I love MMO's..played them for years now..I've played'm all..from UO all the way to modern mmo's....all except this one.  I'm finally ready to give it an honest try.  But I would imagine if I wanted to do everything..ie. Instances and dungeons in Azeroth before moving on to the other expansion packs: BC and WoTLK, that I would be stumped to find someone progressing and gearing this way, yeah?

From what I've read, if you play now its pretty much -quest until 80- and THEN group and raid..which to me seems like it would make you very ill prepared for group/raid.

So it is too late for newcomers to progress and gear up now?  And when I mean gear up, I'm talking about all the COOL stuff lol..not all the boring looking 'greens'.  I'm a fan of exaggerated armor design..but if its too late, I will wait for Aion.           

For sure I'd encourage playing Aion, that's where I'm going to myself when it launches. BUT...if your main concern is not being able to get geared, rest-assured, if you just put in the time you can get geared pretty quickly. When you hit 80 just pug some easy heroics, try following a blog for getting yourself geared off instance drops. Then just find a guild and they will bring you raiding and gear you up. There are plenty of guilds who will help you out.

sweet..so its not too late..the new pack coming next year looks bang'n.

"Too late" is a question on what you expect.

For many reasons you will have problems finding people to get into low level dungeons. Yes, if you wait long enough or are just lucky (and especially know how to search) you might find some, but often you will not, especially for larger dungeons.

So, I'd consider WoW to be a single-player game as long as you are not 80. If you are ok with that, take your time to read through the quest descriptions and check out the stories around them, level your secondary professions and fish some here and there and whatnot, you'll probably have lots and lots of fun.

But if you expect lots of group play before 80, or something like that... you'll be disappointed.

  I'd say try the free trial to see if you will like the game. Considering when Aion is coming out, it'd be a shame if you bought the game and played Aion instead, because I doubt you'll have time to do and see everything before then. It's enjoyable and user friendly, and some will say too easy, but that's for each to judge on their own.  Gear is never a problem to get, even at lower lvls, the progression is not slow or painful, it is WoW after all.

  If you are starting fresh, it can be a chore if you want eveything, level cap, epic flying mount, gear. It is very time consuming to get the gold required, get the pugs/guild for gear raiding, etc. Patience is needed and a little tolerance for those elitists that think numbers on gear > than heart.

  Either way, GL and hope you make the right choice for you, since only you can truly discover what that is.

It's never late to start WoW and progress. The game is in constant flow with being user friendly. There are players that rush to 80, but I know a few that wanna take it slow and enjoy what classic and TBC has to offer. Either way once you ding 80, it's pretty simple to get started.

I would go with Aion also.. The problem with MMOs for me is that if you dont hit that first wave of players your going to be by yourself alot. The first year or so it may be ok with MMOs but maybe not even that long.

Warhammer.. first wave of players pvp was crazy and you could lvl to 40.. now its like... after you get to 11 good luck pvping anymore for 2 tiers.

WoW... everyone is end game, it is a single player game till you hit it.. and it takes a good while, and I'm impatiant and cant really deal with it. wait till cataclysm and play with the wave of worgens or goblins if you want to do WoW.

And all mmos ive played its like this if your not in the first wave, grouping is hard to do. And i dont play an MMO to be by myself.

Originally posted by Perfection66

If your looking for a more "updated" game graphically and gameplay wise it's best to wait for Aion.

Look just recently WoW's No.1 guild "Ensidia" have transitioned to Aion...interview

Think I'm gonna reconsider my time in VG and go for Aion too, if that's where some bunch of nerds which some people seem to worship, are going.

and I know I sound shallow..but all I want is some cool armor and weaps that freak'n glow and have cool effects..skulls tongueing each other above each shoulder pad..capes that say 'Up Yours' and enough hp stats to supply a small 3rd world country.  And Im willing to play casually to get to it..as long as I know its there eventually. 

My fear is..ok I'll get to the WotLK stuff and by that time everyone is ready for Cataclysm.."you wanna do what? Ulduar? thats soooo 5 months ago!" lol

Originally posted by greed0104

It's never late to start WoW and progress. The game is in constant flow with being user friendly. There are players that rush to 80, but I know a few that wanna take it slow and enjoy what classic and TBC has to offer. Either way once you ding 80, it's pretty simple to get started.

The game is user friendly but the community in WoW sure isn't. You can't ask a simple question in general chat without 20 people flaming you and calling you lots of colorful names. I tried several different servers with different characters on each, it was the same everywhere.

LOL!

1-80, takes like a month tops.
After that you just go some heroics, then naxx, then ulduar.
Takes like 1 month after you hit 80 and your already in 5/5 T8 dude, its just to easy.

But as everyone said, wait for Aion. Its gonna be the bomb.

Originally posted by Czanrei

 

The game is user friendly but the community in WoW sure isn't. You can't ask a simple question in general chat without 20 people flaming you and calling you lots of colorful names. I tried several different servers with different characters on each, it was the same everywhere.

Finding a helpful guild usually fixes that problem. I see guild spamming "fun leveling guild" looking for people constanly. Even if they are nobodies, they are probably more then willing to help you out.

Originally posted by Czanrei

Originally posted by greed0104

It's never late to start WoW and progress. The game is in constant flow with being user friendly. There are players that rush to 80, but I know a few that wanna take it slow and enjoy what classic and TBC has to offer. Either way once you ding 80, it's pretty simple to get started.

 

The game is user friendly but the community in WoW sure isn't. You can't ask a simple question in general chat without 20 people flaming you and calling you lots of colorful names. I tried several different servers with different characters on each, it was the same everywhere.

see thats another reason I waited so long..the game has been out for what? 3-4 years..yeah I was hoping some of that crowds' sacks dropped enough and matured a little bit..that way I'm not playing with Ed, Edd, and Eddie.

Ya just wait for Aion, hitting the first wave of people is a blast. And Aion has sick nasty armor and weapons, go to the aion armory and look at some of the gear. :3

You can't fully blame the community, some of there instincts are to be dicks. If blizzard actually moderated anything there would be no problem.

Blizzard for some reason has a complete hands-off approach to moderating in-game and on their forums. I had some pretty ugly encounters with certain players that more than a few were having problems with and when it was reported the case was closed without even being looked into.

 WOW has an ignore feature that works quite well. You can turn off trade chat and general unless you want to use it and it has a language filter.  If you get in a good guild and there are lots then you dont even need to use general or trade if you don't want at all.

 You will have time to level up and  gear up and smell the roses before the xpac comes out. If Aion has players with great numbers then it too will have it's share of  stupid ignorant kiddies. WOW does have the most but thats because well it has the most of everything.

 Some of the people that are anti WOW yet post on the WOW forums are worse than the internet kiddies in WOW anyway.

I'd also wait for Aion.  It's less than a month away and it really is a blast to go in with the first wave of players in a game.  I too have tried to (re)start wow on and off after the last few expansions... I find vanilla wow mind numbing... the place was so busy  when I first played now it's.. meh.  It doesn't take long to get through though I doubt you'll be having a whole lot of fun till then.  People who've been playing for years are generally set and arn't really looking for any new friends.  If you really want to try WoW I'd wait till the new expansion a year or so off.  You'll get a lot more under 60s after that and it should be a whole lot more enjoyable.

 WoW is not too hard to get into progression...but also note that "serious" progression barely exists anymore :/  Raid content is easy to clear and expectations of yourself are truly determine if its "too late" or not (as stated before).  Personally I would not go to Aion unless you enjoy PVP > PVE...but thats a personal preference.

I say pickup some fall non-MMOs like dragon age, borderlands, etc...and then jump into old republic, ffxiv or the wow expansion next year :)

3.3 will bring cross server LFG, so finding peeps to do low level deungons should be a breeze, the world however will feel quite empy because 95% of a servers pop are in northrend.

TBH Id go play some AION or another game and wait for the cataclsym, the expansion will bring max level toons back to azeroth and the revamp of 1-60 will make many re-roll so you'll have loads of peeps to group with along the way.  And loads of pimped out maxlevel toons to drool over.

Originally posted by SeriphinX

I love MMO's..played them for years now..I've played'm all..from UO all the way to modern mmo's....all except this one.  I'm finally ready to give it an honest try.  But I would imagine if I wanted to do everything..ie. Instances and dungeons in Azeroth before moving on to the other expansion packs: BC and WoTLK, that I would be stumped to find someone progressing and gearing this way, yeah?

From what I've read, if you play now its pretty much -quest until 80- and THEN group and raid..which to me seems like it would make you very ill prepared for group/raid.

So it is too late for newcomers to progress and gear up now?  And when I mean gear up, I'm talking about all the COOL stuff lol..not all the boring looking 'greens'.  I'm a fan of exaggerated armor design..but if its too late, I will wait for Aion.           

The unique thing about wow is that just about anyone can start it and still do well once you hit max level.

What you heard is correct, only because the vast majority of players are already 80. You might be able to find the odd new player or someone playing his alt to do dungeons with, but you must understand that it's very unlikely you will find any groups for dungeons (dire maul ring a bell?).

I will say right now that if you want to be decked out in complete dungeon blues lvling from 1-60, you're better off buying blue gear off the AH because people will rarely do those low lvl instances, or unless you're somehow lucky and find a very bored high lvled person to run you through these dungeons but that is also very unlikely.

Doing dungeons from 60-70 however starts to pick-up and people will run those a bit more (near the low 60's however).

And of course, with WOTLK 70-80 instances will be plentiful.

Honestly, you'd be surprised how many people want to do low level dungeons. People are always leveling alts, and there's a lot of gear that can only be obtained from certain dungeons that, say, a twink might want. Certain dungeons are tough, but there's a lot that people do regularly like Deadmines, Wailing Caverns, Razorfen Kraul/Downs, and Zul'Farrak. You just have to be on at the right times.

It's kind of like in another game I play, FFXI, in that people tend to level in waves.  You just have to catch one at the right time.

Originally posted by coffee

3.3 will bring cross server LFG, so finding peeps to do low level deungons should be a breeze, the world however will feel quite empy because 95% of a servers pop are in northrend.

TBH Id go play some AION or another game and wait for the cataclsym, the expansion will bring max level toons back to azeroth and the revamp of 1-60 will make many re-roll so you'll have loads of peeps to group with along the way.  And loads of pimped out maxlevel toons to drool over.

Totally 

This is how it may look for a new wow players.

You will solo most of the time to level 80. As a newly fresh 80 you will then try to upgrade your toon. After awhile you want to do some raid. And thats the dead end. You will have to beable to heal and do damge in certian numbers that your gear wond allow and you will have to show the "leader" what kind of achivements you have. And becuse you dont have the gear nor the achivements it will be a freaking moment 22.

Yeah that's a real flaw, partly because of game design, partly because no-one wants to waste 2 hours carrying a 'noob' through an instance. So achievements have become a gate, which I don't think was there intended purpose. If there was another way to prove to another player that despite having slightly less of a certain stat and you dont have that achievement, but you know the fight then that would be a wanted feature.

As for is it too late, never. depending on how much money you got. If money is not a problem, then buy 2 accounts, RAF them, go to a PvE server, level both toons, transfer to realm of your choice as you can now go PvE->PvP/any. did you also know you can now even pay blizzard to change your faction/race/sex too?

Personally I can't break through the boredom threshold of levelling another toon from 1-80 even with heirloom items.