intrigued by the idea of playing World of Warcraft for the first time.
Great choice. Now, use this WoW beginners guide and learn where to start!
With the tenth World of Warcraft expansion, The War Within, many players play with the idea of starting their adventure in the vast world of Azeroth.
Considering that starting WoW 2024 can feel intimidating due to the game’s massive world and fanbase, newbies may feel overwhelmed by the amount of information to absorb. Fear not! Our new player guide for beginners and returning adventurers has you covered!
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First Steps
Realms
Before you get into the actual gameplay, you should know realms are separate game servers that players play on. For starters, the game will place you on a random server, and that’s fine until you want to customize the realm to suit your playstyle.
Servers separate into Normal and RP. The latter gathers players who want to focus on role-playing. The former offers a standard experience, blending actual gameplay with role-playing.
As you explore the available realms, you’ll notice some gather fewer players – join them if you crave a more solo or pure PvE (Player vs. Environment) adventure.
Create a Character
Whether you pick a realm or let the game do it for you, the next step is to create a character. It’s one of the most crucial steps, allowing for some customization in an already-made world.
The first thing you need to do is choose a faction, and that’s just the beginning of the complicated choices related to creating your ideal character. There are two factions – Horde and Alliance.
Each represents home to different races, so this decision strongly determines who you can play as. Also, each race uses a limited set of available classes. To simplify things, look at this list of races with their available roles.
Alliance:
Human – Warrior, Paladin, Hunter, Rogue, Priest, Mage, Warlock, Monk, Death Knight
Gnome – Warrior, Hunter, Rogue, Priest, Mage, Warlock, Monk, Death Knight
Night Elf – Warrior, Hunter, Rogue, Priest, Mage, Monk, Druid, Death Knight, Demon Hunter, Warlock
Dwarf – Warrior, Paladin, Hunter, Rogue, Priest, Shaman, Mage, Warlock, Monk, Death Knight
Worgen – Warrior, Paladin, Hunter, Rogue, Priest, Mage, Warlock, Druid, Death Knight
Draenei – Warrior, Paladin, Rogue, Hunter, Priest, Shaman, Mage, Warlock, Monk, Death Knight
Horde:
Orc – Warrior, Hunter, Priest, Rogue, Shaman, Mage, Warlock, Monk, Death Knight
Tauren – Warrior, Paladin, Hunter, Priest, Shaman, Mage, Monk, Druid, Death Knight, Rogue, Warlock
Troll – Warrior, Hunter, Druid, Rogue, Shaman, Priest, Mage, Warlock, Monk, Death Knight
Blood Elf – Warrior, Paladin, Hunter, Rogue, Priest, Mage, Warlock, Monk, Death Knight, Demon Hunter
Undead – Warrior, Hunter, Rogue, Priest, Mage, Warlock, Monk, Death Knight
Goblin – Warrior, Hunter, Monk, Rogue, Priest, Shaman, Mage, Warlock, Death Knight
Neutral:
Dracthyr – Evoker
Pandaren – Warrior, Hunter, Rogue, Priest, Shaman, Mage, Monk, Death Knight, Warlock
Earthen – Hunter, Monk, Mage, Priest, Paladin, Rogue, Shaman, Warlock, Warrior
How to play
Starting Location
Okay, let’s assume you’ve created a character. What’s next? Now click Enter World and enjoy a cutscene explaining your place in this new reality.
Once it ends, you’ll find yourself in Exile’s Reach scenario – a starting location preparing new players for their adventures. The zone and roles of NPCs (non-playable characters) vary depending on your faction – but overall, they do a decent job of explaining what’s currently happening in Azeroth.
Also, since the tutorial explains details about controls and interface features, we will allow ourselves to skip describing this part.
Quests
Quests are crucial in any decent MMORPG, as they earn you experience, items, and gold.
All the NPCs around you with a yellow exclamation mark above their head are ready to give you a quest – some task to complete. To get a quest, approach the character, right-click them, learn what the quest is about, and click Accept.
Doing so will change the sign above the quest giver’s head to a gray question mark. Now, you can double-check what the quest requires by clicking on it in the quest list on the right side of the interface or go directly to the map and locate the quest area based on the blue highlight.
Once completed, the quest will tell you how to acquire the reward for your effort.
Exploration Time
Combat and Enemies
Quests are scattered throughout Azeroth, but many of them require combat skills. Exploring the world, you’ll encounter various creatures marked with green, yellow, and red colors.
Green are friendly, yellow are neutral (you can attack them first, but they won’t hurt you if you don’t), and red want you dead. Luckily, combat occurs using the action bar at the bottom of the screen.
It’s also where you can add or remove various effects, attacks, or spells to create a combat skill set that best suits your playstyle.
When you left-click on your target, you can see their health bar and attack them by selecting one of the numbers corresponding to the specific effect.
Death
Combat involves death, so don’t worry if this sad fate befalls you. When this happens, you become invisible to other players and NPCs.
Fortunately, you can respawn by using the Spirit Healer service or by traveling to your dead body and clicking Accept when it asks if you want to respawn. There are, however, consequences to each of these moves if your body is lying in the middle of an enemy base or a battlefield.
Spirit Healer reduces your strength for 10 minutes and damages your items, but respawning near enemies can result in another sudden death.
Sometimes, it’s worth choosing the travel method and respawning a little further away from the corpse and enemy NPCs to prepare for the next round.
Conclusion
The tenth World of Warcraft expansion launch presents a perfect opportunity to immerse yourself in this world again or for the first time, especially since it adds a new zone and a playable race (Earthen).
As you can see, the gameplay mechanics are simple and logical – the more you play, the better you will understand how to use them.
The best thing about this game is that you can play however you want, even if that means spending hours fishing solo in some gloomy forest. Use this opportunity to enjoy your time in your unique style, and don’t be afraid to explore Azeroth at your own pace.