This thread is to handle some of the more general-purpose questions people have, before they have started to play, either because they are trying to decide if they are interested, or just don't know squat about the game yet.
If you want more information regarding ACTUALLY PLAYING THE GAME, I suggest you refer to the "guides..." link at the bottom of the sidebar.
If you have a related question that you don't see right away, hit control-F and search for it. I’ve taken the liberty to group the questions by general topic. There are four posts, in the following categories:
Out-of-game and general questions
Character questions
Money and items questions
Miscellaneous (further down)
If you *still* don't see your question, this is the "ask-a-tester thread" which might be a good place to try:
http://wow.allakhazam.com/forum.html?forum=21&mid=1087230990422348153&num=174
You might also consider looking at Blizzard's mainpage for the game:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com
Overall, the point of this thread is to avoid forum clutter with 30 questions per day on the same "I'm coming from FFXI and I want to know if I can change jobs in this game too" sorts of things. So without more babbling, here's (hopefully) the information you wanted:
OUT-OF-GAME AND GENERAL QUESTIONS
(questions that give an overview of the game)
When is WoW coming out?
When will open beta be?
How do I get into the beta?
The official release is November 23rd.
Open Beta is in progress until then.
Which is better, WoW or EQ2?
WoW is. I don't even leave the subject open to debate. I had previously refused to comment on the issue, but now that EQ2 is going to be released, well ahead of when it's ready, I feel I should take a stance.
I've played Everquest for years, have had time to participate in the EQ2 beta, and quite honestly I'm not impressed. There are a few features in which it does better than World of Warcraft, but they don't make up for the glaring deficiencies. The lag is awful, the zones are small, the content is 100% grind-driven and slower than any other game I've played, the UI is cumbersome, the graphics are poor once you tune them for what your video card can handle (and no I'm not going to spend 400 dollars on a new card and more memory to play THIS game.)
If you're trying to decide between the two, it's really no decision. If you aren’t going to play WoW, go back to the original Everquest.
Which is better, WoW or FFXI?
WoW is better unless you...
want to change your character class constantly.
want a game that forces you to party and can never solo.
want a game that takes you a good 100 days of played time to come close to the level cap.
If that answer is too simplistic, or you want to argue the point, there are ample WoW vs. FFXI threads in the forum.
Will WoW be available for <insert gaming system here>?
World of Warcraft is made by Blizzard. Blizzard is a computer game company. World of Warcraft will only be available for Windows PC and Mac. (Yes, it will be for Mac.)
MMORPGs generally don’t work as well on console systems, so this is just as well.
Can I talk/party/trade with the members of the other faction?
In a nutshell, no. You don't even know the same languages. There are not, nor will ever be any plans to have the two factions intermingled. This is, after all, the world of WARcraft. You and your friends will either have to agree to play the same faction, or agree to not see each other.
You can have characters of both factions, but you can never swap items between them. Blizzard might even disallow having characters of both faction on the same server. The *only* means of exchanging items between factions is via the neutral auction house in the goblin city of Booty Bay.
You will eventually be able to learn other languages, but this hasn't been incorporated into the game yet.
Will it be hard for me, race X, and my friend, race Y, to play together?
If you are both Alliance or both Horde, it is reasonably safe to travel to another starting area, as long as you stay on the roads. The only starting area that is difficult to reach is the Night Elf area, and it can be done easily if you know how. You and your friend ARE playing the same faction, right?
Is experience just from grinding?
How fast do I gain levels?
What is resting?
For someone who does the math, the main source of experience is from killing creatures. However, most players prefer not to grind. When you finish a quest, you earn bonus experience from that. While that bonus will not singularly outweigh the experience earned grinding, you do earn experience killing creatures along a quest, and the bonus is meant to offset the difference from killing specific creatures for the quest.
Your experience bar is displayed at the bottom of the screen. It is broken up into 20 bars. Mousing over it gives an exact number of experience you have and need, (1746/2500 i.e.) You are told exactly what experience you earn from creatures and quests as you gain it...no guessing at a blank bar with 4 notches.
When you log out, your character "rests", and you gain 3 bars (15%) of "rested" bonus each full day you are logged out. That rate is cut to 1/3 if you do not rest in a town. This is a gradual build-up; you don’t have to log out for 24 full hours.
Until you kill creatures for 3 bars worth of experience, or forever long you are rested, you get double what you would otherwise. There is a notch on your experience bar that will indicate at what point you will reach the end of your rested period. Quest experience does not apply, and will slide this notch along with your experience gain.
It is not difficult for an experienced player to go from level 1-10 in about 3 hours, however leveling becomes considerably slower after that. Leveling is brisk, as far as an MMORPG is concerned, but it is certainly nowhere near as fast as, say, Diablo 2. Blizzard has stated, though, that they intend to make it desirable to play the game on multiple characters, so do not expect the same sort of needless time investment that FFXI has.
There are no efficient methods of power-leveling characters in WoW - classic techniques usually serve to slow you down since (a) experience is only earned for creatures you hit first, and (b) you earn a percent of the exp equal to the damage you and your party dealt. A high-level character outside the group would steal most of the experience, and a high-level character inside the group makes the kill nearly worthless. There are very few buff spells that are super-powerful, and they are all level-restricted. Twinking is nearly impossible. "Power-questing" does not work well either, because you earn nearly no experience from creatures, and quickly run out of quests; quest experience alone will not get you levels.
What are quests like?
Quests are an alternate means of gaining experience in the game. They are also a way to obtain specific rewards, and to have a sense of purpose in what you are doing. While it has been discovered that the fastest-leveled characters simply grind solo, the people who enjoy the game more for something other than to see how fast they can go from 0 to 60 tend to do quests.
Quests are given from specific NPCs. You talk to them, they tell you to collect 8 gizmos, kill 8 thingies, or go talk to somebody in the next town. There are variants, there are other types, but most quests are like this. However, quests have lore behind them. You aren't just told "for every 4 gnoll fangs you bring me, you can collect a bounty." There's a story for each, and some of them are quite good.
Can you describe combat a little?
Combat is fast-paced (as far as an RPG is concerned) and involves non-twitch decisions. There is no more bland "press A and watch" syndrome. While there's always going to be some of that, rogues are constantly using abilities as far as their stamina permits, warriors are using different combat skills within their stance or possibly even changing stances, warlocks and shamans are prone to pulling out all manners of spells. In fairness, I usually do the same 4 or 5 things over and over, but I do have options, and sometimes I find it necessary to fall back on them. This isn't EQ where casters are limited to 8 spells and melee don't have anything except a once-per-hour discipline. Fights are usually about a minute solo, far less grouped, and it is not uncommon to have multiple live mobs at once.
Am I forced to party?
Can any class solo?
Any class can solo. At any level.
This is not necessarily the ideal for that person, since there is content in the game that is not meant to be soloed. Dungeons, in general, are not for a single person. However the game can still be enjoyed by a person playing by themself.
For anyone who thinks that it's pointless to play an MMO and solo, or that is destroys the nature of the game if people don't have to party, please keep your rhetoric to yourself. Some people don't have 5 hours to spend lfg, and the game is built well enough that you can play either effectively. The end-game content is all either pvp- or group-oriented.
How is the PvP?
Am I forced to PvP?
PvP is an integral, but avoidable part of the game. There are two server rulesets right now. In one, you can attack anyone of the other faction on sight. In the other, you cannot be attacked unless you consent to PvP by typing /pvp, attacking an NPC or entering a city of the opposing faction, or attacking someone who is flagged for PvP. That flag goes away after you abstain from anything PvP-related for five minutes.
I don't play PvP, so I'm not the best to comment on that issue, but the honor system exists to prevent wanton ganking. In it, players gain honor for killing a player of the opposing faction that is close to or above their level. If a player attacks and kills a character much lower in level, he loses honor. Loss of honor results in being less liked in friendly cities to the point of friendly places becoming hostile toward you, and also (effectively) a loss of experience.
If you play on the non-PvP servers, you can still be involved in a significant amount of PvP if you choose. You will not be missing out if you play on one, nor is it necessarily a good idea to play on a PvP server unless you are dead-set on it.
How does death work? Do I lose experience when I die?
There are graveyards scattered throughout the world. When you die, you appear at one as a ghost. You then have three options:
1) Run back to your corpse. Nothing can see a ghost. You simply have to run back. When you get close to your body, you can resurrect yourself.
2) Another player can resurrect you, if it is a class trait of their's. If they do this, you will experience "resurrection sickness" which reduce your stats considerably for a couple minutes.
3) There is a ghost creature in the graveyard you can talk to called the spirit healer. He can resurrect you at the graveyard, but at the cost of 5% of the experience toward your level. This is the only way you can lose experience.
Is this game too easy? Is leveling too fast?
No. It is easier than some MMO's, but mostly in that it is a lot more forgiving. You don't lose a quarter of your level when you die. You don't have to sit in a corner and wait for someone to invite you to their group. And the leveling curve will not take *forever*. Blizzard caters to both the casual and power gamer.
However, Blizzard has been ramping up the difficulty as the beta progresses. Initially it was easier to level because Blizzard wanted people at higher levels to test that stuff.
If you are concerned with leveling too fast, this is not Diablo. However it is also not FFXI. If someone does indeed hit the level cap and get bored, there is plenty of room to start a new character and visit zones they haven't been to. If they first played a horde character, now they can try alliance. There are also rumors about hero classes, and them involving far more leveling.
What is the "endgame" going to be like? Surely there's more to do after the level grind is over!
The endgame content is mostly not yet implemented (NYI). Most of it won't be in the beta so that it will be an unknown to players when they start playing. PvP battlegrounds and raid content are known entities that are planned.
For individual players, hero classes will eventually be implemented, as well as special quests called "life quests" that as near as anyone can gather will be tantamount to an epic quest.
How does the raid system work?
Pretty much like Everquest's did, with a hardcap of 40 players. If you are the leader of a group, you can "convert to raid" and start inviting more people. There is then a window that lets you move players between the groups.
Players in a raid can work together toward a common goal, however experience and loot is divided many more ways, so generally you should only do this when the goal is particularly lucrative or something other than exp/loot, such as finishing a quest or clearing an instance boss for the thrill of it.
How actually are the raids though?
There are two kinds of raids, PvP raids where players get together to ransack the other faction’s town, and PvE raids that usually focus on instanced content. There’s not a whole lot I can reasonably say about either since mileage varies greatly from raid to raid.
Considering Blizzard's usual fanbase, isn't this game just going to be ruined by the bnet kiddies like their other games?
In my own personal experience, no. There are no more tools and d00dsp3ak than there was in Everquest, and there is no easy way for anyone to hack a serverside-run game or make Pindleskin bots. The playerbase in general has not bothered me, in spite of any indication the official forums might have given you. They aren't much of a tape measure.
I was looking at the worldofwarcraft.com forums and it makes me sick... Are the majority of the people who are playing this game as of now so disrespectful, self-centered, arrogant and idiotic as most of the posters I see on that site?
No, not hardly. Welcome to internet discussion boards, where the people who like to be annoying and self-centered can hear themselves think.
/em eyes the ceiling and whistles.
Edited, Sun Nov 21 17:12:35 2004 by Azuarc
Edited, Fri Nov 26 21:09:29 2004 by Allakhazam
·Theme
- Forums
- World of Warcraft
- General Discussion
- Read this thread before posting your question
Read this thread before posting your questionFollow
Only the exceptions can be exceptional.
CHARACTER AND CLASS QUESTIONS
What kind of characters can I make?
In creating your character, you will need to pick a race and a class. Not all combinations are allowed.
Classes include druid, hunter, mage, paladin (Alliance only), priest, rogue, shaman (Horde only), warlock, and warrior.
There isn’t much difference between races beside racial traits, which are just minor differences to make you feel like your dwarf is a dwarf, rather than being a reason why you and everyone else should BE a dwarf rather than a human for your paladin. There are some minor stat differences as well, but in the long run, they come out in the wash.
What is the best race/class combo?
y can't I b n unded huntr b cuz those wud b teh roxzor!?!1!
There is no single best race/class combination. At least there isn't supposed to be. Some races have racial traits more applicable to some classes than others -- dwarf gun specialization is great for hunters, but useless for paladins. Still that doesn't mean that a dwarf paladin is "gimped" or that a dwarf hunter is *the* hunter race by any stretch of the imagination.
If your favorite race can't be your favorite class, I'm sorry. They did consider the lore of the world of Warcraft (hey, that's the name of the game!) a little bit.
Do all classes have mana, like in Diablo?
What do the classes do?
No. Rogues and warriors use a completely different gauge. Rogues' stamina is a bar that has only 100 points in it, and refills quickly, but always at a set rate. Warriors have a rage bar that starts at zero and builds up as they inflict and receive damage. Other classes use normal ol' mana points.
In addition to stamina, Rogues also earn combo points from using certain abilities in a fight. They are usable only against *that* creature, and the rogue can store a maximum of five of them. A few abilities untap these points for special effects. They have certain skills they can use while stealthed, too, including sap, which stuns a creature before combat that hasn't seen the rogue.
Warriors have three stances, and a unique set of abilities for each of them. The three stances roughly correlate to offensive, defensive, and balanced. They have a taunt/provoke ability, and a plethora of combat skills to use within combat both for utility and for maintaining hate and tanking well.
Paladins have auras and seals. Auras are permanent effects, one in existence at a time, just like Diablo. Seals are ultra-short duration buffs that have some strong effect, like +50% hate generation, or regain X hp for every melee hit you land. Paladins can heal and resurrect.
Shamans, in addition to healing and resurrecting, have totems. These are little statues they plunk on the ground that generate some local effect that can do anything from rooting nearby creatures to absorbing the next magical blow someone nearby would take. They have almost no hp and can be killed easily, but are immune to AE damage. (They are magically generated, no component.) Shamans are also competent in combat.
Hunters tame beasts of the wild to be their pets and fight for them, and excel at ranged combat. They can teach their pets skills, and have a line of abilities called aspects which are like the paladin aura, except that they are usually self-only.
Druids heal and cast damage spells, but also shapeshift into several different forms. In bear form, they behave like a warrior, complete with a rage bar. In cat form, they are a rogue. They also get two non-combat forms for traveling purposes, one for land and one for water.
Priests are the main healing class of the game, but not completely incompetent damage dealers. They have a spell similar to a rune (or ward, depending on your background) that blocks all damage until it wears off, and during that time prevents casting interruption. They can, of course, resurrect fallen comrades. Priests also have the ability to charm humanoid NPCs...and PCs as well, in PvP.
Mages are the masters of blowing stuff up, with spells generated from fire, frost, or pure magic. Frost spells generally have a slowing effect that is used as a crude crowd control, but mages can also polymorph one creature to remove them from combat. Mages can summon food and drinks, and teleport, outside of combat.
Warlocks can have one demon pet to do their bidding. Imps help nuke, voidwalkers make good tanks for the warlock, and succubi (succubuses?) have a passive mesmerization ability. Two other pets, the felhound and infernal, were just recently added. Warlocks can also cast damage over time and curse spells, and leech life or mana. Warlocks create soulstones that let people resurrect themselves on the spot. They also have the ability to summon another player from *anywhere*, if they are grouped, and two fellow groupmates are there to help the warlock with the summon portal.
All spells and abilities are learned from class trainers, with new skills available every two levels. There are a select few skills that come from talents.
What? No death knight? (or blademaster or...)
There is a good chance that death knight will be one of the hero classes available. Nothing is known right now about hero classes except that they probably won't be available for retail.
Describe hero classes.
We don't know anything about them. Blizzard has said very little. They aren't scheduled for making it into the game by retail, although Blizzard claims they will be ready "soon afterward"...whatever that means. In Blizzard time, that could mean with the first expansion.
What class should I play?
What class are you going to play?
You should play whatever you want to play. If you like slicing and dicing, play a rogue. If you like blowing things up, play a mage. If you like ranged combat, play a hunter. If you like healing, play a priest or a druid. If you like being able to go toe-to-toe and blow-for-blow with your enemies, play a warrior.
Don't assume that just because you don't play X, you won't be able to do anything. Any already existing problems of this nature are being looked at by Blizzard. Every class is useful and brings something to the table. Most classes are stackable. There are ways to heal yourself without someone who has healing magic.
Can you change classes?
Are there sub-jobs?
No. You pick one class. If you want to play another class, you can start another character. The game is fast-paced in the beginning such that you won't bludgeon your eyes out with a spork leveling a second character, and slow enough later that it actually feels meaningful to do so.
How desirable is each class in a group?
How well can each solo?
It is Blizzard's intention to make every class a competent soloist, as well as have their place in a group. A typical group will need to have a tank and a healer, but besides that, anything goes as long as you are open-minded. Aside from some major retuning of the paladin in the last week, that balance is moderately-well achieved, but not quite perfect yet.
Is there freedom of stat point allocation?
No. There was at one point, but now your attributes auto-increase based on your class when you gain a level.
Where should I spent my skill points?
What do I do if I mess up my points?
Do skill points work like in Diablo?
First of all, the points you are thinking of are talent points. There are skill points and those are something else, that incidentally, has been removed from the game.
Like Diablo, every class has three trees to spend their points in, and you get a single point every level - but starting at level 10, and there are not and will not be quests or other ways to get more points. Some talents have prerequisites to get, while others simply require you spend so many total points in that talent tree first.
Unlike Diablo, the talents do not provide your actual character spells or abilities. Those are bought from trainers every two levels. Talents, instead, merely modify your already-existing abilities. (There are a handful of talents that are abilities, but the majority of them give passive bonuses to stuff.)
Talents are meant to give your character a focus. Shamans, for instance, can be an effective magical damage dealer, a melee combatant, or a healer. They have a tree for each of these arts.
What happens if I mess up my talents?
You can talk to a class trainer to undo all your talent choices for a price. While this cost is fairly expensive for a leveling character to begin with, it rises to being significant to a level 60 character. You are not supposed to do this often, and you will pay (literally) if you want to start over. While this might seem prohibitive to exploring your character, consider the Diablo alternative, and consider that talents are supposed to represent particular natural abilities and trained foci that your character has developed over time. You can't teach yourself to be a grandmaster in something overnight.
What are ranks?
Rather than having spells called Minor Fireball, Lesser Fireball, Mediocre Fireball, Average Fireball, Improved Fireball, Superior Fireball, Super Fireball, Ultra Mega Uber Fireball, and Disco Inferno, Blizzard decided to just call the spells Fireball rank 1-9. Fireball rank 4 is the direct upgrade to Fireball rank 3.
If the skill uses the same amount of mana (or stamina or rage) as the previous rank, it will simply replace it. In this case, you usually need the lower rank as a prerequisite. All rogue skills, all warrior skills, paladin auras, and a few other abilities fall under this category.
Are there last names?
No. There has been no real word from Blizzard as to whether or not this will be implemented later. There have been some indications that there would be, but my personal impression is there will not be, since there are so many naming issues with players only having one name.
How many characters can I have?
On release, players will be limited to 8 characters total, and cannot play both factions on the same server.
Will beta testers get to keep their characters at release?
No. That's unfair practice. Beta testers get the advantage of playing for a while before everyone else, and knowing the game way better when it goes live. They don't need to hold their level advantage against others, especially on PvP.
Many of the beta players seem to think for some very strange reason that there might not be a wipe. I don't understand why Blizzard doesn't make a statement on the issue, since there is no way they will leave those characters in. (I haven't bought my copy yet, and if they do, I won't, considering the precedent that sets with their clientele.)
Edited, Wed Nov 17 19:19:08 2004 by Azuarc
What kind of characters can I make?
In creating your character, you will need to pick a race and a class. Not all combinations are allowed.
Classes include druid, hunter, mage, paladin (Alliance only), priest, rogue, shaman (Horde only), warlock, and warrior.
There isn’t much difference between races beside racial traits, which are just minor differences to make you feel like your dwarf is a dwarf, rather than being a reason why you and everyone else should BE a dwarf rather than a human for your paladin. There are some minor stat differences as well, but in the long run, they come out in the wash.
What is the best race/class combo?
y can't I b n unded huntr b cuz those wud b teh roxzor!?!1!
There is no single best race/class combination. At least there isn't supposed to be. Some races have racial traits more applicable to some classes than others -- dwarf gun specialization is great for hunters, but useless for paladins. Still that doesn't mean that a dwarf paladin is "gimped" or that a dwarf hunter is *the* hunter race by any stretch of the imagination.
If your favorite race can't be your favorite class, I'm sorry. They did consider the lore of the world of Warcraft (hey, that's the name of the game!) a little bit.
Do all classes have mana, like in Diablo?
What do the classes do?
No. Rogues and warriors use a completely different gauge. Rogues' stamina is a bar that has only 100 points in it, and refills quickly, but always at a set rate. Warriors have a rage bar that starts at zero and builds up as they inflict and receive damage. Other classes use normal ol' mana points.
In addition to stamina, Rogues also earn combo points from using certain abilities in a fight. They are usable only against *that* creature, and the rogue can store a maximum of five of them. A few abilities untap these points for special effects. They have certain skills they can use while stealthed, too, including sap, which stuns a creature before combat that hasn't seen the rogue.
Warriors have three stances, and a unique set of abilities for each of them. The three stances roughly correlate to offensive, defensive, and balanced. They have a taunt/provoke ability, and a plethora of combat skills to use within combat both for utility and for maintaining hate and tanking well.
Paladins have auras and seals. Auras are permanent effects, one in existence at a time, just like Diablo. Seals are ultra-short duration buffs that have some strong effect, like +50% hate generation, or regain X hp for every melee hit you land. Paladins can heal and resurrect.
Shamans, in addition to healing and resurrecting, have totems. These are little statues they plunk on the ground that generate some local effect that can do anything from rooting nearby creatures to absorbing the next magical blow someone nearby would take. They have almost no hp and can be killed easily, but are immune to AE damage. (They are magically generated, no component.) Shamans are also competent in combat.
Hunters tame beasts of the wild to be their pets and fight for them, and excel at ranged combat. They can teach their pets skills, and have a line of abilities called aspects which are like the paladin aura, except that they are usually self-only.
Druids heal and cast damage spells, but also shapeshift into several different forms. In bear form, they behave like a warrior, complete with a rage bar. In cat form, they are a rogue. They also get two non-combat forms for traveling purposes, one for land and one for water.
Priests are the main healing class of the game, but not completely incompetent damage dealers. They have a spell similar to a rune (or ward, depending on your background) that blocks all damage until it wears off, and during that time prevents casting interruption. They can, of course, resurrect fallen comrades. Priests also have the ability to charm humanoid NPCs...and PCs as well, in PvP.
Mages are the masters of blowing stuff up, with spells generated from fire, frost, or pure magic. Frost spells generally have a slowing effect that is used as a crude crowd control, but mages can also polymorph one creature to remove them from combat. Mages can summon food and drinks, and teleport, outside of combat.
Warlocks can have one demon pet to do their bidding. Imps help nuke, voidwalkers make good tanks for the warlock, and succubi (succubuses?) have a passive mesmerization ability. Two other pets, the felhound and infernal, were just recently added. Warlocks can also cast damage over time and curse spells, and leech life or mana. Warlocks create soulstones that let people resurrect themselves on the spot. They also have the ability to summon another player from *anywhere*, if they are grouped, and two fellow groupmates are there to help the warlock with the summon portal.
All spells and abilities are learned from class trainers, with new skills available every two levels. There are a select few skills that come from talents.
What? No death knight? (or blademaster or...)
There is a good chance that death knight will be one of the hero classes available. Nothing is known right now about hero classes except that they probably won't be available for retail.
Describe hero classes.
We don't know anything about them. Blizzard has said very little. They aren't scheduled for making it into the game by retail, although Blizzard claims they will be ready "soon afterward"...whatever that means. In Blizzard time, that could mean with the first expansion.
What class should I play?
What class are you going to play?
You should play whatever you want to play. If you like slicing and dicing, play a rogue. If you like blowing things up, play a mage. If you like ranged combat, play a hunter. If you like healing, play a priest or a druid. If you like being able to go toe-to-toe and blow-for-blow with your enemies, play a warrior.
Don't assume that just because you don't play X, you won't be able to do anything. Any already existing problems of this nature are being looked at by Blizzard. Every class is useful and brings something to the table. Most classes are stackable. There are ways to heal yourself without someone who has healing magic.
Can you change classes?
Are there sub-jobs?
No. You pick one class. If you want to play another class, you can start another character. The game is fast-paced in the beginning such that you won't bludgeon your eyes out with a spork leveling a second character, and slow enough later that it actually feels meaningful to do so.
How desirable is each class in a group?
How well can each solo?
It is Blizzard's intention to make every class a competent soloist, as well as have their place in a group. A typical group will need to have a tank and a healer, but besides that, anything goes as long as you are open-minded. Aside from some major retuning of the paladin in the last week, that balance is moderately-well achieved, but not quite perfect yet.
Is there freedom of stat point allocation?
No. There was at one point, but now your attributes auto-increase based on your class when you gain a level.
Where should I spent my skill points?
What do I do if I mess up my points?
Do skill points work like in Diablo?
First of all, the points you are thinking of are talent points. There are skill points and those are something else, that incidentally, has been removed from the game.
Like Diablo, every class has three trees to spend their points in, and you get a single point every level - but starting at level 10, and there are not and will not be quests or other ways to get more points. Some talents have prerequisites to get, while others simply require you spend so many total points in that talent tree first.
Unlike Diablo, the talents do not provide your actual character spells or abilities. Those are bought from trainers every two levels. Talents, instead, merely modify your already-existing abilities. (There are a handful of talents that are abilities, but the majority of them give passive bonuses to stuff.)
Talents are meant to give your character a focus. Shamans, for instance, can be an effective magical damage dealer, a melee combatant, or a healer. They have a tree for each of these arts.
What happens if I mess up my talents?
You can talk to a class trainer to undo all your talent choices for a price. While this cost is fairly expensive for a leveling character to begin with, it rises to being significant to a level 60 character. You are not supposed to do this often, and you will pay (literally) if you want to start over. While this might seem prohibitive to exploring your character, consider the Diablo alternative, and consider that talents are supposed to represent particular natural abilities and trained foci that your character has developed over time. You can't teach yourself to be a grandmaster in something overnight.
What are ranks?
Rather than having spells called Minor Fireball, Lesser Fireball, Mediocre Fireball, Average Fireball, Improved Fireball, Superior Fireball, Super Fireball, Ultra Mega Uber Fireball, and Disco Inferno, Blizzard decided to just call the spells Fireball rank 1-9. Fireball rank 4 is the direct upgrade to Fireball rank 3.
If the skill uses the same amount of mana (or stamina or rage) as the previous rank, it will simply replace it. In this case, you usually need the lower rank as a prerequisite. All rogue skills, all warrior skills, paladin auras, and a few other abilities fall under this category.
Are there last names?
No. There has been no real word from Blizzard as to whether or not this will be implemented later. There have been some indications that there would be, but my personal impression is there will not be, since there are so many naming issues with players only having one name.
How many characters can I have?
On release, players will be limited to 8 characters total, and cannot play both factions on the same server.
Will beta testers get to keep their characters at release?
No. That's unfair practice. Beta testers get the advantage of playing for a while before everyone else, and knowing the game way better when it goes live. They don't need to hold their level advantage against others, especially on PvP.
Many of the beta players seem to think for some very strange reason that there might not be a wipe. I don't understand why Blizzard doesn't make a statement on the issue, since there is no way they will leave those characters in. (I haven't bought my copy yet, and if they do, I won't, considering the precedent that sets with their clientele.)
Edited, Wed Nov 17 19:19:08 2004 by Azuarc
Only the exceptions can be exceptional.
MONEY AND ITEMS
What currency does WoW use?
World of Warcraft has copper, silver, and gold pieces. 100 cp = 1
sp and 100 sp = 1 gp. You can carry an unlimited amount of money without it hindering you.
How easy is it to get money?
At the most basic level, money comes from killing creatures and either looting the coin directly or selling the random junk on their corpse. If you do *just* this, you will have enough money to cover your basic expenses and no more.
If you participate in a tradeskill, you can theoretically make some money from that. Right now, sadly, you make more money selling components to people who do tradeskills. So cloth, ores, and herbs are all good sources of money.
And finally you can sell decent quality items you don't need to other players. There is an Auction House that lets you put items up for bid, or you can just simply try to hawk your wares in the city trade channels. The Auction House is a clean interface that is more desirable for most people than simply trying to find a buyer in chat channels. They are located in Ironforge (Alliance,) Ogrimmar (Horde,) and Gadgetzan. (neutral) The neutral auction house, while it can sell to both factions, is more out of the way and exacts a higher selling fee, so it is not universally used by all.
What is money spent on?
Every two levels, you get new abilities. You then have to go to a class trainer and purchase these skills. This can cost a fair amount of money. Some classes have some additional overhead, like buying food/drinks, ammunition, and poisons.
You can also purchase better equipment from vendors or from other players. In general the vendor equipment isn't very good, and overpriced to boot. It's usually better to check the Auction House first.
Other uses for money include buying materials for tradeskills, mounts, and paying for transportation. Also, Blizzard is finding ways to remove money from the system, and some of the ways they have done this include repair costs to equipment, reagents to some spells, and putting a price rather than a timer on talent resets.
How is inventory handled?
There is no weight in this game. You cannot become encumbered.
You begin the game with one 16-slot backpack, and have 4 empty bag slots. (If you are a hunter, one of these is filled with a quiver.) Through the course of your playing, you can acquire bags to put in these slots, which generally have more space in them as you level. There is no required level for bags, but you won't see 16-slot bags on your own at level 5.
You also have a bank account, that can be accessed in the main cities, that holds (I think) 32 items and can also purchase more space in the form of bag slots. (This of course requires that you have a bag to put there.)
This might sound like a lot, but you can use it up very quickly if you like to loot everything, do tradeskills, and have certain class items (like arrows, totems, or soulshards) that take up a lot of space. If you find yourself running out of room, you might want to create another character simply to send items to in the mail, and return them at your convenience.
What equipment is there?
Items can be found on creatures, bought, or crafted. Every item has a quality, indicated by the color of the item's name. People will often refer to "greens" or "blues" as being decent items. White and gray are lower quality, and there are a few that are planned that are higher than blue. All items also have a required level, which is directly related to the stats on the item, its quality, and the slot it is for. (A blue item similar to a white item will have a lower required level.)
There is equipment for the following slots: main hand, off-hand, ranged, ammo, feet, legs, waist, chest, shirt, tabard, shoulders, arms, wrist, hands, fingers (2), neck, head, trinket (2).
Some of these slots you will find items for immediately. Chest and leg items, for example. Other slots do not have items for them at level 1. Shoulders will be the first of these that you find. Trinkets are the last you will fill, and never have stats on them; instead they have some effect, either passive or activated. Shirts and tabards are purely cosmetic.
What weapons can I use?
What armor can I equip?
For a given class, a weapon will be (1) immediately usable, (2) learnable, or (3) never usable. Once you are using a weapon, there is only your raw skill in that weapon that improves as you use it. There are no FFXI-esque weapon grades. Since the removal of skill points, one can train weapons by visiting a trainer and having it taught to them for a fee. Trainers can be found in major cities, although not every trainer trains every weapon type.
There are four types of armor - cloth, leather, mail and plate. Priests, warlocks and mages all use cloth. Druids, rogues, hunters and shamans can also equip leather. Hunters and shamans eventually learn to equip mail (at level 40,) which is the armor most warriors and paladins will wear initially, until they acquire the ability to wear plate at level 40.
Durability has also been added to the game. It works EXACTLY like in Diablo. Your items will become worn down and eventually “break,” which does not destroy them, just makes them stop working. You can repair your items in town for a fee that gets to be rather significant at higher levels, especially (in my experience) for plate classes.
How important are items?
Does everyone have the same items?
Where do I get my phat lewt?
Some items drop randomly from creatures. Players refer to these as world drops. They can come from any creature of a given level. Other items are made with tradeskills, are quested, or are found on the body of specific bosses in dungeon instances.
Items that drop are color-coded to indicate the item's quality. Some items are poor (gray), average (white), above average (green), exceptional (blue), rare (purple), whatever. This does not correlate to Diablo terminology in the slightest. Generally speaking, though, dungeon bosses will normally drop exclusively "blue" items. Purple items are extremely uncommon.
Items have a required level. Higher quality items that have the same required level generally do a lot more neat stuff.
Your player does not live and die by your equipment to the extent that you absolutely must go out and upgrade your equipment completely every 5 levels. But they do help a lot, and there will come a point when you need a little lovin' from your armor. Not everyone has the exact same equipment, but there are certain things players try for, and many of the power gamers do the same instance over and over until they get the single drop from a boss that you want. Depending on your intent with the game, farming instances is not completely required, although you ought to set foot in them once in a while.
Due to soulbinding of items and required levels, it is almost impossible to twink a character.
In a group, what looting options are there?
The group leader can at any time change the looting options to one of three settings - free-for-all, round robin, and master looter. Round robin is the default, and the best option for pick-up groups - corpses glow when you can loot them, and everyone takes turns having first access to a corpse. FFA means anyone can loot anything the group kills, and ML only opens the corpses to one person.
If a person checks a corpse, and then leaves it without fully looting, it opens up to anyone else in the group. You can never loot a corpse your group did not tap.
Blizzard has also recently added a few looting options that relate to looting for groups. These options follow round robin rules, however if an item of a certain quality drops, all players get a pop-up window asking if they wish to roll on the item. One option allows all players to roll, and the other only allows players who could actually equip the item.
What does it mean if an item is "bind on equip", "bind on pick-up", or "soulbound"?
In an effort to prevent high level items from being farmed for cash, but not a total nuisance to acquire, WoW has 3 designations on some items you acquire. White and gray quality items almost never bear these distinctions.
Soulbound means that an item is your's forever. You cannot trade it. You can still sell it to a vendor if you like or disenchant it. Quest rewards are almost universally soulbound, so a player has to earn the reward themselves.
Bind on pick-up is used for items that bosses have on their corpses. The item becomes soulbound to whomever loots it, so your party needs to discuss who gets to keep it right away. There is a pop-up warning to prevent accidental clicking. BoP is rarely seen elsewhere.
Bind on equip is the middle ground. You can trade an item that is Bind on Equip, so long as you do not use it. Once you equip it, it becomes soulbound. Most non-boss "good" items are bind on equip.
Are potions just one-time use?
Yes, this is not Dungeon Siege where you can quaff part of a potion and use the rest later. Just the same, potions are not something you use routinely like you would in Diablo. Health and mana potions have a two-minute reuse timer on them, so they are meant for emergencies. Also potions are a bit difficult to come by unless you are an alchemist. The game does not revolve around them; they are simply a help.
How do tradeskills work?
Tradeskills are actually somewhat fun in this game, and not just a drudgery of clicking and dragging objects continually, or endlessly killing mountain lions in hopes of getting a superior hide.
There are two types of skills: gathering skills and production skills. Production skills are things like blacksmithing, alchemy, and tailoring -- they actually make things. But to make them, you need ingredients collecting from a gathering skill, like mining, skinning, or fishing. Generally somebody who has a production skill has the associated gathering skill. Someone who does blacksmithing probably mines also.
To learn a tradeskill, you visit a trainer. They teach you the basics and you are now an apprentice. You can build your skill to a maximum of 75. You are given a few limited things you can do, and as you gain skill, you can learn others. You never have irreversible failures in the game. Only gathering skills can fail, and the plant or ore vein will still be right in front of you. Instead, you simply can't perform the task until you reach a certain skill.
When you reach your cap of 75, you can train further to become a journeyman, and then an expert and an artisan. Each raises your cap higher so you can learn new things. There are level restrictions on these training caps. The first tier is learnable at level 5, but you must be 10 for the second, 20 for the third, and 35 for the final level. This is done to prevent players from crreating level 1 tradeskill mules.
Are the items useful? That depends on who you ask. The simple truth is that for the mostpart, crafted items provide a baseline set of equipment for you so you don't completely suck, but there are also a few rather exceptional tradeskill items.
You are limited to two professions.
Why am I limited to two tradeskills?
There are a few reasons why this change was made, but to put it simply, it doesn't make sense and it was becoming abusive to the economy. Players who simply mined, gathered herbs, and skinned were making massive amounts of money at the expense of everyone who used the items they gathered, largely because there was such a high competition from every single player who did smithing and engineering wanting ore, and because those farmers were making it harder for the actual producers to acquire the items themselves. Now only a quarter of the players have one of those skills, instead of three-quarters.
There are a few tradeskills that are not affected by this limit. Blizzard made a change to call the "official" tradeskills professions. The following were instead made secondary skills: Fishing, Cooking, First Aid.
Could you explain the individual tradeskills?
The following professions are gathering skills: skinning, herbalism, and mining.
Herbalism and mining create a tracking effect, where if you move near an herb or an ore vein, it will show up as a dot on your mini-map. You walk up and right-click on the herb/ore, and your character will attempt to harvest it. If you fail, you can try again. Only one map tracking feature can be active at a time, which is not limited to detect herbs and find minerals. Mining additionally has a side-skill called smelting that lets you turn the ore into bars of metal.
Skinning is similar, but does not have a tracking effect. Instead, any time you kill a "beast," (a particular class of creature,) after it is looted, you can right-click on it to skin it. You do not have to be the one that killed the creature to skin it.
The following professions are production skills: alchemy, tailoring, blacksmithing, engineering, leatherworking. To perform a production skill, you activate a new ability found in your spellbook after training the ability that brings up a simple interface for the list of items you can make. Click on an item name and it states what components you need, and the stats of the item. Without clicking, you can see how many you can make with present components and, via the color it is listed in, how likely you are to gain skill by making one.
Alchemy makes potions from herbs. You must buy recipes - there's no experimentation system like in Morrowind. The potions you create will either produce a buff, or an immediate effect like a heal. Potions with immediate effects have cooldown timers so you can't just go into the fray with 300 healing potions and expect to survive anything.
Tailoring makes cloth armor from cloth. Tailoring has no associated gathering skill with it. Instead, you can find linen, wool, silk, and mageweave as drops from "humanoid" creatures. Tailoring also can make bags.
Leatherworking makes leather armor from skinned leather, and some varieties of mail armor, usually scale mail. It also produces armor patches you can apply to some major armor slots to get them an AC boost. There are three specialty versions of leatherworking you can train in later on, tribal, elemental, and dragonscale.
Blacksmithing makes mail and plate armor, and weapons from mined ore. High level smiths can specialize in weaponsmithing or armorsmithing, and there are sub-specialties of these. There are also a few modifying items smiths can make, like shield spikes and weapon chains.
Engineering is the most remarkable and contraversial tradeskill. Engineering makes guns, bombs, and a lot of knick-knacks. The important thing abuot engineering however is that most items it produces can only be used by engineers. Some players argue that this is a reason for every player to do engineering and leave the other skills to somebody else. Some of the aspects of engineering do have import effects on PvP. Others are just silly or fun, like mechanical squirrels.
The following skills are not professions, but are called secondary skills: Fishing, Cooking, First Aid.
Fishing lets you grab a rod, and cast a line into random bodies of water. Better rods and applying baits and lures effectively increases your skill. Some fish are used in alchemy potions for their oils, and a handful of quests ask for fish, but the only other purpose for fish is to supply materials for cooking. (You can use the fish directly as poor quality food, which work fine for feeding hunter pets.)
Cooking makes food, quite simply. Food is between-battle HP recovery. Sadly, there are very few mana-recovering recipies from cooking, as it does not make drinks. Many creatures you kill will leave meat or other cooking parts. Fish are also cookable. Cooking requires a cooking fire, but you can buy supplies that let you construct these outside of town.
First aid is the creation and application of bandages. A person that uses them is called a physician. Bandages are made from cloth, just as tailored items are. You can apply a bandage to anyone nearby, and they will regain health while you are applying it, but the effect terminates if either you or they are hit.
Oh yes, and don't let me forget enchanting. Enchanting is a profession, too, but I wouldn't really call it a production skill. Enchanters take quality items and disenchant them for weird mystical components that they in turn use to enchant items. Enchantments are permanent, and there are many recipes for many different effects that apply to many different slots. Some players feel that enchanting is the most powerful skill, but it is also easily the most expensive since it directly requires the enchanter to destroy cash items.
Edited, Wed Nov 17 19:35:08 2004 by Azuarc
What currency does WoW use?
World of Warcraft has copper, silver, and gold pieces. 100 cp = 1
sp and 100 sp = 1 gp. You can carry an unlimited amount of money without it hindering you.
How easy is it to get money?
At the most basic level, money comes from killing creatures and either looting the coin directly or selling the random junk on their corpse. If you do *just* this, you will have enough money to cover your basic expenses and no more.
If you participate in a tradeskill, you can theoretically make some money from that. Right now, sadly, you make more money selling components to people who do tradeskills. So cloth, ores, and herbs are all good sources of money.
And finally you can sell decent quality items you don't need to other players. There is an Auction House that lets you put items up for bid, or you can just simply try to hawk your wares in the city trade channels. The Auction House is a clean interface that is more desirable for most people than simply trying to find a buyer in chat channels. They are located in Ironforge (Alliance,) Ogrimmar (Horde,) and Gadgetzan. (neutral) The neutral auction house, while it can sell to both factions, is more out of the way and exacts a higher selling fee, so it is not universally used by all.
What is money spent on?
Every two levels, you get new abilities. You then have to go to a class trainer and purchase these skills. This can cost a fair amount of money. Some classes have some additional overhead, like buying food/drinks, ammunition, and poisons.
You can also purchase better equipment from vendors or from other players. In general the vendor equipment isn't very good, and overpriced to boot. It's usually better to check the Auction House first.
Other uses for money include buying materials for tradeskills, mounts, and paying for transportation. Also, Blizzard is finding ways to remove money from the system, and some of the ways they have done this include repair costs to equipment, reagents to some spells, and putting a price rather than a timer on talent resets.
How is inventory handled?
There is no weight in this game. You cannot become encumbered.
You begin the game with one 16-slot backpack, and have 4 empty bag slots. (If you are a hunter, one of these is filled with a quiver.) Through the course of your playing, you can acquire bags to put in these slots, which generally have more space in them as you level. There is no required level for bags, but you won't see 16-slot bags on your own at level 5.
You also have a bank account, that can be accessed in the main cities, that holds (I think) 32 items and can also purchase more space in the form of bag slots. (This of course requires that you have a bag to put there.)
This might sound like a lot, but you can use it up very quickly if you like to loot everything, do tradeskills, and have certain class items (like arrows, totems, or soulshards) that take up a lot of space. If you find yourself running out of room, you might want to create another character simply to send items to in the mail, and return them at your convenience.
What equipment is there?
Items can be found on creatures, bought, or crafted. Every item has a quality, indicated by the color of the item's name. People will often refer to "greens" or "blues" as being decent items. White and gray are lower quality, and there are a few that are planned that are higher than blue. All items also have a required level, which is directly related to the stats on the item, its quality, and the slot it is for. (A blue item similar to a white item will have a lower required level.)
There is equipment for the following slots: main hand, off-hand, ranged, ammo, feet, legs, waist, chest, shirt, tabard, shoulders, arms, wrist, hands, fingers (2), neck, head, trinket (2).
Some of these slots you will find items for immediately. Chest and leg items, for example. Other slots do not have items for them at level 1. Shoulders will be the first of these that you find. Trinkets are the last you will fill, and never have stats on them; instead they have some effect, either passive or activated. Shirts and tabards are purely cosmetic.
What weapons can I use?
What armor can I equip?
For a given class, a weapon will be (1) immediately usable, (2) learnable, or (3) never usable. Once you are using a weapon, there is only your raw skill in that weapon that improves as you use it. There are no FFXI-esque weapon grades. Since the removal of skill points, one can train weapons by visiting a trainer and having it taught to them for a fee. Trainers can be found in major cities, although not every trainer trains every weapon type.
There are four types of armor - cloth, leather, mail and plate. Priests, warlocks and mages all use cloth. Druids, rogues, hunters and shamans can also equip leather. Hunters and shamans eventually learn to equip mail (at level 40,) which is the armor most warriors and paladins will wear initially, until they acquire the ability to wear plate at level 40.
Durability has also been added to the game. It works EXACTLY like in Diablo. Your items will become worn down and eventually “break,” which does not destroy them, just makes them stop working. You can repair your items in town for a fee that gets to be rather significant at higher levels, especially (in my experience) for plate classes.
How important are items?
Does everyone have the same items?
Where do I get my phat lewt?
Some items drop randomly from creatures. Players refer to these as world drops. They can come from any creature of a given level. Other items are made with tradeskills, are quested, or are found on the body of specific bosses in dungeon instances.
Items that drop are color-coded to indicate the item's quality. Some items are poor (gray), average (white), above average (green), exceptional (blue), rare (purple), whatever. This does not correlate to Diablo terminology in the slightest. Generally speaking, though, dungeon bosses will normally drop exclusively "blue" items. Purple items are extremely uncommon.
Items have a required level. Higher quality items that have the same required level generally do a lot more neat stuff.
Your player does not live and die by your equipment to the extent that you absolutely must go out and upgrade your equipment completely every 5 levels. But they do help a lot, and there will come a point when you need a little lovin' from your armor. Not everyone has the exact same equipment, but there are certain things players try for, and many of the power gamers do the same instance over and over until they get the single drop from a boss that you want. Depending on your intent with the game, farming instances is not completely required, although you ought to set foot in them once in a while.
Due to soulbinding of items and required levels, it is almost impossible to twink a character.
In a group, what looting options are there?
The group leader can at any time change the looting options to one of three settings - free-for-all, round robin, and master looter. Round robin is the default, and the best option for pick-up groups - corpses glow when you can loot them, and everyone takes turns having first access to a corpse. FFA means anyone can loot anything the group kills, and ML only opens the corpses to one person.
If a person checks a corpse, and then leaves it without fully looting, it opens up to anyone else in the group. You can never loot a corpse your group did not tap.
Blizzard has also recently added a few looting options that relate to looting for groups. These options follow round robin rules, however if an item of a certain quality drops, all players get a pop-up window asking if they wish to roll on the item. One option allows all players to roll, and the other only allows players who could actually equip the item.
What does it mean if an item is "bind on equip", "bind on pick-up", or "soulbound"?
In an effort to prevent high level items from being farmed for cash, but not a total nuisance to acquire, WoW has 3 designations on some items you acquire. White and gray quality items almost never bear these distinctions.
Soulbound means that an item is your's forever. You cannot trade it. You can still sell it to a vendor if you like or disenchant it. Quest rewards are almost universally soulbound, so a player has to earn the reward themselves.
Bind on pick-up is used for items that bosses have on their corpses. The item becomes soulbound to whomever loots it, so your party needs to discuss who gets to keep it right away. There is a pop-up warning to prevent accidental clicking. BoP is rarely seen elsewhere.
Bind on equip is the middle ground. You can trade an item that is Bind on Equip, so long as you do not use it. Once you equip it, it becomes soulbound. Most non-boss "good" items are bind on equip.
Are potions just one-time use?
Yes, this is not Dungeon Siege where you can quaff part of a potion and use the rest later. Just the same, potions are not something you use routinely like you would in Diablo. Health and mana potions have a two-minute reuse timer on them, so they are meant for emergencies. Also potions are a bit difficult to come by unless you are an alchemist. The game does not revolve around them; they are simply a help.
How do tradeskills work?
Tradeskills are actually somewhat fun in this game, and not just a drudgery of clicking and dragging objects continually, or endlessly killing mountain lions in hopes of getting a superior hide.
There are two types of skills: gathering skills and production skills. Production skills are things like blacksmithing, alchemy, and tailoring -- they actually make things. But to make them, you need ingredients collecting from a gathering skill, like mining, skinning, or fishing. Generally somebody who has a production skill has the associated gathering skill. Someone who does blacksmithing probably mines also.
To learn a tradeskill, you visit a trainer. They teach you the basics and you are now an apprentice. You can build your skill to a maximum of 75. You are given a few limited things you can do, and as you gain skill, you can learn others. You never have irreversible failures in the game. Only gathering skills can fail, and the plant or ore vein will still be right in front of you. Instead, you simply can't perform the task until you reach a certain skill.
When you reach your cap of 75, you can train further to become a journeyman, and then an expert and an artisan. Each raises your cap higher so you can learn new things. There are level restrictions on these training caps. The first tier is learnable at level 5, but you must be 10 for the second, 20 for the third, and 35 for the final level. This is done to prevent players from crreating level 1 tradeskill mules.
Are the items useful? That depends on who you ask. The simple truth is that for the mostpart, crafted items provide a baseline set of equipment for you so you don't completely suck, but there are also a few rather exceptional tradeskill items.
You are limited to two professions.
Why am I limited to two tradeskills?
There are a few reasons why this change was made, but to put it simply, it doesn't make sense and it was becoming abusive to the economy. Players who simply mined, gathered herbs, and skinned were making massive amounts of money at the expense of everyone who used the items they gathered, largely because there was such a high competition from every single player who did smithing and engineering wanting ore, and because those farmers were making it harder for the actual producers to acquire the items themselves. Now only a quarter of the players have one of those skills, instead of three-quarters.
There are a few tradeskills that are not affected by this limit. Blizzard made a change to call the "official" tradeskills professions. The following were instead made secondary skills: Fishing, Cooking, First Aid.
Could you explain the individual tradeskills?
The following professions are gathering skills: skinning, herbalism, and mining.
Herbalism and mining create a tracking effect, where if you move near an herb or an ore vein, it will show up as a dot on your mini-map. You walk up and right-click on the herb/ore, and your character will attempt to harvest it. If you fail, you can try again. Only one map tracking feature can be active at a time, which is not limited to detect herbs and find minerals. Mining additionally has a side-skill called smelting that lets you turn the ore into bars of metal.
Skinning is similar, but does not have a tracking effect. Instead, any time you kill a "beast," (a particular class of creature,) after it is looted, you can right-click on it to skin it. You do not have to be the one that killed the creature to skin it.
The following professions are production skills: alchemy, tailoring, blacksmithing, engineering, leatherworking. To perform a production skill, you activate a new ability found in your spellbook after training the ability that brings up a simple interface for the list of items you can make. Click on an item name and it states what components you need, and the stats of the item. Without clicking, you can see how many you can make with present components and, via the color it is listed in, how likely you are to gain skill by making one.
Alchemy makes potions from herbs. You must buy recipes - there's no experimentation system like in Morrowind. The potions you create will either produce a buff, or an immediate effect like a heal. Potions with immediate effects have cooldown timers so you can't just go into the fray with 300 healing potions and expect to survive anything.
Tailoring makes cloth armor from cloth. Tailoring has no associated gathering skill with it. Instead, you can find linen, wool, silk, and mageweave as drops from "humanoid" creatures. Tailoring also can make bags.
Leatherworking makes leather armor from skinned leather, and some varieties of mail armor, usually scale mail. It also produces armor patches you can apply to some major armor slots to get them an AC boost. There are three specialty versions of leatherworking you can train in later on, tribal, elemental, and dragonscale.
Blacksmithing makes mail and plate armor, and weapons from mined ore. High level smiths can specialize in weaponsmithing or armorsmithing, and there are sub-specialties of these. There are also a few modifying items smiths can make, like shield spikes and weapon chains.
Engineering is the most remarkable and contraversial tradeskill. Engineering makes guns, bombs, and a lot of knick-knacks. The important thing abuot engineering however is that most items it produces can only be used by engineers. Some players argue that this is a reason for every player to do engineering and leave the other skills to somebody else. Some of the aspects of engineering do have import effects on PvP. Others are just silly or fun, like mechanical squirrels.
The following skills are not professions, but are called secondary skills: Fishing, Cooking, First Aid.
Fishing lets you grab a rod, and cast a line into random bodies of water. Better rods and applying baits and lures effectively increases your skill. Some fish are used in alchemy potions for their oils, and a handful of quests ask for fish, but the only other purpose for fish is to supply materials for cooking. (You can use the fish directly as poor quality food, which work fine for feeding hunter pets.)
Cooking makes food, quite simply. Food is between-battle HP recovery. Sadly, there are very few mana-recovering recipies from cooking, as it does not make drinks. Many creatures you kill will leave meat or other cooking parts. Fish are also cookable. Cooking requires a cooking fire, but you can buy supplies that let you construct these outside of town.
First aid is the creation and application of bandages. A person that uses them is called a physician. Bandages are made from cloth, just as tailored items are. You can apply a bandage to anyone nearby, and they will regain health while you are applying it, but the effect terminates if either you or they are hit.
Oh yes, and don't let me forget enchanting. Enchanting is a profession, too, but I wouldn't really call it a production skill. Enchanters take quality items and disenchant them for weird mystical components that they in turn use to enchant items. Enchantments are permanent, and there are many recipes for many different effects that apply to many different slots. Some players feel that enchanting is the most powerful skill, but it is also easily the most expensive since it directly requires the enchanter to destroy cash items.
Edited, Wed Nov 17 19:35:08 2004 by Azuarc
Only the exceptions can be exceptional.
I got one...
are you my daddy?
are you my daddy?
I would've been your daddy... (5 points of deliciousness to anyone who can finish that phrase)
Oh and Azuarc, I love you. Platonically.
I swear..
Oh and Azuarc, I love you. Platonically.
I swear..
Good post.
Cleared up some of my PvP questions, according to this post the PvP just relates to NPCs unless I consent.
That's good. I can live with that.
Cleared up some of my PvP questions, according to this post the PvP just relates to NPCs unless I consent.
That's good. I can live with that.
MISCELLANEOUS
How are guilds made?
How do guilds work?
Guilds are made when one person goes to the guild creation hall in one of the major cities and requests to start a guild, paying a fee to start it. Once that is done, he now has a guild charter that he needs to get 10 signatures for, from characters on 10 different accounts. Once this is fulfilled, the guild is created. No GM intervention is necessary.
The guild leader can then go back to the guild creation hall and request to design a tabard for the guild at a cost of 10 gold. Other members of the guild can then buy a tabard for 1 gold, and equip it in the special tabard slot.
Guilds, as in most games, vary greatly in nature. Some consist of friendly people just looking to have someone to talk to while they play. Some are tightly-knit families that group together. Some are clusters of power-gamers that work together through difficult content. The only thing all guilds have in common is that they are player-run organizations with a special chat channel you can talk in, and you can only belong to one at a time. They are usually more organized and purpose-driven than the FFXI linkshell that was often little more than a chatroom.
How is transportation?
There are two primary means of transportation in the game: griffins and boats.
Griffins (and hippogryphs and bats and wyverns) are local flights that can transport you quickly from, say, Stormwind to Ironforge. They cost a nominal fee, and follow a set route. You get to watch the flight, but the griffin flies itself. You cannot simply fly anywhere initially though -- you have to visit a location on foot before you can fly to it.
Boats (and zeppelins) are used for inter-continental travel. There are two main continents, Kalimdor and Azeroth. A few select harbors have free boat service, however you must wait for the boat to arrive and then travel across. Fear not! This is not Everquest! The boats only take a few minutes round-trip, and remain at a location for 1 minute.
There are other methods of transportation, also. Mages can teleport themselves and later others to main cities. Additionally every character receives an item called a hearthstone that lets that transport to the inn they call home. The hearthstone is only usable once per hour, and takes quite a few seconds to cast -- it is not an escape tool, and it is not meant simply to get around. Its primary function is to let you get back to a town quickly so you can log in a hurry.
What about mounts?
How do people get around on foot?
Mounts are simply a way to make you travel faster on foot, and there are other player skills with a similar effect - druids, shamans and hunters all get run speed enhancement abilities. None of them work in combat except the hunter's, which has a drawback.
There is one mount for every race. You can not attain a mount before level 40. They come at a cost of 100g. You can also (usually) ride other mounts that are in your faction. There is a second level of mounts avaiable at level 60 that cost 1000g. They have a different graphic and run faster.
While this may change later, there is no way to ride mounts of other factions; there was a bug that players could use to do this briefly, but there is no official way to do this.
Humans ride horses. Dwarves ride rams. Night Elves ride cats. Gnomes ride mechanostriders.
Orcs ride wolves. Trolls ride raptors. Undead have their own sort of horse. Taurens used to have a racial skill, but now ride Kodos instead.
Paladins and warlocks have class-specific mounts called the charger and the nightmare. The nightmare is not quite as fast as a normal mount, and the charger requires a quest to attain.
Mounts and most run-speed modifiers do not work indoors. Mounts in particular disappear if you try to swim with them.
What are instances?
Instanced dungeons are private areas to take your party to -- you reach the entrance to the dungeon and enter a new zone where the servers generate the dungeon just for you. (It's the same every time, not random, but nobody else will be there.)
Creatures in instanced dungeons are usually much tougher than an equal mob of their level, and are usually in tight packs that make it difficult to pull in ones and twos. Simple translation: instances are group content. Do not try this alone.
Many of the best items come from instances, and they can just be fun to clear through. Until Blizzard inserts end-game content, most players at cap spend their time going through instances.
What is tapping?
Tapping is the act of claiming a mob. When you target a creature, it's name bar will be in red. If someone else has already started hitting that creature though, it becomes gray until that person kills it or runs away. If you kill it while it is gray, it is not your creature, and so you will gain no experience and not be able to loot it. If you tap a creature and then let someone else kill it, you will be able to loot it, but if you only caused a quarter of the damage, you will only get a quarter of the experience you would otherwise.
Is it hard to get around town?
Yes and no. It's hard the first time when you are stumbling about aimlessly, but towns are laid out in a clear manner that, once you discover it, makes it easy to find things again later. If you can’t find something, guards give you directions. There are also maps of the city you can look at by hitting M.
Is it hard to find questgivers?
If you're searching a major city, yes, usually. However, most cities seem to be divided so that the level 10 quests are in one area, the level 20 are in another, etc. It is generally easier to find quests in the actual zone you intend to hunt in though, at least until level 35 or so. If you explore the town or outpost in your zone, there will usually be numerous questgivers there.
Once you have a quest completed, and you are looking for that person, you will see them on your mini-map if you are nearby.
How versatile are macros?
Not very. I think Blizzard is going out of their way to try to prevent 'bots. In particular, there is no pause/wait command. Considering that is the bread and butter of a two-boxer, only people with special equipment or a great deal of talent will likely be able to run multiple characters at once.
Blizzard is giving players the option now to mod their user interface as they see fit so that they can see how players will break or trivialize the game. They have also incorporated a number of features from popular custom UIs into the main user interface.
What the heck is Cosmos?
Cosmos is the most renowned and widely-used custom UI among beta players. Using it gives a player access to a host of tools that most players would not have, like extra hotkey bars, mob drop statistics, and is the reason the main UI now has several features, such as quest sharing.
There's mail in this game?
Yes, every town has a mailbox you can visit to send messages to other players and see if anyone has sent you any. Mail costs 30 copper to send (postage), and you may attach one item to the mail. The auction house sends you items and returns bids to you through the mail. It is also possible to transfer items between your own characters through the mail. Mail with items attached to them take one hour to deliver.
Edited, Wed Nov 17 19:42:48 2004 by Azuarc
How are guilds made?
How do guilds work?
Guilds are made when one person goes to the guild creation hall in one of the major cities and requests to start a guild, paying a fee to start it. Once that is done, he now has a guild charter that he needs to get 10 signatures for, from characters on 10 different accounts. Once this is fulfilled, the guild is created. No GM intervention is necessary.
The guild leader can then go back to the guild creation hall and request to design a tabard for the guild at a cost of 10 gold. Other members of the guild can then buy a tabard for 1 gold, and equip it in the special tabard slot.
Guilds, as in most games, vary greatly in nature. Some consist of friendly people just looking to have someone to talk to while they play. Some are tightly-knit families that group together. Some are clusters of power-gamers that work together through difficult content. The only thing all guilds have in common is that they are player-run organizations with a special chat channel you can talk in, and you can only belong to one at a time. They are usually more organized and purpose-driven than the FFXI linkshell that was often little more than a chatroom.
How is transportation?
There are two primary means of transportation in the game: griffins and boats.
Griffins (and hippogryphs and bats and wyverns) are local flights that can transport you quickly from, say, Stormwind to Ironforge. They cost a nominal fee, and follow a set route. You get to watch the flight, but the griffin flies itself. You cannot simply fly anywhere initially though -- you have to visit a location on foot before you can fly to it.
Boats (and zeppelins) are used for inter-continental travel. There are two main continents, Kalimdor and Azeroth. A few select harbors have free boat service, however you must wait for the boat to arrive and then travel across. Fear not! This is not Everquest! The boats only take a few minutes round-trip, and remain at a location for 1 minute.
There are other methods of transportation, also. Mages can teleport themselves and later others to main cities. Additionally every character receives an item called a hearthstone that lets that transport to the inn they call home. The hearthstone is only usable once per hour, and takes quite a few seconds to cast -- it is not an escape tool, and it is not meant simply to get around. Its primary function is to let you get back to a town quickly so you can log in a hurry.
What about mounts?
How do people get around on foot?
Mounts are simply a way to make you travel faster on foot, and there are other player skills with a similar effect - druids, shamans and hunters all get run speed enhancement abilities. None of them work in combat except the hunter's, which has a drawback.
There is one mount for every race. You can not attain a mount before level 40. They come at a cost of 100g. You can also (usually) ride other mounts that are in your faction. There is a second level of mounts avaiable at level 60 that cost 1000g. They have a different graphic and run faster.
While this may change later, there is no way to ride mounts of other factions; there was a bug that players could use to do this briefly, but there is no official way to do this.
Humans ride horses. Dwarves ride rams. Night Elves ride cats. Gnomes ride mechanostriders.
Orcs ride wolves. Trolls ride raptors. Undead have their own sort of horse. Taurens used to have a racial skill, but now ride Kodos instead.
Paladins and warlocks have class-specific mounts called the charger and the nightmare. The nightmare is not quite as fast as a normal mount, and the charger requires a quest to attain.
Mounts and most run-speed modifiers do not work indoors. Mounts in particular disappear if you try to swim with them.
What are instances?
Instanced dungeons are private areas to take your party to -- you reach the entrance to the dungeon and enter a new zone where the servers generate the dungeon just for you. (It's the same every time, not random, but nobody else will be there.)
Creatures in instanced dungeons are usually much tougher than an equal mob of their level, and are usually in tight packs that make it difficult to pull in ones and twos. Simple translation: instances are group content. Do not try this alone.
Many of the best items come from instances, and they can just be fun to clear through. Until Blizzard inserts end-game content, most players at cap spend their time going through instances.
What is tapping?
Tapping is the act of claiming a mob. When you target a creature, it's name bar will be in red. If someone else has already started hitting that creature though, it becomes gray until that person kills it or runs away. If you kill it while it is gray, it is not your creature, and so you will gain no experience and not be able to loot it. If you tap a creature and then let someone else kill it, you will be able to loot it, but if you only caused a quarter of the damage, you will only get a quarter of the experience you would otherwise.
Is it hard to get around town?
Yes and no. It's hard the first time when you are stumbling about aimlessly, but towns are laid out in a clear manner that, once you discover it, makes it easy to find things again later. If you can’t find something, guards give you directions. There are also maps of the city you can look at by hitting M.
Is it hard to find questgivers?
If you're searching a major city, yes, usually. However, most cities seem to be divided so that the level 10 quests are in one area, the level 20 are in another, etc. It is generally easier to find quests in the actual zone you intend to hunt in though, at least until level 35 or so. If you explore the town or outpost in your zone, there will usually be numerous questgivers there.
Once you have a quest completed, and you are looking for that person, you will see them on your mini-map if you are nearby.
How versatile are macros?
Not very. I think Blizzard is going out of their way to try to prevent 'bots. In particular, there is no pause/wait command. Considering that is the bread and butter of a two-boxer, only people with special equipment or a great deal of talent will likely be able to run multiple characters at once.
Blizzard is giving players the option now to mod their user interface as they see fit so that they can see how players will break or trivialize the game. They have also incorporated a number of features from popular custom UIs into the main user interface.
What the heck is Cosmos?
Cosmos is the most renowned and widely-used custom UI among beta players. Using it gives a player access to a host of tools that most players would not have, like extra hotkey bars, mob drop statistics, and is the reason the main UI now has several features, such as quest sharing.
There's mail in this game?
Yes, every town has a mailbox you can visit to send messages to other players and see if anyone has sent you any. Mail costs 30 copper to send (postage), and you may attach one item to the mail. The auction house sends you items and returns bids to you through the mail. It is also possible to transfer items between your own characters through the mail. Mail with items attached to them take one hour to deliver.
Edited, Wed Nov 17 19:42:48 2004 by Azuarc
Only the exceptions can be exceptional.
Rate up. Maybe we could get this added as a guide?
Or at least a sticky...
Or a guide that's all sticky?
Quote:
Or a guide that's all sticky?
Best of both worlds... I approve. *thumbs up*
Now, just do me a favor and not tell my why it's all sticky.
I hit my head last night stumbling around in the dark looking for something, and in the morning all I found was a...
Only the exceptions can be exceptional.
Waddya know.
You actually did something about people asking the same question over and over instead of being witty and annoying.
Rate-up, and thanks.
Az if you take all the useful info from Jaefo's post, we can unsticky the old one and sticky this instead and you can keep it updated. Let me know what you guys think.
I would agree that post is very intimidating already for many players to browse around.
Yeah, sticky posts don't work as good.
As long as Az keeps updating the FAQ of this one, it'll be better.
"Mr. Data, make it so!!"
As long as Az keeps updating the FAQ of this one, it'll be better.
"Mr. Data, make it so!!"
Lady Darkflame wrote:
Az if you take all the useful info from Jaefo's post, we can unsticky the old one and sticky this instead and you can keep it updated. Let me know what you guys think.
well, I used the first of my two blank posts to fill in some gaps, but I'm too worn out to do any more in one sitting. I pooled most of the questions from the first two pages of Jaefo's thread that are not obsolete.
edit: due to the removal of skill points, a few things will need to be edited, but I will wait on that until I see what direct effect it has.
Edited, Fri Sep 10 07:25:38 2004 by Azuarc
edit: due to the removal of skill points, a few things will need to be edited, but I will wait on that until I see what direct effect it has.
Edited, Fri Sep 10 07:25:38 2004 by Azuarc
Only the exceptions can be exceptional.
Woo, 400th post!
Oh yeah, and I went through the rest of the ask a tester thread. Ironically most of the questions in the remainder I had already covered in yesterday's session.
In any event, comments/suggestions/questions about what is there, isn't there, or should be re-arranged to be more intuitive?
Oh yeah, and I went through the rest of the ask a tester thread. Ironically most of the questions in the remainder I had already covered in yesterday's session.
In any event, comments/suggestions/questions about what is there, isn't there, or should be re-arranged to be more intuitive?
Only the exceptions can be exceptional.
Good job Azuarc. Now we need a sticky please. ^^
Quote:
pie > bump
My user rating right now is pi. ;)
Only the exceptions can be exceptional.
Azuarc, where did you get the karma beating at? FFXI forums?
I dunno, I've seen individual posts get rated up, but I don't think I've ever seen a new one be higher than that, so I assume my actual user rating never went above 3.14
Then again, I don't fastidiously track my rating and I don't reread all my posts the second I write them, so I could be wrong.
Then again, I don't fastidiously track my rating and I don't reread all my posts the second I write them, so I could be wrong.
Only the exceptions can be exceptional.
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