The Importance of Community

I've been quiet the last few days, mainly as I've finally worked out how to enjoy my rogue (she's level 74 and still going!) but also because I've been trying to catch up on my blog reading (something I'm still attempting to do!)

As usual my inspiration has come from something written by The Godmother - she touched back on the topic of patch notes that she wrote about back in August, and how it is assumed that a lot of the information is just something people should know.

I remember when I first started playing the game, I had no idea what to do. I spent a lot of time lost in and around Auberdine, just killing things as I had no idea where I had to go to finish the quests I had picked up. I still have memories of my friend starting a new character and coming to help me, leading me up and down the beach to the dead animal corpses that gave me a quest, that I had no idea even existed.

Those of us that have been playing for a long time seem to forget how steep, and long, the learning curve was for us.

I remember being really happy when someone told me about Quest Helper (my very first add-on!), and then someone else told me about Allakazam, and Thott bott!

On my own, I had no idea that these things existed, it took friends and people in the community to tell me they were there.

Granted, these are (were) fan based sites and as such not something that Blizzard created, so there shouldn't necessarily be in game links to the current ones (Wowhead, Wowpedia etc), but I do like the idea of patch notes, and current location of gear vendors etc being on the notice boards in game.

I'm sure we have all tutted and rolled our eyes when someone has asked what seems like an obvious question in guild chat or in an instance, and wondered why they don't just look it up themselves. Maybe we should all just stop assuming that people know where to look :)

As a Community, the WoW is a large and multi-faceted one, with people of all ages, backgrounds and skill level. Those of us who have been around a little longer should have some more patience with those just starting on the curve, and remember that we were once WoW-noobs too ^^