[lore] lore article

[Jen McCutcheon]

WoW article as requested

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TALES FROM BARRENS CHAT - Jen McCutcheon
In this edition: WHERE IS ECHEYAKEE'S LAIR, or, everything you need to know
to start playing World of Warcraft

You've seen people playing it. You've heard cries of "FOR THE HORDE!"
echoing out of the clubroom. It looks kind of pretty, and the people at
keyboards seem to be having fun. And playing World of Warcraft is fun. It's
more fun than going out in the evenings, and definitely more fun than
going to classes at uni. Just ask several UCCans, who have more than a
passing familiarity with some of the units they're doing this year. But
don't be scared - go out and grab a copy of the game. Those units are
boring, anyway.

The first choice you're faced with once you've installed the game, patched
up to the latest version, and activated your account, is the type of server
you want to play on. World of Warcraft offers four different server types:
PvE (players are almost never flagged for pvp unless they trigger it
themselves), PvP (players are flagged for pvp in contested zones, which is
pretty much every zone above level 20 or so), RP (as PvE, but for
roleplayers) and RP-PvP (as for PvP, but for roleplayers). Putting the
roleplayers aside for a moment, there are a lot of opinions on whether PvP
or PvE is better, with words like "carebears" and "ganking whores" making
the rounds. Each server type will appeal to a different type of person, but
playing on anything but a PvP server (the server of choice for pretty much
all UCCans) will get you hassled a lot.

The next choice you'll face will be whether to roll as Alliance (picking
from Human, Night Elf, Dwarf, and Tauren footba- I mean, Gnome) or Horde
(picking from Orc, Troll, Tauren and Forsaken). There's not a lot to debate
on this point - pick Horde and move on.

Once you've selected Horde, there are a myriad of race-class combinations to
choose from. Each class has their strengths and weaknesses, as classes are
balanced against each other in a rock-paper-scissors fashion. The class you
should pick should depend on what type of character you want to play. If you
want to be in the thick of things, a warrior or the more sneaky rogue might
be your choice. If you prefer to kick ass from further away, perhaps a
hunter or shaman might appeal to you. If you want to delve into the schools
of magic and like two-shotting your opponents every trinket cooldown, a mage
or warlock might be your thing. If you really like animals (and I mean
really "like" animals), you probably want to roll druid. And if you want to
roll a total rort of a 'support' class, where you will never get
acknowledgement of your achievements and always be blamed for anything that
goes wrong, but can still get cheap kicks mind controlling people off wharfs
and zep towers, you want to succumb to priest fever.

Now that you've selected your race and class, spend a few minutes tweaking
your appearance and thinking up a name (the randomise butan is right there
if you get stuck) before creating your character and logging in for the
first time. What's that, the server's down for emergency maintainence?
Welcome to the World of Warcraft.
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I've attached a completely unconnected screenshot if you want to put one
in.

regards copyright, I'm happy to go with whatever editors think best.

Jen

-- 
________________________________
http://velithya.livejournal.com
http://velithya.ucc.asn.au
http://velithya.blogspot.com
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