Gameplay:
The story behind 'World of Warcraft' is not just a generic one page summary of what's going on in the game so that if you want to you can RP. The story started back in 1994 with the original release of 'Warcraft: Orcs and Humans' and went from there with four more releases of the RTS game until 2004 the developers ingeniously made it into one of the best MMORPG's ever made and rightly named it 'World of Warcraft'. I would summarize the story but I have no idea where to start or if I did I highly doubt I could make it fit into this paragraph. So please go to World of Warcraft ~ Story to read the six chapter summary, buy the books on Amazon, or play the RTS games of Warcraft that lets you play the storyline. Either way you're in for a treat!
The basic components that make up 'World of Warcraft' is PvE (player vs. environment) and PvP (player vs. player). The game starts the player out in PvE by having the player begin completing quests in the starting area (most starting areas are different for each race). Gaining levels is very easy but gets to be more of a challenge as the players character advances in level. Basically the higher level the character the more experience points the character needs to advance another level until at last at level 60 the character is at the highest level attainable.
At around level 13 or even earlier at level 7 (if you have higher level friends, and are a hordling) the player can start entering dungeons aka instances. Instances allow the player to get into a group of up to 5 players total and go explore different areas unavailable to a solo player (of course excluding higher level players that can solo lower level instances). Each instance typically has between 5-12 different quests, many of which sometimes are linked together. So for example you complete a quest in an instance and the NPC that gave you the quest gives you another quest that is also inside the instance. This is typically how the PvE system works in WoW. This is also how the character gains levels; quest turn ins and killing mobs. Eventually when the character hits 60 a whole new world is opened up. RAIDING. Raiding is by far the most fun aspect of PvE in the game. You get into huge groups between 20 or 40 different players to go to huge dungeons that can take a couple days or even a couple hours to clear. It all depends on how experienced the group is and also of course how awesome your groups gear is. Experience, skill, gear, and a unification of the whole group can make or break a raid group. Installing raid mods and any other addon (found at Curse gaming) can really help unify the raid group. The only addons I look down on and don't recommend are class crutches. Learn to play the damn class, if you really suck that bad that you need to download an addon so that you can pretend that you know what you're doing, do yourself a favor play another class. For example, I suck at playing warlocks so what do I do? I don't play the class.
Honestly, the PvP is a bit limited. You can challenge people to duels outside of cities and get some PvP in that way but you can't really earn PvP points aka honor points that way. Though, if you have low self esteem, don't really know how to PvP, had a bad day or whatever, beating up a lowbie toon by dueling, especially if its a one shot, can make you feel better any day, despite the fact that you don't get in-game rewards. Anyway, Blizzard has set up BG's (battlegrounds) to earn honor points and also earn titles. On this PvP system the player is competing with EVERYONE on the server for points and rank. The higher the rank, the more rewards you can buy, like gear and also if you reach rank 10 I believe you get a war mount. Only real crappy thing is that you can't just join BG's whenever you want. You can talk to a NPC to queue up for a BG, but you can be waiting up to 1-3 hours or so depending on the BG. This puts a huge drag on trying to earn honor points each week. There is a bonus though, each weekend there are battleground weekends. Basically if you play BG's during the specific BG weekend you earn double the honor points than if you played at another time. So for example, the BG for the weekend is Alterac Valley and you PvP in AV, after the BG is finished (a side wins er I mean Alliance wins) honor points are allotted to each faction. Whoever won the BG gets more honor points than the loser.
The only downside to competing for rank is that once you stop PvPing or you don't PvP that much as you used to your overall points start to drop and eventually you can lose the rank you earned. So if you're rank 14, High Warlord, and you stop PvPing every second of the day, you will eventually lose the title. Though, all the gear that you won and earned you can still keep and wear. Blizzard eventually made huge changes to this system right before the expansion of 'The Burning Crusade' so I'll talk about those changes in that review.
Graphics:
The graphics are awesome. Yes, I know they aren't realistic and are cartoonish but they look so cool. Plus, the lore of Warcraft is so far from being realistic I think it all fits together, both the look of the game and the lore. Of course the better graphics card.... and well, computer overall allows you to turn the settings up as high as your computer can handle and which of course makes the game look more and more polished. For example, (and this is embarrassing) I used to play WoW on a Mac iBook G4 512mb laptop...LOL...okay. I had the game on the lowest settings possible and I still got on average about 12fps or lower on that thing. Then I got this awesome duo processor, duo graphic SLi cards and the game really then opened up for me. It became a whole new experience. So the point is, how good and polished the game looks and the frame rate per second really depends on your machine. If it looks like crap it isn't Blizzards fault.
Sound:
The sound and absolutely original music in this game is just awesome. Blizzard and those of course that actually helped create the music need a huge applause. The music soundtrack generated for this VIDEO GAME is worthy of any movie soundtrack. I highly recommend buying the soundtrack of 'World of Warcraft'. My personal favorite song is the Ashenvale song with the woman singing. Its so beautiful and makes me feel as if I could be a Night Elf as well. It puts me in a wonderful calm, no matter how crappy my day has been.
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Rating:
Story: 9.5
Gameplay: 10
Controls: 9.5
Graphics: 10
Sound: 9.5
Replay value: 9.5
Overall: 9.5
Own, Rent, Avoid:
Own: If over eight million people own it, you can't go wrong, as long as you don't mind be addicted for several years at least.
Last Thoughts:
This MMORPG has truly set a new standard for MMO's and I think even console games. I really don't think there has been a game so popular world wide before. When I first starting playing in 2005 the player population had just hit 6 million. Now the scales tip over 11 million at the end of October 2008. This game has it all, an extremely in depth, movie worthy, book worthy storyline, an incredible soundtrack that sounds like it doesn't even belong to a video game, and an overall very addictive world that almost sometimes makes you forget about the one you are actually in.
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Written By
Deborah Jones
1/06/2009
