| Body | Introduction
World of Warcraft (or WoW)is a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) released by Blizzard Entertainment in 2004 (2005 in Europe). It is fourth in a series of Warcraft games by Blizzard and probably one of the most successful online games ever released. The Burning Crusade is an expansion pack released at the beginning of 2007 providing additional lands, races, classes and quests for the WoW fan base.
Platform Requirements
World of Warcraft has been designed to run under Windows 2000 and above, or Apple Mac OS X version 10.3.9 or above. However, it is possible to play the game using Wine, (Wine Is Not an Emulator - a compatibility layer allowing Windows applications to run on UNIX-like Operating Systems) with little effect on performance.
Gameplay, character races and classes
Being an online RPG, gameplay is comprised of taking the role of a character and employing features specific to a race and class, which the player can choose. Additional to race and class, a faction is also chosen. The two factions are the Alliance and the Horde, which have different races available to them.
Alliance Races
Human
Night Elf
Dwarf
Gnome
Draenei (new for Burning Crusade)
Horde Races
Orc
Tauren
Undead
Troll
Blood Elf (new for Burning Crusade)
Classes
Mage
Warlock
Druid
Shaman
Paladin
Priest
Rogue
Warrior
Not all races can belong to every class. For example, a Human may not become a Druid or Shaman, and Night Elves may be Druids, but not Shamans. Apart from the logical reasons for this, it also helps promote races which may be less popular with players.
So far, I've had characters of all classes apart from Rogue and Warrior - most at least until level twelve. My current main character is a level thirty Draenei Mage.
Like any RPG, each class has advantages and disadvantages. I personally favour those which use mana when attacking, but my Warrior is growing on me (although he requires mana for some actions, he uses a ranged 'physical' weapon to attack).
Professions
In addition to making choices regarding race and class, you may also have two primary and three secondary professions. These allow you to create, enhance and/or retrieve items which can benefit you, your friends or other random players in the game.
Available professions are:
Blacksmithing
Herbalism
Tailoring
Alchemy
Mining
Skinning
Leatherworking
Engineering
Enchanting
Jewelcrafting
Professions can earn you a lot of "money" in WoW. If you want to excel in one profession, you'll generally need a complementary profession to help you. For example, if you plan on learning Jewelcrafting, you'll really need Mining to accompany it. My main character is currently an Enchanter and Jewelcrafter. I dropped Mining in favour of Enchanting after gaining a half-decent income in order to buy materials from the Auction House instead of finding them myself. More on the Auction House later.
In addition to the above primary professions, everybody can learn to cook, use first aid and fish.
Buyers, Sellers and Beggars
Like most online RPGs, a lot of buying and selling happens in WoW. Unlike other online "games" like SecondLife - exchanging real money for WoW Gold and vice-versa is not allowed. From what I've heard, the standard ban duration for receiving illegal gold is two days.
As with any online game or community (and e-mail!), there are always people begging for something, be it real or pseudo: fictional currency used in a game, or how to "hack hotmail". This can't be avoided in an online game like WoW, and to an extent, it adds a little bit of reality to the game.
Each major city in WoW has an Auction House, used to buy and sell items within the game (much like auctions in real life). Generally, it's a great place to get things you need quickly - but due to "twinks" (explained next), some items are extremely overpriced.
Servers/Realms
Online play in WoW is made possible through a vast array of Realms. Your initial Realm is automatically suggested to you when you first connect and choose a realm-type, though you may use any realm to create a character. The realms have different categories/styles of gameplay including: Normal, RP (Role-Playing), PvP (Player-vs-Player) and RPPVP (Role-Playing Player-vs-Player). The only main technical differences between them are that in any PvP realms alliance and horde players may attack each other at any time. In normal and RP realms, players must be flagged for PvP (or attack a player or NPC (non-player character) in PvP mode to activate it).
PvP (Player-versus-Player) Activities
If you kill a player of the opposite faction, you will receive honor points. These can be used to purchase special items from certain vendors in the game. In addition to killing PvP-flagged players of the opposing faction, there are servers which host events called "Battlegrounds" where players from multiple realms can take part in competitions against the opposite faction. These include:
- Warsong Gulch: This battleground is basically a game of CTF (Capture-The-Flag), where each team/faction starts at their respective base, and have to capture the opposing flag and bring it back to their own base to win a round. After winning three rounds, a team wins the game. Every time you participate, you will be given honour points for each opposing faction player you attack, as well as one Warsong Gulch Mark of Honor, which is also used to purchase special items in the game.
- Arathi Basin: Arathi Basin's battleground contains five bases which your faction's multi-realm team must claim by activating a flag. The more flags activated, the more your side resources increase - aiming for a target of 2000 resources. During the game, you will receive honor points for kills, reputation points and an Arathi Basin Mark of Honor for participating (or three for winning the match).
- Twinks: As a gay term, a twink is generally a young lad with a good body, near-perfect skin, little body hair and may be accompanied by "sugar daddies". In WoW, a twink is generally a character created to reach a level ending in nine (nineteen, twenty-nine, thirty-nine, etc.) with the absolute best armour and items for their level. A lot of players on WoW have main characters and a "twink" which they use on the battlegrounds to gain honour points.
Opinions past and present
In the beginning, I basically thought WoW looked like a load of crap - then I discovered another MMORPG which I was able to play (I only had 256MB RAM at the time) called MuOnline. I enjoyed MuOnline for a short time, it looked quite cool, had a lot of places to explore, but it lacked quests. Eventually I installed WoW for the first time, but after looking at the 3D characters and being unable to move very far due to all my system resources being eaten - I thought it was really crap and childish looking.
After someone started a private WoW server on a darknet I'm involved with (requiring enough RAM to develop some Java applications) - I upgraded my laptop's RAM and installed the trial from the main WoW site. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it! After leveling a Warlock for a while - I decided I would buy the EU retail version and not long after, The Burning Crusade expansion pack. RPGs aren't usually my kind of game, but at the same time I don't really care for most FPSes (First-Person Shooters) either. The majority of games I love are from the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST days, such as Monkey Island, Speedball, Rainbow Islands, and so on.
Monthly fee justification
Many people criticise Blizzard and WoW as a game - for not only charging for the retail version of the game (which has lovely packaging, and is actually quite cheap) but also for charging a monthly fee to play the game on official servers. Although I do think the overall monthly fee for various MMORPGS could be lower, I also think that it's great value for money if you play quite often. For your fee you get:
- Twenty four/seven access to a variety of stable realms.
- Multi-realm PvP event access
- generally great support from Blizzard staff and GMs
- Updates to the game and free downloads via their torrent system.
You have to keep in mind how much it would be to rent a dedicated server or co-locate one (especially in the EU!) with a package capable of handling the amount of traffic and connections that a WoW server generates and requires. The fee (around €11-13 Euros, £8-9 GBP or $13-15 USD per month) is near-enough what you'd pay for a basic hosting or shell account package.
Conclusion
I definitely think WoW is a good game, although highly addictive. As there is no free package like MuOnline, I suspect most people wouldn't sign up just to play it occasionally - unless they play using top-up cards available at most gaming shops/stores.
If you have a lot of real-world commitments, any RPG may require some willpower to prevent it taking over your real life. This is not a new development; the same could be said about MUDs (and modern incarnates) which are still very popular today, but are less accessible and appealing to younger generations.
As this is supposed to be a review, I should really rate the game! The following is how I rate the game out of ten:
- Presentation - 9/10 (Looks nice, many play options)
- Addictiveness - 9/10 (Very Addictive)
- Durability - 10/10 (Many races and classes, frequent expansions)
- Graphics - 9/10 (Nice OpenGL, well-modeled and meshed)
- Sound - 10/10 (Excellent soundtrack)Overall - 9.5/10 (Great game, worth a shot!)
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