This guide is designed for the mmo-champion guide submission contest where it breifly and to some extent fully gives players who read the different guides a chance to refresh or give them tips to understand some of the wow content that is mostly focused on the shattering and for new players or players that have came back from wow break. most words that have " " in them means they are terms or addons in which you can find under the topics for example "cc"

"waiting" can be found in the lingo part of this guide
for those of you who are concerned with me using words such as "colour and honour" it just means that im from a different country from you (Australia), they arent spelling mistakes, we really do spell words that way

The guide itself gives a brief introduction into the guide itself and other guides, i have chosen not to go into full depth as it may be seen as copyright nor have i given links to any other links than mmo-champion,curse or wowhead , sites that can help that are mentioned throughout the guide as it can also be interupreted as taking suggestions made by other players. I have made these guides by my own opinion and experiences and some from people who complain every day on the forums.

The Archaeology is in depth guide that i have made myself that i have personally experienced throughout leveling 1-525+ which may not be accurate, but i feel is the best way to do it.

there is 3 guides that give guides on guides to different sections of the wow community [sadly no role player guides as i have never been one ] and 1 guide that is about how to responding to this guide.

(Mods Edit out if this out if chosen to be on the front page)- "The only thing you have to do is to write the best guide you can! It can be anything, raid guide, auction house guide, profession guide, class guides, addons configuration guide, guide on how to make your level 1 alt look awesome, guide on how to tweak and optimize WoW, etc ... The possibilities are endless. and "Your guide has to be posted in the Guide Submission Forum. One entry per person."- I believe that this guide is 1 entry. The above states "it can be about anything" "One entry per person". This entry is One WHOLE entry made by ME. Also there is not word limit =D

Now that the introduction is out of the way, Enjoy the guide!



This Guide Will Cover the Following elements:
-- Section Below is for new players and players that are not aware of some things in wow--
1.: I'm new and just hit 85, What Now?
2.: How to prepare for heroics/getting ilvl 329
I just got ilvl 329, how can i be the best assest to my group as possible?
I'm a dps and the queue says 1 hour, these heroics doesnt sound like fun -.-
How do i deal with all of these impatient people that keep leaving after we wipe on bosses?
I just got kicked, wow doesnt seem fun anymore, (Interlude into other possible outlets)
3: PvP
Battlegrounds/Rated BGs/Arena
4: I'm bored at PvP/PvE and want to relax, may be i should play another game? (Minigames etc)
5: Guilds
6: Raids
7: What are Alts/how many can i have and is it better than having 1 character that you spend most of your time on
8: WoW Lingo
9: People are asking me "umadbro" slander in trade and saying obsecure and annoying things
10: Main Professions/Gathering professions
11: Sub professions Do i need them?
12: What are addons and how can they benefit me
13: I want cool things like mounts pets how do i...
14: Achievements, what do these points do?
15: How To Use the Auction house
16: Macros

1:-- Seasoned WoW players section--
2: Heroics are harder than they use to be and i hate pugging with bad players
3: How To level archaeology to the point where it optimizes your character
4: Should i server transfer where there are better guilds/Pugs?
5: Trade Chat, what it is and what its used for
6: what addons do i need for arena/raiding /how do i find out my rotation for raiding/gear/chants/gemming/
7: I need gold for various things (includes whether you have alts or not, professions etc)
8: Guilds that require you to app on their website, is it really worth it
9.- these guides arent really for me, they are helpful but i seem to have knowledge of every single guide and the tips

-- The Shattering, the differences between the previous expansion and this, (includes guides to havent played in months or years that dont get enough info from patch notes) --
1. Deathwing, who is this guy and what has he done with my azeroth, barrens chat is gone (hurray) but still.
2. Portals have been removed from shat and dal, where do i place my hearth once reaching 85
3. Summoning stones are still around, and are included in the cataclysm, does this mean i should or should not use the LFG system?

-- Guide on if you are to respond on this guide and how to respond --
1. I hated this guide, not enough information on the guides (Good Critisism)
2 I hated this guide, not enough information on the guides (Bad Critisism)
3 I hated this guide, not enough information on the guides (Just plain trolling)
4. Loved this guide!!! <3 (comments that arent critisism)

-- A guide on why i was inspired to make this full fledged guide consisiting of guides with guides... guides, and yeah =) --



-- I'm new and just hit 85, What Now? --
1. You just hit 85 after all that questing and completing all those dungeons, this is the level where all the magic starts. From here you can go into Heroic/Raiding environments grouped with 5 or 10-25 other people or you can do some battlegrounds and some arena. Theres much more to wow than just these two however they are the main attractions towards the game, for example if you're a roleplayer seeking out some fun and fantastic nostalgia theres that too, though that can mostly exist on role play realms. The following guides may help you understand or just give you simple tips on how to play wow in a manner where you can become better than you currently are, or just refresh some lost knowledge aswell as tips. Use the index guide to scroll down into which guide you would like to look at.


-- How to prepare for heroics/getting ilvl 329 --
2. So you want to do heroics hmm? well first off you need to decide what role you want to play in a heroic, once you have that sorted, you want to focus on gearing up as that desired role. Now you have to focus on 329 ilvl gear, if you already have it proceed onto article "I just got ilvl 329, how can i be the best assest to my group as possible?". The best way of getting to ilvl 329 is to get items from normal instances and reputation factions. A good way to do this is simply look into the forums of mmo-champion and then find gear that comes from normal dungeons/factions that will help your role in a heroic, or use wowhead or use the addon atlasloot. - Atlas loot described under "addons"

-- I just got ilvl 329, how can i be the best assest to my group as possible? --
First of all, heroics arent the same as wotlk heroics where a tank can pull a pack of mobs and come out at full health. Cataclysm has made it heroics more challenging and in a way more fun then just running over bosses with a streamroller with full mana. the best possible advice i can give to prepare for heroics is to know if you class has any "cc" abilities and to know your rotation/ order of abilities/spells. once this is achieved you may need to browse mmo-champion in order to get some knowledge of the heroics before you can go in, some boss fights have mechanics where you just need to know them or else you will die in a fight.

A great example of this is the last boss in Vortex Pinnacle. He will make a triangle ring of lightning, once someone has dispelled you from your chains you can move into the triangle ring of lightning and not be killed by the lightning "aoe". If you are reading this and do this, i speak on the behalf of the wow community to say "thank you", you have just given 5 minute of your time that would otherwise be spent dieing, running back to the instance, going back into the instance and then doing the same bossfight again. note, if you die to a boss fight and have done something wrong dont worry, some fights need to be played to understand. Oh and also, importantly you get "JP" from killing bosses and completing heroics, you can spend them at your local vendor in major cities.

-- I'm a dps and the queue says 1 hour, these heroics do not sound like fun -.- --

The "LFG" matchmaking system has a lot of dps even though 3 dps spots are met to create a heroic, this is because of every class being able to be a dps and only 4 to be a healer and 4 to be a tank. Dont worry, you will get in eventually, while you are waiting in queue, its not a game of waiting for that queue to pop, but an oportunity to things that you also need to do while "waiting" such as "professions" "downloading addons" " playing the AH" " questing/dailies" " achievements" and "minigames".

-- How do i deal with all of these impatient people that keep leaving after we wipe on bosses? --
You group may have left and you're probably thinking "aww shucks im all alone and spent, HOW LONG? in the queue wondering what you have done to deserve this or what to do now. Blizzard is cool enough to allow you to queue for the same dungeon your in by finding members and getting a whole new group within seconds, or minutes. Groups that are incomplete will be the first thing tanks healers and dps will be transfered to rather than a fresh heroic. If it takes a few minutes for your newfound group comes, you can teleport out of dungeon and do some of the "waiting" suggestions mentioned above while you wait, you'll not feel soo impatient and frustraighted and you might get a better group if your group could not down the boss or npcs you just "wiped" on.
If you really hate the instance, ofcourse you can leave it alltogether and find another heroic. some heroics are harder than others including bosses.

-- I just got kicked, wow doesnt seem fun anymore, (Interlude into other possible outlets) --
Soo you just got kicked, you are either upset or frustraighted, no worries, there are other elements to the game if you do not like doing heroics every time you are on wow, "waiting" is one of them but the other big thing players at 85 love about wow is PvP

-- 3: PvP Battle grounds/Rated BGs/Arena/wargames --

"PvP" is simply killing players of the other faction that are not scripted or have to rely on other team mates to HEAL or TANK to achieve winning in "bgs" or arena. Note:Healers are somewhat required for arena more info on that later. Like with heroics, battleground requires gear, however the gear you want is not obtained from from dungeons or heroics, its obtained by the currency "honour" to get honour you have to do battlegrounds aswell as crafted gear that has "resil" on it. Battlegrounds consist of 10- 40 people depending on the game mode. The bgs have certain things you need to achieve in order to win, for example "wsg" you need to capture the flag 3 times or let the timer run out when your team has more flags than the other team or has the same amount of flag "caps" but was the most recent team to "cap" the flag.

Rated BGs, just like normal bgs these bgs are different, the consist of a "rating" where you need to already have a group in order to enter a battleground. You will be competing against orgasnised teams. if you win you get a higher "rating". Your rating starts at 0 and will progressively get more if you win rated bgs, and will go down if you lose. Rated bgs do not award honor, the award Conquest points which you can buy better gear with than honour.

Arena is much like bgs except the groups are smaller and the map styles are confined into smaller areas and only need 2/3/5 members to create an arena team. Arena teams are like the raids of heroics, they require quick thinking aswell as a planned way of taking your other team out as fast as possible without any casualties. Again, good arena team mate set ups such as specs that classes need and what class set up can be found on these forums aswell.

Wargames are bgs that are not rated and are matches that can be made by having a group and challenging other people in your guild, friends, enemies other guilds into grudge matches or for fun times.

--4: I'm bored at PvP/PvE and want to relax, may be i should play another game? (Minigames/interesting quests etc) --
There are some minigames in wow that you can do while you are bored and just want to have some fun!
In Hillsbrad near the Dalaran Crater there is a quest by a goblin named Brazie The Botanist which will give a very fum quest chain that lets do you a WoW version of Plants vs Zombies, you kill zombies and protect the lawnmowers are they are your only line of defense, once they are gone, the zombies will climb through your windows and eat your brains while they run and tell that!

An interesting quest in felwood can give you a rainbow trinket that shoots intense double rainbows and fears imps that is from last part of the quest chain called Open Their Eyes, many people are aware of since it was released to mmo-champions front page about a week ago and more info can be found on that post.

another is a horde quest only which is started along a quest chain from Kalec in the bilgewater harbour, he sends you on a quest to help a murloc out retrieveing items and then ultimately sends you to the quest giver that is focused on archmage vargoth. Once you get up to the part of the quest chain where you have to go through the trials of frost, fire and ice they are minigames while you are doing the quests and can be done heaps of times after you have completed it.

-- 5: Guilds --
There are a variety of guilds that do various thing in WoW. Choosing the guild for you or simply reading this guide to know what other guilds do and what type of guilds are out there.
There is Raiding guilds, which focused on the current progression available. Hardcore raiding guilds, which are guilds that dont stop untill they drop such as the guilds that have been recently posted on the news feed. casual guilds which do some pvp and some raiding and somewhat focus on gearing up but arent focused on killing every single boss in a raid, and casually pvp in bgs.
and ofcourse PvP guilds which are guilds that focus mainly on core PvP and aim for high ranks in rated BGS/Arena. Almost forget, there is also role playing guilds for the skilled people who have use their plate boots and pointy wizards hat to tell stories over campfires, they generally consist in places such as goldshire in elwynn forest.

Oh and leveling guilds, guildw which focus on players 1-85 that help eachother out doing dungeons and pvp and have alot of people that are new to the game, these guilds are good for new players.Choosing the guild for you depends on what you like doing, the explains the different guilds and what they do and how they operate. Some guilds do require you apply if they are raiding guilds or pvp guilds as they need to see your history in wow, raidwise and to see how much knowledge you know about the game.


-- 6: Raids-- Raids are composed of 10 or 25 players (or 40 if you are keen on doing an opposite faction raid on cities etc.) which go into raid instances, kill bosses for loot which give their character better and different looks per patch/raid content that is available. Both have lock for each raid, for example if you were to raid Icecrown Citidal, if you kill every boss on 10man mode, you cannot on 25 however you can convert your raid IDS to let other players join your raid and continue on their raid, for example you could be in ulduar and just need to kill yogg-saron on 25 and most of your raid leaves,you can make a 10man raid for ulduar and use people that were in your 25 to continue on in 25, however if you kill any additional bosses in 10, it also affects the 25man mode.

-- 7:What are Alts/how many can i have and is it better than having 1 character that you spend most of your time on --

"Alts" are generally characters that you have that can be some what underplayed than your current "toon". you can have up to 50 characters on an account, 10 on the same server. Having alts doesnt make you a nerd or "no life" just simply means that you like to have a variety of characters at your disposal ready to play. there is no one "best" class however in leveling terms, death knights are already lvl 55 and you gain 3 quick levels in the starting zone. Generally having alts is a good thing for having more space to put your BoE equipment if you cannot hold it in your bank on your main character that you play.

-- 8: WoW Lingo --
This guide will explain most of the lingo you will come across in wow.
cc= Crowd Controll, meaning using certain abilities such as sheeping, sapping and entangling roots. Note: Sheep is Moon, it has been written, i doubt a blue would lie to me
aoe= Area of effect meaning spells that target more than 1 mob/npc
mob= npc
npc= non player character, meaning monsters
PvP= Player Vs Player
PvE= Player Vs Environment, (Non player specific gameplay *raids*)
LoS= Line of Site, be in range of a target and not behind walls or far away
Pull= Agro the mob
Agro= Engage, or have threat
WTS= Want To Sell
WTB= Want To Buy
WTT= Want To Trade
OP= Over Priced/Powered/ Original Poster
RH= Random Heroic
BWD= Black Wing Descent
TB= Thunderbluff/Tol Barad
SW= Stormwind
IF= Iron Forge
UC= Under City
Troll=Flamer, a person who wants to make people very mad and feel good about themselves.
LFG=Looking For Group
Bgs=Battle Ground
JP= Justice Points
UI= User Interface
LFW=Looking For Work
BoE= Bind On Equip which means its not soulbound to you can can be placed on the AH or sold to other people
BoP= Bind on pickup, these items are obtained normally from bosses or quest loot that you can only vendor or wear.
Dots= Damage Over Time Spells
Hots= Heal Over Time Spells
CDS= Cool Downs.
GCDS= Global Cool Downs.
Ek= Eastern Kingdoms, not many people use this term, but i have in this guide to shorten how many times i have used it.
lvl=level
Thats about all i can think about right now..

-- 9: People are asking me "umadbro" slander in trade and saying obsecure and annoying things --
Avoid these people are all costs, they playing wow to ruin your gameplay and modify your experiences into negative views, they are called trolls.


-- 10: Main Professions/Gathering professions --
Professions are skills that you can learn from trainers in capital cities, they allow you to craft items that can be gear or useful in other ways such as making gems and enchants. Professions are good to have, they make you gold and also give you benefits such as allowing you more stats on your should enchant for inscription. Gathering professions are main professions however they level by gathering items mining=mining ore deposites etc.

--11: Sub professions Do i need them? --

They are not needed however you can get some very cool and unique items, for example archaeology, you can craft cosmetic items that will give you a noncombat buff.
Cooking allows you to cook food that can give you combat buffs
Fishing, allows you to fish up fish and helps towards leveling cooking.

These professions are more "down time" professions, they arent easy to level up, they do take a while to level to 525.

-- 12: What are addons and how can they benefit me --

Addons are files that when loaded with wow, apply a certain difference to your UI and can benefit you in different ways

the best way to explain this is to show you a screenshot

<img src="http://i.imgur.com/5Hm5v.jpg" alt="" title="Hosted by imgur.com" />

As you can see the format of my screen does not have the blizzard UI there action bars changes, and buff placement changes.
Addons can do more than these two things, they can change your map size, change your party display pictures, monitor threat aswell as functions that bind spells your your keyboard and mouse simpler.

Curse has a database full of these wonderful things that make wow prettier and much easier depending on what addons you download and how you use them.

-- 13: I want cool things like mounts pets and achievements how do i...--
Wowhead is a good website that can show you where to get good pets/mounts etc aswell as how to obtain achievements.

Mini Pets: Mini pets are companions that are cosmetic and are non combat pets that follow you around and can sometimes do special things. Most are BoE and can come from vendors and the Auction House. Others are rare and can require achievements to obtain.
Mounts are normally from reputation vendors, but some can come from killing raid bosses and obtaining achievements
Achievements.

-- 14: Achievements --

Achievements are player earned feats that require some skill or way to obtain them via a variety of different ways and can occasionally award things such as pets, mounts, tabards and much more. Achievement points do not go towards anything, except for the achievement "over 9000" which is to obtain 9000 achievement points =P

-- 15: How To Use the Auction house --
The Auction House is a place where you can put items up for sale, just like in real life. except the items you put up will always be unlimited as wows surpluce of ores and herbs are 100% renewable but still considered "rare" enough to be bought for more than a mere gold, as it too is unlimited. The only items you can put up on the AH is "BoE" but not "BoP" items, aswell as white flavoured text items. Greys can also go up but greys generally have no use at all.

16: Macros

Macros can be found under the command /m and allow you to make macros which you can use to sticky anything you want to say or do over and over again (such as typing or spells) such as using it in trade to allow people to view your professions.


1:-- Seasoned WoW players section--
This is guide for people who have been playing the game for a while now, whether it be years or months.


--2: Heroics are harder than they use to be and i hate pugging with bad players--

Cataclysm heroics are indeed much more challenging than wrath heroics. This is because you cannot simply get ilvl 245 gear and go into dungeons which are attuned for players below ilvl 200 who want to achieve fully ilvl 200 gear. Most of mobs in the new heroics have to be cc'd as they come in big packs and will make your tank die because the healer cannot outheal all of the damage being taken. Not all players are bad, some are just not as good or experienced as you, or attuned to your level of understanding of the game. Yes i will agree there are some very bad players that should not step foot in heroics however its their game too, you cannot controll this. Vote to kick feature does allow some freedom but abusing it can lead to people blacklisting you on the forums letting the community see what you do and make it so they watch out for the next time they are in your group. Some heroics are indeed hard, Stonecore especially but the heroics are defeatable, blizzard has attuned them to be killable by players from different aspects of the game. The real key to having a successful run is to allow your ranged/healers to mana up pulling mobs/bosses, cc adds as much as possible, cc around corners if there are spellcasters put hots up on people that are 75% health or a tad bit lower if you are busy healing the main tank, pop CDS if you notice your group low on health if you are the tank, and ofcourse be "raid aware" and avoid things under your feet such as defile and fire. And make sure you know the boss fights/ mechanisms of the instance. This will allow for a very happy heroic run.


:3: How To level archaeology to the point where it optimizes your character :
This guide starts off telling you how to level (imo) and then ways to get the items you want out of archaeology

From level 1, you will notice digsites on your map, you will also have an abilitiy in your professions tab under archaeology to be able to "survey" if you go to the digsites on your map (making sure they are enabled) you will be able to survey 3 fragment (digs) per digsite. Once this is accomplished you will end up with around 6 Fragments at this level. you will notice that you are working on a project, do not craft the item untill you are level 100, the reason behind this is you can level to 100 by picking up fragment digs and the only way to level from 100-525 is by making artifacts.

If you are aiming for an item, say the epic trinket from night elfs, it will not be available untill you have 450+ archaeology. The way you make projects is simple:
Kalimdor and Eastern kindoms make low selling greys and some rares untill level 449. 450+ it allows you to keep making the rares, but not the original low selling greys you made before 450 (unless they have 2 sockets and go towards an archaeology achievement, Scepters for example). Rares can only be made once. Boas are obtainable in EK and Kalimdor like so, lvl 85 nelf and dwarf items are only craftable once you have 450. lvl 60 bind on account items are still available to make but can be made before 450.
at lvl 300 you can choose to go to outland OR you can stay in EK or Kalimdor, outlands is prefered since its the only place other than northrend that can make items with 2 sockets for easy leveling Oh, and sockets can be filled by having the appropriate race keystone and filling it. Keystones are obtained rarely while digging fragments and allow act as 12 fragments and can only be socketed into artifacts that you are working on IF they allow sockets. Rares artifacts allow around 3-4 keystones while greys 1-2. 375-450 you can now go to digsites in northrend. 450+ you can start getting digsites from all the cataclysm zones except deepholme and the goblin and worgen starting areas. This is when lvl more rares can be unlocked. 525 is the magic number where you can start finding lvl 85 boa epics some can come from nelf, troll and dwarf in EK and Kalimdor, aswell as tolvir. There is 4 digsites per contenient and each time you dig up 3 digs from a digsite it will change to another location on your continent.


Now that you have an understanding on archaeology its time to set a plan on what items you want from archaeology. If you want to find out what comes where, wowhead can help you find what you want out of archaeology. If you want something like the night elf trinket, you'd best be leveling in kalimdor untill 525 unless you have the gold to buy keystones off the AH. Keystones IMO get harder to get as you level because more items require more sockets and use your keystones up, if you want to power level archaeology my best bet is leveling in either EK or kalimdor, then staying in outlands untill 450 if you have the gold to buy the keystones, if not stay in either EK or Kalimdor and gather heaps of keystones when you make items that require 0 or 1 keystones to make. If you are really keen on leveling to 525 stay in outland, again my opinion but the distances seem to be close to gether as outlands is much smaller than either EK or Kalimdor thus gathering fragments is much easier.

I chose not to include northrend as it for me it was the most annoying place to level, outlands was quicker to get around had the same amount of sockets per item made and kalimdor/EK had lvl 85 boas that you could level up and get heaps of keystones and save them along the way. However you can level in northrend, no one is stopping you, the rares there that arent lvl 70 boas are pretty decent such as the yogg saron box, trying to open it is hard. lvl 85 epics will not be easy to obtain as they are rare-er.. to obtain than the blues. Some people i know have been farming at lvl 525 them for a few days now and still havent got their desired item.
Onto the next topic!

--4: Should i server transfer where there are better guilds/Pugs?--
I see people post this a lot, if you are server transfering, you are transfering to a server where you do not know anyone, nor do they know you, server transfering is normally used to get into a better guild that you cannot otherwise find on your server. Pugs will always be pugs, saying there is no reason to since heaps of bgs and lfg servers have been conbined to make a faster queue experience. Other than that, if you really want to leave because your server is deadbeat or you arent in the right timezone, its always an option however if you're think that the best guilds are on high popped/ locked realms you.. are telling a half truth. While some guilds are good on high pop realms, it doesnt mean every guild is, most realms such as the first 15 servers that were made, possibly. If not then its probably a fanboi server which in the case is full of bad people or people who are from backgrounds over other realms seeking better guilds and getting mixed up with bads, pirates, and old school players, Pirates also server transfer once they take loot that they dont need or loot that they "stole" in order to escape the rage people will throw at them. Other than that most high pops are okay to play on.

-- 5: Trade Chat, what it is and what its used for --
Trade chat is used for trading, well it was in the past. Now days its used for communicating for looking for pugs or guild recruitment, people still advertise items on trade however trade can sometimes let the trolls out, someone feeds them and then trade goes into a frenzy of annoying flamers. Becareful what you post, dont add to conversations, personal convos shouldnt be used on that channel especially when there are people who play this game in order to ruin the amazing channel that is used for everything else. Dont spam or use caps to get your point across, it doesnt get your point across at all and players begin to pick up on these people and avoid them.

-- 6: what addons do i need for arena/raiding /how do i find out my rotation for raiding/gear/chants/gemming/ --
Addons such as threat meters (omen for example) are always good, DBM especially, it screams a sound in big blue letters in the event you need to move out of fire or get prepared for a bone storm. Action bar Uis are good, they can help you keybind your actions and allow you to make the bars smaller or bigger or rerange them somewhere else on your screen. a Cast bar addon such as quartz is good. Any party portraight addon is good, for example SFU,Xperl. Guild addons such as epgp lootmaster are always good if your guild is unsure how to loot items to players who need a bigger upgrade. Proximo is a good addon for arena.
Im not going into discussion but people should be aware that this addon does make people in your party or raid or even guild or people around you lag as it sends information back and forth to see their gear and trying to figure out their points. This addon ofcourse is gearscore. i do not recommend this addon for anyone, unless you are trying to get a pug, this addon should only be used as finding a group for a raid or dungeon, once you have turn it off so you can not make people latency go up.

How to find out your rotation etc.
Mmo-champion again as i stated in how to gear up heroics has wonderful guides provided by moderators that give you some idea or the full knowledge that you need for your class, its brilliant its very useful and if you have never read these sticked posts, i recommend that you do read them. they can tell you everything you need to know about your class, aswell as give links to spreadsheets if you are a class that has trouble identifying which peice of gear or gem is better to put in your sockets, and ofcourse enchants.

-- 7: I need gold for various things (includes whether you have alts or not, professions etc) --

So you need gold? instead of buying it which is against the terms of agreement for wow or getting it off people by dancing untop of mailboxes as a female, you can get it by the following:
Crafting items in your professions that people will need. Cataclysm allows everyone to make up some form of gold off their professsions if they can get their mats by the AH or simple by farming the items themselves or using their gathering professions. Another way to make gold is by questing, especially in outlands and northrend, going for loremaster in cataclysm gives around 5k+ and its around 100 quests per zone, 10-20g per quest, same with northrend. Dailies also give out money and items/ reputation that can help you get exalted/ cooking mats if you are doing the cooking dailies etc. Other than that, doing the ocassional heroic daily gives, 80g per run? not to mention the gold you get off bosses and d/e'd / greeded loot. You can sell them on the auction house and vendor the bops.

-- 8: Guilds that require you to app on their website, is it really worth it --
Guilds that would like you to app allows them to see if you are worthy of joining their ranks of their guild, you simply cant rock up and ask for an invite nor tell them your ilvl of your gear, you need to tell them all about your wow character and how good of a player you are and how good you are at your role at what you will be doing in that guild. Most guilds will have premade templates in which they want you to fill out in their way, a good application takes time, not 5minutes, this may take hours or maybe days, depending on what type of guild you are apping to and what they are expecting.

-- The Shattering, the differences between the previous expansion and this, (includes guides to havent played in months or years that dont get enough info from patch notes) --

-- 1. Deathwing, who is this guy and what has he done with my azeroth, barrens chat is gone (hurray) but still. --

Basically the whole of classic wow landscape has changed and you are able to fly etc, 2 new bgs are out aswell as rated bgs and wargames. For raiding currently 3 + Tol Barad
which you can do one 10 or 25, they both have the same loot and lock out but 25 gives more valor points, not by much however.

Deathwing a corrupted black dragon who old gods drove him insane by whispers etc, he was the earthwarder the leader of the black dragonflight and has finally escaped his cage in deepholme and destroying azeroth and commanding his army of twilight annoyances to ressurect old gods to destroy wage war against the titans that improsined the old gods such as your favourite titan yoggy in ulduar.

--2. Portals have been removed from shat and dal, where do i place my hearth once reaching 85--

If you are horde, the ideal location is orgrimmar, everyones there so you can buy and trade there aswell as go to another 3 bank and AH locations if the one besdies grommash hold is packed with players that ruin your fps. SW or IF for alliance still, whichever you prefer. ( oh you can tottally tell im a horde, but i have played alliance longer)

3. Summoning stones are still around, and are included in the cataclysm, does this mean i should or should not use the LFG system?

Use the LFG even if you have a premade group or pugging, the summoning stones are still useful espcially when people havent discovered the entrances for while levelin from 80-85.

-- Guide on if you are to respond on this guide and how to respond --
1. Do not troll or flame or give horrible negative feedback or i will find a mod, and well.. you know what happens =)
2. Positive feed back is good yeah, especially construcitve critisism, this is one of my first real threads/guides i have made.

-- A guide on why i was inspired to make this full fledged guide consisiting of guides with guides... guides, and yeah =) --
Cataclysm is new for everyone, i wanted to share some of my opions/experiences with the general wow coummincate, not only to push them in a positive direction but help them play the game they the way they want to play it and how they can play it in the designed way that they bought wow for. I also have a lot of time on my hands and i made this post while i wasent busy. All up its taken me 6 hours to write and 2 hours to edit. I believe that its a good thing for boub to allow people to make guides for the wow community, especially with new content and players that are joining rapidly. I want to thank boub for making me feel as though i need to make this post, if it wasent for the front page post about giving away cosmetic items, i probably might not have thought about writting this guide in order to help people who are need a guide, in one of these guides to help them do what the want to do in wow now that the "shattering" has changed the game in a different perspective. I hope people will be able to see this guide, and not be a flame fest because players who read some of the content will be like "oh i didnt know that" or "wow, i can make THAT much gold from doing quests? damn!"

Again Thank You and i hope you moderators out there like my post, and if it doesnt get picked, its ok, but if this guide was posted somewhere say a section for players can read through in the forums, it would be very nice to know that they may gain some knowledge or insight into this game.