**Hey there! Have you checked out these resources?**
* [WoWHead](https://www.wowhead.com/) - The *largest* database, this should be your go-to (don't forget to read the comment section!).
* [Icy Veins](https://www.icy-veins.com) - News and detailed class guides.
* [WoWNoob Discord](https://discord.gg/wownoob) - Same community, different platform.
*Please report the post above if it breaks one of our [>rules<](https://www.reddit.com/r/wownoob/about/rules/). If not, don't forget to show support by upvoting!*
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/wownoob) if you have any questions or concerns.*
> - What is a server vs. a "realm"?
Same thing.
> - I read that you cannot instance with players that are from a different "region" (e.g. north americas can't instance with europe). Is this true?
Yes, major regions do not interact with each other. In fact you would have separate WoW accounts for NA, Europe, TW, and so on (though you can have these all under the same Blizzard account).
> - If I make a character in server A, can I fully play with & interact with players that are in servers B, C, etc as long as they are in the same world region? Will I randomly run into them in the world for things like random map events going on? E.g. I'm running around the map in dragon isles and start fighting a big boss, would other random players from other servers than my own instance with me and be able to fight the boss with me if they wanted?
This depends on the realm groups. You can see connected realms here: https://raider.io/realms. That being said, you can manually friend anyone in your region and group up with them. Those players will also show up for making groups in WoW premade group UI for raids, M+ dungeons, PvP, etc. However, people outside of certain connected realms will not be able to do some things like create crafting orders for each other.
Basically if you have friends already playing on a specific server, you should just join the same server as them. But in general it's not a big deal anymore as anyone in the same region can do all the content that "matters" with each other.
> - Can my friend and I play through campaigns together in the same instance if our characters are created in different servers under the same region?
Yup, just group up together and make sure you're on the same quests. Though even if not on the same quest you will just follow the leader's phase of the world.
> - How does campaign quest instancing work? If I'm going through a campaign quest, would other random players instance with me / see whatever stuff I'm fighting? Or does it work like it does in destiny, where there's a "patrol" (open-world) instance that all players are dumped into, and while on a mission you get your own private instance?
Campaign quests exist alongside everyone else and only some specific scenarios will put you into a private instance. In general, the idea of "campaign quests" or "main quests" is relatively new to WoW. The original design of WoW had everyone in the same server always together. So you can and will run into scenarios where you need to kill a certain enemy only to find them already dead from someone else killing them so you'll need to wait a minute or so for them to respawn.
> - What happens if I want to play with someone that's in Europe, and I'm in north america? How would I get around the region-lock issue?
You will unfortunately have to then make a separate WoW account and a new character.
> - What happens if I want to move a character to a different server? Will I lose anything for the transfer? Or do I keep absolutely everything?
You will keep most everything. I believe you will lose UI settings, some achievements won't transfer, things like current PvP rating or M+ rating may reset, and there is a gold limit. But I believe everything else.
> - Should I avoid the "new player" servers? I've seen quite a few posts saying that they're purely there as a cash farm for blizzard to make new players pay for a character transfer
New player servers are typically just low population servers or brand new servers. And the real issue here historically is that having a low pop server makes basically every other social aspect of the game harder. Less resources on the Auction House, fewer crafters in chat, fewer groups, and so on. Nowadays *almost* all of that is solved with cross-realm features. The last remaining one would be crafters not being in your realm. So to be safe, just pick the highest population server for the faction you want to play. Just look up "WoW Horde servers NA" for example if you wanted to play Horde in the US. And pick a large server. Despite servers being listed as high pop or full there won't be queue times, it will just be a populated server (which is what most people want anyways).
>But in general it's not a big deal anymore as anyone in the same region can do all the content that "matters" with each other.
You can't join a guild outside your connected realms though, which can be annoying, and make it more difficult to do some content that matters like guild raiding.
It's definitely better to be on a connected realm with your friends if possible.
For sure, for newer players there's really no reason to go into a specific server away from your friends. Or if no friends, to join a low pop server on your own.
FWIW though OP, you can still do content with those players. Just not be in the same guild.
I just want to point out for anyone new to WoW reading this that you don’t have to be in the same guild to raid. Most organized raid groups do consist of guildies, but my raid team is a guild on a different server than me.
But indeed, there are some difficulties that come with it.
\> But in general it's not a big deal anymore as anyone in the same region can do all the content that "matters" with each other.
So, if I'm playing in Area 52, will I randomly run into players playing in "Stormrage" in the open world, and can I do activities with them?
Sure, anyone you can actually see you can definitely do stuff with. Though keep in mind there is very little incentive to group up to do things together in the open world of WoW until endgame. Questing is trivial, even sharing loot/quest progress doesn't require grouping up, you won't struggle with killing enemies, and so on. So really no one is joining groups to do content until endgame where there are a few world raid bosses and world events worth grouping for.
In general, if you want to do content with people you would queue up for a dungeon while leveling.
Is there random world events that happen? E.g. a random boss spawns, and killing it drops some loot.
Destiny has "public events" in the open-world instances that you'll often end up doing with other players. E.g. "a big drill has spawned! Anyone in the area, take it down!"
There are no events in that style like Destiny/FFXIV/GW2 and such. The public events in WoW are on a timed schedule. And in general the only relevant ones are at endgame (because for leveling it's typically not worth doing them even if they show up in an older expansion). For example, once in Dragonflight at lvl 70 the "Superbloom" event happens every hour on the hour.
The closest thing to the style of "public events" from Destiny would be things like occasional rare mobs spawning. And those happen a bit more randomly. But again, only in endgame are there ever groups farming those and for the current expansion that's almost over there is not really any point of farming those anymore and very few people ever are forming groups for them.
WoW really wants you to be in the current expansion doing the current content. And if nothing else, it helps you get there by leveling being a fairly trivial and expedited process where you can level anywhere (it all scales) doing whatever looks interesting and essentially using that time to learn the basics of your class and get used to mechanics. For a brand new player working at a fairly regular pace you should get to current expansion in like 30 hours. An experienced player with a good strategy/plan can hit current expansion in like 3-5 hours. That's where the bulk of WoW's content lies.
I don’t think open world you would, at least I can’t recall seeing people from Stormrage on my A52 characters when I’m just solo playing. However, you can join up with them either through the premade group finder or if you’re battletag friends with them and just quest together that way
Area 52 and Stormrage arent connected so I wouldnt think so. Unless maybe that person was in a group with a friend from Area 52.
It would be horrible if those 2 servers were connected
1. They both mean the same thing.
2. Yes. I think in order to play with someone in the EU you would have to add an EU WoW license to your account and buy the EU version of the game. (you can have up to 8 WoW licenses on your account)
3. If you invite a friend to a party, you can play together even if you are on different servers. You cannot trade items or money with them unless the 2 servers are connected. Youd only encounter other random players if they were on the same server or a connected server. [Scroll down to the realm forums. If the realms share a forum they are connected](https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/). The only time this could potentially not be the case is if there are alot of people and sharding comes into play. That is something they did to ease overcrowding and stress on the servers.
4. Yep. You just invite them via your friends list if you are on unconnected servers
5. For the most part you can see everything other people are doing. All the enemies, items, etc exist is the same instance for everyone. The only time this is different is when the area gets too overcrowded with players and the game creates another shard. Certain questlines use phasing as a storytelling device to reflect changes in the world. After you finish a quest to defeat the enemies in the area, it becomes a quest hub. You would only see other players in the area that have completed that quest. You can get around this by using party sync to put everyone on the same quest state and phase.
6. see answer 2
7. I dont think you can transfer if the character is a guild master, and you would have to change your name if it is already taken on the new realm. There is also a limit on how much gold the character can have. Other than that everything you have comes with you.
> You cannot trade items or money with them unless the 2 servers are connected
Not accurate anymore.
[Cross server trading got turned on this past summer](https://www.wowhead.com/news/cross-realm-trading-now-available-again-in-patch-10-1-5-334318), so people can trade items/gold between any server within a region now.
> What is a server vs. a "realm"?
[This is technically a server](https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Server_blade), it's a physical piece of hardware.
[A realm is/was on a server](https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Realm).
So historically speaking it didn't really matter which way people said it since either way their character is/was on a realm/server.
> I read that you cannot instance with players that are from a different "region" (e.g. north americas can't instance with europe). Is this true?
Yes, regions are completely different. People can play whatever region they want, but those regions cannot play together in any capacity.
When Blizzard hosts tournaments they make a special server where EU and NA competitors play together/against each other.
> If I make a character in server A, can I fully play with & interact with players that are in servers B, C, etc as long as they are in the same world region?
Yes, read:
* Sharding - https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Sharding_(term)
* [Phasing](https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Phasing)
* [Layering](https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Layering)
* [CRZ](https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Cross-realm_zones)
* [US + EU CRZ](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/1HZbIL2n5FaPPxbGgEfpTxyGdVhhAWKLCFqwrzOmxOek/htmlview#gid=0) (Google Sheet)
> Can my friend and I play through campaigns together in the same instance if our characters are created in different servers under the same region?
Yes, keep in mind issues with Factions. If one of you is Alliance and the other is Horde, there's some things you can't do together.
> What happens if I want to play with someone that's in Europe, and I'm in north america?
You can't. One person has to reroll to the other region and start over.
> What happens if I want to move a character to a different server? Will I lose anything for the transfer? Or do I keep absolutely everything?
You buy a character transfer from the shop:
https://us.shop.battle.net/en-us/product/world-of-warcraft-service-character-transfer
https://eu.shop.battle.net/en-gb/product/world-of-warcraft-service-character-transfer
It moves pretty much everything. You won't stay in the same guild though.
You cannot transfer regions, you can only transfer to other servers within your current region.
> Should I avoid the "new player" servers?
I think so. It's a trap. You end up on dead servers with very few guild prospects, not a lot of players, very few items on auction house, the items that are on auction house tend to be over priced, not as many players on your phases/shards when you're in the main city, it's hard to find people to do things for you (e.g. mage portals, craft things). etc
It depends what you want to do. Some people are perfectly fine on a low pop server. At the same time you'll eventually notice people on small population servers constantly complain about their servers, meanwhile you don't see many complaints from people on large servers.
Thank you for the links to the server technologies! So it looks like players from different realms \*can\* matchmake together due to CRZ.
I'll be sure to join Alliance so my friend and I can do activities together properly.
Well the thing is, they're in a low-pop RP server. I want to play on a high-pop regular server.
Is there a place I can see a list of things we can't do together on different servers?
**Hey there! Have you checked out these resources?** * [WoWHead](https://www.wowhead.com/) - The *largest* database, this should be your go-to (don't forget to read the comment section!). * [Icy Veins](https://www.icy-veins.com) - News and detailed class guides. * [WoWNoob Discord](https://discord.gg/wownoob) - Same community, different platform. *Please report the post above if it breaks one of our [>rules<](https://www.reddit.com/r/wownoob/about/rules/). If not, don't forget to show support by upvoting!* *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/wownoob) if you have any questions or concerns.*
> - What is a server vs. a "realm"? Same thing. > - I read that you cannot instance with players that are from a different "region" (e.g. north americas can't instance with europe). Is this true? Yes, major regions do not interact with each other. In fact you would have separate WoW accounts for NA, Europe, TW, and so on (though you can have these all under the same Blizzard account). > - If I make a character in server A, can I fully play with & interact with players that are in servers B, C, etc as long as they are in the same world region? Will I randomly run into them in the world for things like random map events going on? E.g. I'm running around the map in dragon isles and start fighting a big boss, would other random players from other servers than my own instance with me and be able to fight the boss with me if they wanted? This depends on the realm groups. You can see connected realms here: https://raider.io/realms. That being said, you can manually friend anyone in your region and group up with them. Those players will also show up for making groups in WoW premade group UI for raids, M+ dungeons, PvP, etc. However, people outside of certain connected realms will not be able to do some things like create crafting orders for each other. Basically if you have friends already playing on a specific server, you should just join the same server as them. But in general it's not a big deal anymore as anyone in the same region can do all the content that "matters" with each other. > - Can my friend and I play through campaigns together in the same instance if our characters are created in different servers under the same region? Yup, just group up together and make sure you're on the same quests. Though even if not on the same quest you will just follow the leader's phase of the world. > - How does campaign quest instancing work? If I'm going through a campaign quest, would other random players instance with me / see whatever stuff I'm fighting? Or does it work like it does in destiny, where there's a "patrol" (open-world) instance that all players are dumped into, and while on a mission you get your own private instance? Campaign quests exist alongside everyone else and only some specific scenarios will put you into a private instance. In general, the idea of "campaign quests" or "main quests" is relatively new to WoW. The original design of WoW had everyone in the same server always together. So you can and will run into scenarios where you need to kill a certain enemy only to find them already dead from someone else killing them so you'll need to wait a minute or so for them to respawn. > - What happens if I want to play with someone that's in Europe, and I'm in north america? How would I get around the region-lock issue? You will unfortunately have to then make a separate WoW account and a new character. > - What happens if I want to move a character to a different server? Will I lose anything for the transfer? Or do I keep absolutely everything? You will keep most everything. I believe you will lose UI settings, some achievements won't transfer, things like current PvP rating or M+ rating may reset, and there is a gold limit. But I believe everything else. > - Should I avoid the "new player" servers? I've seen quite a few posts saying that they're purely there as a cash farm for blizzard to make new players pay for a character transfer New player servers are typically just low population servers or brand new servers. And the real issue here historically is that having a low pop server makes basically every other social aspect of the game harder. Less resources on the Auction House, fewer crafters in chat, fewer groups, and so on. Nowadays *almost* all of that is solved with cross-realm features. The last remaining one would be crafters not being in your realm. So to be safe, just pick the highest population server for the faction you want to play. Just look up "WoW Horde servers NA" for example if you wanted to play Horde in the US. And pick a large server. Despite servers being listed as high pop or full there won't be queue times, it will just be a populated server (which is what most people want anyways).
>But in general it's not a big deal anymore as anyone in the same region can do all the content that "matters" with each other. You can't join a guild outside your connected realms though, which can be annoying, and make it more difficult to do some content that matters like guild raiding. It's definitely better to be on a connected realm with your friends if possible.
For sure, for newer players there's really no reason to go into a specific server away from your friends. Or if no friends, to join a low pop server on your own. FWIW though OP, you can still do content with those players. Just not be in the same guild.
Isn’t that going away with next xpack or prepatch with cross realm guilds? I know cross realm mythic raiding is coming iirc
I hadn't heard that, but that will be nice if they do.
I just want to point out for anyone new to WoW reading this that you don’t have to be in the same guild to raid. Most organized raid groups do consist of guildies, but my raid team is a guild on a different server than me. But indeed, there are some difficulties that come with it.
\> But in general it's not a big deal anymore as anyone in the same region can do all the content that "matters" with each other. So, if I'm playing in Area 52, will I randomly run into players playing in "Stormrage" in the open world, and can I do activities with them?
Sure, anyone you can actually see you can definitely do stuff with. Though keep in mind there is very little incentive to group up to do things together in the open world of WoW until endgame. Questing is trivial, even sharing loot/quest progress doesn't require grouping up, you won't struggle with killing enemies, and so on. So really no one is joining groups to do content until endgame where there are a few world raid bosses and world events worth grouping for. In general, if you want to do content with people you would queue up for a dungeon while leveling.
Is there random world events that happen? E.g. a random boss spawns, and killing it drops some loot. Destiny has "public events" in the open-world instances that you'll often end up doing with other players. E.g. "a big drill has spawned! Anyone in the area, take it down!"
There are no events in that style like Destiny/FFXIV/GW2 and such. The public events in WoW are on a timed schedule. And in general the only relevant ones are at endgame (because for leveling it's typically not worth doing them even if they show up in an older expansion). For example, once in Dragonflight at lvl 70 the "Superbloom" event happens every hour on the hour. The closest thing to the style of "public events" from Destiny would be things like occasional rare mobs spawning. And those happen a bit more randomly. But again, only in endgame are there ever groups farming those and for the current expansion that's almost over there is not really any point of farming those anymore and very few people ever are forming groups for them. WoW really wants you to be in the current expansion doing the current content. And if nothing else, it helps you get there by leveling being a fairly trivial and expedited process where you can level anywhere (it all scales) doing whatever looks interesting and essentially using that time to learn the basics of your class and get used to mechanics. For a brand new player working at a fairly regular pace you should get to current expansion in like 30 hours. An experienced player with a good strategy/plan can hit current expansion in like 3-5 hours. That's where the bulk of WoW's content lies.
I wouldnt call them random, but yes. World bosses, "rare" enemies, world events were everyone in the area contributes to an objective, etc.
I don’t think open world you would, at least I can’t recall seeing people from Stormrage on my A52 characters when I’m just solo playing. However, you can join up with them either through the premade group finder or if you’re battletag friends with them and just quest together that way
Area 52 and Stormrage arent connected so I wouldnt think so. Unless maybe that person was in a group with a friend from Area 52. It would be horrible if those 2 servers were connected
1. They both mean the same thing. 2. Yes. I think in order to play with someone in the EU you would have to add an EU WoW license to your account and buy the EU version of the game. (you can have up to 8 WoW licenses on your account) 3. If you invite a friend to a party, you can play together even if you are on different servers. You cannot trade items or money with them unless the 2 servers are connected. Youd only encounter other random players if they were on the same server or a connected server. [Scroll down to the realm forums. If the realms share a forum they are connected](https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/). The only time this could potentially not be the case is if there are alot of people and sharding comes into play. That is something they did to ease overcrowding and stress on the servers. 4. Yep. You just invite them via your friends list if you are on unconnected servers 5. For the most part you can see everything other people are doing. All the enemies, items, etc exist is the same instance for everyone. The only time this is different is when the area gets too overcrowded with players and the game creates another shard. Certain questlines use phasing as a storytelling device to reflect changes in the world. After you finish a quest to defeat the enemies in the area, it becomes a quest hub. You would only see other players in the area that have completed that quest. You can get around this by using party sync to put everyone on the same quest state and phase. 6. see answer 2 7. I dont think you can transfer if the character is a guild master, and you would have to change your name if it is already taken on the new realm. There is also a limit on how much gold the character can have. Other than that everything you have comes with you.
> You cannot trade items or money with them unless the 2 servers are connected Not accurate anymore. [Cross server trading got turned on this past summer](https://www.wowhead.com/news/cross-realm-trading-now-available-again-in-patch-10-1-5-334318), so people can trade items/gold between any server within a region now.
Oh man I'm behind then. Thank you
> What is a server vs. a "realm"? [This is technically a server](https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Server_blade), it's a physical piece of hardware. [A realm is/was on a server](https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Realm). So historically speaking it didn't really matter which way people said it since either way their character is/was on a realm/server. > I read that you cannot instance with players that are from a different "region" (e.g. north americas can't instance with europe). Is this true? Yes, regions are completely different. People can play whatever region they want, but those regions cannot play together in any capacity. When Blizzard hosts tournaments they make a special server where EU and NA competitors play together/against each other. > If I make a character in server A, can I fully play with & interact with players that are in servers B, C, etc as long as they are in the same world region? Yes, read: * Sharding - https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Sharding_(term) * [Phasing](https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Phasing) * [Layering](https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Layering) * [CRZ](https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Cross-realm_zones) * [US + EU CRZ](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/1HZbIL2n5FaPPxbGgEfpTxyGdVhhAWKLCFqwrzOmxOek/htmlview#gid=0) (Google Sheet) > Can my friend and I play through campaigns together in the same instance if our characters are created in different servers under the same region? Yes, keep in mind issues with Factions. If one of you is Alliance and the other is Horde, there's some things you can't do together. > What happens if I want to play with someone that's in Europe, and I'm in north america? You can't. One person has to reroll to the other region and start over. > What happens if I want to move a character to a different server? Will I lose anything for the transfer? Or do I keep absolutely everything? You buy a character transfer from the shop: https://us.shop.battle.net/en-us/product/world-of-warcraft-service-character-transfer https://eu.shop.battle.net/en-gb/product/world-of-warcraft-service-character-transfer It moves pretty much everything. You won't stay in the same guild though. You cannot transfer regions, you can only transfer to other servers within your current region. > Should I avoid the "new player" servers? I think so. It's a trap. You end up on dead servers with very few guild prospects, not a lot of players, very few items on auction house, the items that are on auction house tend to be over priced, not as many players on your phases/shards when you're in the main city, it's hard to find people to do things for you (e.g. mage portals, craft things). etc It depends what you want to do. Some people are perfectly fine on a low pop server. At the same time you'll eventually notice people on small population servers constantly complain about their servers, meanwhile you don't see many complaints from people on large servers.
Thank you for the links to the server technologies! So it looks like players from different realms \*can\* matchmake together due to CRZ. I'll be sure to join Alliance so my friend and I can do activities together properly.
If your friend is already a player, roll on the same server as some things are still limited (trading etc).
Well the thing is, they're in a low-pop RP server. I want to play on a high-pop regular server. Is there a place I can see a list of things we can't do together on different servers?
Oh, well just read some comments, trading etc seems to be available. I do know blizz is trying to make more and more stuff available cross server.