* Basic options
* Movement
* Camera
* Interacting
* Attacking
* Action Bar
* Grouping, trading, and other character interaction
* Sound
* Character information
* Leveling
* Gaining new spells & abilities
* Looting
* Getting additional bags
* Slash commands
* Chat commands
* Guild commands
Basic options: Hit Esc to bring up the main menu, where you can adjust video, audio, and game settings as well as re-map your key bindings.
Tip: For a complete list of keys, hit Esc, then select “Key Bindings”. Scroll down to see all the possible keys.
Movement: Use the A,W,D,S keys to move around the world. Alternatively, hold down both mouse buttons to walk forward; moving the mouse at this point turns your character. There is also a “Click to move” option in the “Interface Options” menu which will allow you to move your character by right-clicking the area of the ground you wish to move to.
Camera: Hold down the left mouse button to look around the world. Hold down the right mouse button to turn your character using the mouse. You can zoom the camera in and out with either the mouse wheel or the Home and End keys.
Interacting: Left-click selects objects and NPCs in the game, while right-click attacks a monster, activates an object, or talks to an NPC. The mouse cursor is context-sensitive. If you mouse over an object that you can interact with, an icon will appear on your mouse cursor indicating the type of action that will occur if you right-click (sword = attack, cog = manipulate, speech balloon = talk, etc.).
Attacking: To attack a creature, move within range (indicated by the appearance of the attack cursor when you mouse over the creature; a grayed-out cursor means you are out of range) and right-click the creature. You will enter attack mode. Move your character next to the creature, and you will automatically begin to attack. Instead of right-clicking a creature, you may also select the “Attack” icon from the Action Bar.
Action Bar: The Action Bar at the bottom of the screen can be used to hotkey your spells, special abilities, or frequently used items, such as food and water (which give back health and mana, respectively). You can activate these either by left-clicking on them or by typing the number corresponding to the slot of the spell or ability you wish to use. Mousing over the icons will show you a tooltip containing the name of the spell or ability. You can also consult your spell or ability books (for casters, the “Spellbook & Abilities” button on the Action Bar) to get a full description of each ability or spell your character may have. You can rearrange your Action Bar by dragging the icons around. You can also add new spells or abilities to this bar as you receive them by dragging them from your spell or ability book. You can also place inventory items, such as health potions, in the bar for easy activation.
Tip: Hold down Shift and use the mouse wheel to quickly flip between Action Bars. You can also use the up and down arrow keys instead of the mouse wheel.
Grouping, trading, and other character interaction: To invite someone into a group, left-click that player and then right-click on the player’s portrait along the top of the screen to bring up a menu of possible interactions. One of these options is to “Invite” (into your group). There are several other available interactions with characters, including inspecting them, or challenging them to duels.
Note: These commands will not work with players of the opposing faction.
Sound: Control-S toggles sound effects. Control-M toggles music.
Character information: Click on the button in the Interface Panel (which is to the right of the Action Bar) that contains your character’s portrait. This will bring up your Character Info panel, which includes your Reputation and Skills panels.
Leveling: Once you reach level 10, you will begin gaining talent points as you level up, which you can immediately apply to your character by opening up the Talent Info page by clicking on the Talents button in the Interface Panel. The Talents page shows all the new talents you can purchase.
Gaining new spells & abilities: New abilities and skills are not gained automatically. You must visit a trainer specific to your class to purchase them. There are other ways to gain spells and abilities, such as completing class-specific quests.
Looting: Right-click the monster’s corpse to bring up the loot pane. You can then click items in the loot pane to place them into your backpack. To open your backpack, click the “Backpack” button in the lower right part of the screen and mouse over the items inside to see what they are.
Getting additional bags: You can put an additional bag in each empty bag space in the lower right part of your screen (next to the backpack). Use your additional bags the same way you do your backpack.
Slash commands: The following are some of the common slash commands in the game, which allow you to do certain things just by typing them into the chat prompt. Hit Enter to bring up the chat prompt.
Note: You can use the Tab key to cycle through possible slash commands. For example, if you type “/a” and hit Tab a few times, you will start scrolling through all the slash commands that start with “a”.
/chat, /chathelp - Provides a list of chat commands.
/follow - Target a player and type this. Your character will automatically follow that player.
/party message (or just “/p message“) - Sends a message to party chat (which only your party members can see).
/r - Replies to the last private message you received.
/say message (or just “/s message“) - Sends a message to people near you in the game.
/who - Lists the players on-line.
/yell message (or just “/y message“) - Yells a message to a wide area around you in the game.
/em message – Creates an emote expression. (For example, if your character is named “Tyrande”, and you type “/em sings”, people around you would see “Tyrande sings”.)
/played - Reports the total amount of time you’ve played the game with that character.
/macro - Brings up the macro user interface.
/cast spellname – Allows you to cast spells by name. Type “/cast”; for example, “/cast Fireball (Rank 1)”. To add spellcasting to a macro, you can type the command manually or Shift-click a spell in your spellbook to add the proper /cast line to the macro.
Chat Commands:
/#, /c, /csay - Sends text to channel # (for example, “/1 Hi!”).
/announcements, /ann - Toggles join/leave announcements on a channel.
/afk, /dnd - Sets your Away From Keyboard or Do Not Disturb flags.
/ban, /unban - Bans/unbans a player from a channel.
/chatlist, /chatwho, /chatinfo channel – Lists channels or channel members.
/cinvite, /chatinvite - Invites a player to a channel.
/join, /channel, /chan - Joins a channel.
/kick - Kicks a player off a channel.
/leave, /chatleave, /chatexit channel – Leaves a channel (or all channels).
/mod, /moderator, /unmod, /unmoderator - Changes a player’s moderator status.
/moderate - Toggles moderation on a channel.
/mute, /squelch, /unvoice, /unmute, /unsquelch, /voice - Changes a player’s permission.
/password, /pass - Changes password.
Guild Commands: Some of these commands can only be used by guild leaders.
/ginfo - Gives basic information about your guild.
/g message – Sends a chat message to all members of your guild.
/o message – Sends a chat message to all officers of your guild.
/ginvite player – Invites another player to join your guild.
/gremove player – Removes a player from your guild.
/gpromote player – Promotes a player one rank within your guild.
/gdemote player – Demotes a player one rank within your guild.
/gmotd message – Sets the guild’s message of the day.
/gquit - Removes you from your guild.
/groster - Gives an entire guild roster.
/gleader player – Sets another player as the guild leader (guild leader only).
/gdisband - Disbands your guild (guild leader only).
Wrath of the Lich King represents an enormous focus of time and resources on giving players even more to explore and experience in World of Warcraft. This expansion would not have been possible without the huge support of the community. We sincerely thank you for that support and for the patience you show while we work on World of Warcraft, and we hope you enjoy all of the new content.
See you in the game!
The World of Warcraft Development Team
Blizzard Entertainment
Windows(R) XP (Service Pack 3), Windows(R) Vista (Service Pack 1)
- Intel Pentium4 1.3GHz or AMD Athlon XP 1500+ processor.
(Recommended: Dual Core Processor such as the Intel Pentium D or AMD Athlon 64 X2) - 512 megabytes or more of RAM, 1GB required for Windows Vista users
(Recommended: 1GB Ram, 2GB for Vista users) - 3D graphics processor with Hardware Transform and Lighting with at least 32 MB VRAM, such as an ATI Radeon 7200 or NVIDIA GeForce 2 class card or better.
(Recommended: 3D graphics processor with Vertex and Pixel Shader capability with 128 MB VRAM Such as an ATI Radeon X1600 or NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT class card or better.) - 12 gigabytes or more of available hard drive space.
- DirectX(R) 9.0c or above.
- Sound: DirectX-compatible sound card.
- Internet Connection: Broadband.
- Mouse: Multi-button mouse with scroll wheel recommended.
Play Requirements
- Wrath of the Lich King is an Expansion set to World of Warcraft. You must already have a properly installed version of World of Warcraft and World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade in order to install and play this expansion.
- You must upgrade a World of Warcraft account before you can play World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King.
- You must have an active Broadband Internet connection to play World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King.
Follow the steps on that page to upgrade your existing World of Warcraft account and recovery options. We strongly recommend that you write down all your security and recovery information for additional reference.
Why You Need Your Authentication Key: You cannot set up an official World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King account without a valid Blizzard-issued Authentication Key. This means that you will be unable to login and play the game.
For this reason, it is important that you DO NOT throw away or discard your Authentication key. We strongly recommend you make a backup copy of the key somewhere you are certain you will not lose it!
Where to Find Your Authentication Key: Your Authentication Key is located on the front of the CD case. You must have an authentication key to set up your account for World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King. This is what makes your account and copy of the game unique to you.
Creating your character
Creating your character is very easy. From the Create Character screen, select your race and class. These decisions will determine what abilities are available to your character. All of the other options on the character creation screen will help you in customizing your characters appearance in-game, but will not affect your character’s abilities or statistics.
Note: Keep in mind that Horde and Alliance characters will not be able to play with each other.
Horde vs. Alliance split
The Horde is at war with the Alliance for the world of Azeroth. Horde and Alliance players are unable to form groups with each other, trade, create guilds together, or even talk to each other. If you have friends you wish to play with, be sure that you select races that are allied with each other. The characters on your account can be of either Horde or Alliance faction, but you and your friends must be of the same faction to play together.
- Horde races: Orcs, Tauren, Trolls, Undead and Blood Elves.
- Alliance races: Humans, Dwarves, Gnomes, Night Elves and Draenei.
Character customization
You can customize various aspects of your character’s appearance. If you prefer, simply click the “Randomize” button to have the game create a random character for you. You can hit this button several times until it creates a character that you like. There will also be ways to further customize your character in the game, both in terms of appearance (such as with weapons and armor) and in terms of attributes and skills your character can learn.
