WoW Classic tips: 9 pieces of advice for any Horde or Alliance players diving into World of Warcraft Classic

These WoW Classic tips will help out anyone jumping into the recent release of the long-awaited World of Warcraft Classic. Whether you're playing WoW Classic for the first time or you're a Warcraft veteran, it's hard to deny that a lot has changed over the last 15 years but we think these basic WoW Classic tips will help kick start your journey as you step back in time through Azeroth. Of course, you shouldn't expect to hit level 60 in a couple of days but these tips should help you get to grips with the old-school MMO as you (re)acquaint yourself with WoW Classic.

1. Get bags as soon as you can

WoW Classic tips — (Image credit: Blizzard)

If you're lucky, you might see a bag drop as you're questing, but if not then you've got two methods of obtaining some. You can either craft them yourself with the Tailoring profession, or ask in the General or Trade chats to see if there are any tailors that can make them for you – most players will be happy to make them if you have the required mats and may only ask for a small tip, rather than a set fee. Don't get rid of your bags as you upgrade; use them for additional bank space or store them for later. Most of the smaller bags won't become soulbound when you use them so you'll be able to send them to any other characters you might make in the future.

2. Loot everything!

Bag space is at a premium in WoW Classic but so is gold if you want to be able to afford the Riding Skill and a mount at level 40. So it's in your best interest to pick up everything that is dropped by enemies, even if it means visiting a vendor more times than you'd like. Grey items (junk) can be sold immediately without concern but crafting reagents may (or may not) be useful later. It's up to you whether you want to store them in the bank or mail them to another of your characters to free up space – just be aware that mailing stuff does cost a small fee.

3. Learn a profession (or two)

Professions are a great way of making gold or crafting equipment that you can use to make your life easier while you're out and about in Azeroth. It's worth doing a bit of research before you take the plunge though, so you know which are the best professions to learn with your class. As an example, Hunters won't go far wrong by choosing Skinning and Leatherworking as the latter enables you to craft leather and mail gear. Other good pairings are Enchanting and Tailoring (you can disenchant a lot of the gear you make), Alchemy and Herbalism, and Blacksmithing (or Engineering) goes well with Mining.

4. Don't buy all your skills

Every couple of levels, you should visit your class trainer to see which new skills are available to purchase but this doesn't mean you should buy everything as it becomes available. It's worth taking a few minutes to check out specific class guides to see which skills you should prioritise for leveling and pick up the rest later when you should (hopefully) have more gold to play around with.

5. Group up if you can

While the first ten or so levels aren't too punishing, it's certainly worth your while grouping up with other players to make questing that much more manageable. Even non-elite quests can be incredibly painful if you try to do them solo, especially when the enemies are densely packed into an area. Fetch quests can be a bit of a pain if you're in a group as the drop rate is often low for these, but once you factor in how much quicker you'll be killing things in a group, it's worth sticking with your friends or finding a guild.

6. Play with your keybindings

While there's nothing wrong with the default keybindings, if you're used to playing modern Warcraft – or even if you're new to Azeroth entirely – it's worth playing around with your keybindings and switching things up to suit you. I never keyboard turn, so for me, one of the first things I did was move the strafe keys down to 'A' and 'D' which frees up 'Q' and 'E' for skills. Another change I made pretty quickly was switching the binding so that pressing 'B' would open all my bags, rather than just one. Oh, and while it's not technically a keybinding, press 'V', as this will enable enemy nameplates and give you a much better visual of an enemy's health.

7. Consider using addons

You might be shying away from using addons in WoW Classic for the sake of keeping the experience as close to the original as possible but it's worth having a look to see what's available. Obviously it's down to personal preference and you should play the game how you choose but there's no addon that's going to prevent the 50,000 or so deaths (possibly a slight exaggeration) that you'll rack up before hitting max level. So if having the ability to see quest objectives on your map makes you feel better as you're on your ninth corpse run of the day, then I say go for it!

8. Go at your own pace

You'll soon discover that WoW Classic is a completely different experience to modern Warcraft. Where the latter is all about the endgame content and reaching max level as quickly as possible in order to crack on with the current content, WoW Classic has a much slower pace.

The endgame content in Classic is minimal. You have a couple of raids to clear as well as reputation to grind to meet those entry requirements but the bulk of the experience of playing Classic is the levelling, so you might as well take your time and enjoy it.

9. Log out in an inn for extra 'rested' experience

When it's finally time to log out of WoW Classic and do something crazy like go outside, you'll want to make sure you've logged out in a 'rest' area. Anywhere in a capital city works – think Orgrimmar or Stormwind City – or if it's too far to travel, any inn will do. You can tell if you're in a rest area because your portrait next to your health bar will pulse yellow and you'll be able to logout instantly, rather than waiting 20 seconds.

Why bother? When you log out, your character will automatically gain 'rested XP' which increases the experience you gain from killing enemies by 200 percent. If you log out in a rest area, you'll gain rested XP four times faster than if you just log out anywhere so it's worthwhile using your hearthstone or spending a few minutes locating the nearest inn.