Thanks for linking to that newbie blog. it looks like a fun read.
 

"I don't know how much fun the newbie is going to have once he hits the endgame and finds that he needs groups but doesn't know how to play well in one, due to lack of practice."

The average newbie has no problem with this. Its us more experienced players who have problems with them, not otherway round. My g/f helped a group in Mechanar heroic yesterday. They had a pretty bad run with several wipes because the DDs really were a bunch of noobs. Tank and healer were from our raid and rather experienced, but if for example the mage keeps sheeping the skull instead of the target he should sheep, things get out of hand. Well.. I learned a lot of interesting new swearwords from my g/f, because neither she nor the other guildie had much fun. The newbies on the other side *had* fun. They had enough fun to thank the rest of the group afterwards for "the best run they ever had".

Long story short: A newbie usually doesn't know that he is a newbie and because it is him that screws up all the PUGs, he knows no really good runs either. Its the same as leveling, he doesn't know the real thing, so he is satisfied with second best. (however, he may wonder a bit why some other players seem a bit pissed while in group with him..)
 

I don't have a problem with newbies. I may even have fun myself when I give him/her/it tips and see the proverbial light bulb appear over his head.

However, I do have a problem with lamers who:
a) Don't know anything
b) Don't want to learn
c) Feel that they're entitled to something
 

i dont think i agree with your post tobold.

it is sad TBC is destroying old world. i gues that will happen again when WOTLK come out. why dont blizzard dev try harder than just adding more level ,more raid , more gear ??? they certainly can spend money and resource to make old world content fresh and not boring.

i think bliz forgot that lv1-60 is the reason WoW got so famous to ppl who never play MMO before. I hope they re-invest some of their 'small' profit back into 1-60 instead of taking easy way out with adding more of the same.

while the newbie story dont mean that 1-60 experience is horrible, the gist of his story tells another side, that he is missing lot of content and he is forced to solo because lack of ppl. he will never know the fun of lv25-55 dungeons.. no brd run.. no SM run.. no fun run unless a high level runs him (for nostalgia). that newbie surely dont have anyting to remember when he reach 70, only pain of leveling and the lonely lands of Azeroth..

if you are the newbie to WoW i bet you will find a whole load of interesting stuff to post :) including the loneliness at azeroth :)
 

Having 4 70s on one Horde server, I find myself in a newbie position by playing my first Ally on a new server. I actually have not had grouping problems, and find the number of toons to be overwhelming! I am on a low pop low horde server with all my 70s, so this new change to a high pop ally server in my time zone makes me feel like I am in grand central station while at sentinal hill!

It is a fresh feeling playing ally. I had no idea that there was a tram between ironforge and stormwind, or that there was so many "shires" around. I am loving it and have taken my name off of all the raiding calenders in my guild because I am having fun again leveling.

Of course as one of the main healers, I wonder do I have an obligation to my guild to raid? I know some of them are pissed that I am not on a lot, and I have not even told them I am stepping out and trying the other side!!! So does loyalty to a guild take preference over my enjoying wow again? Hmmm this post took a bit of a left turn, but I guess it is weighing heavily on me.
 

I'm having fun. I've gone through Deadmines, Stockades, and Blackrock Deeps... I've not finished an instance with an appropriately leveled group yet, but I've had fun in my attempts.

I realize I'm missing a lot of 'fun' by not having groups, but I also am having a lot of fun knowing that grouping isn't required... if I'd had to hunt for groups to progress, I'd have never played the game at all.

I spend a lot of time exploring. I've got a fetish for swimming around underwater with Unending Breath on. I make it a point to complete the long drawn out quests... as much as I bitch about travelling, I like seeing the world.

I also think I'm learning my class fairly well. I'm not perfect yet, but I've figured out how to chain-seduce, and I've already got practice maintaining the proper amount of threat (I use Omen, and have a Voidwalker). I'd have never killed the Forsaken Courier without my own personal tank.

I also have a great guild that I'm a part of. I'm the pet newbie, they're all level 70, semi-casual raiding (3 or 4 raids a week but no required attendance... I guess that's casual?) I imagine that as I get higher in level they'll be the ones that teach me the ropes of how to *really* play in a group.

-Hexx
 

In fact it was interesting to read how good you already play with your first character not even 60. I've met people with several chars on max who knew less about this game.
 

I have a theory that goes along the lines that everyone who plays the game should be required to tank 10-15 instances. In particular, forced to tank as a warrior since it’s a bit more difficult to handle adds and multiple mobs. I firmly believe that having that experience alone would make MOST people much better at playing in a group.

No role has the need to learn and understand both threat mechanics and aggro control than the tank. You also learn little things like always keeping an eye out for mobs headed to the healer or the importance of BRINGING A MOB to the tank when you gain aggro instead of RUNNING AWAY and making the tanks job that much more difficult. You will also note the difference in tanking when focus fire is used versus tanking when everyone is whacking a different target. You also very starkly learn to appreciate the heals and crowd control abilities. Likewise, when you don’t get that heal and die and your healer says “it was too hard to heal everyone” then you will make the realization that healing one target (you) is much easier than healing 5 targets. You will also learn what it is like to get all the blame for other people’s problems.

Ultimately, a tanks job is to simply think about the group and how to keep the group alive. I’d say having EVERYONE in the group with that mindset would be a good thing. Then maybe you would see that mob headed to the healer get blinded by the rogue or that mage waiting for that 5th sunder before unleashing his pyroblast. Personally, now that I don’t play a tank any longer, one thing I always carry with me is this thought: With the exception of boss fights, if I need to get healed, then I am doing something wrong.

Even soloing as a warrior gives you certain skills that are later important in groups. For example, learning how to pull effectively is very important solo survival skill. You can’t heal yourself or crowd control adds, so if you fight several mobs at a time then you more often than not find yourself on a graveyard run. As a result, you compensate by learning to LOS casters (or moving back if you can’t LOS). You learn to pull back (by walking backward) and turn around mobs so that when they run – they run away from the adds instead of towards them. You learn which mob to hit and his relative range to other mobs to minimize adds. That’s not to say that other classes can’t learn these skills, they certainly can. But for a warrior, learning to pull well is one of the most important skills you develop as a player to keep yourself alive.
 

Ahhh... to be young & innocent again! Lol!

@hexx - don't let us "old & bitter" players ruin the experience for you, lol! It's mostly that we're tired of playing the same game after 3 years.

The guild I'm in has a "token noob", too. She's a lvl 35 rogue, and was asking if any of us could make her some healing pots/bandages for her. It was cute when she was offering to pay us for the mats, too. Lol! It's funny - someone who's looking for free handouts is so much more unlikely to get help from me than someone who is trying to be fair. I pretty much have no qualms about throwing 50g at someone who is fair, while it's rather difficult throwing 50s at someone who's constantly whining for handouts & power leveling.
 

While I'm sure being MT would help me learn some things, my experience with Guild Wars PvP taught me a lot as a healer.

I think knowing what a healer or tank goes through is important... we would play Guild Wars at my house after Hurricane Katrina, and I was in a group with me, the Healer, and a tank and two DPS classes (actually a necromancer... pet class with DoTs, and Elementalist, which was called a 'spiker' in GW due to instant damage.)

on my screen, I had the party health bars taking up over 30% of the screen real estate, and another chunk devoted to watching what the enemies were casting. I barely paid any attention to the actual combat... because GW had nasty drains and spikes, I had to make sure I was keeping the heals over time where they needed to be, spike healing when people got really low on health, and clearing curses. i also needed to watch for opponents casting spike spells... a warrior at 50% health was fine, until an enemy elementalist was about to spike him, so I knew I had to pre-empt with my own spike heal to get him to 100% so the spike attack would only take him down to 30% health.

Etc...

Knowing how one of the two primary support roles works is important. I could always tell when I was grouping with people who had healed before, vs those who only ever played damage classes. If you know what the two roles keeping you alive have to do, it makes it easier to let them do their job and still kill stuff.

-Hexx
 

Yesterday i played my first battleground (with my pally lvl 39, horde side).
i had no idea of what i was doing there, everybody was running, fighting, speaking fast. Hehe, so i asked my guild mates and they explained to me the basics of the battlegrounds.

I had a lot of fun yesterday, i wonder how many things like that await for me in the next lvls.

I know tha this is a beatifull moment in the game, when i am always discovering things, so i try to enjoy it the most.

(sry my bad english!).
 

Hexx, my advice is to avoid being power leveled through instances, even if that means skipping them. It really ruins the feeling of accomplishment.

I'm glad that you enjoy your class. I've never played a Warlock, but of the classes that I have leveled up - the Mage was the easiest to solo. You might consider playing one as an alt - especially if you want to try a horde race. The blood elf starting area is simply the finest low level zone in the game. Ghostlands isn't just polished - it's buffed so smooth, you can see your reflection in it.
 

I wrote this up on a blog post from January (I just found out that the blog existed), it is an attempt to deal with the lack of stuff happening in the in low level areas by compressing them into a higher level, which would hopefully increase the range of instances people could do and get good rewards, as well as deal with the "I don't want to level up another dang character to 70" issue that a lot of people have.

I would expect a change like this to work o.k. mainly because fighting a level, say, 25 enemy with a level 25 character won't be that much different than fighting a level 40 enemy with a 40 character, a level 60 with a 60, etc., other than the increased complexity as the levels go up, but the complexity can be increased without a leveling process.

When they release wrath of the Lich King, or any other expansion, they should increase the level of all zones to the 60-80, or 70-80 level range. 1-10 zones might be changed to, say, 60-63, 10-20 would be 62-65, 20-30 would be 64-67, ...outland would be something like 70-75, and Northrend would be 75-80 (for a 60-70 game). Quest rewards for early areas would be increased to work with the new expansion, with some of the experience reward shifted to gold perhaps, but still enough experience to level up quickly.

Zone progression would be changed to rely on completing a particular 5-6 quest line, with plenty of side quests available to fill out the zone's character, or provide gear rewards, etc., to help newer characters get solo experience with their abilities, and fill out the zone in general. skill quests for hunter pets, warlock pets, druid forms, etc. would likely be kept, just similarly updated to the higher level.

Professions would start at level 300 (for a 60-70 game) or 375 (for a 70-80 game). Material conversion skills (Similar to the leatherworking "light leather to medium leather" skills, though with a better conversion efficiency) would be included to allow materials to be updated, or material would be automatically changed to later ones, or older material like linen or silk would be folded into new recipes, to keep them valuable.

Characters that were below the "low level" would either be automatically updated to the required level using conversion formulas for level updates (Level 50, say, would be changed to level 70 in expansion, 400 defense would be multiplied by some number and would add stamina and/or strength, +intellect would be multiplied and add some +spelldamage & healing, etc.) or would simply have their name saved, and people given "gear points" to rebuild their gear upon getting the expansion.

Instances would be adjusted to their maximum levels, probably with a required order so that you would need to do one of (shadowfang keep, Deadmines, Ragefire chasm, Wailing Caverns, Stockades) to do (Blackfathom deeps, gnomeregan, razorfen Kraul), twhich would be needed for (Scarlet monastery, Razorfen Downs, Uldaman), etc., to give people experience with simpler instances before more complex ones. Instances would have experience greatly increased, to make them a useful leveling method compared to soloing, to help out less used soloing healing/tanking/support specs.

As another, side change, some quest rewards would allow cheaper talent respecs (so that a quest reward might be something like: 10 gold, 50 silver, 5,000 experience, and a 3% reduction in respec costs, or a 1 day speedup in respec cost decay.) Talents would probably be given by a quest at the end of the starting zone, and would be similar to pet quests, form quests, etc, in that it would give people a chance to try out the different specializations, than give people however many talent points they would have at that level.

As another person who has canceled their account twice (once out of boredom with leveling, once because time spent playing to level was eating into other things in life), and who has played all the classes up to a medium level but none to a higher level, there is some self interest in this idea, though it is designed for improving a lot of problems areas in the game, though hopefully not causing a bunch of other issues in it.