Reviewed By: Ryan Newman

Traversing The Barrens with fellow staffer and Orc, Nicholas ‘Shebubu’ Stewart, was an exhilarating experience - at first. To feel as though I was now a part of the Wacraft universe in a genuine way - in that my talents and time could advance the ambitions of the side I was playing on - and I could be as integral in the famous struggle of the Alliance against the Horde was nothing short of magical. During our travels together, I had noted to Nicholas that during the Christmas of 1995 I spent all my free time playing Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness, and now, here it is, Christmas 2004, and I was spending the holidays playing Warcraft again, only now I was experiencing first-hand what I had sent so many of my little sprite troops to do before. Circle of life, indeed.

I had originally intended to write this review earlier, but just as I was wrapping up my time in the world, the servers experienced their growing pains. While my main character was busy sitting in an inn that floated in-between the ether and the land of severe lag, I was able to select from my handful of backup characters and get a better feel for the various sides and classes. While Blizzard’s reasonings as to the hows and whys of the problems were a bit combobulated, they did credit players with free days to compensate, which, at the time of this writing, seems to be appropriate enough. That time with my other characters was well spent as my Civil War-era Gnome Magician, Dwarven Hunter, and Troll Rogue all came into their own. However, nothing could keep me from my standard-bearer, the almighty Orc Warrior. As an inhabitant of that world, my time was spent mining, healing, ambushing, creating, dancing - please Hammer, don’t hurt ‘em - and I fought off the almighty lag beast to accompany fellow players in raiding towns.

What is noticeable right off the bat is that the servers are unbalanced. The natural problem of players wanting to be where other players are
 

 
  
continues today, but I found that playing in a lesser-populated server also has its advantages. While the economy teeters on nonexistent, the camaraderie nurtured via the game’s predecessors is natural here and intensified whenever there are so few players - and this turns out to be the case because there tends to be an unbalance between the sides on smaller servers. My main character is located on a server where the Night Elves alone outnumber the entire Horde. While this is cause for some occasionally justified complaining, it also bonds most of the players together in a way that really enhances the experience. The underdog effect was in full swing several times throughout my time in WoW as handfuls of feisty Orc, Troll, Tauren, and Undead raided the Night Elf territory, with one particularly long raid ending up with the intruders being separated and surrounded. Unfortunately, these kinds of experiences are really left up to the players to make the most out of because much of the player-versus-player aspects have yet to be defined by Blizzard.

The honor system discussed in the manual - which would keep lower-level characters relatively safe from higher-level prowlers - was done away with early on. The battleground feature discussed on the official site has yet to be implemented. What does exist, however, are the player-versus-player servers where contested zones automatically flag players to attack and to be attacked by others, leaving the non-player-versus-player servers to require that players manually flag themselves with a command that lasts five minutes. Aside from channels allowing raiding parties to keep their conversations amongst themselves, and the ability to separate loot a particular way, World of Warcraft offers few new ideas in the way of organization or beneficial aspects - no nifty linking attack system as in Final Fantasy Online or experience bonuses for performance. Even with the terrific way Blizzard handled the graphics, which is an outstanding art style masking an engine that even older computers can handle, few systems and connections can sustain the kind of heavy damage a one-hundred-unit raid party can create.

Those not particularly interested in the often brutal player-versus-player experience will find soloing and questing with parties to be much more satisfying. At the outset, the player can choose to be a Human, Gnome, Dwarf, Night Elf, Undead, Tauren, Orc, or Troll, with each having their own benefits and restrictions; for example, Gnomes will have benefits when pursuing the engineering profession, but they cannot be priests. The classes spread out amongst the races are warrior, rogue, hunter, mage, shaman, warlock, paladin, and priest. Each class has a Diablo-style level-branching system that allows players to boost highly specific class abilities through the use of talent points, which arrive at a rate of one per level after reaching tenth level. While stronger versions and new spells can be purchased from class trainers, the enhancements made through the talent trees increase such things as the overall abilities of a spell. So, for the thunder clap ability, going from level one to level two might make the duration of its stun effect last longer and the pain it inflicts slightly greater, but putting a talent point towards it will increase its overall potency, adding more to what it already is. Most skills lead to the advancement of other skills, and so on. With multiple styles of branches to choose from, there is plenty to work towards, but it also serves to keep characters unique - one Warrior may be an offensive juggernaut while another may be weak offensively, but like a rock with their emphasis on defense.

During the game, players can also select up to two professions and multiple secondary skills. I was a fan of mining and engineering, which allowed me to create most of the materials I would need to create an item. There is also alchemy, leather working, ironsmithing, herbalism, and weaponsmithing. The secondary skills include first aid, fishing, and cooking. In short: there is plenty to do. Fans of the MMORPG genre will note that what is unique about World of Warcraft is the crafting success rate. Rarely did I ever fail at mining, whether extracting the mineral or melting them down, and I really cannot recall ever failing in creating an item. This lax approach permeates throughout the game and is one of its highlights, keeping the experience fast and engaging. The activities also tie into each other: the fish caught can be cooked with the appropriate experience, while the cloth needed to make dynamite can also be allocated to making bandages, and so on. This also means that even basic items can be coveted and sold for a good bit in the server’s auction house. Of course, there are also the rare drops that can be put towards new items or sold for cash. That being said, there were few times when I was actually short of cash. It was only when I was able to purchase new and upgraded spells and abilities that the pocketbook got light, and the remedy to that was simply a few minutes of running around the nearest open area.

World of Warcraft seems to have the two design themes: tying things together and ease of use. While previously mentioned in regards to single items being usable in a variety of ways and the high success rate in creating items, the same is also true in regards to how the world is laid out and in how the game takes much of the burden away from the player. It is difficult to describe how the worlds are crafted, because doing so never adequately explains what Blizzard has achieved. The only way I can explain this is to say that the two continents, which are broken up into numerous territories, remind me of a rectangle, with the player moving along the horizontal axis. This means that, while it does not take a long time to get from point A to point B, there is a great deal of room to move about along the way. Aside from having a mount, taking a blimp, boat, or one of the various airborne units as transportation, running is not the time-consuming burden that it is in other MMORPGs, like Final Fantasy Online. Here, going from one nearby town to another doesn’t mean spending thirty minutes on the road, but maybe ten, or a flight that takes a few minutes. Longer journeys may take time, but most of that comes from exploring the initial territory first to find someone to learn the flight path to that location. The game gives off a great illusion of this vast land where the player can run on forever, but the towns are actually intelligently laid out in such a way that players can either take their time to get to a destination or get there very shortly, and the quests are given out in such a way that rarely does one ever make a trip just for one quest. Going from one town to another can easily accomplish multiple objectives, which goes towards the game’s other main theme: ease of use.

The cities and towns themselves can be a little confusing at first, but their layout is very easy to learn. Smaller towns can be anything from a few houses to an outpost, with most having the necessary tools needed for an aspiring craftsman, like supplies to buy as well as an anvil and forge. Each has a style unique to the race, which also applies to the surrounding areas. The outposts built inside a forest will look like they belong there, while others are located in more exotic surroundings, like atop high plateaus. The environments for each race are also suitable to their mythos, with the humans living in a green, forested area, while the undead live in lands of decaying foliage and brooding woods. Similarly, the night elves live in vibrant, lush forests while their neighbors, the Orcs, Tauren, and Trolls, reside in vast plains spotted with caverns, mountains, and the random oasis. Traveling through these lands is made extremely easy by way of signs posted every few screens indicating what direction a particular town is in, with most having roads that lead straight to them.

Ease of use also carries over into aspects that may not seem to encompass it, like leveling. I cannot begin to count how much of my time in other MMORPGs was wasted tracking down someone to get a quest so I could join a friend on the same job, or tracking down someone within a town to finish up a task. In World of Warcraft, most quests - some are specific to the class or race - can be shared with a friend with a touch of a button. So, if someone signs on and has been halfway across the world and decides to join you, their friend can open up their menu and share it instead of having to track down the guy handing out that particular quest. When a task is complete and players are approaching the individual who will complete the quest, the person they need to speak to is highlighted on their mini-map. Even finding a person or location in a town is a breeze, with town guards being able to say where just about anything is (bank, auction house, class and profession trainer, etc.) by highlighting the location on the mini-map. While these may not seem like a revolution on functionality, I can say that this trimming of the fat is what really makes the game as good as it is, because it involves many minor enhancements that go a long way. Since the game can be quick to progress and thus leave room for getting bored with your character, players are allowed to create up to fifty characters - five across ten servers - which allows for tons of experimentation and replayability. These features, along with the quick traveling routes, work with the quick regeneration and ease of resurrection (players can run back to their body for no penalty or resurrect in a graveyard and suffer item damage and a sickness that lasts for a few minutes) to create a game that is not only easy to get into, but extremely fast-paced.

Regardless, the game isn’t all fast times, and fond nostalgia — love that Warcraft III icon usage. There are a few bugs that are still around from the initial launch. Some of the main problems are characters getting stuck in the middle of an animation. Players will get stuck in a mid-swing animation during fighting, and I have gotten stuck on a knee halfway picking at a mineral vein several times. The result of these freezes is a character model that just glides around as if the ground was ice. The player can still attack and be attacked during this time; they just cannot time their moves or pick up the loot. Fixing this requires logging out and back in, which isn’t a giant pain, though it is a pain nonetheless. The lack of any sort of restriction system makes the player-versus-player servers like the Wild West, with only the promises of something really cool coming soon. Also, as polished as the game is, there are quite a few simple tweaks that would have made sense, like having multiple quick-selection bars for spells and items on the screen as opposed to having to scroll through several. It also would have been nice to be able to move them to the sides of the screen, a feature that has instead been added by way of capable modders who are fans of the game.

Also, despite great intros that emphasize the predicament that each race finds themselves in at this particular time in their people’s history, nothing is done about it. There is a giant story the game works within, and some of the quests as well as several books and notes lying around help to shine some light on the history and culture of the surrounding peoples, but nothing more is done to continue it. After countless hours across several characters, I am still dropping packages off and killing a certain number of creatures. While its competitors may not be as polished, the evolving story and world of Asheron’s Call and the enhanced player-versus-player combat of Dark Age of Camelot are certainly missed. There are also some balance issues that need to be worked out, and such is par for the genre. When I see the cool combo ability of a rogue (attack to build up combo points then unleash the points by using a variety of moves that increase in damage by how many points have been built up), I cannot help but wish some of the other classes had something so unique. However, balancing servers would be a nice move, and talk is still going on as to how to do just that. One of the few problems I had with combat was how some areas seemed to love to respawn an enemy right behind me while I was in the middle of a fight, as if the game just wanted to remind me that it could crush me at any time.

Minor bugs aside, the graphics are great with a fantastic art direction and a representation of a full-size Warcraft world that fans of the series could only dream of. Aside from a clipping problem with capes and weapons, the characters are solid, the weapons look good, spell effects are bright, and the clothes are also particularly dashing. Minor effects are also a treat, like the 2D targeting dummy that bounces from side to side on a spring, and the scope (a pleasant surprise - random engineering items that actually do something) that zoomed up to view enemies in the distance. There are also nods to past titles throughout, rewarding those who like to peek in the nooks and crannies. The music is also great, with decent sound effects, but the game could have benefited much more from some environmental audio and more distinct sounds for the races.

Per the design, the controls are easy to get familiar with. Going back to Dark Age of Camelot left me with sore hands because the initial layout was so unintuitive and, compared to World of Warcraft, downright archaic. With mods out that allow for more icons to be displayed on the screen at the same time, there is little more I could wish for out of the controls. The menus, response time, layout…everything is done so well that other MMORPGs need to go back and tweak things up some.

Overall: 8.5/10
In terms of functional design, World of Warcraft is second to none. The controls are great, the menus are intelligently laid out, and the game really goes out of its way to let the player enjoy the experience without making them work for it; sure, players can run around and look for someone to end a quest, but now they don’t have to, likewise with finding a local trainer or auction house. The quest system and quick regeneration of health makes going solo a breeze, which is something I appreciate since I often like to go off and adventure alone. The problem now is that the game seems aimless. With the player-versus-player function neutered, the inviting prospect of participating in the grand struggle of the Horde versus the Alliance is more wishful thinking and unfulfilled promises. The grand story seems to be on hold and there are still bugs that persist. Granted, the game has not been out that long, but with the long beta period, the game having several launches to go and Blizzard still struggling with server loads, the minor problems appear to be something that will remain and they really add up, tarnishing a great experience.