The questions everyone keeps askingFollow

Please note, these questions and their responses are taken DIRECTLY from the sticky at the top of the forum titled "Read first before posting your question."


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.



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.



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.



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.


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 best race/class combo?

There is no single best race/class combination. At least there isn't supposed to be. There certainly is very little difference between the races right now other than starting area, until more racial traits are included in the game.
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.


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.


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.


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.


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.


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. Most paladins and warriors right now favor a certain sword from a weaponsmith.


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.



and here's two I'll add:

Is Dual Wielding good for <xxx>?

Dual Wielding can be done at level 10 by rogues, or level 20 by warriors and hunters. Dual wielding greatly increases the miss rate on each hand, so warriors generally prefer using a two-handed weapon, if they aren't using a shield for defensive purposes. A rogue has no incentive not to dual wield, because they cannot equip shields and cannot use two-handed weapons. Hunters usually dual wield, but they also usually don't melee.


Is an undead bad at being a warrior? (or any other race/class combination)

No. Your game is determined by your class, not your race. Race only decides your starting location and your faction, and gives you a few minor non-game-breaking abilities. Don't hinge your gameplay on your race.

Edited, Mon Nov 15 07:08:29 2004 by Azuarc