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Trainers and Vendors
Class trainers are the source of new spells and attacks and are usually located close to a new character's starting point. For Night Elves, look over in the really big tree. Class trainers offer their services for a fee, starting at a few coppers for Level 1 spells and abilities, increasing to silver and gold for the higher levels.

Soon you'll discover your character needs money, lots and lots of money. And the way you get it initially is by killing things and looting their corpses. Realize that all loot has value and can be sold to the handy nearby vendor. All vendors pay the same for loot. Soon quest givers will offer serious coin and outstanding gear for completing quests.

But money will always be on your mind, thinking about the future purchase of your mount, a riding animal that makes covering large distances happen faster, costs approximately 100 gold and is available at Level 40. Mounts offer convenience, status, and a tactical advantage enabling the ability to cruise through dangerous areas knowing that most hostile creatures can be out run if necessary. And if seriously hard-core, you may be dreaming of the epic mount which costs a fortune of 900 gold. Speaking of money, WoW has a thriving economy as player-made items, loot, and services are sold on the open market and in the auction house.

Leveling
Kills rake up loot, money, and experience points (XP). Character Levels run from 1 to 60. You can power through Level 1 in about 20 min. But each subsequent level requires exponentially more XP to complete. For example, a Level 1 character needs 400 XP to advance, while a level 56 character needs 187,900 XP! Every level gives your character more attributes, such as stamina or strength, the ability to wear higher level gear, and the ability to learn new spells and attacks. After every even level you can return to the class trainer for upgrades.

Professions
WoW characters can choose two primary professions and multiple secondary professions. Professions enable the creation of items that directly benefit your character, your guild-mates, or can be sold for profit. Primary professions included mining, blacksmithing, skinning, leather working, herbology, alchemy, and engineering. Characters start professions as apprentices. By gathering materials and making things, professional experience (PXP) is gained. As your character moves up, through Journeyman and finally to Artisan, more item-recipes become available from the Professions Trainer, as usual, for purchase.

Communication
Communication in the World is handled by text chat and comes over several channels by means of slash commands (/). There is a general communications channel, a party channel (for only your party), a guild channel, and others.

Communication syntax is simple to learn. Select Return to open the text chat window. Every region has a general communications channel so messages can be sent to everyone in that region using "/1". Slash commands such as "/T name" (insert players name for "name") are used to send a tell to another player. /R is used to reply, /G is for guild. Slash commands can also make your character say or do things. Try these: /LOL, /CRY, /WAVE, /BOW, /SILLY, /CHICKEN, & /DANCE. Finally, Macros can be created so the press of a button will send a text message like "RUN!".

Questing
The obsession of Wow is questing and there seems to be thousands of quests. Many are solo-able, but a sizable portion are not, and significant elite quests definitely require parties. Quests are categorized as kill quests, gather quests, escort quests, and protected instance quests. The color-coded quest log reveals the difficulty of the quest based on your experience level. Red is hard. Green is supposed to be easy, and no color means the quest has no value. This typically means you are too high a level for the quest, and the XP reward will be minimal. Quests remaining in your quest log will change colors as your level increases. Elite quests involve elite mobs, who may be the same level as you, but are more powerful and usually require a group effort.
Kill quests might be something such as "the forest is overcrowded, please slay 10 boar." Kill quests lend themselves to parties because even though there are 2-5 of you in the party, each member gets credit for a single kill. This is especially important if the target is too much to handle alone. Gather quests lend themselves to going solo, because then you don't have to share, but again, keep in mind the level of the beast your hunting. The counter argument for party action with a gather quest is that all though players have to take turns acquiring quest items and won't receive as much XP per party kill, the kills will be occurring at a much faster rate. Escort quests involve escorting a NPC (game controlled Non-Player Character) from point A to point B and typically involve the spawning of multiple adversaries or moving through a particularly dangerous area. Think about parties for these.
WoW quests are nicely laid out progressing in a manner to take your character to new appropriate level regions. Most quests come in chains. The successful completion of a quest takes you to the next related quest. Some chains are long, and require you to travel all over the known WoW world. And some quests can be shared among party members.

Parties
Before long you'll feel the need to form or join a party for a difficult quest. Parties can both be the most rewarding and the most frustrating aspect of WoW game play. You'll see both the best and worst in people. Fortunately if you run into a jerk, you can leave the party or boot the offending person. My WoW game play experience has been about 95% positive.

You will learn party etiquette once you start playing, but things like ninja-looting, demanding a valuable, hard to get item if it drops off a mob, and begging for items or money is a turnoff. Most valuable items result in party members rolling for it.

Party dynamics in combat are the most fun aspect of playing WoW especially if your a healer or have special talents. Prior to engaging a group of hostile mobs, it pays to coordinate actions. Healers must keep track of party members and be ready to heal them. Priests can temporarily take control of a mob's mind, making him an ally. Warlocks and Mages respectively can hit a mob with a Fear Spell or Sheep Spell, effectively removing that mob from the fight for a short period of time. The warriors life is not all that complicated, just jump into the fight and start wailing away. Coordinated actions make the difference between success and failure.

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