WoW Rookie is brought to our readers to help our newest players get acclimated to the game. Make sure you send a note to WoW Insider if you have suggestions for what new players need to know.

As a social game, it's fun to make friends in an MMORPG environment. In World of Warcraft, you must also make friends (and sometimes enemies) with members of various faction groups. Reputation (rep) is gained through killing a faction's enemies and completing quests to assist a particular group. Obviously, killing member's of a particular faction reduces rep. For example, killing Bloodsail Pirates increases rep with Booty Bay (Steamwheedle Cartel), while decreasing rep with the Bloodsail Buccaneers.

There are many reasons why we may increase or decrease reputations. You may be asked to do so to as a quest objective or to gain particular rewards. By gaining exalted reputation with the major cities you have access to purchase their racial mounts (provided your they may be scaled to your racial model) and their guild tabards. Higher levels of rep also allow discounts on goods and repair services from vendors, and higher prices for selling useless items. For the next couple of weeks, we'll be taking a look at the ins and outs of reputation on WoW Rookie.

I really like Pinkywinky's idea that she posted over on the forums-- she's running her character as a vegan, which means no meat (she's a mage, so she only eats her own conjures), no killing of non-hostile animals, no leather wearing (again, as a clothie, no real problem with that), and no attacking anything that doesn't attack her. Of course, that doesn't fit the strict definition of vegan, but you get the idea-- she's giving herself her own boundaries inside the game world, and challenging herself to stay within them.

We've seen players do this before (the naked troll is probably the most well-known example), and it's fascinated me every time. WoW is not really a tough game, and so there's all kinds of ways you could make it harder or set up an interesting challenge, either for roleplaying reasons or just to keep it fun. I've always wanted to try play the game without ever talking to anyone at all-- that means no quests, no training, no groups (no talking to players either), no repairs (I'd have to just wear drops as I got them), and no professions. It would be really tough-- I'd probably have to make an exception on the training thing, no matter which class I chose, but I think it would be possible, and it would definitely give a new bent to the game.

Have you ever gone without in WoW, just to see if you could?