World of Warcraft (WOW) is Blizzard Entertainment’s Massively
Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) that has been nothing
short of a runaway success. After spending some time with it, it’s
pretty easy to see why and how this monstrosity has ensnared over nine
million gamers and growing. What separates WOW from other online games
such as Diablo 2 and Guild Wars is its massively multiplayer nature.
What this means is that unlike other online games, when you log into
WOW and pick a server to play on, you are playing in the same game
world as all the other players currently connected to that server. You
can see all of these other players and interact with them in real time,
which is pretty cool to say the least the first time you experience it.
There is no need to go back to a lobby, or town, or anything like that
to get people to play with since everyone is in the same field pretty
much all the time.
Players do need to pay a monthly fee in order to play the game beyond
the first month. The standard fee is fifteen dollars a month, but there
are also three month and six month bulk packages available as well.
With these plans you pay a larger sum up front every three or six
months respectively, but the overall cost to play per month is cheaper
than the standard month to month plan, which is nice since it saves you
money in the long run. There is a lot of speculation regarding games
with monthly fees, and MMORPG’s in particular. The reason players have
to pay an additional fee after they have purchased the game is that
because MMORPG’s are living breathing digital worlds. They require
constant maintenance and continually need to be watched over so things
don’t get out of hand, kind of like a group of small children. In order
to do this people have to be employed to watch over, monitor, and fix
any problems that may come up around the clock. Plus, in order to keep
the game world a dynamic seemingly living place, new content has to
constantly be created for it and implemented. Not to mention the
servers and networks the game is running on require time and money in
order to maintain in addition to the game. All of this stuff is what
your subscription pays for. Is it worth it? The short answer is yes. It
is most definitely worth it. Please, continue reading to find out why.
Players can choose to play either side of the fictional war raging in
the World of Warcraft. These two sides are the Alliance (composed of
Humans, Night Elves, Gnomes, and Dwarves) and The Horde (made up of
savage Orcs, the mighty Minotaur like Tauren, Trolls who speak with a
Jamaican accent, and the creepy Undead). Players can have several
characters per server, and can have characters in both the Alliance and
Horde if they aren’t playing on a PVP server. Characters can be male or
female, and there is a variety of different things to choose from to
make your character aesthetically pleasing and unique. When creating a
character, players also choose their characters class from the handful
the game offers. Players can be a backstabbing rogue, light wielding
paladin, bloodthirsty warrior, power hungry warlock, totem and element
manipulating shaman, divine priest, nature powered druid, pet assisted
hunter, or magic flinging mage. Some classes are race specific, such as
the druid class that is confined to the Tauren and Night Elves. Other
classes, such as the paladin and shaman, are faction specific if you
don’t have The Burning Crusade, which is WOW’s first expansion pack.
After players have gone through all of this they must name their
character. If you are having difficulty with this, or are just lazy,
Blizzard has included a random name generator in the game. It’s located
under the box you type your characters name into, and simply clicking
on it will generate random fantasy Warcraft names for your character.
Upon entering the World of Warcraft for the first time players are
treated to a race specific cinematic that sets up their story and
places players in their appropriate race specified starting area. From
this point forward there is no waiting around. Players simply play by
exploring the world around them, killing monsters, and completing
quests. By default, movement is controlled by the WASD keys much like a
first person shooter. However, if you prefer to point and click your
way to victory fear not, because the controls can be turned over to the
old point and click method in the options. There’s really no need to
switch back to point and click controls though, since the WASD controls
are quite fluid and provide for a much more hands on feel, further
drawing players into the game. The default interface is a bit standard,
but is clean, clear, and provides players with good visibility, and
never really gets in the way. Players start with a dozen hot keys for
their attacks and items, and if for some reason this isn’t enough,
there are four additional hot key bars that can be made visible through
the options. These run along the bottom and right side of the screen,
which can make things feel a bit cluttered if you don’t like to keep
the camera zoomed out. This is nothing game breaking though, and is
only a minor annoyance at best. Players start with a backpack to keep
their loot in, and can equip up to four additional bags or backpacks to
increase inventory space. Between the hotkey bar and inventory bar on
the bottom of the screen is a small section that contains all your
characters vitals, as well as a bar that shows your latency. Here
players can open their character screen, talent tree once they reach
level 10, friends list, and so on, which is very handy. If for some
reason you don’t like the default interface for WOW, have no worries,
because the interface is totally customizable. Blizzard has mod kit
available for download of the World of Warcraft website that allows you
to make the interface however you want it to be.
Graphically WOW is nothing to write home about. It has a cartoon look
and feel, but that is no reason for the game to look as ugly as it
does, especially when games like Guild Wars can run on much less
powerful systems than WOW can, and sport better graphics. On the
default settings WOW is simplistic, bland, and a bit grainy in
appearance. If you can run the game on max settings, you will be
treated to much more smooth and detailed environments and character
models. However, this doesn’t relieve WOW of the problem that it
graphically looks and feels quite dated. This is a problem that is only
becoming more prevalent as time moves on. It’s surprising that after
being out for almost three years with one expansion already available
and another on the way that Blizzard hasn’t announced any plans to deal
with this issue, or done anything to address it already. In terms of
appearance, WOW was tolerable when it launched, but desperately needs a
face lift today.
WOW’s audio is top notch. Each NPC in the game has a fully voiced
greeting that plays when you click on them, much like your units did in
Starcraft and the old Warcraft real time strategy games. There isn’t a
whole lot of variety in these greetings, as it becomes very apparent
early on that the game just cycles through the same pool of some thirty
sound bits. However, these greetings never get old, and it’s always
entertaining to see what comes up when you click on the NPC’s too many
times and make them angry. WOW supports a fully orchestrated sound
track that plays on and off in the background always keeping the mood,
and never ruining it. During battle players will be treated to the boom
of magic, whap of maces, and clatter of steel as they fight over life
and death. It’s worth noting here that some of the original sound
effects for things such as the rogue’s backstab ability have been
replaced. Sadly, the replacements are less than stellar in comparison
to the originals. The end result is that while these attacks can
certainly pack a punch, because of their weak sound, they feel
underpowered. It’s also worth noting here that if you die in combat
there is no loss of experience points or items. Likewise, players won’t
have to worry about other players looting their corpses. Players can
resurrect at the spirit healer in the graveyard and will suffer from
resurrection sickness, which grossly lowers your stats for a short
time. Resurrection sickness also deals a 20% durability loss to all of
a player’s equipment, which requires a trip to the blacksmith to fix.
If players don’t wish to resurrect in the graveyard they can have a
friend revive them, or travel back to their corpse and resurrect where
they fell at no penalty. This is a drastic change from the older style
of MMORPG’s and veterans may argue that it makes the game too easy.
However, Blizzard made it this way because they felt that such features
would turn more people off to their product than on to it, and they
wanted to create a game that everyone can play and enjoy, and that is
what they did.
In terms of overall content for an MMORPG, WOW has a lot to offer and
certainly justifies the monthly fee. Free content updates arrive to
give players new features and things to do every couple of months or
so. Players seeking to battle other players can duke it out in either
global free for all PVP, or one of the many battlegrounds. There are
countless quests to undertake and places to explore for players
interested in that sort of thing. There is a wide variety of
professions for players to choose from, master, and switch between at
their leisure. With nine base classes and eight different races split
between two sides of a war without end, it’s easy to say that this is a
game you can easily invest thousands of hours into.
Despite all the positive things, WOW isn’t without its flaws. The dated
graphics aside, WOW’s biggest problem is that it is shallow in the
sense that the game never evolves beyond doing quests, killing things,
and hunting for treasure, which usually involves the first two things
just mentioned. Players looking for something beyond this will most
likely not be too fond of WOW, since they will see it as a shallow
grind-fest, which is ultimately all the game is. Also, WOW lacks
several basic and key features found in practically every MMO that has
come before it, which doesn’t help matters any. For instance, you can
not customize the appearance of your character after you have made him
or her. You can not change your characters class after you have made
the character. If you want to play another class you have to make a new
character in that class. There is no player housing, no guild halls for
guilds, and no guild bank for guilds. When a player chooses to pick up
a new profession their old one is abandoned, which reduces their level
in that profession back to zero. This is both an annoyance and doesn’t
make a whole of sense if their character ever wanted to go back and
pick up that profession again. Another major problem with WOW is its
end game content. For whatever reason, Blizzard hasn’t been able to
move this part of the game beyond the same shallow, dungeon running,
item hunting raiding, rep grind that it was in when WOW launched. There
is a ton of different fun things to do as you climb the ranks to the
top, which keeps the game interesting, but once you reach the end game
the game falls flat and looses its appeal. At the end game players are
left with two options, they can either dungeon run/raid for hours on
end for new equipment, or they can PVP for honor and PVP equipment.
Both of these things require you to be in a fairly well coordinated
guild in order to get anywhere. Also, unless players are playing on a
new or low population server, they will find that if they aren’t
already in a guild like this by this point in the game then they are
out of luck, and will have nothing left to do. This is because most
people have settled into regular groups they play with by this point in
the game. This makes getting into a group, or picked up for a raid or
PVP battle a challenge, because people usually aren’t looking to add
more members to their group.
All that said, WOW is a great game, and is still the best all around
MMORPG on the market. It is casual so you don’t need to dedicate
hundreds of hours to it in order to advance. The controls are fluid and
very simple to just pick up and play, and it’s fun to play, which is
the most important thing. There is enough content here to justify the
monthly fee. WOW will keep you occupied for hundreds if not thousands
of hours without end. Also, given the dynamic nature of the game, it
will keep you coming back for more, or just to see how it’s changed,
after you think you have seen it all, and then you’ll fall in love with
it all over again. Blizzard has a free 10 day trial available for those
who aren’t sold on the game yet. It is free and will allow you to check
out WOW and find what the hubbub is about. If you like RPG’s, or you
like online games, or are a fan of Blizzard Entertainment, or are just
looking for a good time, you owe it to yourself to check out WOW. If
you don’t fit into any of the categories just mentioned, you still owe
it to yourself to check out WOW, because this game is a true
masterpiece and deserves at least a looking into.
