Welcome to WoW

[tinuviel]

I have met a lovely girl in my new course who has expressed interest in giving online games a try and every time I have talked about WoW she has said: "I'd love to try that!". Win! So, I was planning to give her the battle box for Christmas, together with an invite code for RAF and a little note with my server and character name :-3

Comments

[unlovablehands]

Advice to her:

- You don't want the white armor vendors sell. You also probably shouldn't buy gear on the auction house for leveling unless your gear really needs an upgrade. (Like, you got the current item over 15-20 levels ago.)

- You might have to try out a bunch of classes before you find one you like. Hybrid classes (paladins, druids, shamans) and hunters are usually the ones that come most highly recommended to new players but play whatever you find fun.

- Find out what your class's main stat is and look for it for all your gear. Before you get the specialization for your armor class, it's okay to use items from lower armor classes if they're big stat upgrades.

- Take two gathering professions. Save what you collect in the bank. Later, decide if you want to use any of those items and switch to a crafting profession, or you can sell the materials gathered on the auction house. I highly recommend herbalism.

- You can turn off trade chat when you're in a city. It's sometimes fun to read, but it's full of trolls.

- If you're confused about a quest objective, or can't find something, or want to know what an item is used for, look it up on wowhead.com. When I first started playing, I liked to look up almost all the quests I had in my log on wowhead before I did them just so I'd know what to expect.

- If you're doing a completely random dungeon and haven't done that dungeon before, let folks know. Most of the fights on lower level dungeons are pretty straightforward, but some of them have a trick to them that folks will tell you about.

Advice to you:

- If you are questing with her: GIVE HER TIME TO READ THE QUEST TEXT. Don't just run all the hell over the place zooming through it. I love my BF, but he was always trying to powerlevel me through stuff when we quested together and early on, I just couldn't keep up.

- If your friend decides she wants to play a healer or tanking class, help her practice out in the world before you dungeon. If you get to a medium level and still haven't dungeoned, try duo-ing some of the earliest dungeons as practice if she decides to tank.

- Come with her on her earliest dungeon runs. If she is a DPS class, try having a level-appropriate healer or tank available to lessen the queue time.

- Send her bags and some starter gold for training/bank slots/whatever.

- Help her find a talent spec if she asks. I found talent trees completely overwhelming when I started.

- Let her know she can ask you questions about stuff she's confused on.

[rowanf]

I have been trying to get a friend into WoW and the "give time to read the quest text" is really good advice.

I have been playing so long it is hard to understand how hard, for instance, the IF map is to read. "How to I tell which are doorways?" There isn't really a way, you just have to know now that I look at it with fresh eyes!

Suggest that she play a class you can give reasonable advice about. My friend started out as a rogue, a class I hadn't played. Not, I think, a good class for learning on! I started a rogue so I could figure it out and I'm having fun because I understand about melee/ranged and stealthing in... but I steered my friend to a hunter so that with standing back and pew pewing they can get more situational awareness. They can play the rogue again if they want to later.

Be patient, even learning to "walk" is a new thing to a new gamer. My friend gets so frustrated about running into things. Teach them about autorun and follow.

Have fun!

[cygninae]

This. Very much so. Be patient. Don't whizz her through things that you want to show off, give her time to enjoy them herself too - don't coddle her. I found one of the most frustrating things was to be run through an instance, without letting me learn things.

[silly_walnut]

^ this

google helped me so much when i first started, so would having someone physically there showing me what button turned off growl

[cynical_ghost]

/agreeing with all of this!

I'd also add: Help her become independent. Encourage her to quest on her own, explore on her own, etc. Don't let her become dependent on you too much -- that is NOT the way to learn. As a veteran gamer, it's very very easy to lead a new player around, explaining everything, and practically doing everything for them. This will do them no favors.

Instead, give her the resources and knowledge to do things herself. You'll help her become a competent player that way.