World of Warcraft MEGA-FAQ

There is a bar over your standard action bar that measures your experience, or EXP, until you advance. You can mouse over this bar to see how much you have to go. Staying in a city, town, or safe area will turn this bar blue and you will enter a state of “rested” in which you gain double EXP. Basically if you don’t play a character for a period of time then you are rested for much longer.  This is a way to reward you for not playing the game constantly. Your “rested” amount depletes with kills, not by turning in quests.

Of course killing monsters is the main way to gain EXP, but you also gain a  large share by completing quests. Completion EXP is near the amount of how  much you gain by killing a similar amount of enemies, or close to it. A  standard “fetch” quest nets probably a unit of your EXP bar, while killing a dungeon boss is closer to two or three units.

You also gain small amounts of EXP through exploration. These are not meant as much early, but late you can fill many units on your EXP bar through finishing your maps.

Your level determines what abilities you can train, equipment you can wear and use, quests and areas you can enter safely, battlegrounds you can enter,  profession skills, and given talent points.

Quests

The game is based on you finishing quests in order to gain experience, explore, earn coin, and get new items. You find quests by finding the NPC’s on your  mini-map or by just finding those who have exclamation marks over their heads. You round up to 25 quests and then go out and complete them. There is a  single button to bring up your quest log and by following the ones in your path or nearby you can maximize your leveling potentional much faster than most.

A very key tip to finishing quests faster is to round up all the quests that  take place in one area. Knowledge of the land is key if your log is fairly full, but if not then you can just get them all and head to the area where the most take place, which is usually in an area with lots of things happening. And if you end up in a place with lots of activity and have no quests then there is probably some town with quests to pick up.

*NOTE: I prefer to tackle the “easier” ones in an area, turn them in, see if  the new ones are connected to the others, and then go out. It’s unwise to go into a dungeon with only a handful of quests. For dungeons I suggest using an internet source so you can find if not most at least the ones easiest to obtain, then go into the dungeon.*

When you have a quest and don’t feel up to reading, then here is the guide to dissecting a quest file. There is a who, why, and what part, and it’s the what part that you need because it tells you what you need to do. And if you don’t pick it up from the top where there is usually a number required, then find the what part to learn what you must do. Although some quests are tricky in that you must also find the where part, and there may be two wheres. One that tells you where to go first and another for where you end.

There are three types of quests: go, report, and collect. The vast majority are collection quests in which you either find stuff or kill things to get the stuff, also called “fetch” quests. Go quests mean you just get to one area, usually with the intentions of leading you to more quests. Report quests mean you find something and then report back, usually not requiring any direct fighting.

Pay attention the quest color. You don’t want to let green quests go grey, but you also don’t want to drop all grey quests. If a quest goes grey then perhaps you need to quickly finish it to see if the completion leads to another.

It’s also not wise to take on too many quests in the other races’ areas as you want to build rep with your race and area. Of course you can do all the quests of your faction, and most lead to the same ends, but if you make multiple  characters then just stay to your areas so you can play the game from all angles.

Killing Stuff

Otherwise known as combat or fighting, is the main point of this game. You  kill stuff, get money, rewards, and XP to level up. But there are a few more  things to keep in mind other than just attacking something.
Aggro —–

This is the concept upon which this and many other MMO’s are based. Aggro is  basically an invisible circle under your feet and under all the enemies in the game. If the circles touch, then you draw aggro.

This circle grows in relation with your level to the enemy’s. If you are lower than something then your circle is bigger. If you are higher than them then  your circle is smaller.

You can increase your aggro by three ways: attacking, healing, or using a  threat increasing skill. There are no reasons to worry yourself of aggro when fighting one-on-one, it’s when in a group or raid when aggro becomes key to not dying.

A tank draws aggro by increasing threat and giving honest damage so that the  monsters stay on the tank. If someone is putting more DPS on the same monster then it won’t take long for the monster to attack someone other than the  tank. Healing too much will also draw an enemy. Healing aggro mainly affects when a lower level is healed, which makes sense so players couldn’t do some quests with just a high level healer at their side.

Rogues generate less threat than most, and can lower threat with Feint. I’m not sure if other can reduce threat, but so long as you don’t do a lot of damage you won’t draw aggro.

Crowd Control ————-

This means that you will reduce the amount of things attacking you or your group. Sap from rogues and polymorph from mages are a form of CC which can  turn a 4 enemy mob of elites into 2. There are other ways of CC while fighting, such as Blind and Fear.
Level —–

No reason to attack stuff higher level, because with just their base stats they can put up a fight with any twink. Eight levels below yours and the thing  should die easily, quickly, and without much effort. A couple of levels above you and it will require max effort to survive.

Of course the more low levels you face the more likely you will fail. You would be surprised how easily a level 60 can solo a mob of 20s and take little damage, but that same 60 would die to three or four 50’s.

Elites ——

Elites are either boss enemies or stronger mobs. An elite, non-boss is the  same as a normal enemy level plus eight. So a level 40 elite is like a level 48 normal enemy.

Boss elites are just super-strong, huge health enemies that require more than one of you to kill. Bosses can vary greatly, it all depends on how much health one has.