So I Just Started Playing WoW...

[Vindictus]

I know, I know, I am several years late. I've been playing the trial for a couple of days, and so far I am liking it. Is it worth it to go for the full upgrade? Are there any tips/pointers people can give me? I've been playing as a Night Elf Hunter, fyi.

It depends. What are you interested in? Killing people, or killing monsters, or both? Only leveling? RP?

Max level basically consists of grinding. While it's not as bad as most MMO's, it certainly takes a couple of days/weeks (depending on play time) to build your character up to raid level. If you like doing the same handful of dungeons over and over with people/guild mates, then you'll enjoy it. Beyond 5 man dungeons, you have your raids. If you enjoy spending a couple of nights a week with 9-24 other people killing dragons, then raiding is for you.

PvP contains a similar amount of grinding, probably more. You'll spend a lot of time in Battlegrounds getting angry over dying so much, as you'll have no PvP stats. Arena is more enjoyable if you prefer small-scale player-centric battles.

The most important thing is to play a class you enjoy, find some people you like, and give everything a try. You should know if it's the game for you after you've done some Battlegrounds and 5 mans at higher levels, and have played all three roles.

 

[Jack O'Shea]

I'd say if your injoying it, go ahead and buy it. It's not that expensive and you can pay monthly so if another game comes out that you want to play you only lost like $20 or play until your time runs out.
To all those who say WoW eats up your time and ruins your life are wrong. WoW the game does not force you to keep playing, you can stop anytime you want. It's people who get obsessed with the game who play it non-stop. However there's an easy way to tell if your becoming obsessed; if your friends invited you out to do something but you say no because you want to raid or something you should stop playing.
And finally good luck, i played WoW until i moved on campus and the internet here blocks it.

 

[Dejavuproned]

What he said. It's an addictive game. There are things to like about it. But it's to be noted, that any enjoyment that one derives from WoW is to be taken with a certain quotient of poison. There are also some glaring design flaws that you will come to throw your hands up and accept, and really before you have an investment you can't easily walk away from, you shouldn't have to.

Also, nothing wrong with a nightelf hunter. There are about 90,000 of them for good reason. In my day (quit with the arrival of cataclysm) they were great pvp ambushers and could sometimes skip out on a raid wipe in pve.

Too add to my previous post, this would be my first suggestion. That being said it doesn't HAVE to be a bad game, as long as you again avoid the so called "end game". This is where people lose their lives getting obsessed about gear and stats, because the games designed to keep you hooked in after levelling to coat over the fact that they have no more new tricks up their sleeves once you hit the level cap.

Avoid the temptation to go there and you can still enjoy the game without losing yourself in it.

 

[Wuggy]

You can play the game moderately and still be succesfull (I was a succesfull raider with a social life).

Considering I proudly proclaimed that throughout my WoW career forgive me if I hold your opinion with a pinch of salt.

For the record, I haven't played WoW, or had any desire to, for the past... half a year or so. I say this looking back at the time I played. Just keeping priorities straight, not spending time on non-essentiel stuff frees up a lot of time.

Furthermore, to have a successful raider in present day WoW does not mean anything near the same thing as having a successful 40 man raider in Vanilla did.

Yes, but that's not applicable to the context. It's not Vanilla anymore.

 

[Josh Horton]

In all honesty I didn't like WoW but I say, buy a 1 month and see how you like it, could possibly get to endgame stuff in that time, I know I could of, I hit level 70 in about 18 hours. It bored me half to death getting there.

 

[Zeema]

Alliance i don't usually help Alliance

nah not really i use the WoW wiki
http://www.wowwiki.com/Portal:Main

its really good i use it constantly.

<----played WoW since launch day still only had 1 max lvl character

 

[Rblade]

be prepared to take advice, I could go into how I played my hunter but I don't think that will be of much use. If you run a dungeon finder there will be, not always but at times, people that will give general pointers. Listen to them it ussually makes sense what they are saying if they take the time to explain stuff.
What you don't have to listen to is people whining about what build you choose, optimizing your talent build is for lvl 85. 2 basic rules apply for low levels, USE all your talent points and try to stick to 1 tree (there is some good cross tree stuff but due to synergy of abilities and the fact that it makes you unlock higher tiers you want to stick to 1 tree for at least 50 or 60 levels.

general hunter stuff:

try to not let your focus get to 100 during battles, your focus abilities will do more damage then your focus generating once (damage per second that is, so the numbers might sometimes be lower but they are more effecient). So use them until you can't no longer.

starting out with the beastmaster class would allow you to experiment more easily, your pet will keep aggro (monster aggression) on him so you can fiddle around with using what abilities in what order feels best to you.

good hotkeys, if you haven't already. find out what abilities you use often and hotkey them to 1 2 3 4. I also found it very usefull to, later on, unbind Q and E, bind strafe to A and D and then bind 2 important abilities to Q and E. Easy access and you turn with your mouse so you don't need them.

strafe running, a very easy to execute "advanced" hunter manouver. If you use the strafe keys and run in a very faint circle you can use your instant shot abilities (with the hotkeys) while keeping distance with your foes. Very handy to make sure you rarely ever die, as long as you watch out not to run into other packs of mobs . (there is pretty decend video's on the subject and other basics on youtube.

in general just read descriptions of abilities as you acquire them and try them all, that way you'll find out what is usefull and what isn't. Come lvl 85 is early enough to start thinking about maxing out your build and looking up detailed strategy guides on the wow forums or tankspot or something.

1 last thing, if you use the dungeon finder. Either look up the dungeon if you want to on the web, or follow your tanks lead, stay behind him and don't attack anything he isn't. If you do that and only roll need on items with agility nobody will call you a huntard and you'll make people around you smile

(maby you already knew all this but if you didn't voila)

 

[Nautical Honors Society]

If you like it and want to play it more than continue to play and buy the upgrades, if not, don't.

 

[Hanzo Hattori]

I know, I know, I am several years late. I've been playing the trial for a couple of days, and so far I am liking it. Is it worth it to go for the full upgrade? Are there any tips/pointers people can give me? I've been playing as a Night Elf Hunter, fyi.

Seriously stop while you're ahead and play a game that will chew up less of your time - like EvE or Lord of the Rings Online (if u have to play one at all)

I am serious here, WoW chewed up three quarters of a year of my life... Three quarters of a year of my life was spent in front of one screen or another. Bad mistake.

I myself have been playing 3 years of WoW now and I'm still having fun with it. I'm not that kind of person that plays for hours and hours every day, in general it came to a max of about 7 - 12 hours a week. It's all about the person and not the game, I would've no problem with selling my account and quit it. There are lots of other games (not MMOs) out there I love too btw.

 

[Rawne1980]

I've been playing as a Night Elf Hunter.

As long as you didn't call it Legolas or any variation of that then you are good to go.

 

[solidd]

My experience with WoW was minimal compared to some and crazy compared to others. I only had about 71 days played time (around 1704 hours) on a LOVELY rogue, over two periods of 4 and 5 months, so that's around 6.31 hours per day, 7 days a week. I had heaps of awesome mounts, achievements, at one point i had the best gear on the server (for my class), had a GREAT time with my mates in our own guild, so much screwing around in vent, doing raids, and just general rofling around. I eventually sold my account for about $500 because it was TAKING OVER MY LIFE. I had become a GM of a sizeable pretty respectable guild which did end game raiding, and well, my life timetable had to fit in around WoW. Which is fucked up. Anyway, the maths ended up being as follows:

IF i had spent my 1704 or so hours working an average job at say $20 an hour (aus) I would've earnt:

$34,080

HOWEVER, as I sold my account for $500, this worked out to be about...

$0.29 per hour

So to conclude, wow is a great fun game which really offers a lot. Don't let your addiction get the better of you, stick to a timetable so you don't sink ALL your time into it like I did. If you really really enjoy your character and put a whole lot of love into it, please don't sell it like I did, it's kind of heartbreaking to think all that effort just pissed away for a really tiny amount of money relatively.

Anyway, happy WoWing.

 

[The Dutchess]

If you're hellbent on staying with WoW, reroll...people don't take too kindly to Night Elf hunters, unless that's changed in the 8 months since I quit.

One of the many reasons WoW doesn't appeal to me. He can play what he wants.

I have trialed WoW about three times and have been completely unimpressed every time. It does not live up to the hype at all. I think because I've played quite a few other mmos before I even tried WoW I'd already seen it's style played out a hundred different ways. It may be the "original" but that doesn't mean anything to me.

Wait for SWTOR - I know people are saying its the same hype they give every new game but it is looking excellent. Where else are you going to find spoken conversations and cutscenes for quests or fully functional companions. Plus they're listening to the fans and the testers. It may not live up to the hype but I think it's going to be something special. Like Bioware games? SWTOR is one that will last you for years. Can you guess I'm excited?

If you can't wait play Lord of the Rings Online - much prettier and less annoying people - or City of Heroes which is just LOTS of fun. You can fly and jump over buildings and shoot fire from your hands - I don't know what more you could need. End game content is lacking but I played it for a good couple of years and I'm not easily entertained.

But then I'm a Wow-hater so I may be biased.

 

[Broderick]

I have been playing WoW for a very long time, and continuing to do so. I suggest you keep playing if you are having fun with it, dont force yourself to get to "the good parts" if you have to suffer through gameplay that you just dont like. If you do like the game, experiment with different classes, see how they play, choose which one you like best. Seeing how you chose a hunter for your first character, you should be well off on learning the game. Hunters are a great solo class, and have a variety of skills and abilities to help you out in any situation.

Hunters use agility as their main "stat". Be sure to always take things with agility, as strength and other stats are basically useless to you. You are a ranged class, so try to avoid melee combat when possible. Be sure to tame a pet which you like, there are tons of pets to choose from and they all do many different things(spiders can shoot web, turtles and take mass amounts of damage for you etc).

When in a group, be nice and mind your manners, these are other humans you are playing with. Be sure to ask questions if you need to, but make sure you tried to find your answer to your question elsewhere first, as some players can be quite mean and ridicule you for your ignorence(dont worry, ignore these people, there is a ignore function in the game for such people). Be sure to attack the target that the "tank"(the guy who takes all the damage for the group, and gets all the enemies to attack him/her) is attacking, unless stated otherwise, you might end up dead from stealing "aggro"(aggrivation level of an enemy, stealing it means that you attacked an enemy to the point where they switched from attacking the tank to you).

The most important rule of the game is be sure to have fun, if you are not, try other classes or races; If the game doesnt appeal to you after doing what was suggested above, well we certainly wont hold it against you =D. Good luck on your questing and Lok'tar ogar!

 

[Dandark]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVXVtorazNI

I'll just leave this lying around here.

 

[Fishyash]

I've played WoW for a few years, mainly doing arena PvP at max levels and my main was a hunter. It was pretty good, but I am telling you now if at any point you get bored, just quit. There is no moment where the game will 'get better', maybe refreshing, but never better.

Don't. It'll eat your days, disappoint you over and over while keeping you hooked with "It's gunna be better next patch/expansion

So half of this really. You may get dissapointed and if you feel you are dissapointed or burned I recommend you quit. However, if you like the game by all means play it. It's a great game, but once you see all that will interest you most likely you either feel obligated to play or you only play because you've made friends on WoW and you still want to play with them.

 

[tharglet]

Seriously stop while you're ahead and play a game that will chew up less of your time - like EvE or Lord of the Rings Online (if u have to play one at all)

That's your fault, not the game's. The game makes it possible to sink infinite amount of time to the game, but you're the one who does so. You can play the game moderately and still be succesfull (I was a succesfull raider with a social life).

Yeah - one of the things that irritated me with LOTRO was the feat and profession daily capping. It's fine if I was say, still at school and had enough hours to cap reliably each day, but as someone with a fulltime job (and other stuff) I like to do diff things in the evenings and use weekends to do things like level professions and things like that. Pretty annoying if you want to level professions, but you get capped out very quickly
With WoW, you could get something out of it at any time amount, which is handy when you have an uneven play schedule. For me tho, LOTRO wasn't terribly well designed in some places and I got to a point that the thought of logging bored me.

 

[Mausthemighty]

If you have liked it so far you will like it even more if you get higher leveled. The game is still really fun to play and I loved my time in it. There's tons of stuff you can do: from going on raids to just adventuring with friends, going for the more unique achievements, hanging out with your guildies and chatting, doing fishing, archeology or cooking, playing PVP battles, arena battles or just doing dailies: there's always something to do in Azeroth.

But remember: it's only a game whatever they tell you.

 

[Bobbity]

My tip?

Join a social guild. Raiding is a trap; you get zombified and sucked into a routine that takes over your life. Joining an interesting guild, however, is definitely worthwhile, and having chatty guildmates is actually a lot of fun. Before I quit, I used to occasionally log in for five-ten minutes or so just to talk to them, and see what was happening, not even pretending to actually play the game.

 

[RemuValtrez]

It's definitely a fun game to waste time on. But it's a lot of repetitiveness. I would suggest getting out while you can.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

Im doing arena and rated battlegrounds with some friends atm and really enjoying the pvp.

If you don't want to get too sucked into the game don't raid (I raided hardcore up until the end of Uldum), it's fun and it's a good way to make friends online but it's very time consuming and distracting. It will suck your life away like a creepypasta monster made of epics.

Consider yourself warned.