Tag Archives: Rookie

WoW Rookie: Why you should care about patch 4.3

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New around here? WoW Rookie has your back! Get all our collected tips, tricks and tactics for new players in the WoW Rookie Guide. WoW Rookie is about more than just being new to the game; it’s about checking out new classes, new playstyles, and new zones.

All the news in the last week has been about patch 4.3. Understandably, we’ve all been going through a lot of excitement. Heck, we’re even going to fight Deathwing soon. Amidst all the hubbub, though, casual and rookie players must be asking, “What’s in this patch for me?”

Huge content patches don’t always mean anything new for rookies and casuals, since new raid tiers are often so busy with new 10-man and 25-man bosses that non-raiders can be forgotten. This is not the case in patch 4.3; for that matter, 4.3 might be the most exciting patch for casual players in a long time. Let’s count the ways in which patch 4.3 will be awesome for the rest of us.

Spoiler warning: Behind this here cut, there may be spoilers, not like the racing kind that hold tiny little cars down to the ground, but of the might-give-away-content sign. Thou hast been warnethed.

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WoW Rookie: Why you should care about patch 4.3 originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 29 Sep 2011 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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WoW Rookie: Getting into Firelands PUGs

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New around here? WoW Rookie has your back! Get all our collected tips, tricks and tactics for new players in the WoW Rookie Guide. WoW Rookie is about more than just being new to the game; it’s about checking out new classes, new playstyles, and new zones.

Chris wrote in to me with this question:

I haven’t been able to get into successful Firelands raid groups very often, because I only have a 5/7 achievement on Blackrock, where almost everyone either demands a 6/7 achievement or gives up after repeated wipes. On my old server, Stormscale, it was even worse — Firelands PUGs were practically non-existent. No successful raiding guild seems to have space for a mage, and when I stepped in as leader for the second raid group in my current guild, people stopped showing up!
How can I find a guild or PUG that’ll take me as I am, and where I’ll have a decent chance of killing Domo and Rag? I don’t want to switch to playing a tank or healer as my main, since it’d put me back to square one in both skill and gear.

While this level of raiding is a bit beyond the standard rookie level, it’s definitely a problem that many rookies face while trying to get into raiding. I wanted to cover it here instead of having someone field it in Ready Check, because I think this is the kind of information and strategy that will be important to new players trying to get into progression.

(Note that I don’t mean imply that Chris is new or anything like that; sounds like he’s totally on the good part of the curve. But still, this is good advice for rookies.)

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WoW Rookie: Getting into Firelands PUGs originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 22 Sep 2011 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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WoW Rookie: Why you need resilience

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New around here? WoW Rookie has your back! Get all our collected tips, tricks and tactics for new players in the WoW Rookie Guide. WoW Rookie is about more than just being new to the game; it’s about checking out new classes, new playstyles, and new zones.

We spent a few weeks talking about gear last month. It was, as you might expect, a contentious subject. Since a lot of your success in the game is both represented and facilitated by your gear improvements, a lot of fun and prestige hinges about the gear you obtain. While we discussed the gear, though, one thing kept coming up: PVP gear isn’t great for PVE encounters. Sure, a PVP item with a vastly superior itemization budget can nudge out lower-level gear in same cases, but as a general rule, anything with resilience doesn’t have a place in dungeons or raids.

This led a few readers to the obvious question: What’s the point of resilience if it’s no good? In the articles that discussed gear, we focused solely on PVE group content. This includes raids, dungeons, and group quests. I’d even say that, in general, PVP gear can get you through solo questing just fine. While resilience is completely useless in PVE, it is the holy grail of PVP.

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WoW Rookie: Why you need resilience originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 15 Sep 2011 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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WoW Rookie: 8 things you didn’t know your tank is doing

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New around here? WoW Rookie has your back! Get all our collected tips, tricks and tactics for new players in the WoW Rookie Guide. WoW Rookie is about more than just being new to the game; it’s about checking out new classes, new playstyles, and new zones.

Tanking can be a surprisingly difficult gig. When you see your tank charge into the fray, spamming AOE attacks and generally losing any sense of proportion, the procedure probably looks fairly easy. After all, with the threat changes, it’s not like it takes much work to keep aggro, right?

One of the arguments for that threat change, however, was that tanks have more responsibilities than just watching a damage rotation. I don’t mean to belittle the struggle of other classes, but I think it’s fair to say maintaining a rotation isn’t on the top of the tank’s mind.

To help new folks understand what a tank’s doing in the middle of a fight, here are eight things you don’t know your tank is doing. These aren’t in order of importance or difficulty; it’s just some stuff that non-tanks should know about.

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WoW Rookie: 8 things you didn’t know your tank is doing originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 08 Sep 2011 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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WoW Rookie: Understanding item levels and gear decisions

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New around here? WoW Rookie has your back! Get all our collected tips, tricks and tactics for new players in the WoW Rookie Guide. WoW Rookie is about more than just being new to the game; it’s about checking out new classes, new playstyles, and new zones.

Last week, I talked about a handful of tips intended to be helpful to folks leveling up and getting started in the game. These aren’t tips really suited for folks who rock out with advanced tools, nuanced spreadsheets, and extensive experience. I was aiming at people who largely play the game in-game and rarely visit outside websites. (Yes, I know, it’s not like WoW Insider is piped into the Dungeon Journal, but we’re trying.)

One of my tips was that item level counts. Rightly so, commenters pointed out the huge gaping flaws in the statement. A lot more goes into your gear choices than just item level or even quality color. And while my advice is true, going simply by item level is so simplistic as to almost be misleading. So let’s talk a tad more about why I say item level counts and how you can use that as a rough guide to making basic gear choices.

Caveat reador: if you’re at the point you’re deciding between two endgame items at 378 item level, you’ve left the realm of simply going by item level. Even some 359 items trump 378. But at the point you’re rocking endgame raids, you’ve probably got a grip on looking up your character stats.

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WoW Rookie: Understanding item levels and gear decisions originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 01 Sep 2011 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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WoW Rookie: 8 tips the veterans use in their gameplay

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A neophyte asking a vet for help

New around here? WoW Rookie has your back! Get all our collected tips, tricks and tactics for new players in the WoW Rookie Guide. WoW Rookie is about more than just being new to the game; it’s about checking out new classes, new playstyles, and new zones.

WoW‘s a big game, and it features plenty of nooks and crannies for everyone to explore and tuck away favorite tricks. With millions of players and years of development behind it, the World of Warcraft is a lot for a new player to grasp all at once. Even after playing on your own for a while, a player who isn’t plugged into the community can miss little techniques that veteran players take for granted. These little hidden features aren’t obvious if no one tells you or you don’t read about them on fan sites or news sources.

Without further comment, let’s dive into 8 tips the veterans use in their gameplay. They might help you out.

8. Get some addons. Addons are an obvious go-to method for improving your gameplay, but you’d be surprised how little documentation exists about them inside the game. Essentially, addons allow you to customize your game, change the UI, and otherwise tackle difficult tasks a little more easily. Addons can do many, many different things, so you’ll have to experiment and explore. Addon Spotlight is a good place to start. As a note, I’d caution you not get too reliant on addons and let your skills atrophy; addons are useful, but don’t let them become a crutch.

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WoW Rookie: 8 tips the veterans use in their gameplay originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 25 Aug 2011 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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WoW Rookie: 8 tips the veterans use in their gameplay – Joystiq

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WoW Rookie: 8 tips the veterans use in their gameplay
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WoW Rookie has your back! Get all our collected tips, tricks and tactics for new players in the WoW Rookie Guide. WoW Rookie is about more than just being new to the game; it's about checking out new classes, new playstyles, and new zones. …

world of warcraft news – Google News

WoW Rookie: How to get by the summer blues

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alliance flag mage

New around here? WoW Rookie has your back! Get all our collected tips, tricks and tactics for new players in the WoW Rookie Guide. WoW Rookie is about more than just being new to the game; it’s about checking out new classes, new playstyles, and new zones.

We’re in the full swing of summer, complete with the lurking shadow of a new school year that begins any time now. As guilds plunge headlong into the Firelands, raid rosters get tighter and tighter as faithful raid members eschew the game in favor of playing in the sun, having river shenanigans, and soaking up the heat before it’s gone for the year.

August and early September are frequently lulls for many players. This downpoint isn’t quite the same as “expansion blues,” since it’s a normal yearly phenomenon. After all, it’s awfully pretty outside; who wants to wipe on Rhyolith all night when you could be outside in the pool? While raid leaders yearn for their missing raid members, the players themselves struggle with balancing outside time and game playtime.

How can you manage to keep up with the game, even while the summer winds are beckoning you? Here are some tips.

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WoW Rookie: How to get by the summer blues originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 18 Aug 2011 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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WoW Rookie: How to deal with disruptive players and hate speech

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I received this letter from a reader last week. It made me stupid-happy but also incredibly sad. You’ll see why immediately, I think:

My 9 year old has medical conditions that keep him from having many friends or going outside to play. He has to be homeschooled. For entertainment and to give him a feeling of exploration and adventure, we play warcraft. Other people can be very cruel in real life, so warcraft is a nice escape from that.

But wow has gotten nearly as bad. you can’t hardly be in Tol Barad or Orgrimmar without hearing “ni$&@!,” ‘$#%,” and other hateful language. using the LFD tool is just as bad if not worse. My son plays a prot paladin/holy paladin so that any group he gets in will have a healer or a tank as needed. But the number of “fag elf” accusations we’ve seen in LFD is discouraging.

I’m not even counting “noob” and “you suck” in all this.

We’re really thinking about moving on if things don’t get better. What can we do about this?

hope you can help,
a mom

You can see the happy and the sad in that — happy that our beloved game can help a family; sad that we as players can have such a negative impact. My initial reaction was to hope this was being blown out of proportion. After all, I tend to get riled about slurs and hate speech myself and do so very quickly. Maybe A Mom was being oversensitive?

While it’s fair to say maybe kids shouldn’t be in the game, families absolutely have a reasonable expectation that they can play together.

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WoW Rookie: How to deal with disruptive players and hate speech originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 11 Aug 2011 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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WoW Rookie: How to deal with disruptive players and hate speech – Joystiq

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WoW Rookie: How to deal with disruptive players and hate speech
Joystiq
For entertainment and to give him a feeling of exploration and adventure, we play warcraft. Other people can be very cruel in real life, so warcraft is a nice escape from that. But wow has gotten nearly as bad. you can't hardly be in Tol Barad or …

world of warcraft news – Google News