World of Warcraft

[Jinx]

Hey, you buttnerds. I've been thinking of downloading the free trial of this. I played WoW kind of between 2010-2011, and I was never any good at it and spent more time making alts and exploring various zones than anything. But since I've been playing FFXIV for a year-and-a-half (and am GOOD at the game), I was thinking of just doing something a little different for a bit.

Basically my question is what server do y'all play on? I know Freya, Pike, and Hux all play, but not how often.

[theundeadhero]

Area-52. It's the largest pve Horde server.
You may be thinking large servers are bad because of housing in FFXIV, but in this game, large servers are generally better.

[Jinx]

Nah, large servers are better for sure! Sarg is a medium-high server and it's A++. And fwiw, I have a house! You just have to work hard for the gil and keep your eye out for sellers. :D

(And as someone who has and loves their dinky house, I still think it's a pretty dumb and useless feature.)

[theundeadhero]

I don't even have a room in our house of chocobos :p

[Jinx]

WELL WHOSE FAULT IS THAT LAGOOSHKA

[Værn]

I used to play. One of my friends gave me a spare account a few years back. Upside was that I didn't have to pay for the base game and expansions. Downside was that it was registered to his wife's old e-mail (which she no longer remembers the information for) and his paypal, and he couldn't change the payment settings without e-mail confirmation. I'd just send him the money to pay for the account, but when he decided that the game wasn't fun for him any more he also decided he was going to cut me off as well. At the point my subscription ended, I had just switched servers and helped a bunch of members of a new guild get geared up to start raiding :<

At this point I'd like to get back into it, but I don't want to go through the trouble of rebuilding my mount collection. If we were to get a decent number of active players, though, I might be willing to restart from scratch.

[Scotty_ffgamer]

I liked WoW a lot when I was younger, but the couple times I've come back to it, I just didn't enjoy it as much. I didn't like the changes to some of the dungeons and such I enjoyed, and more importantly the people I played with no longer played. On top of all that, I'm not very good at MMOs. Living with my parents also didn't help since even if I joined a group for an instance, I could be told to get off at any moment. My account also got hacked and i got locked out. I could find no way to contact blizzard about it too at the time, so it's still locked out of whatever I'm sure.

I much preferred xiv when I played just because I had the fat chocobos to play with. I keep really wanting to come back but I don't know if I have the time for it. I feel like WoW is still probably a lot of fun though if you have the people to play with. It's a fun world to explore.

[Værn]

If you do start playing WoW, there are a couple of very important addons that you should get.

First is MogIt. It lets you search through equipment for transmog (cosmetic) use. It'll let you filter by item source (world drop, dungeon/raid drop, quest reward, shop, PvP, etc.), level range, slot, armor/weapon classification, and even color. It even lets you preview these items on your character model and save wishlists to refer to later. If you want to look badass, this addon is a must-have.
Next is Atlas + AtlasLoot. Drops from various dungeons throughout an expansion tend to come together and make matching sets. When browsing MogIt, it pairs up with AtlasLoot to show you the dungeon/raid, specific boss, and drop chance of the item you're trying to get. It makes looking badass a much easier goal to achieve.
Finally, Recount I guess. Basically the standard DPS meter for the game, this one lets you see how much damage you and the rest of your group are dealing and taking, as well has how much your healers are healing. Not as absolutely essential as MogIt and its companions, but virtually everyone will expect you to have this.

This is the complete list of addons I used when I played. I've been told that there's a lot of things that you need if you want to get into raiding, but I never used any more than these. The ones people were insisting I should get are strictly for the sake of convenience, and I assure you that they are not by any means necessary if you take a couple of minutes to learn a boss fight.

[theundeadhero]

You honestly don't need a thing to raid. People are picky and love changing things, but its not necessary. If you're not raiding you really don't need anything.

With that said, some kind of boss encounter mod really helps. It used to be CTModAssist, then Big Wigs, then DBM. DBM is still the go to, but big Wigs has become relevant again.

Recount is nice for personal reasons, although I prefer Skada, but unless you're using it to actually see raid-lead stuff like who isn't interrupting the boss, who isn't prepotting or switching to adds, and so on, it's really just an ego stroker.

DBM and Skada are the only two I use.

Others like to change the UI around, and are super amazed when they learn I use the default UI, but I pull more than my weight and cover a bit of someone who isn't.

Everything else is really just ease of use, and many of them from the past are built into the game these days.

[Værn]

I mainly used recount to keep track of newbies with low damage output, then afterward asked someone more experienced than that player in their class to assist them with learning how to better utilize their classes skill tree. I mainly tanked, so DPS wasn't a major personal concern.

Never used DBM, though. My guild always told me to start countdowns before charging into a boss fight and I just typed it out manually. It was at least six months before someone asked why I didn't just use the countdown command, and then everyone thought I was messing with them when I said I'd never even heard of DBM until just then. And I still never bothered to download it :D

[theundeadhero]

Yeah, that's another good use for it that falls under leadership. I've taught my fair share of people about the light and how to swing it.

Also, maybe this will inspire you:

Xa8xiDaWqpg

[Værn]

That was great. I've never managed to get comfortable with much more than tanking, though. I leveled my paladin as a healer and it was all good until I hit max level, but once I got into raiding I basically became useless. It seemed like every other healer's spells were instant cast and everything I tried doing was eclipsed and went into over-healing. I concluded that paladins were subpar healers and/or I had no business playing a healer, and began to respec for my third tank toon.

[theundeadhero]

Healing is the only thing I'll never do. I tried leveling one once, back in MoP when you could roll as a disc priest and keep everyone alive and still DPS in dungeons. I stopped at lvl 80, though.

[Værn]

I could probably have dealt with playing DPS at the endgame, but leveling was such pain. Dungeon queues took forever and I always felt too squishy to level solo through questing.
Single target damage as a prot warrior may not have been great, being able to pull whole packs of mobs and sustain myself through the fight while gradually killing them all at once felt faster and more powerful to me than trying to level a mage. Pull one thing at a time, hope you don't accidentally get an extra, burst out down, and have to rest for health and mana every few pulls.

[Skyblade]

I actually really enjoyed Legion. I just can't afford the subscription right now. A little tight due to the current home situation.

[Freya]

Okay so ignore these nerds. :p

It honestly doesn't matter what server you're on when it comes to playing with friends as you can join each other cross servers for anything. Only problem is factions. You can't be on Alliance and play with Horde. Don't let that deter you either, pick the race you want. If you want to be a panda person, be a panda person. You want to be a Gnome, be a gnome! If you think Cow people are cool, well think you're cool too!

Sargeras is the largest and most popular server for raiding. It's where you get most of your Pro raiding teams. BF is on that one, I'm on a smaller one called Vek'nilash. If you're interested in the economy funtimes then a larger pop server will be better for you.

As for your role, pick one you think you'll enjoy, don't worry about the meta of it. Pretty much every expac, that changes anyway. Unless you're wanting to raid in a hardcore guild, it doesn't matter what class and spec you pick, just have fun.

Cool thing I think you'll end up doing if you stick with it is WoW tokens. They now have it where you can buy wow tokens and that'll pay for your subscription. So you wont have to actually pay for the game, just take the time to get t he money for tokens.

I don't play as much as I used to. I still log on occasionally but I don't raid or anything. I'm more of a lore junkie than anything and it is chock full of it. You'll have a lot to play through for a while as you level which is great. If you do decide to make a character, hit me up and i'll do the recruit a friend thing and run around with you

[Værn]

You can't be on alliance and party with horde friends, but you can have both horde and alliance tons on the same account. In ye olden days this wasn't the case, but now your faction decision for your first character doesn't impact the future of your account as a whole.

I recommend playing a gnome because they're smaller than any other race. They technically move at the same speed as everyone else, but the size difference creates a kind of perspective illusion that makes them seem proportionally faster than everyone else.
I mained a gnome for the longest time, and when I tried rolling up an elf druid alt I felt hella slow until I got my cat form.

[Jinx]

You guys did see that--albeit, it was very casual--I DID play this game before, right? :p

[Værn]

You guys did see that--albeit, it was very casual--I DID play this game before, right? :p

I completely overlooked that. My gnome recommendation still stands :D

[Jinx]

I'd probably go Nelf. I love everything about their areas and aesthetics.

[Værn]

I haven't played since near the end of Pandaland. Can gnomes be druids and/or hunters yet? There are a few cute pets that I've previously pointed out could be recycled for gnome versions of all of the druid forms, including the fire cat. And it seems weird that they could never be hunters, since they're the race on alliance side that specializes in the profession that makes guns.

[Freya]

Gnomes can be hunters but no, not druids. That'd be silly

[Skyblade]

I haven't played since near the end of Pandaland. Can gnomes be druids and/or hunters yet? There are a few cute pets that I've previously pointed out could be recycled for gnome versions of all of the druid forms, including the fire cat. And it seems weird that they could never be hunters, since they're the race on alliance side that specializes in the profession that makes guns.

No druids, but I believe Gnome Hunters were added with Legion. And they have access to unique mechanical pets.

[Værn]

Groovy.
My guild leader also used to make cracks about how my first character should've been a paladin, but he ended up being a warrior instead because he wasn't tall enough to reach the Light :p