World of Warcraft Review (no fat)

Game Description

World of Warcraft (WoW) is the first MMORPG production by Blizzard Entertainment continuing their highly successful Warcraft Series theme. Released roughly 4 years after Warcraft III, WoW puts players in the eyes of the game characters themselves. For hard core Warcraft fans it's an interesting twist as you go from managing the entire army in a strategy format to getting up close and personal from the perspective of individual soldiers.

WoW Horde Versus Alliance

When beginning the game, players must choose a side to create their character. For those unfamiliar with Warcraft, traditionally there has been a war occuring between Alliance races (Humans, Dwarves, Night Elves, and Genomes) and Horde Races (Orcs, Tauren, Trolls, and Undead). Each race has its own aptitudes and players but realm lines cannot be crossed. For instance, it isn't possible to create a Human who belongs to the Horde faction. While this plays less of a role on the PVP consentual servers, this can have a more obvious impact on the true PVP servers as you cannot attack players of the same faction. For interests sake, at the time of this writing alliance players tend to outnumber horde players.

World of Warcraft Gameplay

One of the most often cited positives of WoW versus other MMORPGs is what you could term "time play". Namely, the time that you have to spend doing something boring such as healing, traveling from one area to another, or waiting for your character to create some item. Unlike games like Eve Online where it takes literally days to cross the entire galaxy, WoW has cut this downtime to a minimum. For instance, when completing quests the objectives will be relatively close to the where you get the quest (or alternatively you must complete sub-objectives that lead you to in a loop to the final). Healing and crafting generally takes seconds rather than minutes, and while it can take a long time to traverse the land of Azeroth, players will constantly be confronted with challenges or obsticles along the way. In these ways, World of Warcraft is a MMORPG that plays in a format closer to single player games.

Typical to most RPGs and expecially MMORPGs, WoW provides a serious performance/reward hook in the beginning to addict players quickly. In the beginning, questing & leveling is extremely easy providing players fast rewards. Following a logarithmic, the longer you play the harder the gains become.

World of Warcraft Questing

The WoW questing system is extensive and rewarding. In an attempt to break the monotony of leveling, Blizzard designed their questing system to provide real advantages to players completing their quest. For instance, one might find that an area rich in mining resources is being guarded by a number of creatures that an NPC (non player character) has created a quest to clear out. Further, if you're heading out hunting, usually there will be a number of quests that could simultaneously be completed in the same area. Rewards for quests are diverse ranging from items, gold, experience and less intangible benefits such as a quick movie performed by the quest giving NPC. Lastly, for roleplayers the story lines for the quest tend to be quite interesting and well thought out.

World of Warcraft Gold

The currency that drives the game is WoW gold. Like other MMORPGs, the aftermarket where players buy WoW gold for real life cash is extensive. While Blizzard has strickly forbidden this kind of practice it still seems to creep into the game where some players are there only to "farm" gold for resale. Where this impacts gameplay is when overpowered characters camp valuable spots for hours at a time. On the PVP consent-only servers this is less of a problem, but for PVP players one best watch out!

World of Warcraft PVP

Like many MMORPGs, WoW allows players to choose consentual PVP servers where players can only fight when both agree. For instance, if you want to attack another player they either have to agree to let you do so by accepting a duel request or have performed some "criminal" activity. On true PVP servers there aren't restrictions on who you can attack but rather restrictions on zones where fighting can take place (i.e. outside city borders).

WoW - 2 Cents

On the whole we liked the game. Coming into the game late, Blizzard seems to have improved on a number of things that other games didn't. There's a lot of things that didn't fit into this short review but players will be happy to discover such as personal mounts and group questing. The major fault to the game are the mediocre graphics (as compared to say Lineage 2) which lands WoW at an overall score of 9.