Learn your class, n00b.

World of Warcraft is a black spiral from which there is no escape. Despite paying for over a year of gameplay, starting numerous characters on a handful of servers, and generally getting annoyed at various facets of the game and World of Warcraft (WoW) community, I nonetheless continue to maintain an account, getting sucked in deeper as changes to gameplay are made, and spending time on different characters, be they newly rolled or thought long-abandoned.

Despite WoW’s ups and downs, I cannot manage to replace it properly, despite trying fervently to like games like Guild Wars. The fact is, WoW is polished like a riverstone, while its competition, despite any merits they may hold, are still too young to stand beside WoW’s smooth feel.

Nonetheless, WoW remains with issue, and sadly, many of them are a result of the community. I’ve found that fledgling servers generally foster a better online society, particularly on the RP and PVPRP servers. Even on such servers, however, there is often some ignorance as to how a character should be played well, and by this I mean well in groups, for it is group-play that defines much of what WoW is, whether one likes this fact or not.

It is for this reason, and the fact that WoW’s sales over the holiday season have brought many new players to our servers, that I thought it would be a good idea to add to the many documents already out there for the game. Frankly, I could not easily find a good “how-to” guide for playing classes in groups. Thus, I sat down to write one, and though not fully content in how it turned out, I decided to post it nonetheless as a work-in-progress, with the understanding that its posting does not mean I cannot change it in time, even though the likelihood of this depends on commentary I hope to receive more than a mere elapse of time.

So it is for your devouring that I release my guide to class roles in the World of Warcraft, specifically as such roles apply to instances. I don’t think it contains anything groundbreaking or new, but rather serves as a proper summary for those who may not be playing their characters efficiently in groups, which is often the case given player’s desire to engage in player-versus-player combat rather than completing quests and exploring the game’s dungeons. Sadly, however, much of the game’s content, particularly as it relates to cool gear, requires exploration of such instances, and hopefully this class guide will help a few people find their way.

02/12/2007 Update: The aforementioned article was relocated.

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