I got World of Warcraft for my Birthday.

And you want to learn how to play World of Warcraft? Well WoW is much more complicated than it first appears and you can waste a lot of time and money in wandering about without a clue. Blizzard have drastically improved the in-game help over the years but their on-line advice still remains very, very basic.

I became aware of this lack of information very quickly and realised that there would be lots of advice on-line, which of course there is, but there wasn't a simple comprehensive guide for new World of Warcraft players to learn the game. So, I thought I would fill the void and have produced an easy to follow guide which also points you to other very useful websites. Just pop along to Learn to Play World of Warcraft.

When you are there please could you tell all your friends about the book by using the Facebook, Twitter and other links. It will increase the book's popularity tremendously and I will be very grateful.

I Got World of Warcraft for Christmas

Well no I didn't, but presumably you did and this is my invitation to you to look at what is probably the best guide for new World of Warcraft players... New to World of Warcraft

It is a very good guide for the WoW beginner or recent convert to the game. It starts off with the very basics and explains simply, but in depth, what you need to know to be able to play the game to a high level of competency. It explains many things that most guides tend to forget about.

It has the following World of Warcraft guides: gold, profession, levelling (or leveling if you are American), add-ons, and screen/user interface advice. You need to know all about these to be able to play the game efficiently. It tells you the fastest way to level up your WoW character.

Use my tips and I am sure you will have fun playing the game.

Google, Google, Google!

Why do they make it so damn hard for us new website owners to get noticed?!  Have good content they say... I have.  Write articles and press releases we are told... I have written numerous.  Use linking phrases in your articles we are told... so I do.  Use linking phrases for the terms you want to be searched for... so I do! But now we are told we cannot use the same linking phrases because they will be considered spam.

This is the point at which I started hysterically screaming and cursing.  The big boys do not have to jump through the numerous hoops that the little guys do and their sites are guaranteed constant exposure.  Of course they advertise on Google which helps, but they do not need to do this because their brand name is all they need.

If you have read my previous blogs you will know I have been attempting for a while to get my site noticed and reap the rewards with thousands of hits.  Blizzard will be releasing an expansion to World of Warcraft very soon and it is unashamedly targeted at the Chinese market.  I would like to be very visible for this launch but I really don't know what more Google want from me.

Most of the sites I am competing against do not market the brand new player niche and many of the guides that are written have very poor content.  Indeed some of the sites are appalling and the content is threadbare, yet I cannot compete for the term "World of Warcraft Guide" or even "New to World of Warcraft".  The latter is the name of my website, so you would have thought that it would be a fairly simple process to rank on the first page for it, but the last time I searched I could find no trace of my site!  As I said in a previous blog, these two terms are the only ones that have significant traffic for my niche so it is imperative that I rank highly for them.  However "world of warcraft guide" is so damn generic I have no chance whatsoever of ever being able to rank for it, and the term is not very useful anyway because most of the traffic will not be new players.  

According to the Google keyword tool my previously favoured search terms "new world of warcraft player guide" and "world of warcraft beginners guide" do not get searched for.  To be frank I cannot believe people do not refine their searches to try to find what they are looking for.  I know I do and surely I am not unique?!

Anyway back to Google's decision to penalise websites for spamming the same linking phrases.  What I want Google to tell me is what the damn difference it makes?  How is it any less spammy to use "world of warcraft guide for beginners" than "world of warcraft beginners guide"?  The point I am making is; how the hell do I get the right exposure and traffic for my hard work without getting penalised?  I feel Google are unfairly restraining my right to "trade" and are creating barriers to entry into the market place.  Apart from Google's obvious domination of the search engines, and hence the Internet, what legal right do they have to restrain trade the way they do?

I know we do not want the Internet to be dominated by useless affiliate advertising only websites and that quality should be the objective of all website developers, but I seriously wonder whether it is right that Google alone should decide.  I would like to see a bit of democracy in action and I'm not talking about democratic capitalism, because money is not the webs raison d'etre.

I'm Top of the Search Pages

Yeah!  Well seems my hard work is starting to pay off, at least in terms of visibility which is the first obstacle in establishing a successful website.

I have a number of search terms I have been targeting for my niche, which is aimed at new World of Warcraft players.  If you copy and paste the following terms into Google you will find I am listed at number one:

• best free guide for new World of Warcraft players
• best free World of Warcraft beginners guide

I also rank highly for other terms as well.  They are mainly a variation on the above themes.

If you are a new WoW player and need some good easy to follow advice then I highly recommend visiting my site.  Even if you have been playing a short while you might pick up some useful tidbits.  Just click on link below and take a good look at the various pages...

http://new2worldofwarcraft.com

I hope you like the site and pick up oodles of helpful World of Warcraft tips :-)

Is Blizzard's World of Warcraft Cash Cow in Decline?

Players are, some would say at long last, becoming cheesed off with Blizzard constantly milking them for more money, and it comes at a time when World of Warcraft has been losing large numbers of customers.  Blizzard are facing more and more competition and in harsh economic times people will look to spend their hard earned pennies more frugally.

World of Warcraft's monthly subscription must be the company's biggest income generator by a huge margin and it would seem sensible to start listening to the customers before more people vote with their feet.  One of my biggest gripes with the game is that it is a constant grind to achieve anything.  Why should it be the case that my PvP gear is not good enough for Dungeon raiding at higher levels? And why should people who like PvE Raiding not be able to use the same gear for venturing into World of Warcraft Battlegrounds?

I know the answers already, they were rhetorical, but it's making the point again that Blizzard are far too deliberate in their efforts to maintain those monthly subscriptions.  Blizzard need to concentrate on putting "having fun playing" at the top of their agenda.  I would love to try out a dungeon or two (masochistic tendencies you see ;-) but I'm too busy trying to get the gear so I can compete on a level playing field in Arenas.  By the time I accomplish that we will already be into a new season and I will need to get the new gear so I can...

The point being I haven't got the time to get both sets of gear necessary to enjoy the different aspects of the game, solely because Blizzard keep moving the goal posts so I will spend money to keep on the treadmill.  What Blizzard should be doing instead is creating more real content and tweaking the current content.  For example some of the Battlegrounds are nothing more than PvE rushes rather than PvP competitions.  Now we all know Blizzard are good at producing RTS games and it cannot be beyond them to develop PvP along similar lines.  Although I suppose that they might not want to compete with their Starcraft and Warcraft products, but I don't see that as a credible view point.





   

Wow Nearly 2000 Visitors Already This Month

But this is because of an Adwords campaign and there is very little evidence that the visitors were interested in the site :-(

I decided to only go with two keyword phrases "world of warcraft beginners guide" and "new world of warcraft players" so that I did not attract generalised world of warcraft searches, but I am not sure how successful this particular aim has been.

Because of copyright it is not allowed to use World of Warcraft or WoW in the actual advert text, which makes life difficult in targeting traffic.  However, the title of my website should give the purpose of my site away, shouldn't it?!

Oh well, I soldier on in trying to get my site noticed.

World of Warcraft Battlegrounds; a series: Arathi Basin

You can find my latest World of Warcraft Battleground series here:

Game Guru

This one is about Arathi Basin and like all of my guides is aimed at new World of Warcraft players.