Wowhead Launches World of Warcraft New Player Guides

Posted 2016/06/10 at 12:02 PM by perculia

WarcraftBasic Movement and CombatHuman Starting Zone 1-5Human Starting Zone 5-10New Guides

Important Milestones in WoW: New to WoW and not sure what to look forward to? This guide will break down important perks and milestones you can look forward to as you level up!

Social Features: Many of the activities in WoW are enhanced by doing them with friends! From completing a quest together to finding four other players to complete a challenging dungeon for better loot, World of Warcraft is a social experience. This guide explains how to make the most of your social experience in WoW.

Alliance Faction and Horde Faction Overviews: Learn about each race in the warring factions and pick one to join. We're covering everything from each race's appearance to their favorite food and pets!

What is a Zone: This guide will explain the basics of a zone—what are the various areas and how each is important. Learn how to use the map, navigate around questing zones, and find an Inn to rest.

City Overview: Learn about unique things you can do in a city and the different cultures behind each city you'll encounter while leveling.

Class Basics: The concept of a class, different roles, types of abilities, using the spellbook, and Wowhead's calculators

New Players and Leveling Guide sectionDungeon and Item Level RequirementsNew Level 100 Player BasicsBoosted Level 100 Player EssentialsLeveling from 1-60: Questing and DungeonsLeveling Guides

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Comments

Comment by VeryGooDiS

Were DK Leveling Guide? (Joke)

Comment by blissfire

Great idea! I'm excited to see these new players coming in and am doing what I can to at least welcome them when I see them even if I can't trade them anything useful across servers. (use Compare Achievements to see if they're on a new account :)

I'm sure these newbie guides will be as thorough and helpful as always!

Comment by Eliteblood

Very nice!

Comment by Djahn

Errors in the Hunter guide. I left a comment there.

Comment by Ketsuki

Fixed, thank you :)

Comment by riotangel

Are there guides on the game concepts? Because those are the things newbies often fail to catch on quickly, and only learn via painful experience.

E.g.

gear selection for class/spec
aggro, linked aggro
aggro radius, and level differences
group roles and team synergy
pet control/management
item loot systems
world PVP

Comment by SilverSapphire

Awesome, thanks! Though I imagine the guide makers will have a blast updating their stuff once Legion launches. :D

Comment by perculia

Are there guides on the game concepts? Because those are the things newbies often fail to catch on quickly, and only learn via painful experience.

E.g.

gear selection for class/spec
aggro, linked aggro
aggro radius, and level differences
group roles and team synergy
pet control/management
item loot systems
world PVP

We have plans to work on a general 'what is an item guide' soon. Probably would have been done today but had exclusive movie reveal/premiere/summit going on. The other topics we may get to in the upcoming months since they're a step up from the very basics (although if anyone reading the comments wants to take a shot at it and write that guide, feel free!)

Comment by lovelywaz

Thanks ... I can use some or all of these ;)

Comment by TwilightNova

To any new players reading this in order to access the guides: welcome!

Comment by DG2020

This should be handy for about a month until the overhauled classes are rolled in.

Comment by perculia

This should be handy for about a month until the overhauled classes are rolled in.

So...yes and no. The timing of the movie is unfortunate in that it's right before Legion. However, these guides are still meant to be short, so hopefully most of the updates will be swapping abilities around but the basic concept will remain the same. I know a few specs like Survival and Outlaw will have bigger updates but 1-20 should stay a pretty simple experience.

Comment by Random0091

Hopefully those who are new or old find their answers with these. They're wonderful.

I would like to suggest something for the website — a tool rather. A sequence that takes a player, new or old, through steps in finding the right character as their main or what to level next. I see a lot of individuals struggle early on with this. For example, it could start off with what type of role they might want to play and continue forth with choosing a class. Maybe include certain races as well their racial benefits. This could help with breaking the line early on.

Comment by Mergas

The only problem I can see with these guides, or WowHead and other online resources, is that players may not find them in time. Not everyone researches online first. I know I didn't start coming to online sites until well after my WoW playing had started. Word of mouth will help some new players, but not all. Is there some way the guides could be 'advertised' in game, such as in the login comments?

Comment by perculia

We are working with Blizzard--a few weeks ago they reached out to us to see if we were working on any new player guides! They wanted our guides to supplement their own, and I believe there should be a roundup at some point linking all of ours with theirs. Hopefully more promotion on the way.

I also reached out to r/wow and got a link to this post highlighted in their New Player sticky--should help with visibility too.

Comment by darkelemental1

Seems kinda pointless to be putting in better class guides now since none of them are going to play the same in just a few months. Good luck keeping updated with all the changes as even after launch I imagine there will be massive class changes since they oddly decided to change everything so much this xpac and so little is coming out in a balanced and working manner.

On that, how will you be trying to call back people to the guides after the changes?

Comment by GordonBuchat

For those of us that regularly check Wowhead and are now aware of these guides, an excellent way to help out the new folks coming to the game as a result of the movie is to direct them here to check them out.

I will be trying to visit some starting areas to pass out Lifelike Mechanical Squirrels and help the new folks out, and now I can "teach them to fish" by directing them here to check out these guides.

Comment by perculia

These aren't really better class guides, they are very simple 1-20 leveling guides that staff focused on in the last week. But if they do seem a lot better, cool, that's great feedback :) We aimed to keep them very short as they're designed to help brand-new players that don't need to known the nuances at very low levels, so while updating them for Legion will take some time, we aren't rewriting them from scratch. You're still going to have one ore two DPS abilities at low levels, and due to ability pruning, maybe less abilities to worry about.

These leveling guides do link to spec-specific guides, but those aren't new - we've had them on Wowhead for quite a while but they haven't always been publicized as much as they should. They will take more time to update, but we're far along in the process of revamping the guide format for Legion and coordinating updates with external guide writers.(##RESPBREAK##)2##DELIM##perculia##DELIM##

Comment by culinund

I like what I have read so far. The only feedback I would give is ... Just be sure there aren't any terms anywhere in the guide that players, not just new to WoW, but MMO's in general, might not be familiar with. I know as a new player to other games, I have come across guides/forum discussions, etc where people are using key words and acronyms that i knew nothing about and it becomes very confusing.

Perhaps that is an idea, and not sure if it already exists ... but add a glossary of key terms and acronyms that are commonly used throughout the WoW universe. I think I've seen this on other sites, but I think WoWhead creating their own would be a great compliment to all these guides.

Comment by perculia

We debated doing a glossary, but thought this was something Blizzard could write or highlight. They said there's a pretty good sticky with terms, so whenever they promote it, we can highlight it somewhere on the site. If that doesn't get done on their end, we'll look into writing one.(##RESPBREAK##)2##DELIM##perculia##DELIM##