Bad lizard, you’re setting fire to the BarcaLounger!
Introduction
Welcome to the world of Azeroth you weird Internet basement shut-in! A richly detailed world of sword and sorcery awaits you, very unlike the depressing real world where you sit in front of your computer all day and night. Since you’re going to be jobless and living at your mom’s house for the next few years playing “World of Warcraft” instead of having a successful career or romantic interest, why not read this guidebook?
Only read the following paragraph if you’ve never played an MMORPG before. Ahahahaha, who are we kidding? You’ve been playing online games for most of your life, haven’t you? And now you can only relate to people whose goals are something like becoming 70th level Warlock. We at Blizzard Inc. understand and accept you. In fact, we are the only people who love you. That’s why we’re making a nice tidy monthly profit from your chronic agoraphobia and slow self-destruction while being electronically addicted to our game.
What can you do in World of Warcraft as a new player or “stoopid newbie”? Lots of stuff, actually! Insulting people you’ve never met in the chat channels is always a good way of making your presence known in Azaroth. Follow high level players and ask them for “sprae gold pleeze sprae gold pleeze sprae gold pleeze” over and over again. Join a guild just to scam magic items from members. Ninja-loot monster corpses and gank each and every player less powerful than you. Just keep doing all the same manic anti-social stuff you’ve done since “Ultima Online” and you’ll probably be good.
Alliance vs. The Horde
You can choose either the Alliance or Horde sides. Alliance is the side of “Good”, but in actual on-line play this makes little difference since 95% of World of Warcraft players choose the side of “Me and Only Me”.
Your Character
Naming Your Character
The goal in a good character name is to make up a word that is somewhat offensive, but not offensive enough to get kicked off your server. We here at Blizzard only get upset when you choose a name similar to a copyrighted name, such as “GANDAWLF”, “RAISTLIN_LOL”, or “HARRY POTTERED”. For such offenses we send a very muscular and steroid-crazed Game Master to your home to punch you in the kidneys and possibly eat your housepets (please consult the EULA).
Races
What character race should you play in “World of Warcraft”? Well, there are many unique and interesting races in World of Warcraft. Or you can play a boring Human.
Human: The baseline race in most MMORPG’s. Like we said, boring. Choose another race.
Gnome: A good choice if you enjoy running around game servers spamming both the /giggle and /poke emotes in order to annoy people. All non-Gnome races hate Gnomes; actually, all non-Gnome players will personally hate YOU for being a Gnome. This seems to be an unspoken rule in World of Warcraft, which only serves to illustrate the mental stability of its subscribers.
Night Elf: If you’re a male with gender issues, play a female Night Elf. Everyone online will believe you are actually a girl since all Internet shut-ins like yourself are male and desperate. As a virtual woman you will receive free gifts of items and gold from male players; accept these presents while repeatingly emoting “*giggles*” and “*blushes*”. You will have to avoid Ventrilo or Teamspeak servers, though, unless you have voice-changing software or have the capability of speaking in a high falsetto.
Dwarf: Who in their right mind wants to play this race? What’s wrong with you?
Orc: This race has a long and detailed history which you’ll never read since the only reason you chose this race is because you want to stomp Gnomes.
Tauren: See above.
Trolls: See above.
Undead: That’s right, you can play an extra from a George A. Romero movie! Wander around heavily populated areas while spamming, “moooore brainnsss” to impress other players with your role-playing skills.
Classes
Choose a character class that best suits your “play style”, whatever that means:
Warrior: If you enjoy running around and attacking everything in sight while ignoring orders from your angry guild leader, this is a good class for you. Your ultimate goal as a Warrior in WoW is to be able to kill town guards and go on newbie-slaying rampages whenever you choose.
Rogue: Creeping around and stabbing people in the back. Excellent practice for confronting your ex-wife’s new boyfriend in a parking lot at night. Oh, that slick-haired weasel will pay, won’t he? Yes he will.
Mage: Many people worldwide play World of Warcraft so they may repeatedly cast spells like “Polymorph Sheep” on other gamers. Just to annoy and enrage those players, of course. Never mind game content and quests when you can interfere with complete strangers from enjoying their online experience, right? Right. You’re one impressive passive-aggressive piece of work, I gotta tell ya.
Priest: The class for extorting other players for healing spells. You literally have the power of life or death over the other classes; use this well to make people suck up to you. If they don’t, threaten to stand in the corner of the instance map and laugh while watching everyone die.
Druid: Nature-loving hippie version of the Mage. Shoots brambles or thorns, pick one.
Hunter: If you’ve always wanted to own a gorilla you can order to squeeze other players to death, this is the class for you. The fact that you can virtually attack other people with trained primates says a lot about the current state of MMORPG’s when you really give it thought.
Paladin: Something like a second-class healer with a big glowy sword. The perfect class if you’re self-righteous.
Shaman: Something like an evil priest, they do things with totems to hurt other players. Yes, totems.
Warlock: Something like an evil wizard, which basically means you’ll be ganking players because you’re an evil Warlock and not solely due to the fact you’re an online sociopath.
Combat
To fight a monster, target them and then choose a combat action from the toolbar. Then watch your character get killed by that monster. Spend the next fifteen to twenty minutes getting your character resurrected. Then target another monster and get slain again. Repeat this process 1,728,319 times as you “level up”.
In PvP combat, do the exact same process above with other players instead of monsters.
Loot
There are different levels of quality of loot in World of Warcraft, each with a color code that signifies the item’s rarity or how much you whine at your team-mates when you don’t receive that item:
Grey: Totally worthless item. Either sell it at to NPC vendor or give it to other players just to annoy them with the pop-up trade window.
White: More worthless virtual crud. Ninety percent of NPC monster loot drops will be of this type, for game balance and to keep you up till 4 AM just to get a:
Green: Magical item that is more than likely worthless too. Try to sell it at an insanely high price to a newbie.
Blue: Better than green.
Purple: Better than blue.
Orange: A legendary quality item excellent for selling on eBay.
Gold: Most powerful and rare item type to be implemented in the game. If you ever loot such an “artifact” item in the future, all players in World of Warcraft will actually find and attack you in real life just to get it. Each. And. Every. Player.
Non-Player Characters (NPC’s)
Much like reality itself (you know, that place outside your basement), there are people in World of Warcraft with little to no character who will order you to do things, ignore you, or attack you. Kinda like how the manager at your Wal-Mart job interacts with you on a daily basis.
Quests
Quests are orders given to you by NPC’s to go somewhere and/or deliver something and/or kill someone and/or something so that you get something (maybe). Each and every quest in WoW has been carefully crafted by the developers to provide you with a challenging and interesting storyline, which you probably won’t bother with anyways, since you’ll look up all your quest solutions on the Internet. Thanks a lot, really.
Guilds
To form a guild in World of Warcraft you must wander aimlessly around your server asking complete strangers to sign your guild charter but not actually join your guild, just so you’ll have a guild charter. If, by some miracle, someone does join your guild and stays a member for more than three minutes, try to get as much gold and equipment off them before they come to their senses.
In Closing
Good luck in your adventures in Azeroth! And thank you for the monthly subscription fee, too. Feel free to buy two or more accounts for World of Warcraft! Just keep sending money to us, Blizzard Inc., or we’ll cut off your supply of electronic crack. Thank you.
Internet Slacker 