World of Warcraft is one of the best timekillers.
+ Over 100 sqaure kilometers of loadtime-free land to explore.
+ Insane ammount of freedom to approach each quest and enemy however you want.
+ Easy combat system is engaging in fun but never confusion.
+ Very low system requirements.
+ RP, PVP, or the two combine to let you choose how you want to play.
+ Unique character customization and emotes.
+ Amazing presentation that's charming to any age.
+ Awesome original soundtrack.
+ Does a great job of slaughtering time.
+ Did I mention the freedom to do anything?
+ It wins my "Most addicting game on earth" award.
- Dying over and over again during quests gets fusterating real fast. br />
- Overpricing exceeds beyong the boundiers of reasonability.
- PVP sounds like a good idea, but it is instead bland and disapointing.
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While I never grew up as a true fan of Warcraft, there's is little more to say about the masterpiece's organization: WoW. And that is, above anything else, enough to wake you up with too.
"A world...of Warcraft?", I thought. How can that be? Warcraft is, after all, the principle of groundbreaking, face-imploding RTS gaming. Imagine taking everything you know about Warcraft and combining it into one huge online world with minimal loading times but groundbreaking freedom nontheless...This is what you get, and you get what you pay for. That is assuming, you want to be using paypal or credit cards to pay the developers a monthly $50. As rediculously expensive as it is, World of Warcraft is a piece of work to behold. There is a huge, endless potential behind the entire game, and by going in, you relinguish yourself to playing a timeless experience that is even better than its RTS counterpart and is probably the best online game ever.
World of Warcraft is probably the biggest MMORPG in recent memory and is relinguishing milions of players every year. The structure itself is no different from a MMORPG that you have probably played before many times; you make your cast of characters, skill them up, and gain the respect. World of Warcraft is the kind of game that wins my "Most addicting game on earth" award. In fact, the elements of an RPG in this one are so innovative that it implodes several years of RPG gaming into one huge inferitory as World of Warcraft is even better than its RTS counterpart and is probably the best online game ever created in mankind. (YES, I had to say that again!)
In World of Warcraft, upon making any new character you are prompted to choose his/her race and class. Players are devided by either the Alliance or Horde team; The Alliance favor Humans, Dwarves, Night Elves, and Gnomes. The Horde, on the other hand, have some Orcs, Trolls, Undead, and so on. All easy to decide; all of the availible races in the game have a whole lot of charming personality. After messing around with some facial customization (to see what its like), you're also asked to select a rage of classes for your character. The class you choose ultimately depends on your gameplay taste, even more, your paitence. For instance, a Warrior is ideal for the hardcore combat, like "tanking" and instances. Players who decide a different trace might consider rolling a priest, who heals other players more effectivly than any other class. Other players might want a combination of the two with Shamans, Paladins, Druids, Hunters, and so on.
One you actually get started in the game, The addictivness of the game WILL ruin your life, and some of your other lives. Upon initiation, your droped into the epic world of Azeroth, which is a little more than just a couple hundred square miles of land with minimal loading times. In fact, the only loading times are those between dungeons and instances; you can simply get your character to run in one direction and go on for litteral miles without ever hitting the 'Loading Bar of Doom'. You wouldn't want to live there of course, but Azeroth redefines 'seemless', and there are some really cool areas to explore. Mountians, forests, valconos, cities -- it doesn't matter if its critical to your current goal or quest; the game's enviroment is overly impressive at the maximum.
As in every MMORPG, you mainly just want to have a stable, strong character, and not just because you can. You'll have to continuesly build your level statistics to the level cap of lvl 65 by completing quests, killing monsters, and generally gaining XP experience. Most of the quests, accepted by npcs who stand around idlely throughout the game, don't take a whole heap of brainpower when they go in the simplistic hardcode, "Kill X amount of monsters, collect X ammount of items, or reach X location". Its like the game was poking at Warhammer's repeativiely similar goals. None of the quests are really all that stragetic or interresting, but by finishing them, you'll get possibly nice gear, skills, items, and moreover XP. As your character grows to more stable levels like 10, you'll also need to set special talent attributes, regarding his choosen class, that will make him/her stronger in specific areas in combat or others in protection or healing.
Also come to the catering are special "profession" skills that display as menial chorehandling skills like Fishing, Cooking, and First Aid. You can get your character to train into the arts of Blacksmithing, Enginneering, Tailoring, Leatherworking, Mining, and the standards; so long as you have the paitence to upgrade them parrelell with your main characteristic skills and experience. And with paitence, its a great way to sell and earn money, upgrade your skills, and maybe even keep it for your own use.
The strech of this epicliness is primarly based on the the players around you in the game world, and the population of the game, as well as the ability to come in contact with another player's character in any given momment as if real-life heros, is alone awesome enough to the game's presenation. All of the game's players (at least on the same faction) grow increasingly dependant on one another. An enginneer player can make his fair share of money by making mechanical parts to the in-game aution house, later to be bought by an enchanter who can weave enchanted clothes for whoever needs it with a trade of a useful inscripted spell scroll from a player who needs another player to craft a new weapon for him with his leet mining and blacksmithing skills. Like with any MMORPG, mudane haters and retarded low-lifes will errupt around you, but the community of the game is generally pretty easy to get along with, and you always have the option to ignore or report the bad apples.
World of Warcraft lets you, as a player, choose however you want to play depending on the server, or realm, you are playing on. There are realms with rules marked "Normal", "PVP", "RP", and "RPPVP". "Normal" realms really don't have any interresting twist, but the inclussion of "PVP", which is Player Versus Player, is the threat of being able to attack, and be attacked, by other players of the opposing faction (alliance, horde) at anytime during your playthrough. You can duke it out with enemy players in PVP Battlegrounds that involve Capture-the-flag and Location Domination objectives, and PVP Arenas willingly hand out special prizes and awards for the winners. Needless to say that it was trying to enhance the ordinary gameplay of hack-and-slash, it instead went to a half-finished element that gives you a pause at best. Its pretty frequent to come across rude players who will "body camp" you in an illegally fusterating fashion, and when you got a Warrior against an invisable rouge or a priest who can heal himself every time he is hurt, it soon becomes a chore. In the end, its clear that simple "PVE" is the star of the show.
The graphics engine. now 6 years old, looks about as admirable as an overdated "Renderware Graphics" artifiact. Through a cartoony glaze, everything in the game looks really bright and colorful in the loudest meaning of the word. Besides that, the graphics play the dimmest role of brightness on the chandilier, and with passing years, its clear that the game has signifigantly muddy textures on the ground and ceiling of buildings, grass, and especially rocky surfaces of the dated cave interiors. The character models don't look all that bad, until you zoom in and get a glance at their sketchy skin and "eyeballs", which are just poorly-cut octogons glued onto the character's face. The enviorments are massive, yes, and the game doesn't slap you over the head with it, but there are some spots where the engine runs at a tangible over-age. Fourtunetly, those graphics are never too important to impact the game's structure, and the sound effects of swords and spells clashing sounds fantastic. World of Warcraft is loaded with an epic soundtrack that mimics a far cry of Jeremy Soule's blueprint, and you have to love it. The voice actors for the character races aren't too bad, perhaps the funny dying sounds at best, but there's no boasting that people play MMORPGs soley for their voicework.
Now it still costs an insane ammount of money, the game can be fusterating, and of course the graphics aren't top notch, but the game is pushing a new revoulutionary schedule for the genre, and you just gotta love it. Hell, there are more than some 67,5000 players, a number that is increasingly growing in number for every second you read this review! Don't waste anymore time now, my friend. If you have the money, the paitence, and a life you don't mind ruining on an addicting-as-hell game, Wow is the game you need to pick up right now. Yes, right now. Go right along. Now. Stop reading and go!