Total newbie seeking general help Options

[missourimedic]

Okay, I'm a TOTAL newbie to ArmA. I mean, I just installed it last night and have never played it. Yes, I did play through the tutorials for a very basic familiarization with the controls and weapons/vehicles. Also, I have over a decade of experience with other similar FPS/multi-player games. (I was even on the Counter-Strike development team, and did some of the "official" maps and textures during the beta stages and version 1.0.)

If you're wondering why I bought this just before ArmA 2 is being released, it's basically because my system can handle this, but probably not ArmA 2... and also because ArmA piqued my interest and I didn't want to wait.

Anyway, despite my previous experience with FPS's (including more sim-like ones such as America's Army), I'm having a bit of trouble acclimating to ArmA, and just want some general advice or tips. Anything useful is appreciated!

Mostly I'm looking for general advice and tips, but a couple of the more specific questions I have are:

1. How do I navigate and set my way-points? I'm having some trouble figuring out where I should be going or what my objective is. I know this is an embarrassingly newbish question, but remember, I just bought the game a few hours ago. I can switch back-and-forth to the map and get a general idea of where I am, but can't figure out how to navigate from the main game screen. Is there a way to view my waypoint(s) from the 1st person view?

2. Is this game fun? I would assume that almost everyone reading this is a fan, or you wouldn't be here discussing it. But the servers I found last night were terrible. One was a teamkilling free-for-all... and the other one was much better, but still didn't have a lot of teamwork. It also seemed like everyone was speaking a different language, so there was little or no communication amongst teammates.

All other advice for a newbie is appreciated!