I have a double dose of external me-links today. On GameSetWatch my second weekly World of Warcraft column has gone up - this one a sort of pre-newbie guide. It looks at the races and classes in the game with an eye towards trying to explain the *rationale* for playing a character - IE, why you’d want to play a Blood Elf, or what kind of play style the Paladin class supports.

There are so many people playing World of Warcraft today, it’s almost a joke. At game conferences it’s almost become a sort of mini-game: “Who’s the most obscure person in your life playing WoW?” One guy I spoke to at GDC this year pretty much won the game forever by claiming that his mom and her hairstylist had a gripping conversation about questing in the zone of Westfall while a perm set. WoW’s widespread playerbase is a direct result of the game’s accessible gameplay, a topic we discussed in last week’s column.

Despite that highly-regarded accessibility, there are still a number of things you should keep in mind when jumping into World of Warcraft for the first time. While Blizzard’s monolith is much better than other MMOs when it comes to making irreversible decisions, there are still many important choices you have to make at character creation. Today we’ll run down the most important things you need to keep in mind before you ever set foot into Azeroth. We’ll discuss class roles, racial benefits, servers and transfers, and (an ever-important element to RPGs) the question of motivation. Read on, and then get rolling.

I know, I know - this seems very off-topic for me. It was also noted in the comments for the last post that there have been *just* a few articles on this subject matter. I concur - but I also think that there’s room in the medium for a very broad approach to the game. Besides … this is fun! It’s really nice being able to write these up on a subject matter I know so well. That base let me really put some thought into what could have been just a toss off. (3000+ words is not a toss off for me, trust me.)

Anyway, hope you find it at least vaguely interesting.