Simplifications

So I've been referring non-WoWing peeps to my blog, just 'cause they want to know what I've been up to and stuff.  It only recently occurred to me that they'd have little-to-no idea about anything I'd say that fellow players would understand in a heart beat.  So with that in mind, I've decided to simplify terms I've used help them understand what in the world I'm talking about.

Let's start with the basics:

Race - That's kind of obvious, it's what creature or being your character is.

Class - The character type, defining your role in group situations.

Spec - Short for Talent Specialization.  Your spec essentially determines how you play your character.  Every class has 3 different groupings of talents known as trees that define how your character operates and what his specialties are.

Talent - A skill which you can choose to spend the 'talent points' (points earned by leveling up, 1 per level) on.  

Skills - Abilities or traits of your characters class, each has a different usefulness and are categorized in the same fashion as the talent trees.  

Professions - Also known as Trades.  Often the primary source of income for your character.  There are two main factions of professions, Gathering and Crafting.  

Crafting professions include Leather Working, Blacksmithing, Enchanting, Inscriptions, Tailoring, Engineering, Jewel Crafting and Alchemy.  These are all used to create useful items both as you're leveling up and entry level (and possibly higher) raiding gear as you reach the level cap.

Gathering professions include Skinning, Mining and Herbalism.  Not as great of a selection but all of them are used for corresponding crafting professions.  

• Skinning -> Leather Working (some Tailoring too, but a much smaller percentage)
• Mining -> Blacksmithing, Jewel Crafting, Engineering
• Herbalism -> Alchemy and Inscriptions

Gear - Equipment that your character has and can use.  The quality of gear varies according to rarity and difficulty to get/make, color of the item's name when scrolled over is an easy indicator.  The range of quality goes as follows:  Gray->White->Green->Blue->Purple->Orange. 

Instance - In other games this would be referred to as a dungeon.  Instances are basically places you go to get better gear or finish quests.  They require a group of 5-40 people (The most common at the current level cap are 5, 10 and 25) composed of tanks, healers and DPS.  Any instance that requires more than 5 people is additionally categorized as a "raid."

Tank - The person who takes the majority of the damage and keeps the enemies' attentions.  They don't do a whole lot of damage but they have a lot of health and armor to take the hits that the enemies dish out.

Healer - Pretty straight forward, someone who keeps everyone else alive. They don't concentrate on the enemies as their primary goal is to make sure that no one in the group dies.

DPS - Damage Per Second.  The primary means of killing in the group.  They have a very high damage output but don't have the damage reduction or health that the tank has and rarely are able to heal as effectively as someone who's specialized to be a healer (though elemental shaman and boomkins can do a pretty good job of spot healing if necessary and have experience at it).

...I think that's all I've got for now, if more come to me I'll attempt to get them posted.  Wish me luck!

Good Hunting,

~Tox