Response to tweet

kirylyn wrote a tweet, but I want to use more than 150 characters to respond. So, here:

A server is a complete, separate copy of the entire WoW world. You can only communicate and interact with people who are playing on the same server you are. You want to have your characters on the server where your friends are playing (if you have friends who play). If that's not a consideration, there are four kinds of servers: PvE, PvP, RP and RP-PvP. "PvE" stands for "Player versus Environment", and is the opposite of "PvP, which stands for "Player versus Player". On a PvE server you have to actively chose to fight other players. On a PvP server the possibility is (almost) always there. "RP" stands for "Role-Playing", and it's a PvE server where you're supposed to actually roleplay your character. People don't do that anywhere near as much as they ought to, which is a pity. Still, what roleplaying there is in WoW goes on on the RP servers. "RP-PvP" is a PvP server where you're supposed to roleplay.

You can have up to ten characters per server. On PvE and RP servers you can have characters from both factions, on PvP servers all your characters must be of the same faction.

Alliance and Horde are known as factions. They are enemies. In PvP, you fight players of the opposing faction (with some exceptions). You can't talk to the opposing faction, you use different cities, you can't trade, nothing. Again, you want to be the same faction as your friends. If that's not a consideration, you want Horde :-)

Alliance consists of humans, dwarves, gnomes, night elves and draenei (weirdo space goats that were added in the Burning Crusade expansion). Apart from the draenei, they match their traditional fantasy clichés quite well. Draenei are, as far as I know, actually original.

Horde consists of orcs, trolls, free undead (known as Forsaken), tauren (minotaurs with a culture strongly inspired by North American natives) and blood elves (relatives of the night elves, and also added in BC). These vary much more from the clichés than the Alliance races do, and some of them are actually somewhat interesting. My personal favourites are the tauren.

There is a common opinion (that matches my own impressions quite well) that the players on the Alliance side are on average younger and less mature than on the Horde side, presumably since Alliance has the races that are traditionally the heroes in fantasy fiction. To check for yourself, create a human and an orc on a PvE server and see what the chat is like in the starting areas (particularly the ones for level 10-20). In my experience, it's pretty bad on the Horde side (The Barrens) and mindbendingly horrible on the Alliance side (Goldshire)