One of the most difficult decisions in our deliberations involved having to choose the winner of our Best PC Game Award. After all, the PC platform had an incredibly strong year in 2004, despite a notable dearth of traditional role-playing games and flight simulations. Some of the most impressive PC games this year really raised the bar on what could be expected both in terms of presentation quality and actual gameplay, surpassing just about everything that's come before. Yet we didn't settle on what was necessarily the most innovative or most visually stunning PC game of the year as our pick--we chose the game we just kept on coming back to. This is the game that we most like playing in our spare time, and this is the game that we talk about when we're not talking about work stuff. We're talking about World of Warcraft.

World of Warcraft is the ultimate refinement of the massively multiplayer online role-playing game genre, which was birthed from the successes of Ultima Online and EverQuest more than five years ago. EverQuest, in particular, is the most obvious inspiration behind World of Warcraft, which unabashedly draws on that game's conventions--and, in virtually every respect, streamlines and improves them. The resulting game is one that some hardcore, longtime MMORPG players dismiss as being dumbed down, but they couldn't be more wrong. What makes World of Warcraft such an incredible success is that it's not simply designed for the niche of elite MMORPG players that have caused the genre to spin off into the fringes of gaming during the past few years. This is a game that just about anyone with a remote interest in gaming could easily get into and greatly enjoy.

One of the best things about World of Warcraft is that it's not exclusively designed for hardcore players, even though it can absolutely satisfy even the most committed game player's demands. Since the game is so quick to get into, and since each of the different character classes is so self-sufficient, it's possible to hop into the game for a half hour or an hour and have a blast, and then go back to your busy life. Alternatively, if you want to partake in some truly epic adventures spanning many, many hours at a time, World of Warcraft's ready to scratch that itch, too.

Blizzard Entertainment is known for creating games that are highly polished, if nothing else. But the thing about World of Warcraft is, it's not just polished--it's extremely well designed. So many aspects of the game are simply more expertly conceived than those of any other game in the genre, and the huge, seamless world and often-impressive artwork combine to make the game not just fun to play, but also a pleasure to take in. Furthermore, World of Warcraft brings together virtually all our favorite aspects of PC gaming: For those of us who love the spirit of competition, there's the player vs. player combat to look forward to. For those of us who enjoy strategy, there are complex group dynamics, deep character-advancement systems, and fast-paced combat. For those of us yearning for another great computer role-playing game, there are tons and tons of quests, and plenty of interesting backstory. It's not often that a game comes around that deserves an unqualified recommendation, but we feel this is one of them. It's the game we tell our game-hating friends and family members to try, because we have a sneaking suspicion that it'll make a convert out of them.