I know this girl, let’s call her Sara, with a gaming problem. You see, her boyfriend is a hardcore World of Warcraft raider, which is a 20-30 hour commitment every week. There are certainly raiders out there who spend much more time with the game, but it’s still the kind of time that could really chew into your relationship. However, this isn’t another one of those Widows of Warcraft problems, because the boyfriend has lucked out: Sara wants to play the game with him, and they’ve used the recruit-a-friend program to whirlwind Sara from level 1 to level 61 in no time flat. They’ve had a grand old time tromping around Azeroth, killing X of Y and running the odd fetch quest, but now the boyfriend’s raiding responsibilities have grown, and Sara is twisting in the wind.

Sara has enjoyed playing, so the absent boyfriend isn’t any trouble. They had a well-planned tour of Azeroth that left her with the kind of gear that scores unsolicited complements. Her boyfriend also left her with an action bar full of clever macros, and a million-jillion gold. It’s a pretty sweet setup, and it’s the kind of thing WoW devotees have been clamoring for ever since Blizzard said you’re lowed to start a fresh death knight from level 55. So what’s the problem here?

It turns out that “no time flat” didn’t give Sara a chance to learn how to play the game. So now she’s stuck with a level 61 mage, no in-game scaffolding to teach her how to play, and all those handy macros are just so much voodoo. Sara hasn’t so much as kited a mob the whole time she has played, and it’s not clear that she even knows what aggro is. She feels stranded in a savage land of 12-year-olds who will mock and bully her if she joins a group.

Sara isn’t the only one with this problem. You’ve played with one of these people if you’ve ever been in a WoW pick-up group. It’s the warrior who can’t hold aggro, the hunter with no pet who never traps, or that damned rogue who keeps typing “wasd” into the chat. Maybe they bought their character or maybe they’re like Sara and ground up the level chain too fast. It doesn’t matter. Either way, they’re in trouble because they can’t get help without looking like incompetent morons, and until they do, you’re stuck with a dead weight warlock. So what are level 60+ noobs to do? What can you tell them to do?

Step 1: Admit you’re screwed
Even if you’re not at the level cap, anyone can look at you and see that you’re high level. Warcraft vets may assume that you’ve put in up to 300 hours into the game and will expect you to behave accordingly. Newer players will expect less as Blizzard has iteratively shortened the leveling process, but you’re still probably in for some abuse. Impatient players will sometimes yell if you can’t keep up, spoiled brats will call you teh gay when you don’t lol as they omgwtfbbq, and griefers can smell a noob from a mile and it activates their spawncamp instincts. These schmucks are a vocal minority, and you can minimize contact by running solo, but if you’re prepared for some harassment, you’ll stand a better chance of handling it gracefully. If all else fails, you can always block someone from talking to you with the ignore command.

Step 2: Remove every last one of those macros
If you look at your action bar and any of the buttons don’t immediately make sense, remove them. Don’t worry if someone painstakingly programmed a macro for every button; they won’t be deleted, just removed from active use for now. The problem that you’re facing is that you’re missing the basics. You can worry about optimizing your shot rotation for maximum damage and mana efficiency when you’re a theorycrafter. In the meantime you’ll want to start paging through your character’s abilities, reading tooltips, and getting a survey of what everything does.

Step 3: Pick and stick
The really crippling problem about being a level 60 noob is that you’ve taken a carefully tested learning process that normally takes dozens of hours and skipped most of it. So one of your goals will be to recreate it. Pick a handful of abilities out of your spellbook that either look cool or you’re already familiar with and drag those to your action bar. Pick out some nice weak monsters to play with, ideally about 10% lower level than you are, and start roughing them up in the spirit of discovery. If an ability doesn’t seem to work in the way you expect or doesn’t seem to do anything, then swap it out for something else. It isn’t worth puzzling over one when there are twenty others to try out instead. Once you have an effective core, start adding more and more buttons until you’ve explored most of your spellbook. Don’t worry if you can’t figure out some of the more esoteric abilities, because we’ll revisit them in step 5.

Step 4: Daily grind
Whether you’re at the level cap or you’re just well on your way, there will be a lot of quests you can run solo. Once you have the hang of most of your spellbook, you’ll have all the tools you need to complete pretty much any quest. Running solo quests until you’re bored with them will teach you most of the skills that you’ll need to effectively contribute to a group. You’ll likely be killed (frequently) as you figure out your class’s tricks for managing larger enemy groups, but keep trying because handling unwanted attention is one of those skills you missed out on.

Step 5: The more you know
There are 10999 other people playing Warcraft right now and a lot of them have written guides at various levels of detail. Reading up on your character class means reading the kinds of writers who write about Warcraft, but there are definitely better and worse places to start. WoWWiki is a comprehensive resource that covers everything from jargon to tactics. It’s up to you how far to go down the rabbit hole, but you’ll at least want to read up on any abilities from your spell book you couldn’t figure out.

Step 6: Reach out and crutch someone
Once you have a handle on what you can do alone, you’ll be ready to bring it to a group. If you’re feeling confident, you can start with a pick up group. This maximizes anonymity, but bears the greatest risk of verbal abuse from teammates. If you let people know that you’re still pretty green, you may be surprised by how many people are friendly and helpful. You may also be surprised by how many groups will kick you without a word, but you can think of it like dating: if it was the kind of group to kick you for being inexperienced, you really didn’t want to run with the jerks anyway (bonus tip: always ask about the loot rules). If you prefer a little more support, you can always try joining a leveling guild. Their membership strictures usually aren’t very tight, and there will be plenty of people learning right along with you. The downside is that there will be a lot of riffraff, but try to keep in mind that you ARE the riffraff, and you don’t have to stay there for ever.

Just remember, a Blizzard employee will never ask you for your login information. And seriously, if you’re standing in the right place, there is no way you’ll get knocked into the whelps.

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