Others prefer to move the left hand off the letters and use the right hand on the movement keys, which puts your right index finger on the A key.

A little more comfortable, right? Some people will stop there, leaving their right hand for the occasional mouse action.

If you shift your finger placement to the left one key - so that the pinky is off the letters and your ring finger is now on the A, your index finger will be on the D.

If you keep your hand here, it's going to feel really weird learning how to move with the keyboard because you'll be using your two weakest fingers most of the time.

If you took a keyboarding class (or typing class, old skool), your left pinky is on the A and your index finger is on the F.

How do you place your hand on the keyboard when you're using it for movement? A very good question, my friend.

Here's a video that will show you what strafing looks like if you can't picture it in your head. Strafing means moving in one direction while looking or attacking in another direction. Toggle continuous walking or running (you press it once, don't hold it down) A lesson from one who has gone before you: I really wish I had learned to use the movement keys before I hit 70. For many people, keyboard shortcuts are the best way to speed up your reaction times. They are still not completely natural for me, but at level 70 when you mostly play PvP, you really NEED to be very fast. I'll confess that I only started learning the keyboard commands for character movement a short time ago. Social panel (tabs for Friends, Guild, Ignore, and eventually Raid) When a keyboard command is capitalized, it's written as ' Shift-L'.) After the break, you'll see a list of keyboard shortcuts for the game interface. (Don't worry that it's a capital L, just press lower-case L. The L in parentheses after ' Quest Log' means you can just press your L key to bring up the log instead of clicking the icon. You'll see that when I hover my mouse over the gold cup icon, a tooltip pops up. Let's start with the button bar that you use to bring up your Quest Log, Spellbook and other things.

You can find most of them by just hovering your mouse over the icons that you click - as no doubt you may have already noticed. There are hotkeys for almost everything you do in-game. You don't have to bail on your mouse, but it's very helpful to learn some of the very basic keyboard shortcuts that will make your life in the game that much easier. Make sure you send a note to WoW Insider if you have suggestions for what new players need to know.Īccept this fact: to be good at playing WoW, you need to learn to use your keyboard at least some of the time. WoW Rookie is brought to our readers to help our newest players get acclimated to the game.

Wow in the bag