Hi,
I am returning to WoW after 7 years. I have no idea where to begin. Can anyone provide advice? I do not know ANYTHING.
Cav
A lot of things have been added to account-wide collections. (It looks like you played in MoP, so it’s much like what they did with the battle pets and mounts.) So, it’s a good idea to log onto all your characters to learn all the stuff. For transmog specifically, it can take the server a bit of time to process everything the first time, so hang out on each character for a couple minutes. You can open up the collections tab from the horse icon on the micro bar and browse through the various tabs.
Professions are now divided by expansion, and you can skill each individually. (So, you don’t have to level Vanilla Engineering to level Shadowlands Engineering, you can just jump right in.) It’s a bit like how the different cooking ways in Pandaria worked.
Many servers have been connected. (For example Aerie Peak is connected to Ulduar.) Connected realms function effectively like one realm (think of the server as the last name.) They share an AH and you can trade freely with members of any connected realms and you can join guilds from these realms. This is different from the CRZ you’d have experienced in MoP (which is still in effect) as that only allows limited player interaction. (No guilds or trading most stuff.)
Chromie Time (Timewalking Campaigns) allow players to use any expansion to level up to 50 to start Shadowlands. The official requirement to unlock it is to get a character to 50, but it seems that players that had characters at previous expansion caps when Shadowlands went live also have it unlocked, so you might already have access.
She’s in Stormwind and Orgrimmar marked by an hourglass icon on the main map if it’s unlocked. She’s near the Embassies, but that won’t help someone who didn’t play in Legion or later. For Horde, it’s in the goblin part of the city and for Alliance it’s strait out the exit to the area with the Cataclysm portals.
Turning Chromie Time on for any expansion will turn on scaling for all expansions to 50. Which expansion you pick determines which dungeons you see in the dungeon finder and which breadcrumb quest she gives you. (You can still start expansions the old fashioned way by hitting up the Hero’s Call/Warchief’s Command boards.)
Without Chromie Time, expansions now will scale up to a cap:
Vanilla, BC, Wrath: 30
Cata, MoP: 35
Warlords: 40
Legion: 45
BfA: 50
So, without Chromie Time, only BfA gets you to 50, but you can eek out enough XP in Legion to get to 48 to start Shadowlands.
As for how to proceed, you can pick up with one of your old characters, turn on Chromie Time if it’s unlocked and level through one of the expansions you haven’t done yet or start a new character. Leveling to 50 is extremely fast these days, so starting from scratch on a character to get your bearings isn’t a terrible idea.
There’s a new starting zone you can choose that’s an instanced tutorial. If you start a character in Exile’s Reach, you’ll have to do the BfA intro up to getting the Welcome to Zandalar/Come Sail Away achievement on your first character before you can go back and turn on Chromie Time. (Later characters that use Exile’s Reach will get an option to opt out of the rest of the tutorial when they get to the main city by choosing the “I know my way around the City” dialog option from the NPC you talk to when you arrive.
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My highest level Alliance toon on AP is in their mid-30’s - Darkbird. I’ll be on him later this week pushing him to 40.
Feel free to contact me at Gzr#1701 if you need help or info.
One other tip to add to Udiza’s great summary: The directory structure for WoW has changed slightly, so the path to the add-on directory is now
C:\Program Files (x86)\World of Warcraft\_retail_\Interface\AddOns
Note the addition of the _retail_. If you decide to try Classic wow, there will also be a _classic_ folder for that version of the game.
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Wowhead.com is the go to site for info about quests, gear, etc. they cover most things in WoW.
Icy-veins.com has good class/spec guides dtat cover the essentials for playin a given spec - talents, rotations, stats, Addons, etc.
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