The forest was lush, and vividly dressed in an array of colors. The tiny night elf hunter was not fooled though – danger lurked ahead. He checked the young night saber bounding beside him, the creature loyal to a fault. This was his protection, his extended attacking arm. If trouble came up suddenly behind him, the cat would respond.

 

He looked back to the unseen path he followed. A fallen tree loomed in front of him, and the night elf ran up to it, and executed a perfect forward flip over the obstacle. There was a long ways yet to go, monsters to fight, and glory to achieve. And the road was new.

 

When World of Warcraft launched, it shattered sales records for massively multiplayer online games. There are close to 90 servers available across the United States and because several still are full, likely more are on the way. Blizzard is happy, and Universal Vivendi is likely tickled by the success of the game. But is World of Warcraft all that it was promised to be? In a word – yes. But at its core, WoW is a dichotomy in the world of MMOs, a contradiction within the core of gameplay that is at once a head-scratcher and appealing.

 

The game is addictive and enjoyable. Everything is laid out before you and you can easily customize the playing experience you have. But here is where the contradiction comes into play: Don’t have much time to play it, don’t worry. You are rewarded for resting and the casual player will not have much trouble keeping pace with someone who plays constantly. Why? Because you are rewarded with 200 percent experience points if you are well rested, something a player who is on constantly will not get. This means that while a hardcore game may earn 75 experience points (or xp) from killing a mob, a player who is well rested (as in away from the game for a certain amount of hours, resting their account in an inn) will get 150 xp for the same mob. Ok, you won’t keep pace with the hardcore gamer that wants plays constantly, but you will make up ground in big chunks.

 

The game is virtually lag-free, the mobs are plentiful and the developers have eliminated downtime (where you kill a bunch of mobs and then have to wait while your hit points and mana/power regenerates) by giving faster reset rates or allowing players to eat or drink to restore needed points in a hurry.

 

This is a game that is incredibly accessible, presents challenge along the way, and can guide players who may never have played an MMO before from the ranks of newcomer to veteran in short order.

 

Design-wise, not many chances were taken in the creation of WoW – unless you call streamlining the grind a risk. But while WoW feels like an amalgam of the best ideas from other MMOs, it maintains its own personality – one that is rife with charm and style.

 

 

Avatars …

 

The game is broken down into two main factions – horde and alliance. Each faction has four playable races, male and female. The races are human, night elf, gnome and dwarf for the alliance, and undead, troll, orc and tauren for the horde. Some of the available classes include druid, warlock, mage, warrior, priest, shaman, rogues, paladin and hunter.

 

As you progress through the game, you acquire items and coins. The coins are vital because they can be used to purchase skills as you level. New skills become available from trainers are every even level. At level 10, you get talent points, which can be used to customize your class.

 

For example, the hunter class has trees in three general areas – beast mastery, marksmanship and survival. As you move through the game, you begin to define you class and skills. The skills are linked to level, as are weapons and armor.

 

Some movements are peculiar to the race you play, and starting points are race specific – for the most part. Moving from one location to the next is done in a couple of ways. You can run (and yes, there is a lot of running distances for most players), you can take a flying mount or a boat ride. For some flights, you have to unlock the areas between the flights initially before you can use the mounts to move quicker. Most of the areas are level specific in design. You can travel to many of them, but since the mobs are geared for certain levels, traveling there when considerably lower is a big risk, while moving through at a higher level yields no xp for an encounter – unless you are doing a quest. And speaking of which, when you first arrive in the world, you can tell which avatars have quests by the exclamation mark above their heads. Some of the avatars have voices, others are merely scribed quest logs.

 

 

Combat and quests and death …

 

World of Warcraft is overflowing with quests. The game easily rivals the quest availability of EverQuest II, but unlike EQ II, in WoW players can only carry up to 20 quests at any one time. A lot of the quests are linked threads, which can reveal story points.

 

Each quest yields rewards in terms of items, coins and xp. You can actually gain more xp through questing than through open hunting.

 

The combat is handled with max/min ranges in mind. A bow has a maximum range and a minimum distance in which it cannot be used. Spells take time to wind up and can be interrupted. Moving between one attack skill and another is effortless. You can hotbar skills and trigger them by pressing the appropriate key.

 

Blizzard has done an outstanding job with the interface in most regards. Some of the keys are not universal to other games, but the learning curve is tiny. Unfortunately, the game employs magic missiles. If a target moves behind a hill or around a tree, when in the process of attacking, your attack will go through the hill or tree and hit the target. Each skill has reset times, and some skills require that you acquire a certain amount of a trait to fire them. For example, the warrior does not have mana, or power, but during the course of an attack, the warrior will build rage, which is necessary for some attacks.

 

World of Warcraft has some of the best death animation ever seen in an MMO, and there is no consequence for dying if you recover your shard. When you die, you are resurrected as a spirit orb in the nearest graveyard. The world goes from glorious color to grayscaled, and you can travel, without consequence, back to where you died and recover your shard. You resurrect with half stats, but that quickly heals.

 

Crafting …

 

Each player can take up two crafting classes in the game, and some work hand-in-hand with other skills. One can take herbology and alchemy, which allows them to find the herbs scattered throughout the worlds, and then create potions with them. Another example of a paired skill set would be skinning and leathercrafting. Without the skills, you cannot collect the resources in the wild. You can, however, collect the items and sell them without having to craft them into something else.

 

Some crafted items are extremely beneficial early on the in the game. Expanding the amount of items you can carry depends on the number of bags you carry and how many slots each holds. The generic bags hold six slots, but players can craft bags that hold much more. Required are found items, a recipe and, naturally, the skill to do it. Other player crafted material is tied to level, and there is a brokerage (similar to what EverQuest has in both incarnations) where you can sell and/or buy.

 

Crafting levels in a slightly different way than xp levels. You use a skill, and level it up through use, then you can buy the training for the next level of that skill.

 

 

PvP …

 

The game does have PvP in a couple of forms. You can dual another player, which is a great way to test skills and weapon abilities, or you can raid. There are also PvP servers available. When you encounter a player in a raid, you cannot see what level they are, and horde and alliance classes cannot understand each other, which alleviates trash talking.

 

Overall …

 

World of Warcraft is a wonderful-looking title that is accessible and will definitely appeal to both casual and hardcore gamers. Players can have a number of characters on each server, which lends itself to variety, if they don’t mind repeating quests tied to certain races, though they can certainly have different races and different classes and experience the fullness of what WoW has to offer.

 

The game has a wonderful backstory, and the lore sprinkled through the game makes it intriguing. The different areas are well designed and diverse enough to further the variety. Though the game currently has a level cap of 60, there is enough to see and do to keep players occupied for a long time.

 

The game has a solid guild structure and enough inducements to make for a thoroughly enjoyable time.

 

Review Scoring Details for World of Warcraft

 

Gameplay: 9.3

Accessible is one word that truly fits this game. Players can move into the world without a lot of trouble and the learning curve is small.

 

Graphics: 9.0

The game is lush and vibrant, but there is a flatness to the world that can be a bit distracting. You know something is not quite right, but can’t really put your finger on it until you finally figure it out. This is a three dimensional world, but the texturing is, for the most part, two-dimensional. This really shows when running up a tree path and the ornate carvings are flat. The animation is very good and the special effects are very well done.

 

Sound: 9.2

The sound is full and wonderful. Not all of the characters have speaking voices, but the game has enough sound effects and a rich musical score to keep it lively.

 

Difficulty: Medium
Play within your level and the game is challenging but not overwhelming.

 

Concept: 8.7

Few risks were taken with this game. It feels like an amalgam of the finest ideas from several other games, but all were given the wonderful Blizzard touch and fit this game’s total concept well.

 

Multiplayer: 9.0

A terrific community awaits those who enter this game. Helpful and generally polite, this is a good social game setting.

 

Overall: 9.1

World of Warcraft is the best-selling MMO of all time (to date) for a reason – beauty and accessibility. Does it raise the bar in terms of gameplay? No. But what it does offer is a grand time in a beautiful world.