Wednesday, October 11, 2006


Review of the Best World of Warcraft Guides
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Can one solo in World of Warcraft?

Can one solo in World of Warcraft? If the answer is yes, then what quests should be soloed in World of Warcraft? Well, first of all, the answer is a big "YES". Soloing is very well implemented in World of Warcraft. Of course, not a 100% of the so far 1,300+ available quests can be soloed, but a good part is. So, what makes a quest soloable? Different factors will influence your ability to solo a quest. They are: * Your character's class * The level of the quest itself * The nature of the quest. Character classes: As you can see from the left menu, there are so far 9 character classes. Each race in World of Warcraft can play some of these classes, but not all of them. Night Elves, for example, are quite reluctant to use magic, so you will not find any Mage, Shaman, or Warlock Night Elf, nor will you find any Paladin, as the Night Elves are not followers of the Church of Light. All classes are not equipped the same way when it comes to soloing. The most important factor that contributes to building your character in World of Warcraft is to become a professional early i.e. A Rogue, a Warrior, a Druid or a Warlock will have better chances to handle mobs (the bad guys in World of Warcraft) than a Priest. This is not to say that any class is less efficient than others in World of Warcraft (they all have their use), but some are just better-equipped than others when it comes to soloing. Level of the Quest: A usual indication that a quest is available for your character is a yellow exclamation mark on top of a NPC. If the exclamation mark is white, this means that a quest will soon be available (within 5 levels). Does this mean that if a NPC doesn't have an exclamation mark, then he or she doesn't have any quest for you? The answer is no. I will come back later about that. Also, note that some quests in World of Warcraft do not come from NPCs but from "Wanted" signs in some locations. These notes do not have any sign that they are quests. To find out if the quest is for your level, right-click on the sign and see if a quest is offered. Receiving a quest from an NPC doesn't also mean that you can solo it. What will indicate the level of difficulty of the quest is in your quest log (letter L to open it). Quests are color-coded in that log: * gray: extremely easy. Your character is too high for that quest. The experience reward will be low. You can however still find a good item as a reward. * green: easy. But it is still not clear (it depends from quest to quest) if this means that the quest is easy to solo, or if it is easy for a full group. * yellow: moderately difficult. Some of these quests can be soloed, but others will require a full group. * red: difficult. Don't even think about soloing this quest. * dark red: Stay away (or enter at your own risk). * (Elite): Associated with a color, this means that the mobs that you will encounter in this quest are Elite (they have a + behind their level). Elite mobs have three times more armor than another mob of the same level, and their attributes are also enhanced. Note that when you will gain some levels, quests will change color. Questing in World of Warcraft is unlike any other MMORPG released. Quests are one of the biggest advantages you can have in the game. What to do when you run out of green or yellow quests? You first need to remember that each faction (Horde or Alliance) has several races. When you run out of quests that you can solo in your region, you can travel to another race's starting region and do the quests there. Now, do you remember when I said that you might find NPCs that have quests for you, but that won't announce it? Here is the reason why: If, for example, your level-9 Human runs out of quests that he can solo in Elwynn Forest, he should then travel to the Dwarves/Gnomes starting location and do the quests there. Of course, as he is now level-9, some of the quests will be way below his level, and the NPCs won't announce them with a yellow exclamation mark. To find out if a NPC still has a quest for you, run your mouse over him. You will see that your gauntlet icon will now have a white speech bubble, which means that the NPC has something to tell you. After doing the quests from another region, you will eventually find out (after you gain a few levels) that the quests from your original region are now a lot easier to complete. How can you travel to another race's location? Well, you don't want me to give you all the answers, do you? Let's just say that there are three ways to travel: by air, by road, and by swimming. Ask your peers in-game if you can't find the answer by yourself. What quests should I solo? There are three main quest types: * Kill a boss/find an item on a boss * Find X number of items * Kill X number of mobs Kill a boss/Find an item on a boss. These quests can be soloed, but usually not at the level you receive them. If you want to solo this kind of quests in World of Warcraft, wait until you gain a few more levels. Once again, the level of difficulty may vary depending on your class. Note that if you do these quests, everyone in your party will receive the item. Find X number of items: These quests should be soloed whenever you can (if your level affords it). It can be very long before a full party collects all the items. Unless the "kill a boss/find an item on a boss" quest, only one person in the party will get the item for each kill. Kill X number of mobs: Although you can solo these quests, each member in your party will receive credit for the kill. What to do when you are not (solo) questing? World of Warcraft is rich in other things to do, be it trade objects or develop skills. Some of these skills are named trade skills, and allow you to develop the proficiency to either create items (clothes, weapons, shields, potions, etc.), enhance them, or just to skin beasts or cook food. Between quests, you should spend some time to develop these skills. Note that, you will need to travel to different regions to collect the elements necessary to use your trade skills. While you can find beasts to skin in every region (allowing you to create leather items), herbs do not grow everywhere. For example (at least during the beta), Peacebloom flowers are best found in Dun Morogh, a Dwarf/Gnome region. While your level-20 character will not find any interesting quest there, he will still be able to harvest these flowers much faster than in any other alliance region. What else should I know? We have covered the basic elements for soloing in World of Warcraft. Remember that you can move to a different region, to check the color code of your quest, and you will be able to decide when to solo, and when not. If you have other questions about soloing in World of Warcraft, contact us and we will gladly answer them. Can one solo in World of Warcraft?


Tuesday, September 19, 2006


Review of the Best World of Warcraft Guides
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World of Warcraft Horde Players Top Five Tips

World of Warcraft Horde Players Top Five Tips By Mark MacKay Here is a list of the most import simple things World of Warcraft Horde players can do to make there game more enjoyable. 1.) You will end up in the Barrens - accept it. Throughout the beta process, the one zone that everybody complained about the most was the Barrens, a level 15-20 zone that is quite literally in the center of everything for the Horde. As a result, this zone has the dubious distinction of undergoing almost constant revisions. The good news is, it's much better than it was - the bad news is, it can still be long and tedious. The thing is, most Horde quest lines eventually send players to the Barrens and it contains access to one of the neutral towns where Horde and Alliance players can get together, so the place is absolutely crawling with players. While that can be good for making friends, it's also the place that's the most hunted and overcrowded on the Horde side. Unfortunately, the Barrens is just a fact of life for Horde players - better to go, do what needs to be done, and get out. 2.) Want to get to level 10 quickly? Visit dead people. More accurately, visit Undead people. Since Quests aren't race specific, players can accept any level appropriate quest regardless of their race. That means that Horde players have access to a slight shortcut to level 10 similar to the one enjoyed by Alliance players. In the Horde's case it means hightailing it to the Orc hub city of Orgrimmar as soon as you can survive the trip and catching a zeppelin ride to Tirisfal Glades. Head south from the zeppelin tower to the Undead town of Brill and start looking for quests. Like Teldrassil for Night Elves, the quests in Brill are a bit easier and can usually be solved without a tremendous amount of traveling, significantly shortening your trip to level 10. 3.) The Horde has the best and worst hub cities in the game. Both sides in World of Warcraft have three hub cities designed for players to congregate, buy and sell items, and deal with NPC vendors and trainers. The Horde is blessed with the best and cursed with one of the worst hub cities in the game. The best city to do business with NPCs in is the Undead Undercity. If you have a choice of heading to one hub city, this is the one to pick. It's the smallest major city, meaning you don't have to do a tremendous amount of running to get to the shops you want. The city is also basically a circle - meaning it's almost impossible to get lost. Orgrimmar, the Orc hub city, on the other hand, is incredibly confusing, with twisting paths that sometime loop back on themselves. Orgrimmar means a lot of running and it's all too easy to get lost. It's also kind of the center of the universe for Horde players, so you really do need to learn it if you hope to use the auction or make new friends. 4.) Tired of fighting for elbow room? Join the Horde! For some odd reason, players seem to choose to play as Alliance characters far more often than as Horde characters. The good news for Horde players, though, is that fewer players mean fewer people jockeying for resources. Even the Barrens, probably the most crowded Horde region, never sees the problems with "mass extinction events" that routinely plague the Alliance. If you're interested in questing and not interested in hanging around with ten other people (at peak hours) waiting for a monster spawn, join the Horde. 5.) The Undead are just psychotically cool While everyone has their own opinion, mind is that no World of Warcraft race gets as many "coolness points" as the Undead. First, the character models are just a riot with hairstyles, there physics and a facial customization options are straight out of the Velvet Dungeon. The designers also clearly had a ball putting the Undead lands together because every area and storyline within the Undead zones is filled with clever asides and subtle (and not so subtle) humor about the Forsaken's unusual situation. Role-players will also enjoy playing the Undead since they're as close as any World of Warcraft race comes to being "evil". True - they are an oppressed minority, but they're also planning universal genocide, so you make your own call. Mark MacKay is a researcher, marketer, and an avid online gamer, including World of Warcraft and also the creator of the WOW Gold Price List Guide, a web site setup to help WOW players find the cheapest place to buy their gold. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Mark_MacKay World of Warcraft Horde Players Top Five Tips


Friday, September 08, 2006


Review of the Best World of Warcraft Guides
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11 Ways to Profit With Auctions in World of Warcraft

11 Ways to Profit With Auctions in World of Warcraft By Drew Shiel 1. Download Auctioneer. It's an essential tool, for both keeping a record of the market, and for determining what's currently available at under the normal price. 2. Don't rely completely on Auctioneer. The market changes with patches and even fashions, and what sells for a lot of money at one point may not do so for ever. If you see six of an item, all at bargain buyout prices compared to old data, there's probably a reason for it. 3. Watch upcoming patches. Temporary changes, such as festivals and the war effort, can change the price of trade materials overnight. Wool cloth saw a price increase of 400% after patch 1.9, due to the War Effort. Anyone who bought wool in bulk beforehand made a huge profit. 4. Create a dedicated auctioneer character. Even with three auction houses per side, it's a complete waste of time and effort flying and hearthing your main in to the capital cities. An auctioneer also has their own storage, and won't be wasting bank slots your main character can use. Start small. A profit of 3 silver doesn't look worthwhile, but it's 3 silver you didn't have before, and it'll turn itself into 6 silver later, and so on upward. 5. Time your auctions carefully. Habits vary from server to server, but there are always patterns. Maybe trade goods sell well during the week, when regular players are online, and rarer crafted items and drops over Friday through Sunday, when the weekend warriors are on. 6. If your auctioneer is an enchanter, pay careful attention to what can be disenchanted. There's often a steady income stream to be got from disenchanting low to mid-level green items and selling the products. 7. Watch for regular customers. If one guy keeps buying your nature protection potions, then maybe you can arrange a deal with him, so that he buys directly from you, and no longer goes looking on the auction house for prices that might be lower than yours. 8. Use your main to supply the auctioneer. You'll get useless green items all the time on your main. Don't sell these to vendors, send them to the auctioneer character, and sell them. Even if you sell low for disenchanting, or disenchant them yourself, you'll still make more than from a vendor. If your main has a tradeskill, you can probably sell some of the products. Potions from alchemy, and very likely the upcoming jewels from jewelcrafting, are good for this. 9. If you can, create a character on the other side (Horde or Alliance, if you're Alliance or Horde), and watch the auction houses there. The Auctioneer addon will help you track those prices. Prices can vary hugely, especially on paladin and shaman gear, which is valuable on one side, and worthless on the other. 10. Be very patient. Some high-profit items won't sell for weeks. World-drop epics are notorious for this; I've had one listed and re-listed at the weekends for for eight weeks. It eventually sold, though, netting me a profit of over 170g in one shot. 11. Advertise on the trade channels. It doesn't cost you anything, and if someone's keeping an eye out, you can have an immediate sale. When you're doing this, spell properly, and don't be afraid to make recommendations. "Perfect for your Shaman!", or "Ideal for Protection-specced warriors!" World of Warcraft contains plenty of opportunities for your character to make a lot of gold. Drew Shiel is a gamer, web developer and writer from Dublin, Ireland. He runs a site about science fiction, fantasy and gaming at dukestreet.org Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Drew_Shiel 11 Ways to Profit With Auctions in World of Warcraft


Monday, July 17, 2006


Review of the Best World of Warcraft Guides
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World of Warcraft Gold Guide

World of Warcraft Gold Guide By Ruibo Chen Having enough Gold in World of Warcraft is one of the most important aspects of the game. Gold has a major effect on your game play. Gold of course has their common known usage in a mmorpg game which is used to buy and sell items from vendors and other players. In world of Warcraft, gold can be used for training. To learn new skills you are required to pay the trainer a fee. Alot of gold would be required to perfect your character. Here are some tips to help you farm World of Warcraft Gold. Grabbing a profession early in the game can most definitely have its advantage. You are able to level up your profession easily and gain its benefits. 2 professions we highly suggest starting with is mining and skinning. As you kill animals and other creatures in World of Warcraft you can easily skin the animals and sell them to vendors or other players with a nice load sum of profit. You are also leveling your profession as well. While you're out leveling your character I'm sure you will kill a numerous amount of mobs that you can skin. The mining profession is another great profession. You will oftenly run into caves which may have some very prosperious mineral ores. Some minerals are very popular in the game and are highly demanded. Questing in World of Warcraft is unlike any other MMORPG released. Quests are one of the biggest advantages you can have in the game. While you're out leveling grab a quest each time you get. Only takes a matter of seconds. Not only will you receive EXP from killing the mobs in the quest but you will also gain additional EXP from completing the quest along with some nice items and money. A great bonus added to help players level faster and get richer of course. Gears in World of Warcraft can get quite expensive. Alot more expensive than just training. From levels 1-40 I highly suggest not investing any money on buying gears or items. Low level characters are not too gear dependent. The quests should be able to provide you just about everything you need. Save the extra gold you have for higher level gears. Certain types of mobs tend to have better drops than others. From what we've noticed so far, humanoids tend to drop more gold and items than any other creature in the game. So while you're out leveling away, try to kill as many humanoids as you can. Ruibo enjoys playing World of Warcraft and helping others with the information he provides on his website World of Warcraft Gold Guide. Help support his site by visiting http://www.worldofwarcraftgoldguide.com Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Ruibo_Chen World of Warcraft Gold Guide


Tuesday, May 30, 2006


Review of the Best World of Warcraft Guides
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Why Is World Of Warcraft So Successful

Why Is World Of Warcraft So Successful World of Warcraft has been an amazing success on every level. There is something about this particular game that has connected with people, more so than any other title. Its popularity just keeps growing and shows no sign of slowing down. The game has many strengths, all of which have contributed to its success. World of Warcraft is well developed and well made. The game's developer, Blizzard Entertainment, has tremendous quality control. They put a lot of pride and effort into their games, and this title was no exception. It spent five years in development, with a team of 65 people working on it. Blizzard held beta tests for the game to see how people responded to it, and they used these opinions to hone and perfect the game as much as possible. It was a very ambitious game, and it has really fulfilled its potential. From the beginning, World of Warcraft was in a strong position, in that it already had a following before its release. There are many people who were fans of the previous Warcraft games and also of role-playing games in general, so there was a core audience who were predisposed to buy it and to like it. Crucially, it met the expectations that people had of it. It delivered on the anticipation and the hype that it saw in the run up to its launch. World of Warcraft is a very impressive game. It is great fun to play, entertaining you and challenging you at the same time. It has strong characters and rich environments, with the game world of Azeroth existing as its own convincing, distinctive universe. It is visually appealing, with a charming, sublime look to it. There is a great deal to do and a lot of variety to the gameplay. It moves well and is always interesting. People are attracted to World of Warcraft because it allows them to play an assortment of different characters. It features great range and choice. You can be any kind of character and any gender that you want to be. The ability to play as either Alliance or Horde gives players the best of both worlds - you can be either a hero or a monster. The freedom you have in customising your character is pleasing, and makes it a more original and unique experience. World of Warcraft offers different types of gameplay. You can play the main part of the game, and go on a journey through Azeroth, completing quests and testing your skills in combat. Alternatively you can take part in the player versus player content. This has become an essential part of the game since it was introduced. Indeed for some players it is now the highlight of the whole title. The battlegrounds are exciting and unpredictable, and feature superb multi-player action. World of Warcraft is great value and is a long-lasting title. It is ingenious and clever and a real challenge. The world of the game is enormous and will amuse you for a long time. The updates to the game enhance it further, and ensure that there are always new areas to explore and fresh sights to see. It is of such high quality that it may become the only game you play. It is so satisfying that people lose interest in other games and concentrate on this one title exclusively. The brilliance of World of Warcraft is that it has built upon previous games of its type and improved them. It could be argued that it is the ultimate massively multi-player online role-playing game. It represents the perfection of the genre. It is not that it is hugely different to previous multi-player games, but rather that it has taken the genre and has made the best example of it to date. It is a masterpiece that has incorporated and refined all the elements of this kind of title. World of Warcraft then is very inviting and is an excellent game. It appeals to people on many different levels, and this has helped it to reach a large audience. It is so well made and entertaining that its success seemed assured, and yet the scale of its success has been extraordinary. It now stands as an essential title. Why Is World Of Warcraft So Successful