Warcraft Level 70 +

World of Warcraft has grown into a game that boasts more than 11 million active subscribers.  Massively multiplayer online games have always been the subject of addiction talks, but World of Warcraft takes this to the next level.  Each and every player that plays the game is paying a fee to play.  For those in North America and Europe that figure is close to $15 per month.  What is it about this game that can attract so many players to it and make them willingly pay to play?  This article will explore some of the ideas that make World of Warcraft an addicting game.

One of the primary features that has been built into massively multiplayer online games since the start is the idea of the grind.  The grind is the idea that players must invest massive amounts of time to advance their characters.  Although Blizzard has tried to remove the stigma with the grind by attempting to make the grind fun, it still exists.  Gathering money, gaining levels, acquiring gear are all a part of the World of Warcraft grind.

One way that Blizzard revolutionized the grind was through their quest system.  Previous games of the same genre required party’s to repeatedly kill monsters for hours on end to gain levels.  Warcraft added in an easy to understand questing system that includes thousands of quests that players could complete to gain levels.  The questing system, for the first time, allowed players to level up in an mmo through solo play.  It also was the way by which Blizzard told the story of Azeroth, the world in which World of Warcraft takes place.  Each quest generally requires a small task to be completed, such as killing a few enemies or gathering a few items.  These tasks could be completed in small increments of time so that you could progress no matter the amount of time you could invest.

Aside from making the grind fun, World of Warcraft also benefits from the social aspect that all massively multiplayer games have.  World of Warcraft servers can support several thousand simultaneous players.  This ensures that no player has the same experience in game as the way the other players interact with you will make the game play different each time.

Guilds are one of the largest features to make this game addicting.  The community aspect of the guild is what keeps many players playing.  You will generally find a guild that has the same desires from the game as you and it is easy to form friendships under these conditions.  For instance, when a guild begins raiding the lure of the community can become very strong.  When raiding, individuals are often attracted to the allure of better gear, but there is something additional that happens when your guild finally defeats a raid encounter.  There is a bond that forms that goes beyond the loot you acquire; something that makes you want to be friends outside of WoW.

So you want to get ready for Wrath of the Lich King, do you?  Wrath of the Lich King will be bringing several new features, many of which you can prepare for right now.  This article shall outline several of these features.

One such feature that the expansion will bring is the release of the new continent Northrend.  This area is being designed as new content for players to reach the new level cap of 80.  In order to begin taking advantage of this new continent you will need a minimum level of at least 68.  Upon reaching 68 you will have a high enough level to begin questing in either Borean Tundra or Howling Fjord, which are two of the entry zones to the new continent.

If getting to 68 is not a possibility for you then perhaps you can reach 55 before the release of the expansion.  Upon reaching level 55 you will unlock the new Death Knight class.  Once you reach level 55 on a character the Death Knight will be unlocked for your account.  You will be able to create a Death Knight on any server, but the limitation is that you will only be able to create one per server.  The benefit of creating this class compared to another class is that the Death Knight will start out at level 55.

There is another feature that Wrath of the Lich King will bring that you can begin preparing for now.  That new feature is the new profession of Inscription.  Inscription promises to introduce the Glyph system.  Glyphs are enhancements that you will junction to your spells to change the way your spells behave.  For instance, glyphs may reduce the cool down of a particular spell or reduce the cast time of the spell.  Each player will have the ability to equip six different glyphs regardless of whether or not they pick the new inscription skill.

For those that choose inscription as a new profession, you can begin preparing now.  It is already known that inscription will utilize herbs primarily.  Therefore, you can begin stockpiling herbs to be best prepared.  The various glyphs will likely be spread throughout the skill levels of inscription, which would require a stockpiling of many herbs of all levels.

One final tip would be to begin saving your gold.  The upcoming expansion promises many new gold sinks that players will be required to purchase.  One such sink is the need to unlock cold weather flying for the Northrend continent, which will allow you to utilize your flying mount.  This gold sink will become available at level 77 and will cost about 1000 gold.  Another, much larger, gold sink will be the new passenger mounts.  A caravan mammoth can be purchased that will carry you and several friends at the same time.  These mounts will cost a small fortune of 20,000 gold.

Whatever feature you may be looking forward to most in Wrath of the Lich King, you can be sure that there is a way to best prepare for it. 

Level 60 and level 70 have been the level cap at various stages in World of Warcraft and level 80 will soon be the new level cap.  If there is one thing that most players have in common, it is that they want to get to the level cap as fast as possible.  Over time various strategies have emerged to reach this goal and this post aims to take a look at those strategies.

One of the most famous figures has been Joana the female troll hunter.  Joana was made famous by being one of the first players to create a detailed leveling guide.  This guide had step-by-step directions for players to follow to maximize their experience gain.  Joana made this guide famous by reaching level 60 on a new server and without a group in four days and 20 hours.

This was not the overall record time for reaching level 60, but it was the most publicized.  Reaching 60 quickly has been possible through power leveling techniques long before Joana came on to the scene, but they aren’t as popular as they require willing participants to help the person trying to level.  Running players through instances repeatedly was one way to power level.  Another way was to get a low level player into Tyr’s Hand in Eastern Plaguelands and have them “tag” mobs for a group of 60’s to kill for them.  Level 60 could be gained in half of Joana’s time through these methods.

More recently, Blizzard has introduced a new method to reach the level cap far quicker.  They have done so through their Recruit-A-Friend program.  The Recruit-A-Friend program introduced several different techniques, the quickest of which allows players to reach level 61 in a matter of minutes.  This program offers players the opportunity to link accounts with new players and gain increased experience together until level 60.  The multiplier, to be exact, is triple the normal rate.  Two normal players could level together, follow Joana’s guide and reach level 60 in less than two days with this program.

There is a faster way to utilize the Recruit-A-Friend program and that is to take two linked accounts and join up with an additional account that contains a level 70 character.  The level 70 can then power the two linked characters through instances and the two linked characters will level at a very fast rate.  Players can reach level 60 in less than 1 day doing this technique.  Some players have reported getting to level 60 as quickly as 5 hours through this technique.

To get to 60 in a matter of minutes requires further knowledge of the Recruit-A-Friend program.  Every two levels that a character on the newly created linked account in the Recruit-A-Friend program gains they can grant one level to their partnered account character.  Therefore a person that gets two level 60’s would have a total of 60 levels to grant.  Granting these levels would only take a few minutes and is guaranteed to be the fastest way to 60.  Unfortunately these 60’s would have to resort to normal methods to get from 60 to 70.

The war between the Horde and the Alliance is the overarching theme to the World of Warcraft.  The faces of these factions are, undoubtedly, the Orcs for the Horde and the Humans for the Alliance.  These two races fought a fierce war that ravaged Azeroth.  The Humans would keep the Orcs in internment camps, while the Orcs were the ones that invaded the Human’s lands.

One of the key features of the war between the Horde and the Alliance is the blurring of the theme of good versus evil.  Upon first inspection one might assume that the Horde is evil, as they are comprised of monster looking races.  On the other hand the Alliance is comprised of the, well, non-monster looking races.  However, that has not always been the case.

The Orcs were the ones to invade Azeroth, but the back story to the invasion is that they were under the influence of a powerful demon.  The Humans, on the other hand, were under no such influence and they tried to eradicate the race of Orcs.  This theme is further explored in Northrend where the Alliance and Horde battle against the scourge.

An Alliance army, led by High Lord Bolvar, engages the Scourge at the Wrath Gate to finally put an end to the Lich King’s reign of terror.  Shortly after the battle begins a Horde army, led by Saurfang the Younger, joins them to fight back the Scourge.  The two leaders exchange pleasantries as they join in battle.  They understand that they must put aside their differences if they are to eliminate the bigger threat.  Prior to engaging the Lich King; however, a group of Forsaken (members of the Horde) deploy a plague that destroys all armies engaged in battle.

King Varian, leader of the Human’s of Stormwind, hears of the news of High Lord Bolvar being killed by the Forsaken.  In an outrage, he decides to ignore the Lich King and concentrate on destroying the Horde.  Unable and unwilling to listen to reason – this is just one example of the Alliance being the aggressors in the war.

The in game experiences of players may disagree with this assessment.  Alliance was by far the more populous of the two factions upon the release of World of Warcraft.  This presented the Horde with a problem during their engagements with the Alliance throughout the world as they were generally outnumbered.  Blizzard would then introduce the honor system that forever changed the way the open world pvp took place.

With the introduction of the honor system came battlegrounds.  Battlegrounds are instances dedicated solely to pvp and offer better honor rewards than open world pvp.  In these cases the numbers were even.  There are limits to how many Horde and how many Alliance players could join these battles.  With the numbers even, for whatever reason, the Horde players began to show that they were better than the Alliance.  Across the board this rang true.  Perhaps they had to deal with being outnumbered for so long that they became better and the Alliance were only used to having the numbers that they won.

As time went on players would switch sides and eventually the battles would become pretty even.  Time will tell how this war unfolds.

The Wrath of the Lich King is the second expansion for the world’s most popular MMO, the World of Warcraft.  This expansion promises a plethora of new features for the casual and hardcore alike.

One of the main attractions to the Wrath of the Lich King is the release of a new class; something that has not happened since the original World of Warcraft beta.  The new class is the Death Knight and it is rather unique.  One of the major differences has to do with the character creation of a Death Knight.  This is a class that will not be available to beginners as you will be required to already have a level 55 character on your account prior to creating a Death Knight.  Any race can choose this class, but you will be limited to creating only one per server.  Death Knights promise to have a unique play style with the introduction of the Rune and Runic system.    Their starting area also introduces one of the key new technical upgrades to the World of Warcraft engine, the introduction of phasing technology.

Phasing technology brings with it the promise of, for the first time, a truly evolving world.  Previously, any time you participated in an in game event the world wouldn’t be any different before or after.  Did you just receive quest credit for wiping out an entire clan of Tauren?  It doesn’t matter because the next time you return that entire clan would be back.  Phasing is going to change all of that.  What this technology allows is for you to influence and change the world.  If you destroy a village then you will see it destroyed.  However, a player who may not have destroyed that village will still see it as undestroyed.  This technology will allow the world to exist in multiple phases so that it can evolve for you while still leaving others the opportunity to experience the same things!  This technology promises to offer a far more robust experience while you level to 80.

A somewhat new feature will be the introduction of vehicles.  Previously, players have had mounts that enabled them to travel quickly, but the new vehicle system greatly expands upon that.  Vehicles are the long awaited answer to mounted combat.  Players will be able to ride tanks, control flying machines and even use goblin shredders.  These vehicles are not just for travel anymore as players will be able to use these to combat enemy forces.  These will be the staple of a new type of zone dedicated entirely to player versus player conflict called Lake Wintersgrasp. 

In this zone the two factions will battle for supremacy to gain control of a strategic fortress.  The fortress will be a destructible building that takes siege damage from the new vehicles.  While in control of the fortress all players of the controlling faction will receive several buffs, including a bonus to experience gain.  In addition players will gain access to a new raid dungeon only accessible while in control of the fortress.

Look for these new features and more when World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King hits stores on November 13, 2008.  You might want to go ahead and level up before it gets here.  Two great leveling guides are Joana’s Guide and Brian Kopp’s Guide which will get you to level 70 in no time. 

World of Warcraft rewrote the book on how to make a massively multiplayer game and continues to evolve the genre.  From the original World of Warcraft to the Burning Crusade to the impending release of Wrath of the Lich King, Blizzard continues to set the standard on how to build a massively multiplayer online role playing game.

Controversy surrounded World of Warcraft when it was initially announced.  At the time, Everquest ruled the scene and had made a name for itself by catering to the hardcore crowd.  Levels could take days to gain. Groups could take hours to form and with death came the possibility of losing a level.  Blizzard saw what the competition was doing and decided to deviate from the standard.

Gone would be the days where death would cost you several hours’ worth of experience.  Gone would be the days where groups would be required in all facets of the game.  The promise that zones could be traveled between seamlessly was made.  Gathering professions would finally see resources populate the world rather than only exist as text messages in your log.

These promises would all be delivered upon when World of Warcraft went live and the public responded.  Everquest 2, releasing at the same time as World of Warcraft, believed they could capitalize on the success of Everquest and the experience they had gained from it, but they would only see failure when facing WoW.  Not even Blizzard could foresee how popular their plan would be as copies of the game became impossible to find and their servers were always operating at maximum load.

 While it was the most fun massively multiplayer game, it would still face problems.  The best gear could only be had by people that invested 20+ hours into the game, money would be a struggle to get and content was limited at the end game for those that didn’t raid.  Blizzard intended to address those issues with the launch of the Burning Crusade.

The Burning Crusade offered the promise of more fun elements and for the most part it delivered upon those promises.  The old honor system that required players to play 20 hours a day was finally removed.  No matter how much time you could invest in the game you could advance towards an honor reward.  The arena system was introduced that allowed players to advance by only having to play ten games per week.

The problems of gaining gold were largely removed with the introduction of daily quests.  These were quests that could be repeated once per day that offered a standard gold reward.  Players would no longer have to look to farming as the only reliable way to gain gold.

The raid system was revamped with the requirement reduced from 40 man raids to 25 man and some 10 man raids.  This reduced the overhead that was required from guild leaders to run their raids and made the raiding system more personal.  All of these changes would be welcomed by the majority of players.

Blizzard has proven themselves to understand what gamers want. With the upcoming release of Wrath of the Lich King, Blizzard will once again show that they are the leaders of the mmo market by introducing more fun elements and removing more grind elements.

Gold is something that is desired by all players in the World of Warcraft and this guide will explain various techniques to acquire wealth.  There is a lot of different techniques for obtaining gold and if you have time, one of the most comprehensive guides is warcraft millionaire which I would highly recommend if you have the time and really want significant wealth.

The first step to acquiring wealth in World of Warcraft is to reach level 70.  Level 70 can be attained with only the gold you receive through quests, so don’t think that you need to make money while leveling up.  While you can make money at sub-70 levels, all options will be available to you when you reach 70 so that should be your primary goal.

When you do reach level 70, what then you ask?  One of the easiest things to do is the various daily quests available in game.  The Isle of Quel’Danas zone has approximately 12 daily quests that don’t take long at all to complete and you will pull in over 100 gold for doing them all!  You also have several daily quests available while in Shattrath City that get you close to another 100 gold.  With the option of doing 25 daily quests per day, you can clear 300 gold per day just from questing. However, questing isn’t for everyone.

If repeatedly killing the same monsters over and over doesn’t bore you to tears then you could always farm for primals.  Primal fire, shadow, water, life, and air all sell for a decent amount of money (depending on your server) and you can acquire them all over the Outland.  While you likely won’t be the only person farming for them, there are enough places to farm for primals that you should always be able to find a spot to farm them uninterrupted.  Just make sure that you sell them on the auction house when you finish.

If you aren’t much of a killer then gathering professions are another option.  Mining, skinning, and herbalism are professions that acquire ingredients.  These ingredients are valuable to players that need them for their own professions.  As such you could sell these items on the auction house for a hefty sum.  Of the three mining is generally the most profitable as there are three professions that require ore, whereas skinning and herbalism only provide raw materials for one profession each.

Finally, one of the best ways to acquire money is to utilize the auction house to your advantage.  There are a few ways to do this.  One way is to get accustomed to the prices that various items sell for and then buy them when their price is low and sell them when their price is high.  This requires a bit of research and there are several mods that will assist you in your search.

There is an easier approach to the auction house that does not require too much research, but you must be an enchanter to take advantage of it.  When you are an enchanter you can disenchant items into dusts, essences, and crystals.  Every ten levels an item will begin disenchanting into another type of dusts, essence, or crystal.  For instance items between 20-29 disenchant differently compared to items between 30-39.  If you know the prices of the dusts and essences for that level range you can buy all items in that range that sell for less than their expected disenchant value and buy them all up.  You then disenchant them all and sell the resulting materials for a nice profit.

Following these steps you will be well on your way to becoming one of the wealthiest World of Warcraft players ever.  If you really want to step it up a notch, I would look into warcraft millionaire .

Questing is the staple feature of the World of Warcraft.  Through quests players gain experience, items and a better understanding of the world they are a part of.  Quests are the primary way in which the story of Warcraft is told to the players.  For all players, it is best to implement a strategy that best suits your goals when it comes to quests.

There are two types of players when it comes to quests.  Those that only care for the rewards the quests grants and those that enjoy the story they tell.  Both will take a different approach to their questing experience, but there are some commonalities that they can share to maximize their experience.

One such tactic involves fully exploring a zone to reveal the entire map prior to beginning your questing experience.  This accomplishes several things.  The first is finding every quest hub that exists within the zone.  The second is that your in game map will now have all locations revealed.  Now when you receive a quest that tells you to find an abandoned house on the western side of the zone you will see on your map where exactly you need to go.

Another simple suggestion is to read the entire quest if you are having trouble understanding what to do.  Nearly every quest in the game has a detailed description of what is required within the quest text.  For those quests that are slightly less clear, you have several resources that can help.

Three resources you can turn to are the various online databases wowhead, thottbot, and wowdb.  These databases contain information on nearly every quest that exists within the World of Warcraft.  While these databases are very helpful, the problem with them is that you need to leave the game to get to them.  Whether you are alt tabbing or minimizing the game, your character could die while you look up information and that is why there are better resources to handle quest look-up in the form of addons.

Addons are modifications to the user interface of World of Warcraft.  Thousands of addons exist that modify hundreds of aspects of the game, but the ones we will examine are the ones that improve quest functionality.  Questhelper, tomtom, and lightheaded are but a few of the choices you have when it comes to these addons.  The best ones will highlight areas of your map to tell you exactly where you need to go to complete your quests.  For those that seek the quest rewards the addons are the single best way to quest; however, if you are one that wants to enjoy the story then you may only wish to use these when you really get stuck.

Overall the World of Warcraft questing system revolutionized the way that massively multiplayer online games were built.  If you truly wish to enjoy all that questing has to offer then it is about time you develop your questing strategy.

Do you find yourself wearing greens and blues while wanting to wear purples and oranges?  Throughout this article you will find tips and tricks that will help you increase your World of Warcraft character’s gear level. 

Upon reaching the level cap in World of Warcraft you may find yourself wearing gear that doesn’t seem so great when compared to the players around you.  At this point you need to ask yourself an important question.  Do you want to want to PvE or do you want to PvP?  Both options are viable in terms of character progression, but both offer upgrades suited to your choice.

The gear designed for PvP is designed around the concept of survivability.  You will receive more health with this gear and more resilience.  Resilience being a statistic that decreases the amount of damage you receive from critical hits and decreases the chances of enemy players from scoring a critical hit against you.

Gear that caters towards PvE players is designed towards defeating the raid bosses in the World of Warcraft.  Tanks are designed to deal low damage and absorb high damage, healers are designed to have high sustainability with their heals and damage dealers are designed to put out the largest amount of damage in the shortest amount of time.  

If you feel that PvP is the path for you then there are two areas that you should focus on and they are battlegrounds and arena.  In battlegrounds you will gain honor points and honor marks.  Both are used to purchase gear through the honor system.  Gear purchased through the honor system will take a long time to buy.  1000 honor per hour is not an unreasonable rate to expect, but with gear costing 20,000 honor each you can expect 20 hours to get one piece of gear.

The arena system is a bit different in that it is based on a rating system.  Your arena team will win or lose games and based on whether you win or lose you will move up and down in the ratings.  Your rating is tabulated once a week and based on that tabulation you will be awarded arena points.  Depending on how well you do you can gain gear very quickly or very slowly.

If instead of PvP you wish to PvE then you will have a different focus.  You will initially need to start out in the 5 man dungeons.  As you gain gear through these instances you will become a little stronger and slowly you will be ready to conquer heroic dungeons.  These dungeons will offer a little bit better upgrades.  Low level raids will become accessible to you, followed by medium and ultimately high level raids.  Depending on your support system this can be a process that takes upwards of many months to complete.  With PvE you are depending on a large number of other people to succeed, but the reward is unifying as a group to accomplish a common goal.

Whatever your decision may be, know that whatever accomplishments you make you will ultimately be judged on your gear in the World of Warcraft.

World of Warcraft can be an intimidating game for the beginner.  It truly is an entirely new world to experience.  When you join, you will find yourself in a game world shared, collectively, with millions of other players and it is not always easy to find your place amongst them.  This tutorial shall guide you on your quest to reach level 70.

When you first join the World of Warcraft you will be given many options that will drastically affect your play experience.  The weight of these choices is not always known to the average beginner.  After reading this you should have a better understanding of the consequences of your choices.

The first option you will face is deciding which server to play on.  The first time you log in you will presented with hundreds of servers each with a varying population status.  As a beginner your first choice may be the server with the population status of recommended, but don’t be fooled!  This indicates that the server has the smallest population of all.  Server population will play a big part in your experience of the game.  A high population server means that you will have plenty of other players to play with, while a low population server means that you will have less people to compete with.

The next choice you must make is on which faction you will choose: Horde or Alliance?  These factions offer their own unique races, which may be how you first make your decision, but the consequences go deeper than that.  This decision will cut you off from roughly half of your server’s population as the horde and alliance are not allowed to communicate with one another in game.  The consequences of this selection can be even greater when you have selected a realm with a severe population imbalance as is the case with the Black Dragonflight server.   On this particular server the Horde are outnumbered 3 to 1.  With such a small representation the Horde here would be the underdog in any confrontation.

One of your final choices, but one of the most important, is class selection.  Druid, Mage, Warrior, Warlock, Rogue, Priest, Paladin, Shaman, and Hunter are your choices.  Each one will offer a relatively unique play style, but what you aren’t told when you first start is that there are only three roles to group play in World of Warcraft.  These three roles are called the Tank, the Healer, and the Damage Dealers and depending on which class you choose you will be picking your role.

The Tank is the person who is hardest to kill and it will be his job to force all enemies to attack him.  The damage he does will be a pitiful amount and because of this no one likes to play as the Tank.  If you decide to become a Tank you will have a very easy time finding groups on your way to level 70.  The Warrior, Paladin, and Druid can all fill the role of the Tank.

The Healer is the person who stands in the back and makes sure the tank doesn’t die.  This generally involves casting spells that replenish the Tank’s health.  If the Healer loses focus for any amount of time then the Tank will generally die, which in a chain-reaction will cause the rest of the group to die as well.  The Druid, Priest, Shaman, and Paladin can all become Healers.

Damage Dealers have one of the best jobs around because their role in group play will be the same as their role when they are adventuring alone.  Their job is to damage enemies and kill them as quickly as possible.  Every class has the potential to become a Damage Dealer, but they were not all created equally.  For instance, if you were to choose a Paladin with the hopes of becoming a Damage Dealer you would find that at your best you would only do half the damage of the other classes.  The Warlock, Rogue, and Hunter are the classes to play as if you truly want to be the best.

Now that this tutorial has educated you on the consequences of your choices you are ready to join the millions already playing the World of Warcraft.    It will not be long until you are level 70 and guiding other newcomers as I have guided you.