1. Making A Character
You can make a character from the "Create New Character" button in the screen that loads after log in. When you click it in the next window you can choose your character appearance and his race and class. You can read the description of each class and like one with you want to play then you have to choose the race of it. This is really important cause every race have diffrent racial ability. Here is list for the appropriate races for each class:
Warrior - Human, Orc
Paladin - Human, Blood Elf, Dwarf
Hunter - Orc, Dwarf
Rogue - Human, Night Elf, Blood Elf, Orc, Undead
Priest - Human, Dwarf, Blood Elf, Troll
Death Knight - Human, Orc, Tauren
Shaman - Orc, Draenei
Mage - Human, Troll, Blood Elf
Warlock - Human, Troll, Blood Elf
Druid - Tauren, Night Elf.
You will learn about the racial abilities in the next tutorials.
In the game there are also two factions The Alliance and The Horde. They are at war and you will fight versus the players from the opposite faction. The races: Humans, Dwarfs, Night Elfs, Gnomes and Draeneis belong to the Alliance and Orcs, Undeads, Taurens, Trolls and Blood Elfs to the Horde.
2. Getting Started
When you first start playing with your character your interface should look like that. I have named all parts of it on the photo below. And now everything will be explained.
Name
This is the name of your character (you choose it when you make new character).
Faction
Your character faction, it can be Alliance or Horde. Character on the photo is from the Alliance. The Horde logo is simillar but red.
Health
This is your health state. You are on your full health (hp) when the bar is full, the character on the photo isn't on its full hp. You can see the exact values of your max hp and hp now by moving the mouse over the bar.
Mana
Because the character on the photo is mage he use mana as a resource to do his spells. Other classes use diffrent resources the Warrior use rage, the Death Knight (DK) use runic power, Rogue - energy and etc. The bar is the same like this for health.
Level
Each character in World Of Warcraft have level. The bigger level characters are much more powerfull than the low level ones. When you start playing your first job is to increase your level to 80 that allows you to use the strongest armor and have all your spells and talents unlocked. All your stats at all will boost up when you are bigger level. There are 3 types of level: Normal level that is a number (from 1 to 80 for players), elite mobs and bosses. Only non-player character (NPC) can be elite mob or boss. That means that they are much more powerfull than other players and monsters. These NPCs are marked with a skull instead of a number for level. Bosses are stronger than the elite mobs. The elite mobs have level and you can see it as a tooltip in the bottom-right corner of the screen when you scroll over them or their frames. On these tooltips you will also see does the npc is elite mob or a boss.
Tip: On the right side of your player frame with hp, mana, portrait and etc... you can see the frame of the player or npc that you have clicked on. The person you have clicked on is known as your target.
Chat Box
Here you get messages from other players. There are 2 tabs above "General" and "Combat Log". In the combat log you see all combat abilities that are used against you or by you or to other players.
Bags (inventory)
In these bags you can put your stuffs like armor, food, water and etc. (food is used to regenerate health and water to restore mana). Every player have a Backpack (the bag with bigger icon) and 4 empty slots for more bags. On the photo above the character have putted on the two of the empty slots bags. You can get bags for these slots from a vendor (friendly NPC from which you can buy stuffs) or from a monster that you have killed. When you get any item it will go to the first empty slot in your bags. You will need to have bags with more slots. You can put bags in the empty bag slots by draging them from the backpack and putting them on the empty slot. You can't put items in bag that is not on bag slot.
Tip: You can delete unusefull items by draging them over the environment that surrounds your character.
Expirience Bar
Here is your expirience until you are below level 80 you will have that bar when you fill it with expirience your character gets level up. The solid blue colour represents your expirience and the transparent blue part of the bar points "rested mode of expirience". You can see the rested mode part in the photo just after the solid blue part of the bar. There are 2 ways of getting expirience by killing monsters or by doing missions (quests). When you kill a monster of a level that is close to your in like 5 level range above and below your lvl you get exp. Bigger level monster will give you more exp than lower level. So the rested mode means that you get double exp from killing monsters until you get exp to fill the transparent blue bar. The bar just will move forward when you get exp from doing quests and will stay until you fill it with exp from killing monsters. You will learn how to get rested mode in the next tutorials.
Quests
The quests are the most common way to lvl up a character and they are given by NPCs. When a NPC is a quest giver it have yellow or blue exclamation mark above his head. You can take the quest from him just by clicking with the right mouse button on him. When you take the quest the mark above his head will be grey question mark and it will change to yellow when you complete his task. After completing the task you have to come and talk with him, then he will give you exp, gold and for some quests a quest reward. You can see your quests in the left part of the screen it writes the name of the quest and what you have to do. If you want more advanced description just click on the quest and a panel will show up. From the top of this panel there is a button that open your map and show you where you should do the quest. Sometimes these quest will be to collect items or to go and talk with someone but mostly they are to kill monsters. When you have to kill monsters in example when you point over a monster (if this is the monster that you should kill) it shows a tooltip in the bottom part of the screen and there writes "x/X monsters slain". Where x is the monsters that you have already slain and X - the monsters you have to slain. "Monsters" is replaced by the name of these monsters.
Map
In the top of your screen there is a minmap that shows your character and other stuffs if you want to open the whole map of the world you have to press the round button in the top- right corner. When you open the advanced map it has two states minimaized and maximaized. In the maximaized state on the right side you see your quests and from above you can chose the zone that you look over. When you press the left button over the map it zooms in and with the right button you zoom out. On the minimized state you see only the map on a part of your screen. For that it is good to be used while traveling to some location. When you move trough some zone you reveal it that means that on the map will be shown always what is there. In the unrevealed mode you can see only the water and mountains. Also on the map you see where you must do your quest. With a yellow questiong mark is pointed where you have to go and talk with someone and with yellow circle where you should kill mobs or colect things. If the mob or the thing you have to get is only 1 there will be 1 circle. If there many around this circle will be a blue zone and you should do your quest in this blue zone.
Watch
Below your map there is a watch it shows the realm time and the time in your country. When you press it you can choose what time to show. Also you can make an alaram for some event from there.
Tracking
When press it there is a dropdown menu from where you choose what things to track the tracked thing will be shown with a small yellow circle on the minimap.
Menu
You have 10 buttons here: Character, Spell Book Talents, Achievments, Quest Log, Social, PVP, Dungeon Finder, Game Menu and Help.
Character - Here are the stuffs about your character. In the panel there you can put a gear on your character. The gear gives you more power and increase your strength, spell power and etc... You can put a gear from your bag just by dragging it on his place in the character panel. You can't put boots on the helm slot for example. Gear that isn't putted on your character don't increase your stats. The stats are shown in the same panel below your character 3D image. Diffrent classes wear diffrent gear. Mages, Warlocks and Priests wear cloth gear. Rogues and Druids wear leather gear. Shamans and Hunters wear mail. Paladins, Warriors, And Death Knights wear plate. If you are a clother you can't war plate, mail and leather, but if you are plater you can wear lighter armor. This isn't recommend cause the lighter armor won't give you the stats that you need in most cases. The attributes that every class need will be explain in the stats guide.
Spell Book - Here are all of your abilities. They are seperated by 4 categories. All classes have a General tab there are the abilities of your race almost all of them are passive and just increase some of your attributes. Except this every class have 3 other tabs by spells that he use. For example the mage has Arcane, Fire and Frost. When you are 1 level you will have only 1-2 spells by increasing your level you will obtain new spells. But the spells don't just come like that to gain them you need to go to a trainer. The trainer is a NPC
when you point with your mouse over him in the tooltip in the bottom-right part of the screen will wirtes for what class is this trainer. In the zone which every class start there is a trainer, if you can't find him you may use your tracking to see where is he or just search in google something like "WoW Warrior Trainer" or "WoW Mage Trainer". In the later tutorials you will learn where are located the class trainers.
Talents - In this tab you can put talents that increase your power and abilities when you are 80 level you will have 71 talent points to spend. You can see in the tooltip of these talent what each do. You have 3 trees there like in the spell book they are diffrent for every class. Like the mage has Arcane, Fire and Frost. You can advance to the talent of the next line only if you have putted points enough points on the lines above it. It isn't recommend to spend all you 71 points in the most common case you need 50-60 points on one tree and others in the first tlaents of other tree.
Achievments - here is a statistic of your accomplishments. In the statistic are counted things like the biggest damage that you have done on a single hit. For some achievments there are rewards like mounts or title. You can chose your title from the character tab it is from dropdown menu above your 3D portrait (when you don't have any title you can't see it). In most cases you don't need to complete achievments on low level.
Quest Log - Here is a more advanced list of your quests. When you click on a quest in the right part of your screen there is a 3 buttons from the panel that opens. "Abbandon" - to remove the quest compleatly (it can be gained from the quest giver again). "Share" - to give the quest to your friends instead they go to the quest giver. And "Track", when you press it quest disappears from the list below your map but you still have it and can complete it. You can see ti from the Quest Log and when you press track again it shows there.
Social - This is the place where is your list with friends, channels and guild You can add a friend just by targeting the player open social and press add friend button. When a player is your friend you can see when he is online, where he is and etc... In the chat as you can see in the screenshot above every message is like this [channel][playername]: Example Text. If the channel is global you won't see this message if you don't added the global channel in your social channel list. There are channels that appear automaticly like 1.General 2.Trade 3.LocalDefense 4.Looking For Group. On LFG channel all the players in the game see the writed message. In 1, 2 and 3 channel only the players in this zone see the messages. When you passing from one zone to next in the chat will write something like Joined Chnnael 1.General - (zone name). There are other channels like whisper, when you write in the chat "/w (player name)" you write only to a single person, after the player name there should be a space and then you can write your message to this player.
PVP - From this tab you can join on battlegrounds or see your arena team. After you level up to 80 you need first to go to battleground. To do that you come here and join on the random battleground when the battleground end you gain honor with this honor youcan buy good gear.
Dungeon Finder - After you have some gear from honor you need to do dungeons. When you are level 80 you can join in 3 type of dungeons: Random Lich King Dungeon, Random Lich King Heroic Dungeon, Specific Dungeon. When you complete a Random Lich King Heroic Dungeon (RDF HC) you gain 2 emblems of frost. With emblems of frost you can buy the most powerfull gear in the game, but only the first RDF HC every day will give you emblems of frost (EOF). The next RDF HC will give you emblems of triumph (EOT), with them you can also buy a powerfull gear. Also every boss from these dungeons drops one or two EOTs. From the specific dungeon you don't get any reward when you complete one, but from there you can join in the dungeons that you want. To gear fast you need to do Forge Of Souls (Fos), Pit Of Saron (Pos) and Halls Of Reflection (Hor). When you start you can't get into Pos or Hor first you need to complete one quest in the entrance of fos to can join for pos and from pos you need to complete other quest that appear after kill the first boss there - Krick and Ick. After that you can go to Hor.
Game Menu - This opens your game menu like the Esc key.
Help - From here you can find help about the game. From "Character Unstuck" button you can teleport your character into your starting location (the place where you've started on level 1). And from "Talk with a GM" button you can require a Game Master assistant to help you if you are bugged or something else. The Game Masters don't help you to kill bosses, complete quests or anything else! They can just give you information.