Azeroth is a vast and ever-growing world. Taking that first step into that world is daunting for anyone who used to play or is looking to join World of Warcraft. Ten expansions, dozens of patches, and almost limitless content from Blizzard Entertainment make that decision to hit “play” even harder. We’ve broken down how to get started on your adventure to become a champion of Azeroth, from before you even get started to ideas on what to do once you’ve reached max level.
What exactly do you need to start playing World of Warcraft?
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With ten expansions and a subscription, the first and probably most important question is… what do you need to purchase or subscribe to play? If you want to try out World of Warcraft, a free trial lets you play up to level 20, which does not take long to reach.
Beyond that, a World of Warcraft subscription is a great way to get a complete idea of what the game offers. With a subscription, you’ll get access to every expansion up through Dragonflight, the most recent expansion. All content up to Dragonflight is fully accessible and explorable, including all old dungeons, raids, classes, and events. But don’t worry, you don’t have to do all of it to get caught up. Every new player is set on a starting experience, which we’ll discuss later.
You must purchase The War Within on top of your subscription to play the most current content. This will unlock Khaz Algar and everything beyond that until the launch of Midnight as it all comes out. But that’s not all a subscription gets you. If you want to play World of Warcraft in a version similar to its 2004-2006 state, World of Warcraft Classic is included in that price. The same goes for limited-time events unrelated to The War Within, like Plunderstorm and Remix events. For the context of this article, we will only stick to the game’s retail (the most currently released content) version.
How to Choose Your Race and Class in World of Warcraft?
Classes and races have a lot tied to them. Races are tied to the two different factions, the Horde and Alliance. Each race has its racial abilities, like the Evokers being able to fly without a mount and have their distinct racial look and history that goes along with them. Be warned, not all races can be in every class. Some have restrictions, like Demon Hunters can only be Night Elves or Blood Elves.
As for classes, there is a distinction from other class-based MMOs here. Your character can only be that one class. Classes break down into more refined playstyles as you level after unlocking specializations. This is where different roles in each class can come into play. Warriors can unlock Protection or Fury specializations to become a tank or DPS class, respectively. Others, like the Hunter and Mage, can only be a DPS class with different playstyles. Picking a class with the role you want to play is vital at this step because you can’t play a role in dungeons or other content if that specialization does not meet that role requirement.
If you ever do not like the class you initially picked, don’t worry! Warbands, a new feature introduced in The War Within, help speed up leveling with any class after reaching 80. Every character on your account that reaches 80 unlocks a 5% experience increase for every subsequent character up to 25%. Plus, many rewards and unlocks are shared with your account.
Now That You’ve Created Your Character…
Hit “enter world,” and you’ll begin the new player experience. For most players, that’ll be Exile’s Reach, a mini-zone that kicks off your adventure. Demon Hunters, Death Knights, and Evokers each have a unique starting zone and experience. These zones will familiarize you with the key mechanics of playing World of Warcraft. The lessons here range from things as simple as casting spells, what happens when you level up, and questing to how to queue for dungeons and how to choose your specialization upon reaching level 10.
While overly simplistic in its presentation, it’s a neat and isolated way to get your feet wet in the experience. After completing this, you’ll begin your real adventure with Dragonflight. All new players have Dragonflight selected as the leveling campaign to get them to level 70. While other expansions are available, sticking with this one is highly advised until you can move on to The War Within. If you decide to level up an alt or a new main, you can choose any other expansion as your leveling experience.
Choosing Professions in World of Warcraft
Your character can select two professions to learn, from gathering resources to creating armor, gear, and consumables. These are best chosen and done once you start leveling up in The War Within from level 70 onwards. Professions are expansion-specific and don’t require you to learn one way back in Dragonflight to succeed in current content’s work. But do research on what synergizes.
Being a Blacksmith and Jewelcrafter will make you poor very quickly. Choose professions that help feed into each other, like Herbalism and Alchemy or Mining and Blacksmithing. Professions are a great source of extra income and an easy way to gain quick experience while leveling up and adding more stuff to do once you hit max level.
What’s Next?
Once you’ve completed the leveling campaign, there is so much to do that max-level content may feel overwhelming. I suggest completing the story first. Get all the max-level quests out of the way and unlock all the available max-level content. The next best thing is to really learn your class and chosen specialization. Look up resources; some will be recommended later for the best talent builds, most efficient rotations, when to use your cooldowns best, and what stats are the best for you.
Test what you’ve learned on practice dummies, world quests, normal or heroic dungeons, and delves. While many players may be welcoming in lower-difficulty experiences, those trying to push content for better loot expect you to know at least what you’re doing so as not to waste their time and resources.
If higher-end multiplayer content doesn’t sound like what you want to do, there are lots of solo experiences to do, like Delves, the single to five-player dungeon-lite experience, or world quests. Work on your professions. Or even pet battle, a rarely talked about feature similar to Pokemon.
If you are into the competitive space, there’s PvP with massive battlegrounds or smaller 2v2, 3v3, or 5v5 battles, each with its ranking systems. For PvE competitive-focused players, you could raid the latest raid experience. Or push dungeon levels in mythic +, a time-based dungeon experience that gets more challenging the higher level you run with new twists and rewards. Lots to do, and there are no wrong options for whatever you want to pick to play that day. There’s even old content if you want to experience everything leading up to The War Within, too!
Research and Resources in World of Warcraft
There are hundreds of resources to help you on your journey to Azeroth. While many are good in their ways, these are ones that every WoW player will recommend. Wowhead is your one-stop shop for guides, tips on completing quests and achievements or finding those rare items. They also report on all the latest WoW news as it breaks. YouTubers, like Nobbel or PlatinumWoW, are great resources for lore-related questions.
They each have videos on just about every piece of lore associated with WoW and explain it in easily digestible ways. Icy-veins has good builds for talents, class guides, and gear recommendations. Curse Forge is probably one of the best ways to download add-ons to enhance your experience. Using Curseforge takes a lot of the hassle of finding the most highly rated add-ons and keeping them up to date. Finally, the WoW subreddit and the class discords. These together are great go-tos for discussions about the game and for more information about classes and specializations from other players.
Starting off in Azeroth can be daunting, but since World of Warcraft has been around for over 20 years, help is everywhere. Take a deep breath, hit “enter world,” and have fun! Just learn from my mistakes and play in moderation.
