For the New Player

This is a post from a blogger i frequent: http://redhawksgaze.blogspot.com/2010/05/recommendations-for-new-wow-player.html

Some of his suggestions are great.  There is one i wouldnt suggest, which is to get questhelper.  I find it almost cheating.  I wish people would actually read their quests.  it would totally help them later on.

For those who are going through their second or 17th character, sure, use questhelper.  even then, blizzard has added a quest objective interface in their map screen so you dont even need questhelper.  now if you're completely spatially impaired and cannot locate yourself on the map (I Am Here) and where you need to go to complete a quest, then you should consider getting questhelper, but turn off everything except waypoints.  waypoints gives you an arrow on your screen that will show you where to go to your next quest objective. 

In any case, i would also like to reiterate leveling to 20 as the benchmark for getting the "feel" for your class. sometimes playing a character is awesome when its your first character.  i know i felt awesome playing a mage for the first time and liking all of the things about it.  six months later, i tried a druid and that blew me away.  i loved it.  then a year later, i tried playing a paladin and that beat all the other classes hands down. 

Why i say this is because i did not try out all the classes to 20 the first time around.  i was fine with leveling maybe three different classes (all of which were similar: Warlock, Mage and Hunter).  they were all ranged dps, with the mage and warlock playing a little differently, and the warlock and hunter playing almost exactly the same since they both have pets, only one is "magical" and the other is "physical".  so what im trying to say is play the different classes first.  play them all.  give each a fair shot and see where it takes you.

And dont forget, each class has three different talent trees, or specialties.  so in reality, you have 3x more choices than you think.  there's a lot to learn, but the fun of the game is the learning.  the game is a journey.  enjoy the ride.