This post is a part of Help a Noob day over at Zug Gaming
Better a newbie than a nub
- If you get called a nub, it’s time to work out what you are doing so wrong.
- If you are called a noob, it’s time to work out what you can do better.
- If you get called a newbie, it’s time to celebrate each and every new experience and look forward to the joyful times of learning how you can be your best while having fun and lots of it.
I was a newbie once and with the coming Cataclysm I will be again, if only for a short period of time.
I have been a noob on many occasions over the past 5 odd years and even a nub on occasion.
Probably the most important thing to know about being a newbie is that we all were once and people will be surprisingly accepting of a new player, they may even be helpful – this isn’t as unusual as it may seem.
The challenges for you as a newbie are:
- Walking the line between unimagined new experiences and getting the game given to you on a plate.
- Being a nervous beginner in your 1st dungeon, raid or battleground and being the one the other party members harangue for apparent ineptitude.
- Being the low dps (damage per second), heals or threatless tank while enjoying the game you play (yet scorned by others) or bring a competent addition in whichever facet of WoW you choose to enjoy.
Walking the line.
If you are here, reading this, or reading ZugGaming, or one of the hundreds of others out there, you want more than to fumble in the WoW darkness.
This is good, but only so long as knowledge doesn’t steal the magic and mystery from a wonderful game with often missed graphics, storylines and experiences.
Learn to play well, but only to facilitate the experience, not to remove it.
Going down in your 1st dungeon.
Dungeons, raids and battlegrounds require not only the skills you have used to solo your way to the dungeon finder. They require a new set of skills combining both teamwork and knowledge of the content.
This is reset with every new group and every new dungeon, raid and battleground.
The best way to approach this is to admit it straight up.
- I’m new to the game
- I’m new to the dungeon/raid/battleground
- I’m new to this class
Now that you have that off your chest-piece, you are less likely to be called a noob, or god forbid a nub, but only if you go the next step and listen, learn and act upon the greater knowledge of those you play with.
You will need this knowledge. You will be back and next time you won’t be a newbie.
Do what you do… Well!
No one minds what you do on your own time, but the moment you join a group there are a set of (often) unspoken norms, or rules that you will be expected to play within.
If you play a damage dealer, you will be expected to aim for your potential damage, your participation is essential for the parties success.
If you are a healer, you will be expected to first and foremost keep the tank alive, then yourself, then the best dps and so on.
If you are the tank, you have one job and one job only. Ensure the only person getting hit is yourself, never the healer and rarely the dps.
Pull aggro off the tank as dps, daydream rather than heal, ignore the lose mobs and you haven’t fulfilled your role.
Play your best and you will gain virtual friends for life!
Slay them all!
Many players fixate on particular aspects of the game. They aim to be the best raider, or PvPer, or role-player, or quester, or explorer, or… there is so much choice.
Ultimately it is your choice but if there is one thing I would recommend, it’s to leave no aspect of WoW unexplored.
At one point I swore I would never PvP, or go to the trouble of preparing to raid, or waste time exploring, or fishing, or questing.
Now, 5 years down the track, I wish I had begun my WoW life tasting all the delicacies of WoW. These days I gorge myself and it is hard to drag me from the table of wonder.
Taste it all not once, but often. Be a newbie in every way you can, enjoy your time and when ready get serious, slay them all, show them all…
That you are not a noob like Gnomeaggedon!
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
http://gnomeaggedon.net/2010/10/02/better-a-newbie-than-a nub/
“enjoy your time and when ready get serious-”
trying, trying!!!
and what about ‘nabs’ btw?
Awesome post
I especially like the advice to “Do what you do… Well”. I can’t imagine the people who go into an instance and put forth no effort at all, are having a great time, but it can be a lot of fun trying to beat your own highest dps or heal/tank flawlessly! The World (of Warcraft) would be a better place for all of us if just more people followed that advice! 
“Newbie”, “noob”, “nub” (as well as “newb”, “newby”, etc.) are actually all supposed to be pronounced the same way and are just different ways of spelling the same word. Misunderstanding of this fact by people reading chats in online games has led to a differentiation in meaning attributed to the various spellings. While there are generally accepted differences in meaning between “newby” and “noob” (“n00b”), differentiation between “noob” and “nub” may not be widespread and possibly arose from an interplay of voice and written chat.
Most of the misunderstandings in online gaming arise from a failure of communication.
dear mr snuff
Seeing as you have had the time to sit and study the usage and development of these abbreviations over time I have to trust you that “are actually all supposed to be pronounced the same way”.
I would have thought that the context they were used may have shown that perhaps the meaning was different. Language is a fickle mistress.
It is amazing that the meaning and usage of words would adapt over time in the gaming world just as they have in the broader world.
Heaven forbid that users abbreviate words. Then they and others change what they mean over time. My world has just changed forever. I think I need a bex and a lie down.
Dear Dave,
“The meaning and usage of words” is a misleading phrase because it implies a universality of said meaning(s) and usage(s) when the actual issue is that changes are taking place in pockets of users and creating multifarious overlapping jargons and a virtual Tower of Babel.
Even the language you employ just here must be your own jargon which I don’t fully understand since it appears to me as if you are employing sarcasm just to be mean and snarky.
I must be mistaken.
Alright boys, take it outside to the real world that we know each other from.
Dave: As you said, you should have known better than to rise to the bait of the troll otherwise known as Snuffy.
Snuffy: I have been trolled by the Royal Shakespearean Society of Pedants previously and you are way out of your league.
Truly this blog is written for fun, with the intention that it is received in the spirit of fun. It is not, nor even intended, as some academic peer reviewed journal.
Thus your recent comments lend nothing to the blog, rather have people scratching their heads wondering what sort of a fool would make such statements. Dave and I know the answer to this question, but the hundreds of other readers do not.
While I appreciate real life friends reading my blog, I don’t appreciate them ignoring the intent, which is for it to be a silly, lighthearted, often ill-written view of the world of warcraft from the position of a GCD spamming Gnome Mage.
If you can’t ensure that future comments remain within the spirit of the blog, then as I have many times before, I shall place you on /ignore and in the one master stroke, save all my readers from your pedantry.
readercount–
Something filtered that comment and edited out the second “-” so I will rewrite it as:
readercount-=1
I went through the cycle of newbie, n00b, and nub.
I’m a brand new warlock. Having played WoW so long, I am actually doing well in figuring out the class and doing decent DPS, but I know diddly squat and I know I know diddly squat. However, I am thoroughly ENJOYING playing the lower levels and learning the class. It’s like I’m seeing WoW through new eyes.
The first time I played WoW though, I was a n00b. I had absolutely no idea how to play…I was positively ignorant about how to play my class. Worse off, I thought I was doing WELL.
and then…the other day…someone called me a nub (derogatory) for playing a DK. I understand that lots of people hate DK’s, but this is a class I have devoted nearly 2 years to. I know how to play and to call me a nub because I play a DK is inexcusable and offensive. Le sigh.
I got called a ‘nubcake’ once — where does that fit in on the hierarchy? I suppose if I weren’t such a newbie I would have come back with a scathing rejoinder, such as ‘I like pie’.
Nice post. I’m hoping that the upcoming patch/expansion resets our ‘Newbie meters’ a bit, though I suspect a lot of people will completely ignore the scenery in a race to 85.