World of Warcraft (WoW) is a Massively Multiplayer Online Roly Playing Game. It has over 10 million subscribers and has been active for nearly 8 years. Players of the game control a character they have created and get involved with the game by completing quests, dungeons, raids, battlegrounds and many other facets along with other people from across the globe.
A quick description of the most important aspects of game play:
Quests are exactly what they sound like, a task given to you with objectives that need to be fulfilled, often coupled with a storyline. Fulfilling quests earns you XP, gold and sometimes “gear” or items.
Dungeons are isolated instances where (usually) 5 party members group together to progress through said dungeons from start to finish while completing objectives, quests, killing bosses and collecting gear/items.
Raids are much like Dungeons, however they are larger (10 or 25 members), often longer, have better items for reward and are generally harder difficulty. These require a lot more co-ordination and time to be completed successfully but the rewards are much better.
There are 2 factions (Alliance & Horde), multiple classes (Death Knight, Druid, Hunter, Mage, Monk, Paladin, Priest, Rogue, Shaman, Warlock & Warrior) and multiple races (Blood Elf, Draenei, Dwarf, Goblin, Gnome, Human, Orc, Night Elf, Tauren, Troll, Undead, Worgen and Pandaren) to choose from.
Each character plays at least one role within the game: Damaging (DPS), Tanking (Tank) or Healing (Healer or Heals). All classes can do at least one, while some classes can do up to all 3 roles. These roles are officially called specializations, or ‘specs’ for short. For example, you may be asked what spec you are, to which you would reply something to the sound of ‘Resto’ or ‘Holy’, depending on your class(healing examples).
To sum up each role and what they do in World of Warcraft quickly and bluntly in a dungeon or raid situation: DPS hits the enemy (trash or boss), a Tank holds the enemy’s attention(often called holding aggro or having the most threat), while Healers heal those who have been damaged by enemies (Healers must heal Tanks, DPS and other Healers aswell as themselves).
There are generally 2 types of gameplay in the World of Warcraft: Player vs. Environment (PvE) or Player vs. Player (PvP). Player vs. Environment (PvE) is when you’re playing on your own or with a group to accomplish something against computer controlled enemies (NPCs or non-playing characters) such as in Dungeons, Raids, Questing, killing mobs or trash etc. Player vs. Player(PvP) is when you’re playing on your own or in a group against other real-life players, for example in a Battleground.
As a website dedicated to healing, we’re going to focus mostly on this role and how you can improve your healing ability from all aspects of PvE including levelling, running dungeons and raiding. And if we get time, perhaps a bit of PvP advice as well.
Now that you have an idea about what the World of Warcraft actually is, now it’s time to learn all about the Healing side of things, which is what this site is all about. So continue on to: What is Healing?.