Played on:
Windows
MMORPGs have been around for years and years now, but World of Warcraft is the first one that thousands of gamers will actually try. Blizzard's name is very well known in the gaming industry, as every one of their titles garners massive sales and promises years of addictive gameplay. When WoW was first announced, it seemed like Blizzard would be coming down from the heavens to "redeem" the massive multiplayer world with another of their divine inventions.
Ok, World of Warcraft isn't that good - other MMORPGs aren't going to go totally out of business just because of this game. But at the same time, Blizzard has put together one of the most solid, purely entertaining MMORPGs I've had the chance to play yet, and I can say that if there's one game of this kind that you should try, it's this one.
Blizzard has taken the plot from Warcraft 3 and made a sequel of sorts out of WoW. No, this is not a strategy game, but the world will feel very familiar and much of the lore and locations can be seen and explored here. I find it funny that it's a MMORPG that wound up allowing one explore more of the Warcraft world more than the strategy games that the world's based on. A word of warning, though; if you hate MMORPGs and love Warcraft, I don't think that this one will be the great savior. Many problems evident in MMORPGs still linger in World of Warcraft, and while this one is about as close as you can get to perfect, it's still nowhere near it.
The developers have done an excellent job getting you acquainted with the basic ways in which this genre of online games work. You'll start off in a small village - away from the massive cities that are the hub of the major civilization in the world - so that you can learn things one at a time without being overwhelmed. Combat is easy, and the quests start right from the first few seconds you're in the world.
Let's take a minute to talk about quests. If you think of them in the Everquest sense, then you'd know that quests are a serious pain in the butt that are hardly worth touching. In the case of WoW, that's simply not true. Quests will send you to fight stuff you were going to fight anyway, and the rewards are very substantial. They're easy to track too, with WoW's excellent quest log interface. You can even share your open quests with other people, which can ensure that your group will want to hang around with you to fight monsters together.
But grouping is not a huge priority here in World of Warcraft; while it can certainly help, you can complete most quests on your own as any character class. The way this is done is by allowing even the support classes some pretty decent damage spells, which puts the classes at lower levels much closer together in ability. This overall effect diminishes as you get closer to level 60, but you can easily get into your 30s and even 40s as any class completely on your own.
Death is always looming in World of Warcraft, and with no easy way to run away from monsters, you will likely be dying much more often here than in most MMORPGs. The social and aggressive nature of most monsters in the game can almost guarantee a death for anyone who gets close, even if those monsters are of the same level as the player. Yes, Azeroth is a harsh world, and players who hate dying will not be happy with WoW in this respect.
Not all is lost, though; WoW uses a unique death system that's different from any other game I've seen yet. There is no experience loss at all in this game, and you don't ever have to retrieve your body if you don't want to. Upon death, you can be resurrected by a player or you can "release" your spirit. If you choose the latter option, you'll pop in town with a very freaky-looking "spirit world" effect, and you have the choice to ask a Spirit Healer to resurrect you on the spot (at a large cost of durability on your equipped gear, meaning extra cash to repair the items) or you can run out to your body and resurrect yourself for very little cost at all - other than the time taken to get out there.
This system makes death much more of a hassle rather than a soul-killing, "I quit this #$%^& game" kind of event. Even if your gear is reduced to a durability of zero, it's still there and while it acts like it's not even equipped at all, it can never be destroyed by player death. All you need is the cash to repair it again. I really enjoy this system, and when it's combined with the rather large number of ways in which players can get killed, it means that your group will still try and do things the smart way but aren't slitting their wrists because of a few deaths. To sum it up: the difficulty is high, but the penalty for failing is low. It's effective and fun.
WoW includes eight races to choose from, from the teeny Gnomes to the massive Tauren. Humans, Trolls, Dwarves, Night Elves, Orcs, and the Undead round out the cast, and four races make up one of two sides that you must choose from. The Alliance pretty much embodies your classic good guys, and the Horde is a combination of the more bad-guy side. Blizzard seems to want to press into our skulls the notion that "good" and "bad" have no meaning anymore in Azeroth, but either way, appearances and player behaviors do seem to match what side you pick so far.
I particularly like the game's structure of requiring you to pick a side when you choose your race; the Alliance and Horde are very distinct, even if the character classes are mostly the same for either side. While the races inside either faction will start intermingling after only a few levels of play, most races have their own cities and newbie lands complete with their own full set of quests. Starting a second character and picking a new race and class really feels different from the last one, and that unique feeling can last at least through the 20s and maybe even the 30s if you head to zones you haven't been to before. On top of this, the Alliance and the Horde both have totally unique sets of lands to explore, and these areas can take you pretty far towards level 60. Each side really does feel like a different game, and switching sides does add plenty of replay value.
WoW includes a ton of loot, most of which can be had from monster corpses or as a result of quest completions. This stuff really helps your character a ton, especially armor; since player health seems to be pretty close across the character classes, the difference in survivability comes from your magic resistances and the quality of your armor. Weapons come in many different forms, and the game also includes "damage per second" on each weapon's statistics to allow for easy comparisons. The game also includes many soulbound items, some of which bind when you receive them, and some that bind to the player that equips them for the first time. Soulbound items can always be sold back to an NPC vendor, so there's always a small monetary compensation for that item you can't use or don't want.
World of Warcraft doesn't include a private messaging system per se; instead, there's a true postal system that requires you to type out and send a letter to another player. The recipient must go to one of the many mailboxes around Azeroth, and can read, reply to, or delete your letter from there. You can also attach a single item if you want, so that players can hand items to each other without having to meet up - although since delivery of items takes about an hour, you can't quite get your instant gratification in the form of new gear. When I first heard that this system was set up, I thought it was pretty decent but not incredible; I was wrong. Guild members can very easily hand down items as they go, and also quickly make sure that anything they pick up and cannot use goes into the right hands.
And if that fails, there's always the game's built in auction system. Major cities include an auction house that can be used to sell your items, and it surprisingly includes a lot of options seen on eBay. Buy it now? Check. Long, medium, and short durations on auctions? Check. A fee for putting an item up for auction? You betcha. The nice part is that Blizzard hides the exact time that auctions end, which prevents "sniping". It means that buyers are more likely to bid what they are willing to bid rather than what they think they can get away with in a few milliseconds, and I think this system will really help the game's longevity.
