One word: Battlegrounds! Yep, as of Patch 3.2, you can now gain experience in PvP battlegrounds like Warsong Gulch, Arathi Basin, and Alterac Valley. So now, in addition to power-leveling through questing, you can also earn XP by completing battleground objectives. Here are some tips for gaining experience:
At BlizzCon this weekend, Blizzard announced that the next World of Warcraft expansion pack will be called Cataclysm. They also announced some of the new features that will be included in it. You can watch Blizzard’s trailer for Cataclysm here. Here’s a quick summary of the biggest changes:
Although you can solo a lot of things in WoW, most people find the “multiplayer” part of a Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG) to be the funnest part. Unfortunately, some people don’t know how to behave nicely online, regardless of their age or background. And even if you’ve played other MMOGs, WoW is still a sub-culture all its own. You need to know how to be a good WoW player if you want to be invited back to groups, get into a guild, and generally have a funner time in the game.
Here are some good social guidelines to follow whenever you play WoW:
Use completely sentences and spell words correctly. Unless you’re with people you know well, don’t use “txt-speak” when you type. Most importantly: don’t use curse words. You never know if you’re playing against a 10-year-old whose mother is sitting beside him ready to report you to the Game Masters.
Start with our article on WoW abbreviations. Don’t be afraid to ask people what they mean; most people are quite nice and are flattered when they are asked for advice. (If someone calls you a noob/nub, just turn and walk away. They are not going to be nice to you.)
If you type “/yell” in chat, whatever you type after that will be broadcast across the entire area where you are. It’s really annoying. People will even put you on Ignore if you continue to do it. Know that there are more appropriate ways to get your message to the right people. If you want to sell something, use Trade Chat. If you want to join a group, use /LFG. If you want to ask for quest help, just use “/say” near any town’s bank.
If you join a group to run a dungeon, make sure you have 1 – 1.5 hours to devote to finishing it. Otherwise, at the very beginning, let the group know you need to leave early. It’s extremely rude to leave an instance in the middle. You leave everyone in the lurch and they will probably wipe (all die) without you.
If you’re in a group, make sure you discuss how loot will be rolled on before you get to an instance boss. Typical rules are that everyone can roll on green items, but blue items should be “Needed” only by those who can benefit from them. (For example, a warrior should roll Greed on a blue-level cloth robe, but the Mage and Priest can roll Need.) Doing otherwise will get you branded as a “ninja” and it will be very hard to make friends that way.
If you need more help, sign up for our new eCourse! Of course, simply following the rules of everyday life are a good guideline, no matter where you are. Especially remember the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
If you’re fairly new to World of Warcraft, to the point of still trying ot figure out the most efficient ways of leveling, the only way you probably know how to make gold is by selling loot from kills to vendors. Of course, some people beg or dance on mailboxes, but you and I have our dignity, don’t we? So instead, let’s talk about legitimate and even faster ways of earning gold.
Remember when you got your driver’s license? All you wanted was some wheels to get you around town faster. But your Dad wouldn’t give you the keys unless you earned money to put gas in the tank, right? In WoW it’s pretty much the same thing. For the current WoW patch, you can buy a mount at level 30, which will put you back a total of 45 gold for training and a mount. But when patch 3.2 comes out soon, you’ll be able to get a mount at level 20! You can’t make that kind of gold by selling grays from the starter zones! And with our power-leveling tips on this site, you’ll be getting to level 20 or 30 even faster than most people. So you’d better start learning how to get your cash flow moving.
Learn the Fishing skill and catch Deviate Fish at the ponds in The Barrens called Lushwater Oasis, Stagnant Pools, and Forgotten Pools. These fish sell for big money on most servers and you can get them at any fishing level.You must balance your desire to power-level with the fact that you will absolutely need gold to buy a mount. Obviously, gathering herbs and figuring out Auction House prices takes time away from your power-leveling. On the other hand, what good is it to be level 70 and have no mount??
Add-on Review: Bagnon
As I’ve said before on this blog, anything that makes questing in World of Warcraft less frustrating and more fun gets a big thumbs-up in my book. To make things easier in the game, you can find lots of add-ons at places like Curse and WoWInterface. Add-ons are little programs (Blizzard-approved) that you can install to make your WoW life more enjoyable.
One of my favorite add-ons is called Bagnon. It takes the place of all your different bags and merges them into one big bag so that you can see everything at once. You can even find items with a search box — which comes in very handy at higher levels when your bags are large and you can’t find those pots you need! This add-on is also handy because you don’t have to click multiple times to open all your bags at once: just hit one key (”b”) and you get a window that shows every item you’re carrying. Bagnon even works at the bank, too!
I definitely recommend searching for add-ons that will enhance your WoW gaming experience. There are even add-ons that can help you with questing, like pointing you toward the monsters you need to kill or optimizing the order in which you finish your quests. I’ll be reviewing more of these types of add-ons in weeks to come. In the meantime, happy questing!
Ever wonder why you and some of your World of Warcraft friends don’t necessarily like to do the same things in the game? Maybe you crave the leveling “ding!” and obliterating every monster in your path, but your friend keeps wandering around, exploring every nook and cranny. Or maybe you know someone who’s just nuts about PvP but you can’t stand it.
Well, there’s a reason why some WoW players are so different from each other. A man named Richard Bartle discovered that different gamers have different types of psychological responses to games. He developed a test called the Bartle Test which helps people figure out what their gamer type is.
I’ve tried a lot of the World of Warcraft guides out there and I’m here to tell you they are not all created equal. You have to know what you’re looking for and do a little research before you can find the best power-leveling guide. In this post I’m going to compare the Zygor Guide with the Warcraft Pros guides so you can understand the differences between them and decide for yourself which one is best for you. (Of course I have my opinion, but I’ll leave that for last!)
Photo by chanchan222
Some people who play World of Warcraft like to level — but I’m not one of those people. Leveling is called “grinding” because it feels like a chore that will never end. Yes, there are some quests with good storylines that should not be missed. However, for each one of those quests there are ten more that involve grinding out kills — dozens of boars, gnolls, murlocs, or demons.
At first leveling is okay because you have goals to aim for: new powers at level 10, faster travel at level 20, a mount at level 30… But it really starts to drag between level 30 and level 58. Many gamers use power-leveling guides to help them through this grinding period. These guides do not play the game for you, they just help you find your quest objectives faster. You can get to higher levels in the game so you can experience the most interesting content.
If you’re a new player who just started playing World of Warcraft, you’ve probably seen a lot of abbreviations in chat that you might not understand. (Obviously, I’m not talking about common ones like LOL or OMG.) There are some terms that are unique to WoW and sometimes asking what they mean can be embarrassing. No problem, I learned a lot about WoW the hard way and I enjoy helping new folks. Read on for your personal decoder ring…!
Photo by emutree
As unbelievable as it sounds, a Warrior managed to get from level 1 to level 80 without dying once. That’s an incredible feat! Apparently this wasn’t her first character, so she was able to use her main to buy some nifty items that helped get her out of some scrapes. Some bloggers have even taken up the challenge to try it themselves.
Get Blog Updates via RSS