World of Warcraft: A Beginner's Guide

How do I navigate the world of Warcraft?

There are four continents in "World of Warcraft." Kalimdor, the Eastern Kingdoms and Northrend are on the planet of Azeroth. The fourth continent, Outland, is on the remains of a remote planet. Characters of all levels can play in Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms, but Outland is designed for levels 58 and up. There's no level requirement to get to Northrend, but characters who haven't gotten to their high 60s won't last long in the wilds there.

To travel back and forth between Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms, Alliance characters can take a boat, and Horde characters can take a zeppelin, each of which is free. To travel to Outland, you can walk through the Dark Portal located in the Blasted Lands in the Eastern Kingdoms. To get back, you can take portals from the neutral city of Shattrath to each of the factions' capital cities. Alliance characters can get to Northrend via boat from the city of Stormwind, and Horde characters can travel via zeppelin from Undercity.

Other travel methods include:

Hearthstone: A hearthstone is part of your inventory. As you're leveling, it's a good idea to set your hearth for the zone in which you're working on quests. To do this, just talk to an innkeeper.
Air taxi: For a small fee, a flying beast will carry you to a particular location. You must have picked up the corresponding flight path by speaking to the flight master who works there. Flight masters for paths you haven't yet discovered are marked with green exclamation points.
Mounts: At level 40, you can purchase and learn to ride your race's mount. If you're a paladin, you can learn a spell to summon a mount from a class trainer. At level 60, you can buy an epic mount, which is a faster mount -- paladins and warlocks can complete quests to learn to summon their own epic mounts. At level 70, you can buy a flying mount and a swift flying mount. Druids can gain flying abilities at level 68 by learning flight form from a class trainer. They can complete a quest to learn swift flight form at level 70.
Portals, teleports and summons: Mages can teleport themselves from place to place or summon portals for other players to use. Druids can teleport themselves to the druid sanctuary of Moonglade. Warlocks can summon other players to their locations. Characters that learn the engineering profession can build devices they can use to teleport themselves to particular cities.
Summoning stones: You can summon members of your party to summoning stones located outside of instances.

You can explore much of this world by yourself, but to get to some locations, you need a group. Next, we'll look at how to meet people in the game.

Buffing

Gear: Gear comes in different levels of quality, which you can determine by looking at the color of its name. Gray and white items are relatively poor quality. Green items are uncommon and enhance one or more of your stats. Blue and purple -- or rare and epic -- items improve your stats or abilities even further. Try to choose gear that improves the stats you rely on the most. For example, casting classes generally need extra intellect, and tanking classes need stamina and armor.
Food: Eating food and drinking water in the game restore your health and mana, respectively. Food and drinks can also buff your stats. If you learn to fish and cook -- these are two secondary skills that every character can learn -- you can cook your own buff food.
Spells: Many classes have their own buff spells. Cast these on yourself and your party. You can also use scrolls to cast buff spells.
Enchantments: Enchanters can add buffs to most gear.
Gems: These come from jewelcrafters. They fit into sockets on some pieces of gear.
Consumables: There are lots of items in the game that you can consume, or use up, to buff yourself. These include flasks, elixirs and other potions made by alchemists. You can even buff your fishing skill with consumable fishing lures.