WoWGrrl's World » alliance

Wailing Caverns via Dungeon Tool = Tests Galore!

Valdesta — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 18:55:40 +0000

My wee tanks on Alliance side are progressing through a few different instances, with Wailing Caverns being one of the ones that comes up regularly whenever I put myself into the Dungeon Tool.

Wow, what a series of tests that instance is!

Dungeon Tool Is No Way To Learn Wailing Caverns

Dancing Dranaei Tank

This is the first conclusion I've come to, after running 3-4 full WC's on my Druid and my Warrior, and many failed attempts on my Shaman healer.

The logic behind the statement is that Wailing Caverns is a twisty, turny, confusing instance at the best of times, but if you're trying to learn the route, the Dungeon Tool is likely NOT going to be your friend.

This isn't to say that it will ALWAYS not be your friend, but by and large, when I get into a Wailing Caverns group, it's a partially complete run, and your first job will be to find your dungeon mates.

Without dying to wandering slimes.

Wailing Caverns Test #1 and 2: Find Your Teammates (Without Dying)

I got into a fresh Wailing Caverns the other day and while it's a long journey to the end, I personally think that's the best way to get into this particular dungeon, unless you know the route through the instance by heart (which I do, which is why I'm comfortable tanking it).

The party itself was well-built, with a solid heal/tank team and DPS who did their job without causing extra mayhem.

Team Wailing Caverns

We progressed nicely until running into a bit of extra Druid aggro which resulted in our healer being put to sleep, which resulted in my death, and the scattering of the rest of the group as they panicked and tried to run for the instance door.

The instance door, of course, was too far away for those panicky people to get to, so everyone died and everyone had to run back. (Note to dungeoneers: Fight to the death. Defend someone who can resurrect, to the point of dying yourself. Don't run, it's unlikely you'll make it anyway)

One damage dealer decided to take a Spirit Rez, and then eventually left the group, and the trials of finding a successful new party mate began, while our team continued through the instance, four-manning the content.

We then went through three DPS - and watched each of them die (to slimes, they confirmed) as they tried to get to us. Each of the three waited for a full minute for a resurrection that was never to come, and had to be told to release and run back.

"We're too far in to run back to get you, so run back and be careful not to aggro the slimes again" was what I told each of them. (yay for alt + arrow up, repeating your history of chats)

So they'd release, and try to run back, but being Alliance folk who didn't make a huge home of The Barrens in order to learn the route to Wailing Caverns, all three ended up leaving the party before they found the instance door.

Meanwhile, our team is continuing to progress further and further into the instance, making it more and more difficult for someone unfamiliar with the instance to find us.

Finally one of the DPS make their way to us successfully. We're nearly at the end by the time they do.

Wailing Caverns Test #3: How's My Jumping Skills?

Deep in Wailing Caverns, there are two different places where players need to jump over a gap in the floor in order to progress.

The first Jump Test is the biggest - jumping onto, and then off of, a boulder that connects two hallways.

We've all failed this Jump Test as newbies in Wailing Caverns. This gives us patience to wait for the others who are currently working to pass the Jump Test for the first time, but it also gives us special pleasure as we watch you jump.

And fail.

And Jump again.

And fail again.

It's a little sadistic, but once you can reliably pass the Jump Test, you'll probably get some kind of sick pleasure out of watching others learning the skill as well.

This recent run we had two members who were new to Wailing Caverns and hadn't practiced nor passed the Jump Test yet. They both fell down five times each and had to run back around the loop to try again before they made it across.

Thankfully, the second Jump Test is a lot friendlier in that while the fall down is completely brutal for getting back up, the distance one has to cover in order to "pass" the test is a lot shorter than the first one. Nobody failed the second Jump Test, thankfully.

Wailing Caverns: Good Practice Keeping Focussed

Final Boss In Wailing Caverns

Ultimately, this dungeon (and Blackrock Depths would be similar I'd imagine) is a great one for giving players practice at "letting go".

Letting go of the thought that we should run back to escort a new player.

Letting go of the expectation of having a clear run through to the dungeon group if you join part way through.

Letting go of the thought that it takes 5 to progress through an instance well.

Letting go of the thought that all lowbie instances are fast and easy, and above all, letting go of the thought that dungeons have a linear path from start to finish.

What a great place!

Playing the Battlefields in World of Warcraft

Valdesta — Mon, 27 Mar 2006 15:39:13 +0000

A strong underpinning of the World of Warcraft is the ongoing war between the Alliance and the Horde. Good vs Evil, Light vs Dark... a battle that will never truly end.

As members of either faction, you can take part in the war effort in many ways - raiding Alliance territory, providing supplies needed for war to open the gates to AQ, and what we're talking about here... the Battlegrounds or Battlefields, which are specifically set up for Player vs Player competition and are outside the game's regular map.

Why Play The Battlefields?

Players do not enter the Battlefields to gain experience for advancing their character to the next level, although some experience is earned when the Battlefield reward coupons are turned in.

Mainly, players enter into the Battlefields to engage in a practice called "Player Killing". In the battlefields, aside from the steps that need to be taken to "win", there is a lot of player-vs-player (PvP) action in the format of two warring factions clashing. Every battlefield you enter, you can pretty much guarantee you will be killed at least one time, even if you're not trying to kill others. (note: there is no equipment degradation when you die in the battlegrounds)

So, why not go in there ready to kill as many alliance as get in your way??!

No Experience For My Effort??!

While you do not get experience for killing players from the other faction in the Battlefields, you DO get something for the effort - Honor with the different groups in your faction.

Honor itself is what is used for player ranking in the PvP arena. Players who gather honor are rewarded with Military titles as they progress and gather more honor. Each week with the Tuesday morning update the prior week's honor is calculated and some players will find themselves promoted a rank or two, or even demoted a rank or two.

And continuing on, the military ranks players earn through their Battlefield and other PvP efforts earn the player the right to purchase special equipment, food, drink and trinkets which are superior quality to those found in shops and in the majority of drops one could attain at their level.

Won't I Get Pounded By Lvl 60's?

Glad you asked! ;)

The battlefields have level ranges: 10-19, 20-29, 30-39, 40-49, 50-59, 60

So, you'll be faced with some tough folks for sure, but not ones that are completely out of range for you to contribute to killing.

Cool! Let's Form A Party And Join The Battlefields!

Great! Glad to hear that you're interested in trying it out. Now, some important information for players to understand as you head into the battlefields for the first time:

Join the main raid - since all those in the same raid party get honor shared for things like capturing/returning flags and honorable kills, everyone in the battlefield tends to join one big raid group to facilitate as much honor as possible for every member. For this reason, even if you join as a group, disband your party and say "invite please" or find a way to get into the main raid group.
The team is 10 ppl big - even if you enter with friends or guildmates, it's difficult to stick together because different players have different playing styles. Therefore, try to think of the entire raid group as your "team" even if you don't know them.
Do your best, but don't worry - even if you're brand new to the battlegrounds, just do your best. We all start out new at some point, and all have to figure out how to get our PvP feet under us, so don't worry about letting the team down in the mean time. If anyone's squawking at you over the raid line or through chats, just ignore them.

Battlegrounds can be started at level 10 with the Warsong Gulch "capture the flag" Battlefield. When you get to level 20 you can start to enter Arathi Basin, and at level 51 you can enter Alterac Valley.

How Do I Sign Up?

Look for Battlemasters in any large city - Origrimmar, Thunder Bluff, and Undercity all have battlemasters for fellow Hordelings.

Alternatively if you're going in with a friend or a guildmate, party up and get them to put the party in the queue. You can then leave the party and you will still be in the queue for the battlefield. When you come out, you will come out in front of the same Battlemaster your friend queued you both up from.

When Do We Play?

The games can happen at any time during the day or night, as soon as player requirements are met on both the Alliance and Horde side.

For instance, if there are 5 or more Alliance and 5 or more Horde in the queue for Warsong Gulch, a game will begin.

The evening is the best time to try to get into the Battlefields, although mid-day (near lunch) is also good.

Join in and if you're in my level range in Zul'jin, say hello! (or cheer me if you're alliance ;) )

Responding to Rizzo the Troll Hunter

Valdesta — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 15:35:33 +0000

Hey cool, I have my first repeat noter :)

Rizzo is a Troll Hunter living in the World of Warcraft realm, Alexstrazsa.

Seems like we're about the same "size" in the game, and maybe going through some of the same experiences and quests these days! Certainly we've shared some similar experiences in the PvP portion of the game, although I'm envious - Rizzo has made it into Arathi Basin and actually played!!

I'd put myself into the queue for Arathi Basin about 25 times in the 20-29 range and NEVER got into a game. Either the existing game was lasting huge amounts of time, or - more likely - there simply weren't enough people in Zul'jin signed up to play that battlefield.

I'm finding that the 30-39 range is bad for even Warsong Gulch, which I could get into with no problems during 20-29, except in the really low-population times of wee hours of the morning. In the 30-39 range in Zul'jin there just aren't enough people in the queue for WSG to play very often... I have a friend who got demoted with this week's update because they haven't been gathering enough honor because it's so tough to find an active game nowadays. I sure hope the 40-49 range is better!!

As for the Horde vs Alliance imbalance and its affect on the psyche of the team that loses over and over... I've certainly run across some tough Alliance groups in WSG in the 20-29 range in Zul'jin, and I've certainly lost over and over to the Alliance on some nights. I remember one night in particular where the Alliance group had a whole whack of lvl 29 Shamen and it was Horde blood that spilt more regularly that night, for sure!

Overall, however, I find that the Horde does really well in the battlegrounds and there's enough winning to go with the losing that I find it fun and something I want to return to each time I play. I get some games where the Alliance players completely ignore Hunters and others that attack from afar, and some games where I seem to be a primary target every time I come into the area. I've met some good fighters from the Alliance side but have never really tried to communicate that to them.

When it comes to the age of the players, I'm personally quite happy with World of Warcraft. I come from RuneScape which has a significant % of player base being "free" players, not paying a membership each month, and the demographic attracted to that game is predominantly 8-13 year olds. In comparison, World of Warcraft has a lot more adults. I've actually not really run into too many annoying kids. Sometimes the General line gets annoying and I turn it off for a while, and it's true that I don't "hang out" with other players in the same game area (which might attract annoying people trying to be cool with the hang out group)... but so far so good in my experience.

I think the "annoying player conundrum" has another big difference between World of Warcraft and RuneScape - on RuneScape, every player who is logged in at the same time as me can send a message I can see, whereas on World of Warcraft, you have to be logged into my realm and be a part of my faction to communicate where I'll see. This severely restricts the beggars that somehow don't get screened by the $15/month subscription fee.

And on the subject of login queues during the prime time hours, Zul'jin gets pretty backed up as well, I've seen queues of up to 600 or so. Fortunately there's been some transferring of characters off of our server to another PvE one recently and I do notice the difference when logging in as a result. However, sometimes when the queues are long for getting into my primary home of Zul'jin I'll spend some time contributing to the Warcraft Realms census project by logging into servers on their "most wanted" list and using the Census+ UI Addon to gather logged-in-player information (while I play the character on that Realm).

Once I've logged into 3-4 other Realms to take a Census, I'll happily wait in the Zul'jin queue to play. I can blog in the meantime anyway, and generally it takes no more than 15 minutes to get logged in during peak hours.

My Sen'jin character, the Gnome Mage is part of the Alliance but I haven't really played with her very much to know much about the Alliance folk. I think I should actually create an Alliance char on Zul'jin so I can get into the battlefields and see if there's any kind of strategy that is being pushed around regularly for Alliance... I agree with the "know thine enemy" part of things! But I've always gone on the strategy of one player per Realm, because then I have a few realms to choose from when my main realm is queued to the hilt.

Thanks for your notes! Great to hear from you!!

TTFN

Valdesta
Lvl 34 Troll Hunter, Zul'jin

PvP fun continues in World of Warcraft

Valdesta — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 21:37:08 +0000

Yo!

I'm not at my home computer right now or I'd log in and get a picture of my new PvP rank - I'm a Grunt. In the Horde, that's the second rank and therefore it has two stripes. It's equivelent to the rank of Corporal on the Alliance side.

PvE Gear Guides

Don't Dungeon in your PvP gear! Learn where to get great PvE gear.

WoWGrrl's Playing Guides

Guides By WoWGrrl

My last couple of games of Warsong Gulch's capture the flag game as a lvl 29 were great, I even captured the flag for the first time. As a Hunter I'm generally "support" of the guy going for the flag but I thought I'd go for it myself a couple of times and I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to get the flag and bring it all the way back to our base with little trouble that game.

Of course, now that I'm in the 30-39 range and I'm lvl 32 myself, getting anywhere near the flag is much more of a challenge, but I shall persevere (osu!)!

I've played 3 rounds of WSG since hitting level 30 and the new category that comes along with that (fighting against lvl 30-39's instead of 20-29's), and it sure is different than the previous level grouping!

First of all, the number of kills in a game is usually way lower than the 20-29 range. I guess the 29's are a lot more powerful than the 20's, or the teams are more organized by the time they get to the 30-39 range so the 30's are getting more defense from their teammates when the 39's attack. I tend to think it's just the power differential, but maybe it's just my limited experience, too.

Secondly, the rounds tend to go a lot longer than they did during the 20-29 games. Usually with the 20-29 range I could get into a game within 15 minutes, but now sometimes I'm waiting an hour for the previous game to end. I'd imagine the length of the game skews my thoughts of the # of kills per game but I don't think the 20-29 ones regularly went as long as the higher category's.

I did pretty well even though I was lvl 31 against a lot of 39's. In fact, one time when I was the only person tailing a guy who picked up our flag, my pet and I got him distracted enough that he, at level 38, stopped running with the flag and decided to take me on directly to try to get rid of me. But once he broke off from running and started on me he could see he had a lot less hit points than myself and my pet and we were knocking them down further more quickly than he could knock me down. So... he started to run again, but then came back and attacked me again... and one of my teammates caught up with us and helped me finish the guy off.

I came out of the night with 24 honorable kills from those three rounds. I tried to play a round last night but they were taking too long for me to get in before it was time for bed. Ah well, I'll try again tonight!

Horde -vs- Alliance, races at war, Battlegrounds (BGS)

Valdesta — Sun, 15 Jan 2006 21:29:58 +0000

History

I've played RPGs for a long time - the first one I remember was on the Commodore Pet, and when I got my Commodore 64 I had to run a "Pet emulator" (which sounds cooler than it was) to be able to continue to play Dungeon.

When I left home and went to my only year of University in 1991, I got onto the Internet and was introduced to MUDs online. Text-based multi-user dimensions that were much like the Zork series I had played on my '64 while I still lived at home with my folks, except there were other people playing.

On the MUDs I played, I never ever got into Player Killing (PKing) because I found it annoying. I was definitely a Player-vs-Environment (PvE) player, preferring my opponents to be "stupid" in the way that only computer-generated, low-tech beings can be.

I finally got into some Player-vs-Player (PvP) action in RuneScape, by playing Castle Wars (their name for "capture the flag"). I found Castle Wars to be a great lot of fun, mainly because death meant very little, and the whole point was to keep going and not worry about "concequences".

Warsong Gulch

Now, in World of Warcraft, I'm getting into the long-standing war between the Horde and the Alliance by participating in the Battlegrounds.

At level 10 you can start getting into the Warsong Gulch (aka WSG, aka "capture the flag") battleground and you'll be placed in an Instance that contains other folks from level 10 thru to level 19. I didn't start until level 21, so I've been playing in the same 20-29 level range Instance throughout my experience with it.

What a great lot of fun! Sure, sometimes I get killed 14 times in a round but I've also gained a respectable number of honorable kills, killing blows and honor points myself so it all works out.

Apparently I am told I have to wait until Tuesday for the new ranks to be handed out. Right now I'm essentially rankless.

Arathi Basin

AB is another Battleground that I'm high enough level to get into, but it doesn't have a 10-19 play range like WSG does - you have to be at least lvl 20 to get in. I haven't checked this one out but the game played is different than in WSG, in AB it's a 'resource collection' task. I'll write about it when I dive into there, but for now I'm having fun with WSG.

Rewards For Participating

I don't know exactly how it works, perhaps the WoW website gives that info but I'm too lazy to check - all I know is that after a round of killing and being killed, I end up with items in my inventory that I can trade with an NPC near the battleground master. Three of these (insignia's?) are worth 25 silver coins and 1200 experience, which is a nice payout for a low level!

In addition to the financial payout, there's the honor points accumulated, and the Honorable Kills, plus you get a military title applied before your player name once you get a rank!

Plus it's fun to change focus occasionally and kill other players instead of killing mindless monsters.

Plus hey, maybe you'll make a few new friends for killing those mindless monsters and completing more quests on the outside, so you can get big, burly and strong for the Battlegrounds!!

World of Warcraft addons, Census+ and CosmosUI

Valdesta — Fri, 06 Jan 2006 15:32:40 +0000

The last couple of days I've spent a bunch of time fiddling around with Add-ons to World of Warcraft.

Specifically, I installed Cosmos UI (user interface), Census+ and something to make the upload process for the census results easier, a program called UniUploader.

I installed them just before the 1.9 patch came out, so I had the lovely experience of immediately having to upgrade/re-install the software since there were oddities or outright problems.

Actually, the only REAL problem I've had is that I cannot get UniUploader to work for me. Or, if the uploading is going on, it's not crediting to my account on WarcraftRealms and since I'm uploading Census data not only to be nice but also to perhaps see my name on the top contributor's list, that's not cool.

CosmosUI

At any rate, CosmosUI has a whole bunch of helpful little things all bundled into one package, like a bitty script that automatically closes your loot window if there's nothing in it, and prints a message to your chat screen about how there was no loot to get. Plus, when you're looting and there ARE things to pick up, there's another script that makes the loot window come up right under your mouse, and if there are three objects in the window all you have to do is click three times and the script will move the window so the objects are under your mouse for each click. How cool is that??!

Census+

Census+ is pretty self-explanatory if you take a peek at the website I've referenced. It's statistical information about the population of characters on World of Warcraft, broken down in almost every way imaginable. The data those graphs are based on is data that has been gathered by players like you and I by using the Census+ mod as we play, letting it do a bunch of 'who' queries to gather data about the players online at the time. If you shut off its verbose printing feature (which is off by default) you'll hardly even know it's running, except for the fact that you have to upload the Census data file every once in a while.

UniUploader

That's where UniUploader was supposed to come in and make things easier... but I can't seem to get the uploader to work for whatever reason - at least it doesn't credit me the same way I get credited when I do my own uploads. So... I canned UniUploader and I guess I'll just do my uploads manually every few days.

It's too bad, tho, because I had done a lot of world-hopping to gather my data and I think UniUploader thought it was doing its job just fine and therefore it deleted the data that had "already" been submitted, each time a new submission "went out".

Ah well, I guess now that I have it "figured out" I'll be okay.

[Jan 10/06 note: After reviewing some forum discussions on the "no file found" topic, I removed version 2.3 of UniUploader and went to v 2.1.2 and the auto-upload function now works just fine]

WoW MMORPG acronyms

Valdesta — Fri, 06 Jan 2006 10:28:28 +0000

Thanks to Blizzard Support for this info!

Add: Will usually refer to any additional monsters that have started fighting your group after you are already engaged in combat. For example, if you are fighting a bear and half way through the battle a wolf comes along and begins attacking you, this would be considered an "add".

AFK: Is short for "Away From Keyboard". You can active the AFK flag on your character by typing /afk in the chat line. It also automatically activates if your character is idle for an extended period of time

Aggro: This refers to aggressive actions against a player. If a monster turns and attacks you, you have gained aggro.

AH: Is short for "Auction House". This is where you can sell and buy items from other players of your same faction (and opposite factions at Gadgetzan).

AOE: Is short for "Area of Effect". This is when a spell can affect all targets in an area instead of being directed at a single target. Blizzard, Frost Nova, and Hellfire are all examples of AOE spells.

BB: Is short for "Booty Bay".

BFD: Is short for "Blackfathom Deeps".

BOE: Is short for "Bind On Equip". This means that when you equip the item, it will no longer be tradable to another player and can only be sold to a vedor.

BOP: Is short for "Bind On Pickup". This means that when you loot the item from the monster, it will no longer be tradable to another player and can only be sold to a vedor.

BRD: Is short for "Blackrock Depths".

BRS: Is short for "Blackrock Spire".

Buff: A spell cast on a player, pet, or mob which enhances a specific statistic for a set time period. Spells such as "Mark of the Wild" and "Power Word: Fortitude" are examples of buffs.

De-Buff: A spell cast on a player, pet, or mob which places a negative effect on a specific statistic for a set time period. Spells such as "Demoralizing Shout" and "Curse of Weakness" are examples of de-buffs.

DOT: Is short for "Damage Over Time". This refers to a spell or effect that slowly deals damage over an extended period of time, rather than all at once.

DM: Is short for "Dire Maul".

DS: Is short for "Darkshore" and or "Darkshire".

GG: Is short for both "Good Game" and "Good Going" depending on the context in which it is used. If you happen to save a party member, someone might say "GG" meaning good going. If you beat some one in a duel, the other person might say "GG" meaning good game.

GZ: Is short for "Gadgetzan".

HOT: Is short for "Heal Over Time". This refers to a spell or effect that slowly heals damage over an extended period of time, rather than all at once.

IF: Is short for "Ironforge".

KS: Is short for "Kill Stealing". This occurs in games when another player or group attacks a mob that you are already fighting in order to get the experience or items from it.

LBRS: Is short for "Lower Blackrock Spire".

LFG: Is short for "Looking For Group".

LFM: Is short for "Looking For More".

LS: Is short for "Lakeshire".

Mara: Is short for "Maraudon".

MC: Is short for "Molten Core".

MH: Is short for "Menethil Harbor".

MMORPG: Stands for "Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game". In an MMORPG, thousands of players exist in the same game world at the same time. This creates an incredibly rich and active environment in which interesting things are constantly taking place. MMORPGs provide thousands of hours of game play, with a nearly infinite variety of goals to achieve across a vast world covering miles of land and sea. For the World of Warcraft, we will also be adding new content on a regular basis, thus ensuring that there will always be new adventures, new locations, new creatures, and new items to discover.

Mob: Is short for "Monster" and is a word used to describe creatures that you kill in the game aside from other players.

NPC: Is short for "Non-Player Character". These are computer-controlled characters. Quest givers, merchants, inn keepers, etc.

OG: Is short for "Orgrimmar".

Proc: A term used to denote when a special effect of an item randomly triggers or what the special effect of said item does. Proc only refers to a randomly triggered effect that arises from attacking or being hit. If your item has an ability to click it to make it cast a spell 100% on demand, that is not considered a Proc.

RFC: Is short for "Ragefire Chasm".

RFD: Is short for "Razorfen Downs".

RFK: Is short for "Razorfen Kraul".

RR: Is short for "Redridge".

Scholo: Is short for "Scholomance".

SFK: Is short for "Shadowfang Keep".

SM: Is short for "Scarlet Monastery".

Strat: Is short for "Stratholme".

TB: Is short for "Thunderbluff".

Temple: Is short for "The Temple of Atal'Hakkar."

Train: Train or training is when someone pulls a group of monsters past another player, causing them to get attacked. Please do not confuse this acronym with the training you do at your own class trainer.

UBRS: Is short for "Upper Blackrock Spire".

UC: Is short for "Undercity".

Uld: Is short for "Uldaman".

VC: Stands for Van Cleff and is used to refer to "The Deadmines".

WC: Is short for "Wailing Caverns".

WTB: Is short for "Want To Buy". Usually used on the Auction channel. Example: "WTB stack of 10 light leather"

WTS: Is short for "Want To Sell".

WTT: Is short for "Want To Trade".

XP: Is short for "Experience Points".

ZF: Is short for "Zul'Farrak".

Choosing your Race on WoW Online RPG

Valdesta — Fri, 06 Jan 2006 02:53:12 +0000

This entry goes along with the entry about Choosing your Class on World of Warcraft and is part of the Getting Started series of entries, aimed towards folks who are logging into World of Warcraft for the first time, or who have already created a character but felt they did it somewhat randomly with no real reason for their choices.

Races and Their Factions

The first thing you should know about the races on World of Warcraft is that they make up the "good" or the "evil" side of two warring factions. These two factions make up the world and are battling against a third faction of ultimate evil, while also battling each other.

The "good" faction is called the Alliance and consists of Humans, Night Elves, Dwarves and Gnomes.

The "evil" faction is called the Horde and consists of Trolls, Orcs, Undead and Tauren.

Of course, I personally believe that "good" and "evil" depends on who you are and what circumstances you're under in a lot of cases, so let's just say I've used the Good and Evil labels just because they're easy.

Enough about philosophy, however - back to races on World of Warcraft (pre World of Warcraft expansion pack Burning Crusade).

As was mentioned in my entry about Choosing a Realm on World of Warcraft, the only time it really "matters" whether you select Alliance races or Horde races is when you have friends that play and you want to create a character that will be able to talk to them through in-game chat, as well as group with them to actually play the game. In that case, you'll need to agree with your friends whether you're going Alliance or Horde, and make your race decisions from there.

What Does My Race Choice Affect?

Other than communication with friends as mentioned above, two things are influenced by your race:

Where on the map you start as your first "home"
What classes you can choose

Home, Sweet Home

For many reasons, Blizzard has decided that different races should start on different parts of the World of Warcraft map. Some races start in the same spot as other races, but in general, each race has its own starting town. If you're familiar with the Warcraft story, you'll know why some races are together. If you're not familiar, watch the animations as the game goes on and you'll get familiar ;)

When you first start as an Orc or Troll, you'll start in the same town, Valley of Trials, but eventually in your travel you'll come across the home of the Tauren and the Undead as well. And if you wander into Alliance territory you can find the homes of those races as well.

Class Selection For Races

Some races are more suited for certain classes than others, to the point where World of Warcraft restricts certain classes from certain races. Tauren, for example, cannot be Mages, Priests or Rogues. Don't ask me why (except for the Rogue one - Tauren are too HUUUGE to be that nimble and silent when they move), that's just the way it is.

In Closing

Race choices are partially about whether you have friends playing or not, partially about what class of character you were wanting to play, and partially about whether you want to have any piece of role playing in your game.

Initially, I selected a Troll because they were ugly and that's what I was looking for.

After seeing and listening to the interesting and beautiful cinematic introduction to playing the character I had configured (the first time I logged into the world with my new character), I took some time to create a character from each race on different worlds in order to watch the introduction and listen to the story. Maybe you'll want to do the same!

Starting over in a new World of Warcraft Realm

Valdesta — Mon, 02 Jan 2006 01:10:28 +0000

Currently I'm playing on the 10 day free trial of World of Warcraft, and I'm 4 days into the trial.

I've played one character rather hard-core, I'm a little embarrassed to admit that she's already level 18 and has done a lot of exploring and questing.

But now it's time to re-start with a new character, because I've found out where my family is "living" on the game. My nephew is a Human of all races... I started out as a Human so we could play together but I just can't handle being a stinky human, so I've re-started with a character that is in the Alliance (instead of the Horde, which would be my first choice of characters) but is something more interesting than Human.

My apologizes to all you Humans out there. Nothing against y'all.

I have selected the race of Night Elf, and the class of Rogue. I'll post my picture after I've gotten a few levels.

Logging in to World of Warcraft for the very first time

Valdesta — Tue, 27 Dec 2005 11:16:28 +0000

This is the first time I've ever played a Warcraft game, but I'm a long-time player of Role Playing Games in general, so the fundamentals of World of Warcraft already come naturally to me, thankfully.

However, that doesn't mean I wasn't confused the first time I tried to log into a Realm on World of Warcraft after I had installed World of Warcraft from the 5 CDs that came with the documentation.

The first thing that confused me was the process of selecting a Realm to create my first character in. For some reason, the game itself selected a Realm that was NOT marked as "full" but there was a LINE UP for logging in! I was put into 82nd position and told I'd be able to log in in about 15 minutes!!

I tried a number of other worlds whose population was marked as "medium" and not full, but I got the same "line up" problem.

Then... I tried a world whose population was already marked as "full" and I logged into the Realm immediately!!

Maybe I'm misunderstanding something... ??

At any rate, once I got into a realm, I found it was a Horde realm so I created my first Avatar in the form of a (female, like me IRL) Troll Hunter, and I logged in.

I actually logged in last night, not this morning, so I was playing at about 8-11PM Central time, and there were a number of other players running around in the city I started up in.

Unfortunately, as soon as I got logged in, someone obviously more experienced with the game than I was started running back and forth and around me, jumping over me and then interacting with me - offering for me to join his party, and then later initiating a duel and when I declined, initiating another one shortly afterwards. Oh, and he also ran around saying "LOL" over and over - and while it's got a cool sound effect and physical gesture, the "coolness" wears off very quickly when it's done over and over.

So, even though I had originally accepted the invitation to the party, and even though I accepted and duelled the second time without knowing what I was doing, as soon as I figured out how to, I announced I was leaving the party (/party I'm leaving now, I'm brand new to the game and gotta get used to my interface) and then left it and walked away from LOLman.

Having watched about 2 minutes of the game from my nephew's house at Christmas, I knew my first "thing to do" (aside from figuring out what button does what command) was to talk to an NPC with a yellow exclamation mark over its head. Thankfully, the game starts you facing the first person you need to talk to.

And this first person gave me a hunting quest right away, oh joy! I was assigned to kill 10 wild boars I believe, so I headed out to do that.

Initially I started fighting with the hand axe that was wielded, and I was doing fine there, but since I'm a Hunter, I was given advice to use my bow since Hunters do a lot of ranging work. It took me a while to figure out how to move my bow onto my quick-action bar and then how to weild it in order to use it, but once I got the hang of it I found I could get three arrows off on my target before their running towards me brought them too close for arrow work and I'd have to switch back to the hand axe.

Unfortunately, the Realm I was in went down an hour or so after I got logged in, and I was forced to create another character on another Realm just to be able to continue playing. The second realm I chose was an Alliance one, so I created a (female) Human Rogue character.

I was pleased to see that I can retain the same name across multiple realms, but I don't know how the underlying fact of how that works will influence the playability of the game. Maybe it won't at all!