I've been a regular on this forum for a while now and all too often I see things like this getting posted:

"I have a problem with class plz help me" or "Why is this game broken?"

In order to get a good answer, I propose here some steps to go through to help you fix your problems as fast as possible.

1. Search for an answer on your own
Most questions I see in this forum have been asked a dozen times and keep getting asked over and over. There are many sources where you will probably find the answer as most questions are pretty common:

http://worldofwarcraft.com
http://wowhead.com
http://www.wowwiki.com

If those fail, try the most powerful source of info on the net - GOOGLE!
http://www.google.com

Now, you have the forums. Ask yourself - is there a specific forum where this problem might have been addressed? Perhaps the class forum, PvP forum, bug report, suggestions, realm forum? Check the stickies in the appropriate forum, or try a word search. All too often you'll find the answer right away.

When all this fails and you want to post in the correct forum, now it's on to step 2.

2. Formulating your question
One thing that is too easily overlooked is that if you ask the wrong question, you will not get the answer you want.

bad: "How do I unlearn fishing?"
Will get you the answer: "You can't."

vague: "Why can't I unlearn fishing? I already have two cooking and first aid."
Will get you the answer: "You can still learn fishing even if you have both of those."

precise: "I want to learn skinning but it says I can only learn 2 professions. Is it possible to unlearn something else like fishing to make room for it?"
Gets a more hearthy answer: "Unfortunately you can only have 2 professions at any time. Fishing is not a profession but a secondary skill, so the fishing skill slot cannot be used to learn skinning."


Avoid questions whose answer is based on personal preferences or ethereal and unmeasurable factors like fun and frustration.

Example: "Which class is more fun?" "Which class owns PvP?"

Things like that have entire forums devoted to discussing them. The Beginner's forum is not the place for it.


Avoid focusing your question too much around the path you want to take to achieve your goal in favor of describing the problem you are encountering.

Bad: "I've been killing redridge gnolls for an hour and they stopped dropping steel pikes, and I'm one short. How do I get them to drop one more?"

Good: "I only have 4 iron spikes in my inventory and my quest log says I have 5. I try to turn them in to the lakeshire blacksmith, and even though his question mark is yellow, the "complete quest" button is greyed out. Why is this happening?"

At this point I would point out that you probably have that fifth spike in your bank, which would register it for your quest objective as complete, prevent more spikes from dropping but prevent you from turning in your quest.


Your post's title is also a good way to ensure a swift reply. Make it precise and to the point.

bad: "PLEASE HELP ME"

good: "problem with guns"

better: "Gun won't fire - 'Too far away' error"


3. Use proper english
I can't stress this enough. We are a pretty forgiving bunch for the occasional typo, but butchering the language by replacing words with numbers, using "u" for "you" and generally writing like a 6 year old hopped up on a sugar rush is simply not going to look good for you.

Paragraphs are good. It can be pretty hard to go through a page long post presented as a single clump of text, and many of us may just prefer skipping it entirely, so the author of that page loses, no matter how brilliant and well-written his point may be.

Avoid using all caps. It looks like you're screaming.

And avoid using leet speak at all costs. Nobody can stand that and will make you look like you're only looking to impress people by showing how "hardcore" you are. It will fail.


4. No whining allowed
This is a beginner's help forum. If you want to rant against a class, blizzard, forum moderators, GMs or the fact that you hate such and such fact, please do us all a favor and do it somewhere else.

Or better yet - not at all.


5. Do not badger the forum
Not being able to play and enjoy World of Warcraft is frustrating. I can certainly understand that. But do not type an angry message demanding to have an answer "right now" or replying to your own post every 5-10 minutes to remind us nobody has answered to you yet. We are not Blizzard employees, you are not paying us for this service, and we do this out of our collective love of the game.

Give us time. Many of us are accessing this forum from work, and are expected to, you know, work.

So just give it a little time. We're usually pretty prompt at giving replies.


((EDIT: Added a fifth section))

Great read. Sticky-worthy.