World of Warcraft is an MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online
Role-Playing Game) created by Blizzard and published by Blizzard
Entertainment. The game takes place in the world of Azeroth, inhabited
by the most bitter of enemies and the scariest of creatures. There are
two full continents to explore and plenty to do in the land of Azeroth,
so be ready to pick up your sword (or spellbook) and get ready to fight
for either the Horde or the Alliance.
Before you jump into Azeroth, you must first create your own,
customizable character. There are two warring factions to choose from
and four different races for each faction. Depending on which server
you choose, players on one faction are allowed to kill players of the
other faction when in contested territory. Anyhow, when creating your
character, you have eight different classes to choose from (which
aren't available to every race, but may be to others). Character
creation isn't too varied and is pretty poor when compared to other
character creation systems for other MMORPG's, like the Lord of the
Rings Online which can get pretty deep. Other than the different
hairstyles, most players of the same race pretty much look the same.
You're not even allowed to change the body composition of your
character, so Humans always end up looking like beefed up, muscular
guys on steroids even when you're a magician, so it's pretty saddening
to say the least. Also when creating your character, your not allowed
to choose a name for your character that's already been taken by
another person, but that's typical in most MMO games to steer away from
confusion. To try and keep the game feeling like a realistic game world
and to keep some sense of lore, World of Warcraft also doesn't allow
you to enter numbers into your character's name (but character names
like "LegolasOne" are abundant). The character creation isn't too
shabby, but it could definitely use some updating to catch up with the
times.
After you're done creating your character, you're ready to begin your
adventure. The first thing you are introduced to in the World of
Warcraft is quests. Quests are basically missions, where you either
kill a number of things, collect a number of things, or something to
that effect, which eventually yields reputation gains, monetary gains,
experience, or new gear. Quests can get repetitive, and there are a few
instances where you'll be cursing the game wondering why a certain
quest item hasn't dropped off of a monster yet, even though you've
killed twenty of them, but the game does such a good job at sucking you
into the whole experience that you don't even begin to care and you
just start thinking of the benefits. To add to the fun of questing, it
is also possible to group up with a pal or a bunch of buddies to tackle
the quests together. Not only is it rewarding, but it also creates new
friendships with people and makes the game move a little faster and
smoother.
To help you complete these quests is a database crammed with thousands
of different pieces of gear to customize your character with. Depending
on what character class you chose, some certain pieces of gear may not
be available to you (for example, mages can't wear plate armor). The
gear types in WoW are cloth, leather, mail, and plate, and they can be
classified as junk, common, uncommon, rare, epic, and legendary. All
gear from uncommon to legendary are considered magical, and produce
some sort of effect on the character. These effects can range from
increasing the regeneration of your health to adding more points to
your overall health. Once these pieces of gear are removed, the
benefits go away. You will be able to obtain uncommon gear from the
get-go, but that's only by using the auction house, which I'll explain
later in the review. You probably won't be getting your first epic gear
until at least level 40.
Now that you're all geared up and you've been questing like a real
hero, Blizzard knew that all of that would get pretty boring after
awhile so there are things in the game called instances. Instances are
areas loaded with "Elite" creatures (considerably tough monsters which
are extremely hard to kill unless grouped with other people) and
improved loot. At different intervals in an instance, you will be
tasked with killing a boss monster, which is a single monster with
extremely high stats, magical abilities, and rare gear (which can only
be found from that monster). Instances are fun additions to the World
of Warcraft and can create even larger bonds between your friends. Not
only are they extremely rewarding, but they're also a lot more fun to
do than quests, and they can be done as many times as you'd like to.
However, after your done gearing up some more, doing more quests, and
have gained a considerable sum of levels, now it's on to the big stuff:
raids. Raids are basically instances but scaled to on a much larger
scale. Instead of running into instances with four other players, raids
consist of about 24 other players because they're so large and
difficult. The enemies are tougher, the bosses are meaner, but the
benefits are enormous. You can only get the best gear in the game from
raids. Thankfully, as raids are x5 bigger than regular instances, it's
also x5 the fun.
After you get to Level 60 and have all of the best gear the game has to
offer, there really isn't much to do in the world of Azeroth other than
improving your tradeskills or commandeering the auction house to turn a
hefty profit. Tradeskills are basically modern day jobs like mining or
tailoring that uses regents like ores or cloth to create new items. At
higher levels, you can create higher level gear, but the amount of
regents needed increases with each level you go. Everything you make
initially increases your level by one point, but as you continue to
rise in levels, some creations will yield no level-ups, or it will be a
1/4 chance of it happening. If your not much into creating objects
though, you can always pick up a tradeskill and head off to the auction
house. At the auction house, players from your faction are able to
trade all kinds of objects, ranging from useful gear to useless junk.
The auction house is very simple to use, and is basically self
explanatory. You can view lists of different objects or search up a
specific one. When auctioning your own item, you can have the auction
last up to 48 hours after you set a starting bid price and optionally a
buyout price. Using the auction house can improve your gear drastically
and without effort, or you can become rich instantly by using it wisely.
You will probably be spending a lot of time in the world of Azeroth,
and for an MMORPG, it looks pretty good. The game is intentionally
cartoony looking, but they pulled off all of the visual capabilities
splendidly. The game still looks pretty good even at the lowest
graphical capabilities and resolution possible, but there is still a
definite amount of lag when entering major cities (as there are dozens
of players in one city at a time, crammed between all of the buildings
and shops the city has to offer).
Yet, even though the graphics look great, the sound is even better.
Monsters sound realistic and rarely share the same sound effects
between species. Weapons and such also sound great and to the greatest
degree of realism. NPCs will greet you when you talk to them, and
they'll say good bye when you leave. Even though there is a distinctive
amount of voice acting thats lacking (all quests need to be read, the
quest givers don't speak rather than the typical greetings and
farewells), to include audio for all of the thousands of quest would
require an enormous amount of space. To top it all off however, if you
decide you don't really like the sounds in the game, you can easily add
in your own without breaking the Terms of Service.
As I've said many times throughout this review, World of Warcraft can
be very addicting. Arguably, it may be the most addicting game ever
created. Whether it's the size of Azeroth that astounds you or the
certain charm that the game lays upon you, you will constantly find
yourself coming back regularly. At a gamers point of view, the
addiction of World of Warcraft may be it's biggest flaw. It gives
internet trolls' something to regularly bash the game about and it
often deeply affects the lives of the player. In recent times, people
have actually died from playing this game non-stop. If you think that
you're not going to get addicted to the World of Warcraft, think about
it this way. Playing World of Warcraft is sort of like smoking a
cigarette or taking a drug for the first time. You say to yourself "I'm
not the type of person that gets addicted, I can quit whenever I
want,". Unless you have some form of resistance to MMORPG's, WoW will
most likely have you coming back for more. Fortunately, WoW addiction
is easily breakable, as you'll eventually realize that you are
essentially doing the same things over and over again.
Fortunately for WoW, it was created by an outstanding team of game
designers, and the game is constantly updated through patches. Not only
do these patches fix up game errors and bugs, but they also bring about
new game mechanics, instances, gear, etc. World of Warcraft just never
ends. To top it all off, the game is backed by thousands of modders, so
there are always new modifications to try out and make the World of
Warcraft experience easier and more enjoyable to everyone.
In conclusion, World of Warcraft is a game that appeals to just about
everyone. You don't need to be a lover of RPG games or fantasy to
instantly enjoy WoW. Having complete freedom to do whatever you want,
talk to anyone, and to create your own hero is just simply
mind-blowing. You just haven't play a fantasy game until you've played
WoW.
