hey, soo ive played some of WoW before, just some intro quests from TBC, lich king, mists etc - and got a load of toons lvled thanks to level boosts from expansions i bought for WoW and never played
well now that FFXIV kinda sucks and the community for it has turned into toxic politeness (the kind of people who hate your very presence but try waay tooo hard at being nice about it) I figured now might be the time to actually play WoW aandd actually learn how tf to play it especially now theres controller support baked right in and i might’ve sorta paid for 6 months upfront >.> (im cheap and wanted that very slight discount lol)
some of my newbie questions for now are:
Do i need to play the older expac’s first or can i just start with the newest WoW campaign and still kinda know whats happening? (the game is being stubborn and forcing the newest quest on me xD just not sure if thats the right thing)
For the endgame gearing, how does that work here? like is there tokens to grind for or do you just do max level raids/dungeons and roll on loot? (in FFXIV you had to grind for tokens to get high level gear, including some savage raids for certain pieces that were 5ilvls higher than normal tokens - not sure how WoW does it is all)
and last question - is there any humorous side quests that are worth doing? (ffxiv has the hildibrand quest chain that was a parody of the key events in the main story for example)
Welcome to Azeroth! Hope we can provide a nice break for you.
You definitely don’t HAVE to do any older content. If you have a level 70 boost, you can use that and start into the latest expansion The World Within immediately.
If you are starting from level 10, you can just get to 70 through Dragonflight and then start TWW.
Either way, you won’t miss anything you need. The devs are scrupulous about ensuring that you can start the game in TWW at level 70 and never need to go back for anything.
Story, if you want that, is something else. Story in WoW is much more sprawling and less directed than in FF. Unfortunately, the devs saw people praising the story in FF, and in the last few expansions have enforced a rigid path for levelling from 70 to 80 - the quest markers with the brown shields around them - and then a “campaign” of quests at 80, so you will need to do those. The handling of characters has been … dubious … for the last few expansions as well, so I’m not sure it’s worth investing a lot of attention into. Certainly I think the characterisation from Shadowlands, through Dragonflight, into TWW now has been Trash-Tier and occasionally dipping into hateful. At least Jaina, Thrall, and Khadgar are still with us and recognisable. If you want story, look for the smaller local stories - that’s where WoW storytelling has always been at its best.
But story is not important for getting on with the game.
If you decide to level more alts, I would suggest sending each one through different expansions so that you get at least a flavour of each.
OK, gearing.
From 70 to 80 you will wear quest rewards and drops. They will do fine; it doesn’t really matter.
When you first hit 80, you may be able to pick up some cheap pieces at the Auction House. Just make sure they’re your armour type and have the right primary stat for your class/spec. OTOH, the gear may be too expensive. It is not worth spending a lot of gold here; you will outgear this pretty fast.
You will see World Quests marked on your map, starting when you finish the levelling campaign at around level 77. Some of these will give you gear upgrades, but not many; the devs pretty much destroyed the world content last expansion, and doubled down on that this expansion.
Instead, you will work your way up mostly through Delves, and Normal and Heroic dungeons. At the start, you should also be able to fill in some very weak slots from regular questing at level 80.
When you hit 80, you will be at item level ilevel 510-550. Ish. Depending on grift and luck.
Gear now comes in “Tracks”, that can have a range of ilevels:
Explorer 558 - 580
Adventurer 571 - 593
Veteran 584 - 610
Champion 597 - 619
plus two higher tracks that are above your pay-grade for now.
You get a piece on a certain track, and then can upgrade it with Valorstones and Crests to the max level for its track. You will be introduced to this system by quests. Don’t be afraid to spend your Valorstones and Crests on lower level gear. The game gives you a serious discount on upgrades to an ilevel you have already equipped. For example, suppose you upgraded an Adventurer-track shoulder to its max of 593, and then get a 584 Veteran shoulder drop. You will find the price of upgrades heavily reduced to get that Veteran 584 to 593.
You want to get your gear level onto Veteran track ASAP, and then move up from there.
There is a table here that explains and gives sources:
and here are two others:
Once your gear is up around the 600 mark, you’re ready to begin endgame proper. It’s time to start picking your preferred activities
Delves
Mythic-Plus Dungeons
Raids
PvP BGs/Arena
I won’t go into details about these, but do please ask if you have questions!
I will also give you some bookmarks
www.wowhead.com for quests, items, maps, guides. Use Wowhead as your first resource when you have a question. ALWAYS READ THE COMMENTS!! They are from people who had the same problem you did!
www.curseforge.com/wow/addons for addons. You can also install an addon updating program to keep your addons up to date since changes are pretty frequent. I use WoWUP with Curseforge.
