Complete WoW Newbie Guide. [Archive]

Wig44.

14-07-2008, 08:02 PM

---WARNING--- THIS IS A LONG GUIDE, SO YOU DON'T INJURE YOUTSELF I RECOMMEND YOU READ IT IN SECTIONS Go bug naughtynemo or something inbetween.

If you've never played a Massively Multiplayer Online Game before, relax. Yeah, seriously, follow this guide and soon you'll be telling noobs where to go.
World of Warcraft is very easy to get started in and to have fun with. If you're a MMORPG veteran, this guide should help get you up to speed quickly. This guide should help give you a general idea of what to expect as you begin playing.
If you find some of the terminology a little daunting, there's a glossary which should help explain some of the more common terms. There is also a list of acronyms to look through, to find one that you might not understand.

GLOSSARY (http://www.wowwiki.com/Category:Game_terms)
ACRONYMS (http://www.wowwiki.com/Category:Acronyms)

CHARACTER CREATION

There is a very slight (+/-3 points) stat difference based on race; starting stats are determined mainly by your race. Your race choice determines your faction allegiance (either Horde or Alliance), your starting area, and your Racial Traits - (See Below). What you can do with your character, however, is determined mostly by your choice of class.

Can't decide what class to play? Make one of each that sound interesting (you can have up to 10 characters per server), play them up to level 5-15 or so, and decide then. It only takes an hour or two to get the first few levels, and then you'll have a much better idea of what it's like to play each class. You may still miss out on the more significant parts of playing a class, as some important skills are given at level 20 or 30 for the first time, but you will get the gist of the class so that you can at least understand what higher level characters are talking about. Alternatively you can read the description of each class to have a general idea of them. An important factor to consider when choosing a class is whether there is going to be much demand for characters of your class in groups. Generally, tanks and healers are in higher demand than damage dealers for most servers. Therefore, if joining instance group/raid is you first priority, choosing classes that can spec tank or healer may improve you chance of getting invited. For those who want to be the tank in instances, warrior, paladin and druid are your choice. With the right gear and spec, they can have higher health and armor than the rest of the party. You can absorb large amount of damage and prevent others from being attacked. Warriors and paladins can wear mail at lower level and plate after level 40, which provide them with very good armor. Druids can only wear leather or cloth. However, they get Bear Form and Dire Bear Form at level 10 and 40 respectively, which gives them large amount of health and armor bonus (Bear Form is similar to a Warrior in Mail armor, Dire Bear form is similar to a Warrior in Plate armor). If you want to heal others, priest, druid, paladin or shaman can be considered. All of these classes, with specific talent point allocations, will make a competent main healer. In addition, all of them provide useful buffs to the other members of the party. Paladins have auras which buff all players in their group within a radius, and beyond that have blessings that they can cast on anyone that give different benefits. Shamans have totems which act similar to auras in that they buff party members near them, but they have very different benefits. Druids can increase the critical hit chance, spell critical chance, or amount of healing done to the entire party, in bear/cat form, moonkin form, or tree of life form, respectively. Priests' stamina buff is always useful to everyone. With certain spec they can also help party members regaining mana at a much faster rate. The five classes mentioned above can also be damage dealers with the right gear and spec. However, there are four classes that can be considered as pure damage dealers: mage, warlock, rogue, and hunter. Mages excel at dealing massive magical damage to their enemy. Their powerful area of effect damage is helpful in many encounters. Warlocks have abilities to summon a demon as a pet which will do the player's bidding. They are famous for their damage over time spells. Rogues have stealth abilities, can open locks, and can deal lots of damage by backstabbing. Hunters are the only ranged class in game that do mainly physical damage. They can tame pets to help them in fight, as well as put down various traps to help the party. Depending on their spec, they can also boost their party members' damage output in different ways. To see what the population for each class is on a given server (or all servers) for one faction or another, see Warcraft Realms (http://www.warcraftrealms.com/weeklyactivity.php?serverid=-1&factionid=3)

Read more about the early levels of the nine classes!

Starting a Druid (http://www.wowwiki.com/Starting_a_Druid)
Starting a Hunter (http://www.wowwiki.com/Starting_a_Hunter)
Starting a Mage (http://www.wowwiki.com/Starting_a_Mage)
Starting a Paladin (http://www.wowwiki.com/Starting_a_Paladin)
Starting a Priest (http://www.wowwiki.com/Starting_a_Priest)
Starting a Rogue (http://www.wowwiki.com/Starting_a_Rogue)
Starting a Shaman (http://www.wowwiki.com/Starting_a_Shaman)
Starting a Warrior (http://www.wowwiki.com/Starting_a_Warrior)
Starting a Warlock (http://www.wowwiki.com/Starting_a_Warlock)

After you choose the starting details of your character, you will be given what looks like a cinematic based on your race (http://www.wowwiki.com/Race) with a voice-over giving some background history of the race. This is actually a real-time fly-thru in the game and you will see actual players (http://www.wowwiki.com/Player) moving around if you look carefully, and you may get a glimpse of some combat. The fly-thru usually starts at a capital city (http://www.wowwiki.com/City) and flies through parts of the country-side to your starting area.

Starting Areas

Depending on your race, you will start in one of eight starting areas:
http://images.wikia.com/wowwiki/images/7/7c/Horde_32.gif (http://www.wowwiki.com/Image:Horde_32.gif) Horde (http://www.wowwiki.com/Horde)

Orc (http://www.wowwiki.com/Orc): Valley of Trials (http://www.wowwiki.com/Valley_of_Trials), Durotar (http://www.wowwiki.com/Durotar), Kalimdor (http://www.wowwiki.com/Kalimdor). This area is dry and rocky, mostly consisting of reddish desert.
Tauren (http://www.wowwiki.com/Tauren): Camp Narache (http://www.wowwiki.com/Camp_Narache), Mulgore (http://www.wowwiki.com/Mulgore), Kalimdor (http://www.wowwiki.com/Kalimdor). Mulgore is lush and green, with large lakes, grassy plains, and mountain valleys.
Troll (http://www.wowwiki.com/Troll): Valley of Trials (http://www.wowwiki.com/Valley_of_Trials), Durotar (http://www.wowwiki.com/Durotar), Kalimdor (http://www.wowwiki.com/Kalimdor). (Same as Orc.)
Undead (http://www.wowwiki.com/Forsaken) (Forsaken): Deathknell (http://www.wowwiki.com/Deathknell), Tirisfal Glades (http://www.wowwiki.com/Tirisfal_Glades), Eastern Kingdoms (http://www.wowwiki.com/Eastern_Kingdoms). Tirisfal Glades is a dark forest over-run with the mindless undead of the Scourge (http://www.wowwiki.com/Scourge).
Blood Elf (http://www.wowwiki.com/Blood_Elf): Sunstrider Isle (http://www.wowwiki.com/Sunstrider_Isle), Eversong Woods (http://www.wowwiki.com/Eversong_Woods), Eastern Kingdoms (http://www.wowwiki.com/Eastern_Kingdoms). Rebuilt city. The Fly-thru actually begins in the Ghostlands, showing the straight path of destruction left behind by the Scourge after their attack on the Elven city.

http://images.wikia.com/wowwiki/images/1/11/Alliance_32.gif (http://www.wowwiki.com/Image:Alliance_32.gif) Alliance (http://www.wowwiki.com/Alliance)

Dwarf (http://www.wowwiki.com/Dwarf): Coldridge Valley (http://www.wowwiki.com/Coldridge_Valley), Dun Morogh (http://www.wowwiki.com/Dun_Morogh), Eastern Kingdoms (http://www.wowwiki.com/Eastern_Kingdoms). A snowy area with mountain paths and frozen lakes.
Gnome (http://www.wowwiki.com/Gnome): Coldridge Valley (http://www.wowwiki.com/Coldridge_Valley), Dun Morogh (http://www.wowwiki.com/Dun_Morogh), Eastern Kingdoms (http://www.wowwiki.com/Eastern_Kingdoms). (Same as Dwarf.)
Human (http://www.wowwiki.com/Human): Northshire Valley (http://www.wowwiki.com/Northshire_Valley), Elwynn Forest (http://www.wowwiki.com/Elwynn_Forest), Eastern Kingdoms (http://www.wowwiki.com/Eastern_Kingdoms). A low, forested region with various human settlements in it.
Night Elf (http://www.wowwiki.com/Night_Elf): Shadowglen (http://www.wowwiki.com/Shadowglen), Teldrassil (http://www.wowwiki.com/Teldrassil), Kalimdor (http://www.wowwiki.com/Kalimdor). A huge, ethereal, twilight forest that perches entirely on top of a colossal World Tree (http://www.wowwiki.com/World_Tree) to the northwest of Kalimdor.
Draenei (http://www.wowwiki.com/Draenei): Ammen Vale (http://www.wowwiki.com/Ammen_Vale), Azuremyst Isle (http://www.wowwiki.com/Azuremyst_Isle), Kalimdor (http://www.wowwiki.com/Kalimdor). Misty forest area around the crash site of the Exodar (http://www.wowwiki.com/Exodar).

IMPROVING YOUR CHARACTER

There are many ways to improve your character from merely grinding (http://www.wowwiki.com/Grinding) (killing monsters (http://www.wowwiki.com/Monster) for what they drop (http://www.wowwiki.com/Drop) and the experience (http://www.wowwiki.com/Experience) they give), to questing (http://www.wowwiki.com/Quest), PvP (http://www.wowwiki.com/PvP), crafting (http://www.wowwiki.com/Crafting) (learning and improving professions (http://www.wowwiki.com/Profession)), or just gathering (http://www.wowwiki.com/Gathering).
Ultimately, you'll want to gain levels (http://www.wowwiki.com/Level) so you can improve your fighting or spellcasting, but also because you need higher levels to improve professions and access such cool things as mounts (http://www.wowwiki.com/Mount). Also, to make your character more competitive you will want to get better gear (http://www.wowwiki.com/Gear) and skills (http://www.wowwiki.com/Skill). For most of that you will need money (http://www.wowwiki.com/Money), but can also be gained through quests and PvP.

Getting Experience

http://images.wikia.com/wowwiki/images/3/30/Pointer_quest_on_32x32.png (http://www.wowwiki.com/Image:Pointer_quest_on_32x32.png) interact with quest giver http://images.wikia.com/wowwiki/images/a/af/Pointer_quest_off_32x32.png (http://www.wowwiki.com/Image:Pointer_quest_off_32x32.png) quest giver out of range http://images.wikia.com/wowwiki/images/f/f9/Pointer_sword_on_32x32.png (http://www.wowwiki.com/Image:Pointer_sword_on_32x32.png) hostile (http://www.wowwiki.com/Hostile) in range http://images.wikia.com/wowwiki/images/5/56/Pointer_sword_off_32x32.png (http://www.wowwiki.com/Image:Pointer_sword_off_32x32.png) hostile (http://www.wowwiki.com/Hostile) out of range The combination of Questing (http://www.wowwiki.com/Quest) and killing mobs (http://www.wowwiki.com/Mob) is the primary way of gaining experience (http://www.wowwiki.com/Experience). You can also get smaller amounts just by exploring (http://www.wowwiki.com/Exploring) new areas (although this is impossible without first being at a reasonable level and shouldn't substitute combat experience considering the risk involved). You can also gain experience by just killing mobs (http://www.wowwiki.com/Mob) without questing, although this may become boringly routine after some time. As for just milking experience from mobs, there are guides elsewhere explaining which mobs are best for killing at certain levels of classes (some of which are listed at the bottom of this guide). The rule of thumb is, monsters two levels lower than you allow for the fastest XP, as they die fast while still providing decent XP per kill.

Training New Skills

http://images.wikia.com/wowwiki/images/7/7d/Pointer_trainer_on_32x32.png (http://www.wowwiki.com/Image:Pointer_trainer_on_32x32.png) interact with trainer http://images.wikia.com/wowwiki/images/f/f1/Pointer_trainer_off_32x32.png (http://www.wowwiki.com/Image:Pointer_trainer_off_32x32.png) trainer out of range http://images.wikia.com/wowwiki/images/d/db/Pointer_maploc_on_32x32.png (http://www.wowwiki.com/Image:Pointer_maploc_on_32x32.png) interact with guard http://images.wikia.com/wowwiki/images/b/ba/Pointer_maploc_off_32x32.png (http://www.wowwiki.com/Image:Pointer_maploc_off_32x32.png) guard out of range As you progress and gain levels in the game, you will be able to learn many new and exciting skills (abilities (http://www.wowwiki.com/Ability) and professions (http://www.wowwiki.com/Profession)) and spells (http://www.wowwiki.com/Spell). These are all learned at your class trainer (http://www.wowwiki.com/Class_trainer), profession trainer (http://www.wowwiki.com/Profession_trainer) or weapon master (http://www.wowwiki.com/Weapon_master) in the various cities. If you're having troubles locating a trainer, just ask a city guard (http://www.wowwiki.com/Guard). The class trainers will offer you more skills and spells at every even-numbered level. The profession trainers will allow you to advance in skill stages and offer you more recipes (http://www.wowwiki.com/Recipe) as you increase your skill level.
As of level 10, you can also further specialize your character by investing talent points (http://www.wowwiki.com/Talent_point) into talents (http://www.wowwiki.com/Talents) geared toward different aspects of your character.

QUESTING
Quests (http://www.wowwiki.com/Quests) are the core of the World of Warcraft experience. From around level 10, you will almost always have a dozen active quests in your quest log. A lot of the time, if you're like many, your log will have the maximum of 25 quests in your log. It is good, however, to limit this as well as is reasonable, because others frequently have quests to share with you. The more of the group working on the same quest, the better, as you can all work to a common goal and you each know distinctly what that goal is.
Quests are obtained from NPCs, from items in the world, or shared from party members. Not all quests can be shared, and there are many quest lines that you must follow from the beginning; you cannot skip within a quest line.
In your starting area, you will find some quests that are common to all, and for some classes, you will have some class-specific quests. All of these quests are good to start gaining experience. These often include killing low-level creatures (http://www.wowwiki.com/Creature) in the area or speaking to one of the nearby NPCs (http://www.wowwiki.com/NPC).
You can identify quest giving NPCs from the ! over his head. Talk (http://www.wowwiki.com/Talk) to the quest giving NPC to get the quest. The giver of a quest you have yet to complete will have above his head a silver ?. When you complete the quest by meeting its requirements, the quest giver will have a ? over its head. These symbols will also appear on your mini-map (http://www.wowwiki.com/Mini-map) to help in navigation and discovering new quests.
Note: If you have the requirements, but some items are in the bank (http://www.wowwiki.com/Bank), you must retrieve them to finish the quest. They must be in hand. Otherwise, it will appear as though the quest is bugged when it's not. Most of your first 10 levels will come from quests (http://www.wowwiki.com/Newbie_guide/Quests#Obtaining_and_Completing_Quests) and from monsters you kill as a part of doing quests. While a good group is a very good thing, if you find yourself in a party (http://www.wowwiki.com/Party) that wanders around killing non-quest monsters and doesn't seem to be working towards a quest, it may be better to go questing alone. Most frequently, groups involving different classes are much more effective than groups of only one class, or being solo. Also, in groups, players can share many quests with one another so that all of them can be doing the very same quest, and if the quest involves only killing monsters, each monster killed contributes to everyone's quest. If a quest involves picking up an item from one specific mob (http://www.wowwiki.com/Mob), all party members can pick it up at once.

GETTING GOLD
http://images.wikia.com/wowwiki/images/2/26/Pointer_bag_on_32x32.png (http://www.wowwiki.com/Image:Pointer_bag_on_32x32.png) interact with vendor http://images.wikia.com/wowwiki/images/2/27/Pointer_bag_off_32x32.png (http://www.wowwiki.com/Image:Pointer_bag_off_32x32.png) vendor out of range http://images.wikia.com/wowwiki/images/d/de/Npc_bag_on_16x16.png (http://www.wowwiki.com/Image:Npc_bag_on_16x16.png) buy/sell after talking You gain money (http://www.wowwiki.com/Money) in World of Warcraft by completing some of the quests (some of them have no monetary reward (http://www.wowwiki.com/Reward) associated with them), killing mobs (http://www.wowwiki.com/Mob) and looting (http://www.wowwiki.com/Looting) their corpses (http://www.wowwiki.com/Corpse), selling excess inventory items (http://www.wowwiki.com/Item) to the vendor (http://www.wowwiki.com/Vendor) NPCs (http://www.wowwiki.com/NPC), or learning one or more professions (http://www.wowwiki.com/Profession). Don't forget to pick a profession and skill it up as much as you can in the early levels. Trying to max out your profession after you hit 60 is a tedious and very undesirable process. As you go up in level, both the quest rewards and the money from mobs increase, as a general rule. Also, humanoid (http://www.wowwiki.com/Humanoid) and undead (http://www.wowwiki.com/Undead) mobs drop loot (http://www.wowwiki.com/Loot) for more cash per kill than any of the beast type mobs who aren't quest-related. Upon completion of a quest at your maximum level (60 before, 70 after The Burning Crusade) you receive a monetary reward instead of experience. The same rules apply, you get more money if the quest was more difficult.
As for choosing to learn a profession and selling the product of your labors at the auctioneer (http://www.wowwiki.com/Auctioneer), that all depends upon how glutted the market is with that tradeskill and/or those products. If the market is saturated at the moment, if you can afford to occupy the space, hold onto your products and maybe they will be more in demand later. Note that sometimes you can get more money by selling raw materials (skins (http://www.wowwiki.com/Skin), ore (http://www.wowwiki.com/Ore), gems (http://www.wowwiki.com/Gem), and herbs (http://www.wowwiki.com/Herb)) than by selling finished products (armor (http://www.wowwiki.com/Armor), weapons (http://www.wowwiki.com/Weapon), potions (http://www.wowwiki.com/Potion), and other gadgets). This is because most items can be used for various products. However, no player can make all products, and raw materials are of little use to them if they cannot use them for what they need.
In addition, there are always the Trade Channel (http://www.wowwiki.com/Chat#Basic_Chat_Channels) (only in cities (http://www.wowwiki.com/City)) and the auction house (http://www.wowwiki.com/Auction_house) (which appear in all racial capital cities, including Orgrimmar (http://www.wowwiki.com/Orgrimmar), Thunder Bluff (http://www.wowwiki.com/Thunder_Bluff), Silvermoon (http://www.wowwiki.com/Silvermoon), and Undercity (http://www.wowwiki.com/Undercity) for Horde and Darnassus (http://www.wowwiki.com/Darnassus), Ironforge (http://www.wowwiki.com/Ironforge), Exodar (http://www.wowwiki.com/Exodar), and Stormwind (http://www.wowwiki.com/Stormwind) for Alliance) where you can hawk your wares. All auction houses associated with a particular faction are linked, and there are also neutral auction houses which are also linked. The neutral auction houses are more expensive to post for sale (on the order of three times), and are not linked to either of the primary factions.

REST/HEARTHSTONE
While in an inn (http://www.wowwiki.com/Inn) or a major city (http://www.wowwiki.com/City) (such as Thunder Bluff (http://www.wowwiki.com/Thunder_Bluff)), your player portrait will begin to glow and your level in your portrait (http://www.wowwiki.com/Portrait) will be replaced with the letters "ZZZ", indicating that you are resting (http://www.wowwiki.com/Rest). If you log off here, you will continue to rest while offline. When rested, your XP (http://www.wowwiki.com/XP) bar will turn blue, and a notch will appear indicating exactly how rested you are. You will earn double XP from killing monsters while rested until your XP bar fills to the notch.
Experience you gain from a quest has no effect on the amount of rest you have left over, and it will not double up if you are rested.
One bubble (http://www.wowwiki.com/Bubble) of rested XP is earned for every 8 hours spent resting, up to a maximum of one-and-a-half full levels. In other words, you can leave your character resting in an inn for up to ten days without playing before you earn the maximum amount of rest state.
You also become rested while logged off in the wilderness, but only at 1/4 the normal rate. Be sure to log off at an inn or a major city whenever possible! And if you're at an inn, make sure you see the resting icon. It is usually a good idea to hearth (http://www.wowwiki.com/Hearth) back to the inn of your binding (http://www.wowwiki.com/Binding), if you can't run there quickly enough.
http://images.wikia.com/wowwiki/images/5/5e/Pointer_hearth_on_32x32.png (http://www.wowwiki.com/Image:Pointer_hearth_on_32x32.png) interact with innkeeper http://images.wikia.com/wowwiki/images/9/90/Pointer_hearth_off_32x32.png (http://www.wowwiki.com/Image:Pointer_hearth_off_32x32.png) innkeeper out of range To set or change your bind point (http://www.wowwiki.com/Bind_point), talk to an innkeeper and click make this inn your home.
When you are about 5th or 6th level, you will receive quests to go to another town area. This town is where the first inn available to a new character is placed. Put another way, until you get your first 5 or 6 quests out of the way you will not happen across an inn and so you will have to 'camp out' when you logout, unless someone shows you where it is so that you can go there before you receive such a quest.

COMBAT/FIGHTING & DIEING
Some quests require you to kill mobs (http://www.wowwiki.com/Mob) to meet their requirements, but you can also just kill mobs for XP (http://www.wowwiki.com/XP), their drops (http://www.wowwiki.com/Drop) or to skin (http://www.wowwiki.com/Skin) them. (Killing other than for a quest is called grinding (http://www.wowwiki.com/Grind).) Either way, you will have to fight.
http://images.wikia.com/wowwiki/images/f/f9/Pointer_sword_on_32x32.png (http://www.wowwiki.com/Image:Pointer_sword_on_32x32.png) hostile (http://www.wowwiki.com/Hostile) or neutral (http://www.wowwiki.com/Neutral) in range http://images.wikia.com/wowwiki/images/5/56/Pointer_sword_off_32x32.png (http://www.wowwiki.com/Image:Pointer_sword_off_32x32.png) hostile (http://www.wowwiki.com/Hostile) or neutral (http://www.wowwiki.com/Neutral) out of range You can attack any hostile (http://www.wowwiki.com/Hostile) (name written in red when selected) or neutral (http://www.wowwiki.com/Neutral) mob (http://www.wowwiki.com/Mob) (name written in yellow when selected) and they will fight back. Combat (http://www.wowwiki.com/Combat) can also begin by entering a hostile creature's aggro radius (http://www.wowwiki.com/Aggro_radius) and they will attack you automatically. A neutral mob will ignore you unless you make any kind of threatening action toward it. Sometimes two or more mobs (hostile or neutral) may be linked so that if you attack one, another comes without calling.
To kill the mob (http://www.wowwiki.com/Mob) you must reduce their health (http://www.wowwiki.com/Health) to zero. If the mob (http://www.wowwiki.com/Mob) reduces your character's health to zero you die (http://www.wowwiki.com/Death).
To reduce a creature's health you can attack in a number of ways:

A weapon (http://www.wowwiki.com/Weapon) to attack (usually by right-clicking the creature):

Melee (http://www.wowwiki.com/Melee) weapon such as a axe (http://www.wowwiki.com/Axe), dagger (http://www.wowwiki.com/Dagger), mace (http://www.wowwiki.com/Mace), staff (http://www.wowwiki.com/Staff) or sword (http://www.wowwiki.com/Sword).
Ranged (http://www.wowwiki.com/Ranged) weapon such as a bow (http://www.wowwiki.com/Bow), gun (http://www.wowwiki.com/Gun) or thrown axe or dagger.

A spell (http://www.wowwiki.com/Spell):

Direct Damage (http://www.wowwiki.com/Direct_Damage) spell such as Smite (http://www.wowwiki.com/Smite) (priest (http://www.wowwiki.com/Priest)), Wrath (http://www.wowwiki.com/Wrath) (druid (http://www.wowwiki.com/Druid)), Shadow Bolt (http://www.wowwiki.com/Shadow_Bolt) (warlock (http://www.wowwiki.com/Warlock)), or Fireball (http://www.wowwiki.com/Fireball) (mage (http://www.wowwiki.com/Mage)).
Damage over Time (http://www.wowwiki.com/Damage_over_Time) spell such as Immolate (http://www.wowwiki.com/Immolate) (warlock (http://www.wowwiki.com/Warlock)), Shadow Word: Pain (http://www.wowwiki.com/Shadow_Word:_Pain) (priest (http://www.wowwiki.com/Priest)), or Moonfire (http://www.wowwiki.com/Moonfire) (druid (http://www.wowwiki.com/Druid)).

An item (http://www.wowwiki.com/Item):

Thrown dynamite (http://www.wowwiki.com/Dynamite) (engineering (http://www.wowwiki.com/Engineering)).
A targeted rocket.

Once you kill the creature you may or may not be able to loot (http://www.wowwiki.com/Loot) and gain some treasure.
Using combat skills will increase your weapon skill. Being attacked will increase your defense (http://www.wowwiki.com/Defense) skill. The maximum amount of skill (under common circumstances) is 5 × your character level + Racial bonuses.

Player vs Player (PvP (http://www.wowwiki.com/PvP))

With the PvP system, you may fight players of opposite factions if their PvP flag (http://www.wowwiki.com/PvP_flag) is turned on. You will know since their names will be written in yellow (you can attack them but they can't attack you) or red (you can attack them and they can attack you). Players of opposite factions can only attack you if your flag is up. See PvP flag (http://www.wowwiki.com/PvP_flag) for a fuller description.
You can fight players of your own faction in duels (http://www.wowwiki.com/Dueling). Duels will not affect the status of your PvP flag and they do not end up in death. "Death" will cause the duel to end but the loser will be left alive with almost no health.
In Stranglethorn Vale (http://www.wowwiki.com/Stranglethorn_Vale), there is an arena where you can fight anyone of any faction, like a free-for-all battle. Only those in your group are safe from your wrath. At specific times a treasure chest is set at the center of the arena. The last man standing gets the loot.

Recovery

Health (http://www.wowwiki.com/Health) and mana (http://www.wowwiki.com/Mana) (or energy (http://www.wowwiki.com/Energy) as a Rogue (http://www.wowwiki.com/Rogue)) will recover over time. If you are willing to sit down, you can eat food (http://www.wowwiki.com/Food) to recover health faster and imbibe a drink (http://www.wowwiki.com/Drink) to recover mana faster. You can eat something and drink something at the same time (use one then the other) which regains health and mana in one break period. You cannot eat or drink during combat.
During combat you can use potions (http://www.wowwiki.com/Potion) or spells (http://www.wowwiki.com/Spell) to recover health or mana during combat. Some special items also allow recovery with effects similar to spells. Potions generally act instantaneously. You may only drink one of these potions every 2 minutes and drinking one potion type precludes drinking the other for the full time. Spells can be instant, but most have a casting time which can be delayed or interrupted by combat. First Aid (http://www.wowwiki.com/First_Aid) can also be used to recover health during combat, but the recovery is incremental and can be interrupted, as it is channeled (http://www.wowwiki.com/Channel).
Rogues have some special abilities (http://www.wowwiki.com/Ability), potions or foods that can increase the recovery rate of energy, but most are only available at higher levels, so somewhat beyond the scope of this guide.
Warriors (http://www.wowwiki.com/Warrior) use rage (http://www.wowwiki.com/Rage) which is generated by dealing, receiving, and avoiding damage. Thus, recovery is not really an issue. But since their rage decays over time following a battle, there are potions that give the warrior rage. These aren't generally necessary, however, since rage is usually generated at an acceptable rate without the potion.

Death (http://www.wowwiki.com/Death)

Unlike other games, in World of Warcraft you lose no items or experience when you die. Instead, all of your equipped items immediately take a 10% durability (http://www.wowwiki.com/Durability) reduction (this applies only to items equipped when you died, not to items in your inventory). While in spirit form, you can run back to your corpse and rejoin it for no additional penalty by selecting the "Resurrect Now" button when you come within range; you come back to life with half health and half mana. Run speed is increased while you are a spirit and you are able to walk on water.
A Spirit Healer (http://www.wowwiki.com/Spirit_Healer) is also present in each graveyard who can bring you back to life immediately, saving you a trip to your corpse. However, doing this will cause all of your equippable items to take an additional 25% durability hit; this applies both to equipped items, and to items in your inventory. In addition, you will suffer from resurrection sickness (http://www.wowwiki.com/Resurrection_sickness), beginning at level 11. Furthermore, at the point when you die, you are usually doing something that is necessary to complete a quest. In this case, you will have to return to the same place. While sometimes it is better to go ahead and resurrect at the spirit healer, it is usually better to return to your corpse.
Note: If you are killed by another player in PvP (http://www.wowwiki.com/PvP) combat, you do not take the initial 10% durability hit. This means that if you walk back to your corpse or are ressed by another player there is no adverse effect at all, except the time to make the trip to your corpse due to a PvP death. However, you will always take a 25% hit if you are resurrected by a spirit healer no matter how you died, and if you are above level 10, you will also suffer from resurrection sickness

Wyverns, Gryphons, Bats, and Hippogryphs

http://images.wikia.com/wowwiki/images/3/35/Pointer_flight_on_32x32.png (http://www.wowwiki.com/Image:Pointer_flight_on_32x32.png) interact with flight master http://images.wikia.com/wowwiki/images/1/1c/Pointer_flight_off_32x32.png (http://www.wowwiki.com/Image:Pointer_flight_off_32x32.png) flight master out of range One of the most common forms of transportation in World of Warcraft (http://www.wowwiki.com/World_of_Warcraft) is flying. Gryphons and Hippogryphs provide this for the Alliance (http://www.wowwiki.com/Alliance), while Wyverns and Bats are aligned with the Horde (http://www.wowwiki.com/Horde). Many settlements have a flight point (http://www.wowwiki.com/Flight_point), with an NPC who will allow you to travel to various connected points for a fee. Before you can use a flight path you must travel to it on foot and "learn" the path by clicking on the flight path NPC (http://www.wowwiki.com/NPC) who will have a green ! above their heads. Flight paths are fixed; you cannot control the creature you are on, so sit back and enjoy the view.
While in flight, you cannot perform any skills, but you can tinker with macro (http://www.wowwiki.com/Macro) functions, set up your action bar (http://www.wowwiki.com/Action_bar), chat (http://www.wowwiki.com/Chat), and tool your game configuration settings. This is an excellent time to change your video settings, especially if your computer is slow to change them. (The color-depth settings are reset to default each time you load the game.)

Zeppelins and Boats

Travel between the two continents and to locations more remote than are accessable via flight path is done via large Zeppelins, Boats, or similar. These cost nothing to use, and operate on a fairly rapid schedule. They are also a relatively safe way to travel, for those with the correct faction alignment, as they usually have guards stationed at the stops. Anyone can use any of these travel options, but the guards will try to kill you, if you are not liked by their faction, of course.
The Horde (http://www.wowwiki.com/Horde) have Zeppelin services, operated by the goblins, between the cities of Orgrimmar (http://www.wowwiki.com/Orgrimmar) (Durotar (http://www.wowwiki.com/Durotar)), The Undercity (http://www.wowwiki.com/The_Undercity) (Tirisfal Glades (http://www.wowwiki.com/Tirisfal_Glades)) and Grom'gol Base Camp (http://www.wowwiki.com/Grom%27gol_Base_Camp) (Stranglethorn Vale (http://www.wowwiki.com/Stranglethorn_Vale)), each point being connected to the other two.
The Alliance (http://www.wowwiki.com/Alliance) has boat routes that provide service between Rut'Theran Village (http://www.wowwiki.com/Rut%27Theran_Village) (Teldrassil (http://www.wowwiki.com/Teldrassil)) and Auberdine (http://www.wowwiki.com/Auberdine) (Darkshore (http://www.wowwiki.com/Darkshore)); Auberdine and Menethil harbor (http://www.wowwiki.com/Menethil_harbor) (Wetlands (http://www.wowwiki.com/Wetlands)); and Menethil harbor and Theramore Isle (http://www.wowwiki.com/Theramore_Isle) (Dustwallow Marsh (http://www.wowwiki.com/Dustwallow_Marsh)). Also, there is a boat which runs between Auberdine and Azuremyst Isle (http://www.wowwiki.com/Azuremyst_Isle) (Azuremyst Isles (http://www.wowwiki.com/Azuremyst_Isles)), landing near The Exodar (http://www.wowwiki.com/The_Exodar) for players which have the Burning Crusade expansion installed.
The goblins run a neutral (all players start neutral to Steamwheedle Cartel (http://www.wowwiki.com/Steamwheedle_Cartel)) boat service between Ratchet (http://www.wowwiki.com/Ratchet) (Barrens (http://www.wowwiki.com/Barrens)) and Booty Bay (http://www.wowwiki.com/Booty_Bay) (Stranglethorn Vale (http://www.wowwiki.com/Stranglethorn_Vale)).

For more details see: Zeppelin (http://www.wowwiki.com/Zeppelin), Boat (http://www.wowwiki.com/Boat)

Personal Travel (http://www.wowwiki.com/Mount)

Certain classes, such as mages (http://www.wowwiki.com/Mages), druids (http://www.wowwiki.com/Druids), hunters (http://www.wowwiki.com/Hunters) and shaman (http://www.wowwiki.com/Shaman), have different means of personal travel which help them get places faster. The Engineering (http://www.wowwiki.com/Engineering) profession (http://www.wowwiki.com/Profession) also allows use of four trinkets that allow personal teleportation to either Winterspring (http://www.wowwiki.com/Winterspring) and Area 52 (http://www.wowwiki.com/Area_52) if you took Goblin Engineering specialization or Gadgetzan (http://www.wowwiki.com/Gadgetzan) and Toshley's Station (http://www.wowwiki.com/Toshley%27s_Station) if you took up gnomish specialization.
At level 40, all classes can purchase mounts (http://www.wowwiki.com/Mounts). These are somewhat expensive (on the order of 90g for training and 10g for the mount) and can be reduced in price by gaining higher reputation (http://www.wowwiki.com/Reputation) with your faction (up to 20% discount), but provide a faster means of transportation than traveling everywhere by foot. Paladins (http://www.wowwiki.com/Paladins) and Warlocks (http://www.wowwiki.com/Warlocks) get free mounts at level 40, after speaking to their class trainer (http://www.wowwiki.com/Trainer).
At level 60, all classes can upgrade to epic mounts (http://www.wowwiki.com/Mounts#Epic_ground_mounts). These mounts are more expensive (600g for training and 100g for the mount), but provide a greater speed increase than does a normal mount -- which becomes quite useful when traversing the larger zones intended for level 60+ characters. Again, Paladins (http://www.wowwiki.com/Paladins) and Warlocks (http://www.wowwiki.com/Warlocks) get special mounts (after completing a long and costly questline).
At level 60, 30 AV (http://www.wowwiki.com/AV) Tokens, 30 WSG (http://www.wowwiki.com/WSG) Tokens, and 30 AB (http://www.wowwiki.com/AB) Tokens, will also get you a mount. There is still the need to pay for the riding training. This will save you 100g (http://www.wowwiki.com/G) , and lets you pick a different mount, other than race specific mounts.

At level 70, all classes can purchase flying mounts (http://www.wowwiki.com/Mounts#Flying_mounts) for use only in Outland (http://www.wowwiki.com/Outland). Basic flying mounts (800g (http://www.wowwiki.com/G) for training, 100g (http://www.wowwiki.com/G) for the mount) are the same speed (both on the ground and in the air) as regular (level 40) mounts. Epic flying mounts are also available; they're much more expensive (5000g (http://www.wowwiki.com/G) for training, 200g (http://www.wowwiki.com/G) for the mount), but also much faster (same speed on land as an epic mount and +280% speed in the air). There are no special mounts for Paladins (http://www.wowwiki.com/Paladins) and Warlocks (http://www.wowwiki.com/Warlocks) this time around; instead, Druids (http://www.wowwiki.com/Druids) can learn a flight form (http://www.wowwiki.com/Flight_form) from their class trainer (http://www.wowwiki.com/Trainer) at level 68. At level 70, Swift Flight Form (http://www.wowwiki.com/Swift_Flight_Form) becomes available through a long but fun questline once you have paid the 5000g (http://www.wowwiki.com/G) for the artisan riding skill.

The Tram (http://www.wowwiki.com/Deeprun_Tram)

The Deeprun Tram provides free transportation between Stormwind (http://www.wowwiki.com/Stormwind) and Ironforge (http://www.wowwiki.com/Ironforge). The entrances to the tram are found in the Dwarven District (http://www.wowwiki.com/Dwarven_District) in Stormwind and in Tinkertown (http://www.wowwiki.com/Tinkertown) in Ironforge. The tram comes every few minutes and is a very fast means of free travel between the two major Alliance (http://www.wowwiki.com/Alliance) cities in the Eastern Kingdoms (http://www.wowwiki.com/Eastern_Kingdoms).
It is also the only safe way to travel between Stormwind and Ironforge for low-level characters the first time as you cannot use flightpaths until they are discovered. The areas between the two cities are for much higher-level characters.

Items

Item Quality (http://www.wowwiki.com/Quality)

Items (http://www.wowwiki.com/Item) are ranked by their quality (http://www.wowwiki.com/Quality) in World of Warcraft (http://www.wowwiki.com/World_of_Warcraft), identifiable by the color of the item's name.
For all items, in order of increasing quality:

gray names indicate poor (http://www.wowwiki.com/Poor) safe to sell these directly to a vendor.
white names indicate common (http://www.wowwiki.com/Common) quality; these items generally have a use in 1 or more professions (http://www.wowwiki.com/Profession) or quests (http://www.wowwiki.com/Quests).
green names are uncommon (http://www.wowwiki.com/Uncommon). You will occasionally find these as you do battle against some monsters.
blue names are rare (http://www.wowwiki.com/Rare); these items are usually stronger than most uncommon items.
purple names indicate epic (http://www.wowwiki.com/Epic) items, generally found on high-level bosses (http://www.wowwiki.com/Boss) in Endgame (http://www.wowwiki.com/Endgame) Instances (http://www.wowwiki.com/Instance).
orange names are legendary (http://www.wowwiki.com/Legendary); these are extremely rare and of very high quality. There are only a handful of these items in the game.
red names are artifacts (http://www.wowwiki.com/Artifact); these items are not implemented in the game yet.

Item Binding (http://www.wowwiki.com/Soulbound)

Some items in World of Warcraft can become soulbound to one particular character, making it impossible to trade them or sell them to other players. There are two types: those that will bind when first equipped (http://www.wowwiki.com/Bind_on_Equip), and those that will bind when they are looted or picked up (http://www.wowwiki.com/Bind_on_Pickup). When looting, you will get a warning dialog telling you that looting the item will permanently bind it to you when you either equip or loot such an item. Once an item is bound to you, it will indicate in the tooltip (http://www.wowwiki.com/Tooltip) that it is soulbound just below the name of the item. You can sell soulbound (http://www.wowwiki.com/Soulbound) items to vendor NPCs (http://www.wowwiki.com/NPC), but not to other players. Destroying these items, selling them to a vendor, or disenchanting (http://www.wowwiki.com/Disenchant) them (if you are an enchanter (http://www.wowwiki.com/Enchanter)) are the only ways of getting rid of these objects; you cannot mail them, trade them, or sell them in the auction house (http://www.wowwiki.com/Auction_house).

Acquiring Items

Items are acquired in several ways:

Killing monsters (http://www.wowwiki.com/Mob)
Completing quests (http://www.wowwiki.com/Quest)
Getting them from other players

By trade (http://www.wowwiki.com/Trade).
By mail (http://www.wowwiki.com/Mail#Messages_and_Shipping) from other characters or your own characters (that are on the same server).

Mail with an item in it takes 1 hour to arrive.
Mail with just a message and/or money arrives instantly.

Making them yourself Tradeskills (http://www.wowwiki.com/Tradeskills) provide items that are one notch above equal-level quest items. However, you can send items you make to your other character (and to other players) or sell them to vendors or auction them at the auction house (http://www.wowwiki.com/Auction_house).
Buying them from vendor NPCs (http://www.wowwiki.com/NPC) Most vendors sell stuff appropriate for the level area they occupy. Equippable items found at most vendors are much worse than what you should be wearing if you do many quests.
Buying them from an auction house (http://www.wowwiki.com/Auction_house)

Item Attributes

Most items in World of Warcraft have one or more attributes (http://www.wowwiki.com/Attributes). Depending on what class (http://www.wowwiki.com/Class) you chose to play, some attributes (http://www.wowwiki.com/Attributes) become more important than others.

Parties (http://www.wowwiki.com/Party)

Partying (http://www.wowwiki.com/Category:Partying) is what a MMORPG (http://www.wowwiki.com/MMORPG) is all about. If we wanted to play a one-player game, there might be other games more suitable. Partying is the best way to get to know someone, as far as the quality of their character:

How well they act around others
How well they learn new features
How well they develop and learn and use tactics

In order to be the best you can be in a group, it is good to look at other classes to see what they can do for you, and to see what you can do for them that they can't do for themselves. Don't be afraid to ask someone for a benefit that they can offer you; and if you have something they might benefit from, give it to them.
First off, it is not entirely uncommon for first-time group members who had never met before to offer an enchantment (as it increases their skill, which benefits them). If you don't get such an offer, do not just expect them to respond affirmatively to a request.
All classes that can buff should buff everyone in their party. Some buffs require certain talents (http://www.wowwiki.com/Talent) or reagents (http://www.wowwiki.com/Reagent), so you shouldn't be surprised if someone doesn't have the buff you're looking for. Just remember to ask. Many players don't know the lengths of all your buffs, so you'll just have to remind the buffer. In the case of a paladin (http://www.wowwiki.com/Paladin), where they can cast only one blessing on each character, you should ask the paladin for the particular blessing you want.
Many classes are hybrids and you can fill two different roles. Everyone should know what role they play in any given party, and also how to play that role well.
See the Instance Grouping Guide (http://www.wowwiki.com/Instance_Grouping_Guide) for information that is absolutely essential for going into dungeons with others. It is incredibly annoying when people do not follow the principles outlined in that article. Some people can be taught patience and such; others can't. You should do what you can to learn from experienced people (who are usually notable just from seeing how they speak and act) and teach others the same.
It is considered rude to invite somebody into a party, especially if they have not asked for a party, without first speaking with them. In many cases, however, it's obvious that you have a common goal. In these cases, you may get an invitation to join a party (but you should still not give one before speaking). Some instances of this is when you see the same character over and over in the area of a certain type of monster which is a quest monster or one that gives reputation. In this case, it is very beneficial to be in a group even if you don't help each other. The reason is that all members of the group get credit for killing each monster that the other one kills. However, if you're not immediately in the same area attacking the same clusters of monsters, it would be good to have free-for-all looting (http://www.wowwiki.com/Looting), or else a lot of loot would probably not be picked up by the others.
Another important reason to party up is that (probably) in every case, two together will be more than twice as effective at killing any given monster or set of monsters than the two separately. Synergy is very important in grouping. Two paladins can have two different auras which can be very beneficial; three is nice, too, but the rewards are greatly diminished at that point, because the group would receive a greater reward from another class. Two hunters can benefit each other in a similar manner as well, along with two warriors, and so on. But the greatest benefit of all is to have only one of each class. But it is not always easy to achieve such a grouping.

Looting (http://www.wowwiki.com/Loot)

Looting and loot drops (http://www.wowwiki.com/Drop) in World of Warcraft (http://www.wowwiki.com/World_of_Warcraft) are fairly straightforward. If the corpse of a monster has gold sparkles on top of it, it means there's something on the corpse that you can loot. Once you loot a corpse, if you don't take everything off it, everyone else in your group will have the option to loot.
There are a few different looting types in parties that can be set by the party leader by right-clicking on his own portrait in the upper left. Two of these types are affected by the loot threshold, also set by the leader (the threshold can be set to uncommon (http://www.wowwiki.com/Uncommon), rare (http://www.wowwiki.com/Rare), or epic (http://www.wowwiki.com/Epic)).
Money loot is always shared in a party regardless of loot type. However, if a party member is out of range when a monster is looted, they will not receive a share of any gold found on a corpse and will not be able to roll for any special items found.
In addition to the loot rules that can be set up to run automatically (see Looting (http://www.wowwiki.com/Looting)), many groups have additional rules that they add in. Don't forget to decide them before starting!

INSTANCED DUNGEONS

Group Encounters

Instanced Dungeons (or "Instances (http://www.wowwiki.com/Instances)") are where the fun really begins. These are not the sort of places you'll want to do alone. Unlike many random areas of the game where you may easily get by as a solo player, instances and dungeons are designed to challenge whole groups of players. Most instances and dungeons will require five people to complete successfully. They always contain many Elite (http://www.wowwiki.com/Elite) monsters.
Instances are great for groups to go and get experience and loot, though they present quite a challenge. It is ideal, therefore, to construct well-balanced groups that include members to fill all party roles, typically a tank (http://www.wowwiki.com/Tank), a healer (http://www.wowwiki.com/Healer) and three damage dealers (http://www.wowwiki.com/Damage_dealer). Additionally, it is preferable to have at least one or two of the members with good crowd control (http://www.wowwiki.com/Crowd_control) abilities.
Among the four classes that can act as healers, priests (http://www.wowwiki.com/Priest), paladins (http://www.wowwiki.com/Paladin) and shamans (http://www.wowwiki.com/Shaman) can resurrect without a cooldown (other than the mana (http://www.wowwiki.com/Mana) cost of each cast). Druids (http://www.wowwiki.com/Druid) can resurrect once every 20 minutes, and engineers (http://www.wowwiki.com/Engineer) of any class can make or buy Goblin Jumper Cables (http://www.wowwiki.com/Goblin_Jumper_Cables) which has the chance to fail, and has a cooldown as well. Druids and engineers should resurrect a paladin or priest the first attempt, so that they can resurrect the rest.
See the class (http://www.wowwiki.com/Class) article for a table of roles that usually need to be played, and the rating of each class' ability to fulfill that role.
Instances are both sources of excitement, and of dread.

A place for you and your group only

In the regular world, monsters exist and walk around doing whatever it is monsters do when the players aren't there. Anybody can come along, kill them, get the loot, skin (http://www.wowwiki.com/Skin) them or whatever, and move on. If one player kills a monster, obviously it can't be killed twice. That means other players have to wait until that monster respawns, which occurs regularly (within 5~15 minutes depending on which monster is in question). Some monsters are quest targets which need to be killed by any player attempting to complete that quest (a simple example is Goldtooth (http://www.wowwiki.com/Goldtooth) in Fargodeep Mine (http://www.wowwiki.com/Fargodeep_Mine) for humans (http://www.wowwiki.com/Human) starting out). You may find yourself waiting for Goldtooth to respawn before you can kill him again. You may even be able to kill the same monster any number of times, as long as you wish to wait around.
In instances, it doesn't quite work the same way. Each group that goes into an instanced dungeon gets their own version of it – their own instance of it, hence the name. This means you will never be inconvenienced by another group going in and killing all of the monsters and getting the loot before you do, but you will also never have the possibility of having another group or player come along and saving your hides from an ugly battle! Each group gets to go through the whole place on their very own.
This can mean some good loot and experience as a group progresses through an instance. Furthermore, the monsters in the area tend not to respawn until after some kind of scripted trigger, such as killing the head boss (http://www.wowwiki.com/Boss). In the Deadmines in Westfall, the Goblins and Defias Miners (of various types) stay dead. The wandering Defias Enforcers and Taskmasters (patrols (http://www.wowwiki.com/Patrol)) are the only ones that respawn regularly (just to keep things interesting). However, as soon as the Head Boss Edwin VanCleef (http://www.wowwiki.com/Edwin_VanCleef) is killed, the dungeon respawns with monsters, and it may end up being a bit of a fight to get back out the same way. However, you could just head off the other side of the boat and leave through the tunnel.

Death and Resurrection in Instances

If you die in an instance, your spirit need only find its way back to the entrance of it. As soon as you re-enter the instance, you are resurrected as normal, but at the instance gate. However this can mean that you may have a long way to run before you catch up to the rest of your group. In certain cases you may end up fighting your way back to your group (or your group, if you're the only one left, may end up fighting their way back to you!). The benefit of this is that if every member of your group dies in a battle, you don't need to go walk around looking for you corpses. You just need to to re-enter the instance, and everyone gets revived at the same point.
If it has taken your group some time to get to a point in an instance you want to avoid having to fight your way back in again. It's smart to try to allow characters with resurrection (http://www.wowwiki.com/Resurrect) abilities, such as priests (http://www.wowwiki.com/Priest), paladins (http://www.wowwiki.com/Paladin), shaman (http://www.wowwiki.com/Shaman) or druids (http://www.wowwiki.com/Druid) to survive a difficult fight even if other characters must sacrifice themselves in the process. If these particular classes are to survive a disaster that kills the rest of the party they can eventually resurrect the whole party. Thus allowing you to begin again at the point you were up to and avoid a long fight on the way back in.

Chat (http://www.wowwiki.com/Chat) and Interface (http://www.wowwiki.com/Interface_Customization)

Channels

World of Warcraft has a chat (http://www.wowwiki.com/Chat) channel system to allow players to create their own private chat channels. Use the /chat command to get a listing of chat channel commands. You will automatically join chat channels "General", "Trade", and "LocalDefense" when you create your character.
To send a message to a chat channel, type "/# (message)" where # is the number of the channel you would like to send to. 1 is always the "General" channel, and 2 is the Trade channel when in a city. (Type /chatlist to see a list of channels you are currently on.)
Item links can be sent by shift-clicking any item, but they won't work in any "numbered" chats other than the Trade channel, which only appears in large cities. Links will work in party, say, and guild chat. (This was done to prevent item/trade spamming in the General chat channel; unfortunately, it also means that you can't share item links with friends in private chat channels. However, if someone requests that you link an item to them, you can do that through whisper (http://www.wowwiki.com/Whisper).)

The Mail (http://www.wowwiki.com/Mail) system

For a small price (30c (http://www.wowwiki.com/C) ), you can send in-game mail to other players. This can be sent when other players are offline or online. An icon will appear near your minimap indicating if you have new Unread Mail. To read your mail, visit the postbox outside any inn. You can also send items through mail to other players as "attachments". Sending mail is instantaneous, unless there is an item attached, in which case the message will take one hour to be delivered (sent items between characters on the same account is still instantaneous). Attachments are returned to the sender if the message goes unread for 30 days, or if the recipient does not remove the item from their mailbox within 30 days of reading the message.[1] (http://www.wowwiki.com/Newbie_guide/Chat_and_interface#cite_note-0)
You can also use a C.O.D. (http://www.wowwiki.com/C.O.D.) to send mail with items attached. This allows you to set a price for the recipient to be able to collect the item from the mail (i.e. you can charge them for the item). When the recipient clicks the item to put it in their pack, a dialog comes up stating the price. If they say accept, then the price is deducted from their money and sent to you in a mail message. They may also select return which will return the item to you via mail. C.O.D. items expire from the recipients inbox in 30 days even if unread, so be sure they know that it is coming. You can C.O.D. items to your other characters on the same account (http://www.wowwiki.com/Account) also.
You may also send cash in mail, but all mail sent with money (http://www.wowwiki.com/Money) arrives with an hour delay.[2] (http://www.wowwiki.com/Newbie_guide/Chat_and_interface#cite_note-1) For example, your character needs a bit of quick cash and you have another character on the same account with cash, switch to the other character, drop some cash in the mail, then switch back, and the cash should already be in your inbox. If your other character is on another account (say, your brother's or sister's), you need wait 1 hour, log out to the beginning logon screen and proceed as normal. You don't need to be on one account to send money or any such, but it is much faster and easier.

INTERFACE CUSTOMIZATION/UI BEGINNER'S GUIDE
Slash Commands

To understand how everything else works, you need to know what a Slash Command is. WoW allows you to give simple commands to the game in the form of a slash (/) followed by the name of the command. You can give these commands directly by typing them into the chat box. An example would be the "/follow" command. If you target a friendly and type "/follow" (without the quotes), you start following them. You can get a list of some of the slash commands by typing "/help".
There are several types of slash commands. Some are designed to perform game actions (e.g. /follow, /assist, /cast), others are chat related commands (e.g. /yell, /chatlist) or give you information (/who). You also have emotes (/laugh, /bow).
Finally, there is one very special slash command "/script", explained later.
Macros

Macros (http://www.wowwiki.com/Macro) General guides Macros Beginners Guide (http://www.wowwiki.com/UI_Beginners_Guide#Macros)
Making a macro (http://www.wowwiki.com/Making_a_macro)
UI FAQ/Macros and scripts (http://www.wowwiki.com/UI_FAQ/Macros_and_scripts)
Category:Macros (http://www.wowwiki.com/Category:Macros)
Useful macros (http://www.wowwiki.com/Useful_macros) (by class)
The purpose of a Macro is to allow you to create some very simple custom actions or tasks, based on the existing game actions. A macro is just a sequence of slash commands, which are executed in order when you execute the macro. To create a new macro, either type "/macro" (without the quotes), or click on the speech bubble next to the chat box and select macro. You can then give a macro a name, an icon and type in a few lines of slash commands. The macro is created in the form of an action that you can drag onto your hotbar. You can activate the macro by clicking on the resulting button on the hotbar.
An example macro would be:
/cast Fireball(Rank 1)
/say "I am frying it!"
This macro merely casts a fireball, and then has your character tell everyone nearby that you're casting it.
Macros have some severe limitations, and are only intended for very very simple tasks. The most important limitation is that it is difficult to cast more than one spell at a time using a macro (although it is possible, using API_SpellStopCasting (http://www.wowwiki.com/API_SpellStopCasting)). This limitation exists so that macros can't automate too much for you. You can have as many other commands within the 255 character limit as you like.
See also The Blizzard World of Warcraft UI & Macros Forum (http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/board.html?forumId=11114&sid=1) and HOWTO: Make a Macro (http://www.wowwiki.com/HOWTO:_Make_a_Macro)
Scripts

"Scripts" are computer programs written in a "scripting language". Scripting languages are usually dynamic languages, and scripts do not require compilation in order to be executed (they are "interpreted"). Scripts and scripting languages are typically used to solve small to medium sized problems, and to create "throw away code" to quickly solve a problem at hand. In principle however, scripts can solve the same kind of problems as lower level programming languages such as C++, albeit they might run slower.
World of Warcraft has a powerful scripting language called Lua (http://www.wowwiki.com/Lua) embedded. This means that the WoW client can directly interpret and execute Lua programs.
Lua scripts are used in the following places:

/script [command] : If you type the slash command "/script" in the chat box, you can follow it with one or more valid Lua language statements (i.e. a script), separated by semi-colons ( ; ).
Macros: you can enter scripts as part of macros, by putting one or more "/script" commands in your macro.
Addons: these extend the WoW client with new slash commands and often user interface elements. This additional functionality is provided through Lua scripts (containing the actual addon logic). User interface extensions are defined in XML files.

So what can a script do? There are many resources on Lua scripts. See our page on Lua (http://www.wowwiki.com/Lua) to find out more about the language. Browse the rest of the Interface Customization (http://www.wowwiki.com/Interface_Customization) page for additional resources. The most important point however is that scripts are able to perform many more game actions than slash commands. This is done via a set of functions (called API or Application Programming Interface) that WoW makes available for use in scripts. There is a quite extensive list of all the API functions available for use in scripts at World of Warcraft API (http://www.wowwiki.com/World_of_Warcraft_API).
After all that explanation, here is an example of a script:
if (IsPartyLeader()) then
ChatFrame1:AddMessage("I am the leader of my party!")
end
This script is very simple. When you execute this script, if you are the party leader, then you get a message saying you are the party leader. To use this script, you would have to do so via the "/script" command. e.g.:
/script if (IsPartyLeader()) then ChatFrame1:AddMessage("I am the leader of my party!"); end
You can type this directly into the chat box, or make that line part of a macro, so that it's reusable.
In summary: a script in WoW is a short program written in the Lua language, able to interact with the game and perform game actions. You use a script by including it as part of something else, e.g. by putting it in a macro via the /script command, or by putting it in an addon.
AddOns

Blizzard has made the decision that the user interface of World of Warcraft is fully customizable, modifiable and extendable. This is completely legal, and is encouraged by Blizzard. A User Interface Modification (UI Mod for short) and AddOn is exactly the same thing, the difference is merely in their names. Usually "Mods" tend to refer to smaller things that only modify existing funcionality of the user interface, whereas AddOns tend to add extra functionality. From here on, we will simply use "AddOn".
From a User's point of view

From a user's point of view, what you need to know is that AddOns come in the form of one or more text files, ending in the ".toc", ".xml" and ".lua" extensions. These files are supposed to go into a folder called Interface in your World of Warcraft folder, or into one of its sub-folders. Usually AddOns are distributed as zip files by their authors, and you "install" them by simply unzipping them in your World of Warcraft\Interface folder.
Warning: Be very very careful with AddOns that come as executable ".exe" files. Always triple-check before you use these to make sure that they really do what they say they do, as executable files can do anything whatsoever to your computer. AddOns are supposed to be written in text format in .xml and .lua files, so that anyone can check that there is nothing malicious about them. You have no such check available with executable files. Also, since AddOns only operate within WoW, they can't harm your computer, whereas executable files can.
Having said that, some authors do distribute their AddOns as executable files. These executables most of the time don't do more than just unzip the AddOn's files and place them in your WoW folder in the appropriate places. Occasionally the executables are used to automatically download updated versions of the AddOn, or to upload data collected by the AddOn (for example item statistics to be put on a web-site, etc.).
Uninstalling: You can always uninstall any AddOn and reset the WoW UI to its clean default state by merely deleting or renaming the Interface, ***, and Cache folders in your WoW folder, then restarting WoW.
From a Developer's point of view

AddOns mainly consist of two types of files:

Lua (http://www.wowwiki.com/Lua) files, which contain the brunt of the logic
XML (http://www.wowwiki.com/XML_User_Interface) files, which define how your dialogs, buttons, etc look. These elements are commonly referred to as "Widgets".

You list these files in a TOC (http://www.wowwiki.com/The_TOC_Format) (Table Of Contents) file together with some additional parameters.
If you've been programming before, you may be used to having your program start, and keep running, until you don't want it to run any more. Not so in WoW. AddOns are event driven, i.e. everything that happens does so in response to an event, e.g. the user clicking one of your buttons, the client receiving a chat message, someone hitting the character, etc. Those events are delivered to widgets, and to grab hold of them, you need to embed little snippets of Lua code in the right places that calls functions in the .lua files. It is possible to implement a whole addon in just the .xml files, but it gets clunky, and you need to HTML-encode < and > characters and so forth.
Good places here on WoWWiki to look for more information:

Interface Customization (http://www.wowwiki.com/Interface_Customization)
World of Warcraft API (http://www.wowwiki.com/World_of_Warcraft_API)
XML User Interface (http://www.wowwiki.com/XML_User_Interface)
AddOns (http://www.wowwiki.com/AddOns) - a guide on how to create an addon from scratch
Category:HOWTOs (http://www.wowwiki.com/Category:HOWTOs)
XML Basic (http://www.wowwiki.com/XML_Basic) - needs help of pro addon developers to fill up reference

External guides:

mmhell.com - A Beginner's Guide to Interface Modification - OUT OF DATE (http://wow.mmhell.com/articles/interface_modification/beginners_guide.html) (Marian 'Fyrn' R, Aug. 2004)
mmhell.com - Your first AddOn - OUT OF DATE (http://wow.mmhell.com/articles/interface_modification/writing_your_first_addon.html)

Cosmos, Gypsy, CT_Mod and other AddOn packages

If you look around the forums a bit, you will see names like Titan_Panel (http://www.wowwiki.com/Titan_Panel), Cosmos (http://www.wowwiki.com/Cosmos), Gypsy (http://www.wowwiki.com/Gypsy) and CT_Mod (http://www.wowwiki.com/CT_Mod) popping up. These are major AddOn packages that contain a large number of UI AddOns. Their authors (often working in teams) are respectable members of the WoW community who have worked hard to create useful (and sometimes not-so-useful) AddOns for your gaming pleasure, and have bundled them together into one easy-to-use package.
Feel free to use any and all of these packages. They are legal, Blizzard allows and encourages their use, although you won't get technical support from Blizzard if something is wrong with them. There are many of these around, download and try a few of them and see if you like them. Usually the authors make these packages highly configurable so that you can adjust them to your needs.
Note: a lot of these major AddOn packages conflict with each other, so you won't be able to use them together.
Standalone, pure AddOns, what is so good about them?

You will sometimes see AddOn authors being proud of their AddOn being "standalone", or "pure addon". In the past, often AddOns modified existing UI functionality by changing something in the existing, core UI files provided by Blizzard. This has lead to conflicts as different AddOns all tried to modify the same file. A "pure addon" is one that does not modify any existing files, and merely adds its own files. This is a very good thing, because you can have any number of such AddOns happily coexisting side-by-side. For this reason in WoW patch 1.10, Blizzard has completely disabled the ability to change the core UI files themselves. Therefore, all modifications to the UI can now only be done via pure AddOns. (Note that this doesn't mean that existing functionality of the UI can't be modified, it just means that it has to be done via an AddOn without modifying Blizzard's files themselves).
Also, a lot of AddOns depend on other AddOns for their operation. For example, most AddOns in the Cosmos package wouldn't work by themselves, and need the whole Cosmos package to be present to work. A "standalone" AddOn is one that is capable of working by itself, with nothing more than just that one AddOn being present. Again, this is a good thing, because it allows you to pick and choose just those exact AddOns that you want, without having anything you don't want. Many addons are aware of the major addon frameworks though and can interact with them if they're present.
Having said that, from the point of view of an AddOn's author, you will find that often a lot of AddOns do very similar sort of things. It is much more easy and quick for an AddOn author to create a new AddOn if they can rely on existing functionality in other AddOns or some common core "libraries". That's why there are AddOns out there that depend on things such as the Sea (http://www.wowwiki.com/Sea) function library, which in itself is just an AddOn. If you find an AddOn that requires some other core AddOn, don't be afraid of it. Just make sure you also download the core AddOn.

Now that is a LOT to digest, and most of it comes from wowwiki.com so credit to them.