What is World of Warcraft? World of Warcraft, otherwise known as simply ‘WoW’, is an online adventure game. Players create a character and can choose from a variety of race and class combinations, such as an Orc Warlock, or a Human Mage. They play as this avatar, leveling up in an open world full of quests and monsters. They may team up with other players to tackle particularly hard challenges, or to run through a dungeon. Guilds are created that bring together players from all different walks of life and create tight knit in-game communities. As you level up, you can work on professions like blacksmithing or leather working. Perhaps you want to collect battle pets or transmog appearances. And once you get to the highest level, you can do end-game content like raiding. Whatever it is, there is a lot to do in this game. Whether you want to play it casually or competitively, this is a big game and has a place for every type of player.
World of Warcraft is the biggest MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) the world has ever seen. Although this game debuted almost twenty years ago in 2004, according to activeplayer.io, the game had 8.5 million players in the last thirty days. Chances are, you know of this game or know someone who plays it. When it was release it was a huge sensation that swept the gaming space. Recently, Activision-Blizzard has rightfully taken a lot of heat for their work culture and sexual harassment. Due to that, along with a couple disappointing releases back-to-back, the Wow community had a pretty negative outlook. Now, with the release of the newest expansion and recent approval for Microsoft to acquire Activision-Blizzard, the community is starting to have a more positive outlook on the future of the game. So if you want to start playing WoW, or just learn more about it, now is a good a time as any!
Fun Fact: As a collective, the World of Warcraft community has played close to 9 million years of World of Warcraft. That’s a lot of time spent on Azeroth!
World of Warcraft Lingo
Alt: Since you can create multiple characters, they typically have a main and ‘alts’. These alts are their secondary characters that they don’t play as much.
Boss: A powerful enemy in the open world, dungeons or raids. They are harder to kill, typically have additional abilities and drop good items for the players to use.
Buff/Debuff: A buff is a spell or aura that is placed on a character that strengthens them. A debuff is the same, but it weakens the character.
Character: The avatar that a person plays as in-game.
Class: This is the type of character you can play as and will decide what abilities the character has, what resources they use and ultimately determines their play style. Examples would be things like the warrior, mage, hunter or evoker.
DPS/HPS: Damage per second/Heals per second; Used to measure how much damage or healing someone is doing. DPS also refers to the role of a damage-dealer.
Farming: The repetitive act of killing monsters or collecting resources.
Gank: Ambushing another player, who is normally at a disadvantage.
Guild: A community of players in-game that allows players to easily communicate, share resources and plan activities like raiding.
Healer: One of the roles in game, this person is responsible for healing the other party or raid members.
Loot: Items or armor that drop from monsters,
Main: The ‘main’ character someone plays and spends most of their time leveling and collecting more powerful gear on.
MMORPG: Massively multiplayer online role-playing game; the type of game WoW is.
Profession: Secondary skills the player can learn in addition to their class abilities. This includes things like cooking, tailoring, herbalism, skinning, mining and much more.
PvE: Player versus environment; these are activities where the player(s) are fighting against the game itself, like dungeons or raids.
PvP: Player versus player; fighting other players typically to the death in the open world, arenas or battlegrounds.
Quest: An adventure the player is sent on by a non-player character, typically to kill or collect a certain amount of monsters or items.
Race: Refers to the different races players can choose from when creating their character. Examples would be humans, orcs, gnomes, dwarves, night elves, and many more.
Raid: A large group of players that team up to enter a large dungeon with difficult bosses and encounters. Refers to both the dungeon they enter and the group itself.
Realm: Not all players play on the same world, there are many different identical worlds and these are called realms. This helps to prevent over crowding and keep the game running smoothly during peak hours.
Res: Resurrection; bringing a player back to life after they have died.
RNG: Random number generator; refers to the randomness of the game in, such as dropping loot or getting a critical strike in combat.
Spec: Specialization; the specialized type of class a character is. For example, a mage could be a fire mage, frost mage, or an arcane mage. Each class has their own specializations, or ‘specs’.
Tank: One of the roles in the game, this person is responsible for keeping the attention of monsters and taking the majority of the damage.
Wipe: When the entire party or raid dies during an encounter.
Questions to Ask a Wow Player
What class do you play/What do you main?
What a person mains is important and usually how they identify in game. An example answer would be: “I’m a Night Elf Druid” Typically people have played their main for a long time and they are pretty attached to it or to that character.
Are you Horde or Alliance?
There are two opposing factions in games that players can choose from; Horde or Alliance. While both factions can be any class, only certain races can be played by both sides. Horde have races like Orcs, Trolls and Undead while the Alliance has races like Humans, Dwarves and Gnomes.
Do you raid or do you prefer PvP?
While some players do both, normally players will have one type of play they prefer. If they are a PvP’er they like to fight against other players to the death, while raiders like to work alongside others to defeat difficult bosses.
Do you collect anything in game like mounts or pets?
WoW has been around for a long time. In twenty years, a lot of content is put into the game as new expansions are added. Now, some people make it their main mission to go back to old content to collect old mounts, toys or achievements!
What expansion has been your favorite so far?
There have been nine expansions in WoW’s history so far. Some good, some not so good. While peak player count was during the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, most will have one that they look back fondly on for one reason or another.
A Little Bit About WoW Lore and History
World of Warcraft was a game built off the ideas from the Warcraft 3. The game takes place on the world of Azeroth, inside of which a world-soul slumbers. These world souls, which eventually emerge as titans, are powerful celestial beings. While the world soul inside of Azeroth has already been attacked many times throughout the Warcraft history, the game released back in 2004 focused more around exploring the world of Azeroth itself. Back then, players found themselves leveling up as they fought against enemies like the Defias Brotherhood. Once they reached the end game, some of the main bosses were dragons like Onyxia or the Old God, C’Thun. Since then, World of Warcraft has gone through nine expansions. Starting with the Burning Crusade expansion, in which the ultimate end boss was Illidan, up to now in Dragonflight where the ultimate boss is not yet known. The World of Warcraft has been constantly growing and expanding.
Raiding and You
As these expansions have gone on, raids are released to push the story along. As I just mentioned, one of the first raids was fighting the ancient dragon Onyxia. Since then and throughout the nine expansions, there are now almost 60 different raids. Luckily, you don’t have to worry about all of them. In reality, you will be focused on the raids that are available during the current expansion. In this case, Dragonflight is the most current expansion and at the writing of this article, the most recent raid is Aberrus: The Shadowed Crucible. You may hear that raiding is difficult. While that is true, there are easier difficulties, with Raid Finder being the easiest. That being said, if you want to start raiding, my advice is to join a guild who can guide you.
Retail, Classic and Era
These days, there are a few different timelines WoW is on. Retail is the current version of WoW. It includes all past expansion, including the most recent, Dragonflight. Then there is classic, which started back during ‘Vanilla’ and is now on the second expansion that was released, which is the Wrath of the Lich King. Finally, there is also Era. Era is vanilla, or WoW exactly as it was when it was originally released back in 2004. These older versions of WoW have been gaining in popularity over the past few years as players long to return to a simpler version of Azeroth. In particular, the Era version has seen a recent surge in popularity as the hardcore community grows. What hardcore means is that you get one life. If you die, you don’t get to resurrect and you have to start over with a brand new character. So, which is the best for you?
How to Get Started
If you wanted to get started playing WoW, here are a few things to consider:
- Do you want to play on Retail, Classic or Era servers?
- This is completely up to you, but if you have friends already playing one of these, join them. It’s always going to better to play with people you already know. And if you don’t, my personal opinion would be to play classic or era, as the games are easier for beginners than retail is.
- Do you want to play Alliance or Horde?
- This is going to decide which faction you will be part of. Keep in mind, you can have a character on each faction, but most people will focus most of their attention on one faction. Take a look at the races each offer, see how you like the aesthetics of the zones and the story of each. There is no wrong answer!
- What race and class do you want to play?
- Again, there is no wrong answer here. But, you will be spending a lot of time on this character you create so make sure it’s something that sounds fun to you!
3 Gift Ideas for A WoW Player
- Merch
- It helps to know if they are Horde or Alliance, or if you know what they main for a race and class. Stickers, keyboards, mouse pads, or a sweatshirt with the Horde or Alliance insignia on it are all great gift ideas.
- Game Time or Gift Card
- Since WoW is a subscription game, getting them a gift card or buying them game time is a thoughtful and easy way to win them over.
- Customized Merch
- Yes, it’s merch again. But, if you know what their realm and character name is you should be able to get a snapshot of what their character looks like. From there, you can have print outs or posters made of their character, which is something extra special.
Final Thoughts
World of Warcraft is a massive game full of things to do and people to meet. It has a large and dedicated fan base and an interesting story line to follow. Whether you are looking to step into the world of Azeroth or just needed to know what the heck a WoW is, I hope you learned something new. Thanks again for reading and see you again soon.
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