Choosing a Side

So how do you decide whether you want to be Horde or Alliance? Well, there are different factors that may go into your decision. For example, I already had friends who played that I knew I would want to chat with so I chose Horde because they were Horde. Later, I also created an Alliance character because I wanted to see what the other side was all about.

I know some people that chose Alliance because they can be Humans and some people are prone to be more attracted to this. (Not to mention the characters tend to be better looking!) It’s really just a matter of opinion when it comes to this and both sides are just as capable when you know what you are doing.

Honor Points

There is something in the game called the Honor System that you may be interested in. You get Honor Points that can add up to rank. So just what does this mean and how do you get these points?

You get honor points from:

•    Honorable Kills
•    Killing racial leaders
•    Achieving Battlegrounds objectives

So what is an honorable kill? Well, an honorable kill is a player character within your XP range, (i.e. a character whose name is colored and not grey.) There are different factors that influence the Honor value of a kill:

•    Your victim’s level
•    Your own level
•    Subsequent kills: killing a character a second, third or fourth time within 24 hours after the first kill will give reduced points for kills (75%, 50% and 25%). The fifth and subsequent kills give no Honor at all.
•    Group or raid: killing while in a group or raid will share the Honor among team members in the same way as XP, with the exception of the raid penalty on XP not being applied to Honor. Lower level members will get a smaller portion than the higher level ones.
•    Your or your team or raid’s contribution to the kill: each solo character, group or raid participating in the kill gets their share of the Honor.
•    Your victim’s rank
•    Being present at the time of the kill

Killing racial leaders: killing one of the NPCs considered leaders of their race. The racial leaders are:

•    Thrall
•    Cairne Bloodhoof
•    Lady Sylvanas Windrunner
•    Highlord Bolvar Fordragon
•    King Magni Bronzebeard
•    Arch Druid Fandrag Staghelm

Achieving Battlegrounds objectives: the Battlegrounds contain several opportunities to gain Honor in addition to killing your opponents, one of them naturally being winning the Battleground.

Raiding

Below is a screen shot taken of a raid just before I jumped in. Alliance was putting a hurting on the town of Crossroads. In fact, this is pretty typical. Participating in a raid gives you an opportunity to rack up some honor points as we have explained above.

Raid groups are groups of more than 5 people and are typically used to defeat unique challenges at higher levels. In WoW, up to 8 separate groups can be linked up to form a group of 40 players and these groups are called raid groups.

Raid group members cannot earn credit towards most non-raid difficulty quests, or more specifically, the ones involving killing creatures and collecting items. Raid groups usually give less experience for defeating monsters than normal groups. However, raids allow players to overcome challenges that might otherwise be nearly impossible.

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W/Up Arrow = move character forward
S/Down Arrow = move character backward
A/Left Arrow = move character left
D/Right Arrow = move character right
Q = Strafe left
E = Strafe right
Space/ Number Pad = Jump
X = toggle sit/stand
Number lock/ mouse button 4= toggle autorun
Insert = pitch character up
Delete = pitch character down

Action Bar Functions

?# ? (0-9, -, +): Activate an action in the action bar
CTRL-F# (1-10): Select shapeshift/stance state

Targeting Functions

Tab: Lets you cycle through different enemies in the area.
Shift –tab: This is how you can cycle backwards through the enemies in the area.
Ctrl-tab: This will let you cycle through friendly players.
Ctrl-shift-tab: Cycle backward through the players.
F1: target yourself
F2-5: Target party members
Shift-F1: target your pet
Shift-F (2-5): target party member’s pet
G: target last hostile
T: Attack target
Shift – T: Have pet attack target

Chat Functions

Enter: open chat box
R:  reply to a whisper
Shift-c: toggle combat log
Interface Panel Functions

C: Character pane
B/F12: Open backpack
F8-F11: open bags
P: Spellbook
I: abilities
Shift-I: pet book
N: Talents
Shift-P: pet pane
U: Reputation
K: Skills
L: Quest log
Esc: Game menu
M: World map
O: social pane

Miscellaneous Functions

Number pad +: zoom in mini-map
Number pad -: zoom out mini-map
Ctrl –M: toggle music
Ctrl-S: toggle sound
Ctrl-+: master volume up
Ctrl–: master volume down
Alt-Z: toggle user interface

Camera Functions

End: move forward through camera positions
Home: move backward through camera positions
Mouse wheel up: zoom camera in
Mouse wheel down: zoom camera out

When you start playing the game, you will see that there are bars located at the bottom that allow you to place your spells inside for quick release. You need to customize these so that they work best for you. You can switch through the bars with shift+bar number. Then you press the number of the spell you want to cast. For example, shift+2 and 2 may be Corruption and you might want to switch back to bar one for another spell so you can quickly press shift+1 and 5. As you create these, it will take some time to really get the feel for it and become comfortable with the controls but once you have, you can create combos that allow you to cast off the greatest and most effective spells really quickly. People will be wondering how you ever got those spells off so fast.

For example, if you are fighting a spellcaster, you can cast spells to drain their mana which makes them unable to attack back and then you quickly run in for the kill. They will be dead before they know what happened. You can also set up macros in the game. You can find macros by pressing the ESC key while in the game and then selecting Macros. It will show you how to customize your own. This is a great way to cast spells, set totems and more. Also, you do not have to put just spells in your macros, you can put other commands as well.

Technorati Tags: functions, hotkeys, world of warcraft, wow, wow functions, wow hotkeys, Wow Interface