So the Lunar Festival is over, and any sort of reference to it is automatically out of date. On the other hand, I spent the last few days of the holiday achieving and didn’t have chance to write this, so let’s just pretend it was supposed to

be late in the first place.

A couple of weeks back Khi of the wonderful Tree Burglar set WoW bloggers a challenge.

One of the big parts of this holiday in-game has characters traveling the world to find various elders and pay them a little respect. In return, they pass on a few words that might be wisdom, and you continue on your way. Similarly, we bloggers have the opportunity on a regular basis to share a bit of advice, but it’s often directed toward those that already have some experience in our area.

So for this Lunar Festival, I have a bit of a challenge for you: Write something directed not at those that have months or years of experience, but for those that are just getting started.

You’re the Elder. Pretend you’re smart for a few days =P

Thinking about my days of stalking nubcakes over on the newcomers forum, and the sort of questions they tend to ask, I thought generic tips and class-specific advice were either done to death or a bit out of my league. Therefore I’m going with what I know, welcome to Elder Holyshell’s guide to Settling Down.

Choosing your server

If you’re going to be playing with friends, this decision is generally easy. If you’re starting off all alone, or your friends are spread over various different servers , you need some more criteria to narrow the choice.

One method is to choose one of the realms marked for new players on the realm list screen when you log in. These are usually realms that are new or have low populations, since high pop. realms have all sorts of nightmares of their own (additional instances spam being the worst). However bear in mind that low pop. realms can have wildly fluctuating economies and it

can be more difficult to find a group (offset a lot by the recent introduction of cross-realm pugs but you’ll still need realmies to raid with when you get that far).

An important thing to check before getting attached to any new realm is the main language. There are lots of realms marked as English which will turn out to be unofficially Italian, etc etc. You can of course just log in, stand in a busy place, and see what people are speaking, or you can have a quick look at their realm forum. Either way you’re saving yourself a reroll or server transfer fee for a few minutes extra research.

Choosing your class

I won’t say much on this because it differs from person to person. It does however come up a lot in the newcomers forum so here is a link to something you may find useful.

Choosing your guild

World of Warcraft is a Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game. While you can see a lot of the content solo, most people find the game to be more fun playing with a regular group of friends. If you’re looking for a guild to settle down in and go from level 10 newbie to level 80 awesomeness, here are some things to consider:

• Do you know what your goal is going to be at endgame, or do you need a guild that does a bit of everything to help you decide?
• Do you prefer to play with people your own age, or does variation not bother you?
• What sort of atmosphere are you looking for? Do you want to be in a guild where at least 10 people are constantly chatting, or something that gives you occasional peace and quiet? Somewhere that bad language or tasteless jokes are encouraged or discouraged?
• Would you rather have a guild with lots of people your level, or one that will see you mostly levelling alone/with strangers but will be there for you at endgame?

Once you have an idea of basically what sort of guild you want, there are a few routes to go down. Emerald Dream for example has as unofficial forum with guild listings as well as the official one, and of course now we have the guild pages on this blog too. Anyone seriously looking for a guild should eventually see one of these three advertising channels and if a guild piques their interest can  follow a link to their guild website to find out more.

All realms have their own official forum, and they’re always going to be full of guild recruitment. You may find that on your realm only the high level guilds are recruiting through this method, which is when you should a) make a post there detailing what you want and what you offer, and b) turn your attentions to the in-game /guildrecruitment channel.

When you find

a guild that sounds promising, make sure you have a proper look at their website. Any halfway decent guild should have their rules on display, and you should always make sure their attitude fits your own before even thinking about applying.

Enjoying the game

For a new player, it can seem that the only goal is to get to maximum level asap and start raiding/PvP/whatever. This may be true for you, it may not, but always remember there’s almost infinite content while levelling and stopping to investigate it if that’s what appeals to you is not in some way “wrong”. Play how you want to play, and screw everyone else.

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