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World of Warcraft

product pricing
Price: $19.99

Publisher: Blizzard Entertainment

ESRB Rating: Teen

Release Date: November 23, 2004

Platforms: Macintosh, Windows XP, Mac OS X, Windows

Media: DVD-ROM

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Features

This game requires a monthly fee, and an internet connection to play
Create and customize your own hero from the unique races and classes of the Warcraft universe
Explore an expansive world with miles of forests, deserts, snow-blown mountains, and other exotic lands
Visit huge cities and delve through dozens of vast dungeons
Adventure together with thousands of other players in an enormous, persistent game world

 

Product Description

World of Warcraft didn't invent the online role-playing genre, but it certainly benefits from the missteps of other titles that have come before. A mind-boggling array of improvements in graphics, gameplay, networking, and interface--really every category--makes this game the crown prince of the genre, a great starting place for newbies, and a challenge to any other MMORPG currently in the works.

Inside the human camp
The game's beautifully rendered locations are filled with small details, such as flying birds and flowing water.
A History of Conflict
WoW takes place just four years after the real-time strategy Warcraft series, which chronicles a 25 year struggle between the Alliance (humans, dwarves, gnomes, and elves) and the Horde (orcs, tauren, trolls, and undead). Even though there's tons of accumulated story to the series, new players should not be daunted. The background is there for you to explore, but you don't have to tread a lot of Azeroth history to get into the action.
The makers boast 2,000 existing quests with more being added, many of them noncombat in nature.

The game looks magnificent. There's plenty of detail and variety to the landscapes and interiors, and the artwork has a refreshingly playful style. There's not a lot of variety in the character creation process, but with all the skills and proficiencies to combine in the game, WoW focuses its customization not on the appearance of your character but rather on the character of your character. The game lets you adopt any two trade skills, regardless of character race or class, and combine those skills in useful ways. If you choose skinning and leatherworking, for example, you can fashion bags from the carcasses of monsters you defeat, which will allow you to carry even more inventory items.

Expanded Commerce
You can sell the items you make, find, and loot through a variety of outlets. Like any role-playing game, WoW has merchants who will buy your cast-off items for fixed prices, but you can also sell to other players at your own price through in-game chat or by leaving it with one of the auction houses located across the map. This virtual free market is a game within the game, like Monopoly somehow inserted into the middle of Chess. Heck, you can even send items C.O.D. to other players via the game's mail system.

In-game quest log
The game's Quest Log keeps track of up to 20 quests at a time.
In other online role-playing games, starting players have to invest dozens of hours whacking at small prey and doing other odd jobs one at a time to gradually "level up" to more interesting challenges. WoW lets players accept a variety of quests--up to 20 at a time without penalty for abandoning any of them before they're complete. The makers boast 2,000 existing quests with more being added, many of them noncombat in nature. Where some games only grant experience through battle, WoW grants experience for exploring and fulfilling quests too.

A Level Playing Field
There's also a built-in handicap for casual players where your character enters a rest state when you log off from the game. The longer you're logged off (up to a week), the bigger the experience bonus you'll get when you return to battle. An enemy tagging feature--the player who lands the first attack on an enemy claims the loot for himself or his party--prevents onlookers from swooping in and pilfering items from a monster that you brought down. That resolves a common complaint of other titles.

WoW interface
Icons and pop-ups help put complex controls easily within reach.
Most games severely penalize players when they die in-game, usually by shaving experience points, funds, or both. In WoW, death just relocates your ghost to the nearest graveyard, and the only penalty is the time it takes you to get back to resurrect your character's corpse.

All of this makes for a very complicated game, but the well-designed interface puts all the game's elements into icons either visible framing the action or within a simple keystroke. The enemy's artificial intelligence is quite strong too: Monsters will join nearby fights to aid their comrades, switch targets strategically midbattle, and ambush players. The map system fills in details on places you've visited, so you always know where you are and where you've been.

Overall, World of Warcraft is a game that's easy to learn, challenging to master, beautiful to watch, and tons of fun to play. --Porter B. Hall

 
Average Rating: 4.0

Product Reviews

Rating: 1 Starsdon't waste your money on this game

This game is pure garbage until from start to finish. While the game is easy enough for anyone to play (including people that aren't 13+ years of age as the game suggests). The cartoony graphics are fun to look at and the weird little dances the avatars do are amusing to watch, but why should that really matter. I've played lots of video games and have better features to rate on a game on than cheap graphics and ease of play. To start off my complaints I'll mention this game is extremely buggy. Bugged mobs and quests scattered all over the place, and every time they patch it they create 50 more bugs to patch the next time around. I feel so sorry for the people that gave good reviews to this game, because I have no doubt in my mind they are already addicted to this game. Hell, almost everyone on campus I know that plays this game isn't satisfied with a few leisure hours of game play. Most or them play this game for hours each night to level their character to 60 (70 if you have the expansion). I should know I went through the same thing and it was fun at first because my friends helped me learn how to play this game, but in my two years of playing this game I have learned its nothing but a bunch of lil 15 year old kids and immature adults doing but ripping on each other all night. Every single time I played this game I would hear the word newb about 50 times as after all that seems to be an elite WoWer's worst fear. Don't be fooled the word "newb" in this game has nothing to do wiht being but is a lame term everyone uses on each other in an attempt to insult each other's intelligence and you'll hear it every time you ask a simple question about the game when you're signed in. This is in addition to numerous racial comments and other forms of language and abuse of the policies that either don't get dealt with by the GMs or never get reported. Believe me, I've tried reporting as much harrassment as I can about this game but when it takes an average 4 hours to get a response for a single abusive player its hardly worth it. Once I hit max level I did get into raiding which took me an entire night and on rare occasions longer, but I never really got much of anything out of it. After all the time I've wasted playing this game and taking abuse from unruly players I only wish I could get my time back blizzard --- think I could get a refund? People, I know it seems like internet is the future of just about everything here but really there are so much better ways than this game to entertain yourself. Play basketball or a fun nintendo game with your friends, but don't join the bandwagon of teh 10,000,000 walking zombies that devote their life only to bettering their characters til the next expansion of this game. Its not worth it.

Rating: 5 StarsA highly addictive and surprisingly beautiful game.

My friends had played this game for a month or so, and I finally gave in. So there I am, a tiny little level one without the slightest idea as to what the hell I was supposed to do. Luckily, the beginning levels do a good job of teaching you how to play the game and at the same time make you feel important to the workings of the world. That's part of what makes this game so great, you feel like an important hero, but at the same time know you're not the only one out there. In fact, the farther you advance in the game, the more you start to work with those other people, making you feel more and more like a soldier or drone than a hero, which kind of took away from the fun of the game for me. Also, the world and scenery are perfect. Its familiar enough for you to relate to it and make it believable, but different enough to make you feel like you're in a whole new fantastic world. They also give you enough rewards along the way to keep you leveling to 60, like my favorite, the mounts. i had an awesome raptor for my troll. Once you hit level 60 your journey is far from over, there is PvP, raiding, professions and more. So there is something there for just about everyone, although I did a little of everything. I give you one warning, if you plan to get to 60 and make something of yourself like become high warlord or down Nefarion, prepare to take the time out of your social life. This game had a lot of heart put into its development and it shows, there's just some kind of magic to the game.

Rating: 1 StarsFun but not inovative and vastly time consuming

Interesting game at certain levels. At low levels this game can be very fun. lots of people and easier leveling make it very entertaining. And then it stops... there is a pretty large gap in people and grouping from the low levels about 30ish until your level 70. The game has become a solo grind until you get 70 because a majority of the game content is written for level 70 or is so outdated that its not useful or even possible to get people to explore the content on most occasions. Once a character reaches level 70 it is pretty much a requirement for a person to devote themselves to either pvp which then is mostly a solo act again unless you happen to find an active pvp guild which can be very challenging and on a whole is a very limited experience. pvp requires that you grind for the gear that make a character able to compete with other characters. very little of the pvp system relies on a players skill. The other major option is to engage in PVE which the player can experiance a wide range of content. this can be a very interesting way to explore wow though once again very quickly it becomes a limited venue do to the social demands of guilding and gear that are required to continue to explore the content. Months can be spent to gain a new item that is only marginally better than a previous one and one that could be replaced in days if a player was willing to devote their free time and suffer the whims of a higher ranked guild.

All for all.. if your a new player expect at least a couple of months of solo grinding to get your character to a point that you will be even socially eligible to be able to enjoy the majority of the content of the game. If your willing to do that the game can be very fun.

Rating: 5 StarsMany things to consider from an older, former console player

I used to play almost exclusively on Xbox 360 only using my cpu for surfing, documents, and the occasional trist in the world of Sid Meier's Civilizations. Over my Christams-New Years break I was introduced to this game by some friends I was visiting. The Xbox is now in a closet, the PC hooked up to the LCD TV, and I am hooked.

Since I started playing I have noticed a few things that people may want to consider before buying the product.
1) It is extremely beneficial to buy guides of some sort, so once you decide that you're going to play this game prepare for another layout of some bucks and also I recommend having a computer that can flip between windows as you may want to consult a website to help you get through some of the tougher quests.
2) If you like the game and can see yourself playing it for at least 6 months at a time go for the longer time option. 6 months at (I believe) $77 or so.
3) Most of the people on here seem to talk about PVP only servers where you are always flagged for PVP. There are also PVE servers where you can enable and disable PVP meaning you can quest without higher level players jumping you and basically play against the environment (although much of the really good equipment is only available through earning it in pvp arenas or battlegrounds).

4) The game is very addicting and time consuming. My highest charachter is at level 65 and I have already invested 12 days (288 hours) of time into building him (there are guides available that show you how to level faster, power level, but I really enjoy taking the game at my own pace.

5) The game can be soloed completely, and can also be run entirely with groups, although I've found that its best to have a mix of both.

6) Create more than 1 toon (charachter) at a time. If you dont touch use a charachter for some time they become rested and gain double exp for kills. This is an easy way to gain levels fast.

7) The game can be played out of the box with content dl only from Blizzard, but it is very beneficial to dl some third party addons. Many of these are easy to install, and have been used by millions with no problems, just check around before you dl something.

8) If Tuesday is you're main day for playing games don't buy. The servers are down most Tuesdays (sometimes for a short period, but they have been down till 3 or 4 eastern since I've started playing).


All in all WOW may be the most addicting game I have ever played. I have been mostly a PVP FPS player on consoles, but the depth of the game, the differing environments, the storyline, the RPG experience, and diversity of each charachter, along with all the added capabilities that the world of warcraft site and third party sites offer is incredible. For any gamer who likes RPG's that are realxing for the most part, but can be insanely intense during boss battles and PVP fighting. This game is definitely one of the best you'll buy. For those who consider money an issue.... if you buy one game a month that is more than the monthly fee for this game, and you probably won't want to buy many if any games (money saved). For those who don't consider money and issue, there are many other things you can purchase to enhace the experience and help you to level more efficiently. This game truly has something for everyone and is worth every dollar spent.

PS you can get a free trial and if you know someone who already has the game you can save them some money (get them to send you an email and they get a month for free if you pay for three months).

Rating: 5 StarsRead the Review - esp. about it being Spyware - but still ok for me

I downloaded the trial version of WarCraft yesterday (Sun, 03/09/08) at about 11:30 AM EDT and didn't stop playing until 12:25 AM (Mon, 03/10/08). Needless to say I found WarCraft impressive. I went right to the '1' reviews here at Amazon and was also impressed by the fellow who basically called the program specialized spyware (because it is a EULA violation checker) and panned the customer service as arrogant and uncaring. I also read about 'after the 60 level" character limitation issue i.e. you have to join in a crowd to make any headway (i.e. not get killed .0001 seconds) unless you want to get into an endless loop of 'same-old, same-old'.

Well as I can get the program cheap for about $8.00 here at Amazon and since all I basically want to do is: kill monsters galore and freely and heavily flirt with the virtual hotties (God knows what these women look like behind the mask and I REALLY don't want to know) and as $15.00 per month is no hardship (cheaper than some dating services and I don't have to go on any expensive dates cringing about what she'll think of me or trying to be polite when she doesn't live up to the image she created in my mind with her online profile, emails and chat sessions) WarCraft should be fine for a past time for me and I do recommend.
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