Welcome to WoW for Beginners. If you’re just starting out in the World of Warcraft universe or if you’re thinking of jumping in, here are some basics that will get you started.

World of Warcraft, also known as WoW, is the most successful online role-playing game in history. It weas launched by Blizzard Entertainment in 2004 as the fourth game in the World of Warcraft series.

The game is set in the world of Azeroth. It’s what’s known as a MMORPG—Massively multiplayer online role-playing game. And I do mean massively. At last count, World of Warcraft has over 11 million subscribers!

World of Warcraft is a role-playing game, which means you become a character and live in the Warcraft universe.

As you kill monsters or complete various tasks called quests, your character gains experience. You use WoW money to buy items. You can play by yourself or you can join forces with other players.

Incidentally, two typical WoW beginner mistakes are:

1. Spending gold on things that you can get for free.
2. Wasting lots of time wandering around looking for quests instead of solving multiple quests in the same area.

I have never used this guide, but I’m told this is one of the absolute best guides out there:

The Ultimate World of Warcraft Strategy Guide.

It tells you exactly what quests to do in what order so that you don’t waste precious game play time. It also tells you exactly what you should buy and lots of other tips.

The guide interacts with the game itself so that tips and extra screens show up while you play right on your screen. If you want to try it, please click on my affiliate link above.

Choosing a Character

Realm
The first thing you’ll be asked when you open a new WoW account is what realm you would like to be on. Now this isn’t a location in the Warcraft universe, but it’s really just a fancy name for Blizzard’s servers. With millions of subscribers, they can’t all play on the same server so you need to pick one.

The game play on each realm is exactly the same; only the players are different. Keep in mind that you cannot change realms later (well, unless you pay for a transfer) so here are some tips to help you decide on one:

• You can only interact with players on the same realm, so find out what realm your friends are on and pick the same one.
• There are normal servers and PVP servers (player vs. player). For a Warcraft newbie, I strongly suggest a normal server (otherwise you’re likely to get killed the minute you venture out of the starting area which can be really frustrating for someone starting out.)
• Normal and PvP servers also have a further breakdown of Role-Playing and non Role-Playing. The difference between these is simply the way the players have agreed to play. On a RP server, the player remains in character the entire time, so you couldn’t chat with someone about a movie you saw. For a starter, I suggest a normal server. You can try a RP or RPPVP server with a future character after you’ve mastered the basics.
• How many people are in the realm is also a consideration. Too many and it’s harder to get resources and kill mobs (monsters). But too few and you may have trouble forming a group or joining a guild later on. Try to go with something in the middle.

Here is a list of the available realms and what types they are:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/realmstatus/

Faction
The most important thing to decide is what faction you want to be in. There are two: the Horde and the Alliance. A very general difference is that the Horde are non-human characters such as orcs and trolls, while the Alliance characters are human or human-like such as dwarves and elves. (The exception are blood elves, which came over to the Horde from the Alliance).

What faction you decide upon is important, especially if you want to group with other players. You can only group and chat with players in your own faction. The other faction is considered the enemy.

Also the game itself acts differently based on factions. For example, some cities have characters that are friendly to Alliance players but hostile to Horde players; some quests can only be completed by Horde players and others by Alliance.

Race/Class
After picking your faction, the next thing is to decide on a race and class. These two really go hand-in-hand because a particular class is only available for certain races, but often a class can belong to more than one race.

You have certain traits determined by race, such as Taurens have a strong relationship with nature. You have certain abilities according to your class, such as Druids being able to shape shift into animals.

The Alliance faction has these races:
Gnomes
Night Elves
Draenei
Dwarves
Humans

The Horde faction includes these races:
Taurens
Trolls
Blood Elves
Orcs
Undead


The article continues on page 2: WoW 101.

Frustrated by how long it takes to level up?

Want to earn 500 gold/hour?

Is Questing Taking Too Long?

Then I highly recommend Ultimate WoW Guide.

This guide has it all:
* 500+ gold/hour Gold Guide
* Leveling by Profession Guide
* Leveling by Class Guide
* Fastest Way to get the Maximum Quests Completed

Click here to check it out.