World of Warcraft (often referred to as WoW) is a MMORPG. created and developed by Blizzard Entertainment. It is the fourth released game, set in the fantasy Warcraft universe, which was given to us in 1994 with Warcraft: Orcs and Humans. World of Warcraft takes place 4 years after the events that happened in Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne. The game has over 11 million players worldwide. There are two expansions out already (The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King) and a third one has been announced (Cataclysm) There is no worry of getting bored, because Blizzard is constantly adding new patches, with new things for players to mess around with, to keep them occupied until the next expansion is released.

The game is set up with two different factions, Alliance and the Horde. The races on the alliance side are Humans, Night Elves, Dwarves, Gnomes, Draenei. The races for the Horde are Orcs, Trolls, Undead, Blood Elves, and Tauren. Certain races can be certain classes, but any race can have any profession. Classes are what determine the type of character you will be. You can be a Death Knight (wielder of death, and you must have a character of lvl 55 to make one) a Druid (you can transform into different animals and beings), Hunter (you use a bow and arrow and fight along an animal companion), Mage (wielder of the elements), Paladins (Guardians and Holy Warriors), Priest (used primarly for healing, but can deal damage by using shadow magic), Rogues (the stealthy assassin, sneaking around is your primary weapon), Shaman (uses totem's to put up defensive and regenerative spells), Warlocks (masters of shadow, flame, and demon powers), Warrior (your everyday, run of the mill fighter).

The last thing that you need to know about are professions. There are two types of professions, primary and secondary. You can only have two primary professions, but you can have all the secondary ones (there is only 3 anyways). The Primary Professions are Alchemy (the ability to make potions by mixing herbs together), Blacksmithing (user bars of metal that you get from mining to create armor and weapons), Enchanting (add bonus upgrades to weapons and armor by using magical essences), Engineering (use bars you get from mining to make guns and scopes and just wacky items), Herbalism (collecting flowers to either sell or to use with Alchemy to make potions), Leatherworking (when combined with Skinning, you can make leather armor and upgrades for armor in general), Mining (just as it sounds, you mine for ore, which you can then smelt into bars so that armor, weapons can be made), Skinning (the ability to skin the hide off of animals, used to make leather and mail armor) Tailoring (the ability to use cloth to make cloth armor, and to make big bags to carry more items), Jewelcrafting (use the jewels that you can sometimes find to make trinkets, necklaces, and rings), and Inscription (enhances spells and abilities). The Secondary Professions are Cooking (use a fire to use the meat that you find to heal you when you are low on health), Fishing (use a fishing pole to catch fish, to use in Cooking), and First Aid (use the various cloth that you find to create bandages for healing).

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