World of Warcraft Review (PC, Mac, Online)
World of Warcraft has lived up to its name and turned the world of PC gaming into a world of WoW. The most successful MMORPG (massively multiplayer role-playing game) to date, boasting over 11 million subscribers (that’s more then the entire population of Switzerland!) and its showing no signs of slowing down as it nears its five year anniversary.
After getting out of a time abusive EverQuest relationship with scrapes, scars, and bruised fingertips, the low maintenance, casual fun time that World of Warcraft was offering sounded magnificent.
That’s what prompted me to jump on the WoW bandwagon as soon as I could. Lucky for me I didn’t have to wait very long.
When the game was finally released, I had had my fill of the Alliance and most of the classes, so I went Horde (much less playtime on beta) and Hunter (not released until after the beta was over). Not sure what I was thinking since I ended up with an incomplete class in a roughly tested area. =)
As it turns out it didn’t matter much, since the first few months (like most new MMO releases) were more of a paid beta then a real game. There were an incredible amount of server issues and down time, but they refunded all the paid players for the down time. I was far from minding since it kept me nice and casual by default.
Eventually, all the server issues were resolved, classes completed, and major bugs ironed out, but playing casually had already sunk in as a habit.
While I did make it to the level cap at the time (level 60) I really took my time. I tried to enjoy the game and probably managed this far better as a casual player. WoW was really great at making me feel like I had accomplished something despite playing for a short period of time. It also helped that I didn’t have to find other people to play with. I could just go out and finish up some quests all by myself. This was practically unheard of in EverQuest.
Had WoW required lots of my time, I probably would have just quit. I was determined not to get sucked into such a huge time commitment again.
After I hit level 60 (the level cap at the time) and having tried a few different classes I took a break since the end of the game at the time was just large raiding (40 people) and PvP, both of which I had no interest in.
While the game was incredibly fun, I didn’t have any trouble taking a break, as I felt very little loyalty to it. In many ways WoW was quite a disappointment, since it was essentially a more polished version of the previous MMOs I has just left behind.
I had hoped for something that would stretch the boundaries, incorporate more mechanics from the Warcraft games. A Massively Multiplayer Real Time Strategy Role Playing Game, now that would have been a sight to behold.
Review
Release date: November 23, 2004
Website: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/index.xml
Developer: Blizzard Entertainment
Platform I played on: PC and MAC (I love that I can play this on my Mac as well!)
Game play
Since WoW has been around for so very long already, I decided to split the review up into the three WoW incarnations thus far: The Original (this review), The Burning Crusade Expansion, and The Lich King Expansion. This will not only shorten each review (or at least keep me in the reasonable range) it will also allow for highlighting all the wonderful (and not so wonderful) changes that have happened over the years. Enjoy.
World of Warcraft is fashioned in the (long?) standing tradition of MMORPGs like EverQuest and Dark Ages of Camelot. The general idea is based off the Dungeons and Dragons game (you know characters written down on paper, reading rule books, and everyone sitting around a table and playing together, face to face. I know, shocking!)
The basic goal is to level up your character (that’s right, you only play one character at a time, remember role-playing!) Each player creates their own, choosing from a selection of races and classes and gives their character a unique (to the server) name that acts as the main form of identification (limited choices of race and class combinations means some characters end up looking alike).
Leveling up is achieved by accumulating experience, which can be gained by defeating monsters or completing quests (these are basically errands that you run for the computer controlled characters in the game.) Each new level completed opens up new and more powerful skills and abilities for the character, this allows the progression into more challenging areas of the world.
Another way to enhance your character is through equipment. As you explore the world, defeat big bad monsters, and complete quests, new and more enhancing equipment will be provided as a reward (not only experience, but also, what we like to call, fat loot!)
Combat, one of the main forms of gaining experience and interacting with the game, is designed to be (what technical terming people have termed) Modal Combat. This basically means that the character’s chosen target is selected (like a permanent highlighting).
Since the character does not need to keep the target in visual sight to interact with it, once the target is selected there is freedom to move around, cast spells, melee, chat (though this might lead to dying), etc.
The game has a vast amount of components too it, too much to really discuss it all in my little review, but this gives the basic idea of what the game is. There really is so much more too it though, trade skills, raiding, faction grinding, player vs. player, world events, and more.
World and Story
There is an incredible amount of story included in the game. With three previous games and an entire world developed to house all this lore, its way too much to sum up.
Frankly I wouldn’t know where to start, as I don’t really know much about the story. It’s not that vital to the game and much more of a bonus for those that find the world lore interesting.
For all of you that are curious about the lore, here is a link to the story site. =)
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/story/index.html
Graphics
This game looks great! The Warcraft style is consistently propagated through out the whole game, creating a spectacular and vibrantly cohesive world. Each character race has a clear theme as do the various locations found in the game.
The characters, while appropriately designed for the world, left a bit to be desired. Oh they are fabulously modeled and have great animations, but none of them are really that pretty. I know, that’s an incredibly girly thing to say, but honestly, if I am going to be spending my time in a fantasy world, I want to be STUNNING!
The world design came up with quite a few dramatic locals. Just exploring the entire world for the first time is well worth the free month, as there are some incredibly beautiful areas to be found. Not all of them though. A few of the locations ended up with a bit too much brown or covered in too much fog, but keep looking. It’s worth the effort. =)
Side note, beware the collision. There are often hills that look perfectly climbable but aren’t, thank you collision. Never mind the tiny itty-bitty pointy edge sticking out that my character got stuck on.
Replay ability
Replay ability for this game mainly comes down to motivation. There has always been a lot of interesting things to do in the game, so much so that you don’t really have have to replay much at all, unless you want too.
Ah but here is the crux, you need to find all the stuff you can do. After a certain point the game no longer leads you by the hand. This can be a harder transition to make for some people as self-motivation then comes into play. As there is no real ending, setting your own goals becomes the driving force for accomplishing anything.
For some people this will mean playing through the game again with a brand new character. Others it will mean playing through the various dungeons and raids to upgrade gear on their character, or possibly going out and collecting supplies to further their chosen trade skill. Then of course there are those that just want to PvP.
Most activities in the game are repeatable in some form or another (most require massive amounts of repetition to excel at them); it’s up to you to decide if that’s what you wish to do with your time online. =)
Multiplayer
YES! Massively! (Well, this is limited by server capacity, which I estimate at being around 2500 people online at the same time on the same server.)
This is essentially the purpose of the game, to socialize, make friends, and have other people available to play with or against.
That’s what really held my attention, playing with friends (and my husband of course!)
Things that bothered me
-Just another MMORPG
This point has been made already, but I wanted to touch on it again, since really this is my main gripe with the game. I had just left a level grinding game behind and was not looking for another quest, slay monster, rinse and repeat type game.
It should be noted that WoW made the level grind and questing quite a lot easier, which added mucho fun value and took off the pressure of spending a huge amount of time on the game to progress.
-World of Walkcraft
At the beginning of the game there was so much time spent on running around, getting from one quest to the next, that it got boring quite quickly. Thankfully they had jumping in the game. At least it gave some break to the monotony. (Jumping saved me for falling asleep while traversing the Barrens!)
Also once a character got to level 40 they could then purchase a mount, which would allow them to traverse the continent at increased speeds. At level sixty an even faster mount became available. This of course saved so much time.
It should also be mentioned that there are various modes of transportation around the world, flight links that will give you rides to other specific flight locations, for a minimal fee, boats that will take you to other continents, even blimps. But in the end you still had to run to the location to take catch the flight or boat or blimp. Yaay, for mounts!
-PVP
PvP stands for Player vs Player, any situation that throws one human player against another human player.
Everyone I know has heard me rant and rave about PvP ruining my game experience. Okay maybe not quite ruining, but its obvious I am not a big fan of PvP! Maybe I should qualify that. I don’t think PvP belongs in games where character level and equipment outweigh player skills.
Really I’m very happy avoiding PvP, when I can. It’s really a multifaceted dislike, one that I should explore at some later date. (I could go on and on and on and I’m trying so had not to make this review too long.)
-Horde vs Alliance
The world is broken up into two different factions, Alliance and Horde. This has never sat well with me, mainly because I find it tiresome to have my choices taken away from me. If I want to play with my friends that are on Alliance side I have no option to play Horde.
Not only is the segregation irritating (you can’t even communicate with the opposite faction), there is an immense amount of content that is wasted. They (Blizzard, the developer) have to do almost twice the amount of work to satisfy each faction.
I find it completely lame, superfluous, and a waste of time.
-No real ending!
I’m still waiting for an MMO to come up with an interesting end game. WoW did absolutely nothing new, but gave the players the option to raid (huge group activities that essentially are only to get better equipment) and PvP. Neither of these things was of interest to me. Not only had I just left games that specialized in such activities, but also I found them to be a huge copout.
Time played
Okay so this is actually a tough question to answer. Since I am breaking my review up by box releases, its hard for me to determine how much of my characters logged play time is for each of them. I think we played the original WoW for about six months before taking a break.
Game finished
~singing~ This is the game that never ends, it just goes on and on and on! ~singing~
With the third expansion coming out, this game is far from finished.
Mood Progression
Last Thoughts
Despite all my misgivings about this game, it’s an incredible achievement and super fun. Blizzard deserves major brownie points for pulling it off. I have no troubles understanding why it’s so popular, even though I would have really liked to see more Warcraft in my World of Warcraft.
Tags: cooperative, d&d, guide, hunters, levels, loot, mac, mmog, online, pc, roleplaying, skills, world of warcraft
