The Dawning of MMO's.
When I first saw World of Warcraft I was very skeptical of the title I had enjoyed the original games in the series but the style of the game and the things I had been seeing from its very early alpha stages had me thinking if the game was going to be any good. At this point I set my standards high after playing Everquest for five whole years. I took a step down from the game to play Everquest II which failed to capture the magical effects the original game had given off to me and after spending time with that I moved on to Matrix Online which delivered a new view on MMO's but wasn't really innovative enough, anyway back to the review.
World of Warcraft exceeded expectations the art style the game offered was excellent and set the tone for the game though some areas do feel rather comical than spooky when it should be but the essence of Warcraft is retained. WoW ( World of Warcraft) continues to the lore of the universe going taking place after the events of Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos and The Frozen Throne. Not only did it continue a canon lore but added more to the already expansive universe with the Scarlet Crusade, The Ashbringer, and ETC.
The music in World of Warcraft was very well composed the soundtrack does a really job of expressing the environments to the soothing music of Darnassus to the epic feeling Molten Core. The soundtrack does compliment it's environment very well, and the themes of the Major Cities are quite memorable.
The combat system is by far one of the most simplistic and user friendly one out there. It allowed for casual players to be able to play the game with relative ease and strayed a bit away from the hardcoreness of games like Everquest but in it's aspects does apply to the hardcore player with things like macros and such when it comes down to the max level PVP and High end raid dungeons you encounter later on in the game.
World of Warcraft broadened the MMO genre out to both those non hardcore and hardcore players but creating an experience both styles of gamers can enjoy and at the same time allow the to coexist with each other with flawless ease.
Aside from minor issues with glitches which are always being patched by Blizzard the game is pretty much flawless and with constant content updates the game can be played endlessly.