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World of Warcraft

product pricing
List Price: $19.99
Price: $19.61
You Save: $0.38 (2%)

Publisher: Blizzard Entertainment

ESRB Rating: Teen

Release Date: November 23, 2004

Platforms: Mac, 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


System Requirements
Minimum Recommended
Operating System PC: Microsoft Windows XP or Windows Vista (with latest Service Packs)
Mac: Mac OS X 10.4.11 or newer
CPU PC: Intel Pentium 4 1.3 GHz or AMD Athlong XP 1500+
Mac: PowerPC G5 1.6 GHz or Intel Core Duo processor		 PC: Dual-core processor, such as Intel Pentium D or AmD Athlong 64 X2
Mac: Intel 1.8 GHz processor or better
Graphics Hardware PC: 3D graphics processor with Hardware Transfor and Lighting with 32 MB VRAM, such as an ATI Radeon 7200 or NVIDIA GeForce2 class card or better
Mac: 3D graphics processor with Hardware Transform and Lighting with 64 MB VRAM, such as ATI Radeon 9600 or NVIDIA GeForce Ti 4600 class card or better		 PC: 3D Graphics processor with Vertex and Pixel Shader capabilities with 128 MB VRAM, such as an ATI Radeon X1600 or NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT class card or better
Mac: 3D graphics processor with Vertex and Pixel Shader capability with 128 MB VRAM, such as ATI Radeon X1600 or NVIDIA 7600 class card or better.
Memory PC: 512 MB (1 GB for Vista)
Mac: 1 GB		 PC: 1 GB (2 GB for Vista)
Mac: 2 GB
Hard Drive Space 15 GB of free space
All Platform Requirements Keyboard and mouse, required for controls. Other input devices not supported. Active broadband Internet connection required to play.

 
Average Rating: 4.0

Product Reviews

Rating: 1 StarsWas a great game but now

Once upon a time WoW was a great game to play. Then Blizzard ruined the game with a single innovation, Arena play. The biggest complaint with the battlegrounds prior to Arena was losing PvP reputation if you didn't constantly run battlegrounds. Even if you constantly ran battlegrounds, you could lose PvP reputation because you didn't run them enough. But at least the battleground scenarios were within the context of the game's Lore. Then came Arena where players could PvP either one on one or in groups of up to five. Arena had nothing to do with the game's internal Lore. This should have been a warning to Blizzard that innovations outside of a game's Lore is never a good idea. As a result began the Nerf-cycle.

1. "Wah Wah, (class here) is over powered and can't be beat in the Arena! Wah Wah!"
2. Blizzard nerfs (class here)
3. Pick a different player class
4. Go to step 1

Eventually the uniqueness of the various classes became bland mediocrities and the content of the game was dumbed down compensate for the over-nerfing of character's abilities.

Once upon a time WoW was a great game. Now its a borefest of mediocre character classes running the same three dumbed down quests for 80 levels:

1) Go to "Y" and get me "X"
2) Kill "X" number of "Y"
3) Collect "X" number of "Y" (and if "Y" is a part of an animal, multiply the number of animal parts needed times 25 to tell you how many "X" you'll need to kill and loot to get "Y".)

Rating: 1 StarsNot Worth Your Money

This game is ok at best. First off the game allows you to go up to level 80 in the game. Though you have a long way to go in leveling the game only kicks off at level 20 because at level 20 you get a mount, better spell and other things. But after level 21 it gets boring fast. Before you get to level 20 you are basically grinding for level 20. After level 20 you are still grinding for level 80. So basically you get a few hours of actual fun in the game.The game gets boring because the quests are empty and all of them are basically the same every time and basically when you get down to it you are paying 15 dollars a month just to get a better weapon for your character and better spells and other things. Now that wouldn't all be problem if they didn't charge you 15 dollars a month. If the game was free like guilds of war i wouldn't have a problem. Even if they had to be that greedy and charge you money at least charge 5 dollars a moth and that would be an acceptable price.

Rating: 5 StarsWOW

This game is great if you don't mind paying the 15 bucks a month to play online Highly addictive!

Rating: 5 StarsSimply the best MMORPG of all time!!

I've been playing WarCraft since the original "WarCraft: Orcs and Humans" debuted in the mid-nineties. Originally a real-time-strategy game (RTS), WarCraft has come a long way and has become Blizzard's flagship. The title, in my opinion, really gained major recognition with the release of WarCraft III: Reign of Chaos and WarCraft III: The Frozen Throne. Without the key characters introduced in these games (as well as WCII: Tides of Darkness and WCII: Beyond the Dark Portal) World of WarCraft never would have been possible.

Although I was a bit skeptical at first, after playing the demo for a few days I was hooked. The lush graphics and music that creates the game's environment is simply breathtaking to any video game fanatic. WoW, as it is known, originally has several classes, races, and two factions that the player can use to customize their own character.

The game is played online for approximately $15/per month. (A pricey fee to some, but well worth it in my opinion.) Additionally players can choose the option of playing on a PvP game server for added fun and (in some cases) frustration or you can relax on a non-PvP server and enjoy the various areas, dungeons, battlegrounds, and raids that compile the World of WarCraft.

I give the game a five-star rating overall, not only because of it's entertainment values but also for the skills that can be incorporated in the lives of our youth. (Social Development, Money Management, etc.) Sounds crazy, but yes some teachers are using this game in the classroom with all that it offers.

All that being said, it is very entertaining and will keep you involved for hours, days, months, years, etc. WoW also has two expansions to it: The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King, with a third expansion (Cataclysm) soon to follow in the fall of 2010.

Rating: 1 StarsDONT BUY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is a horrible buy. I got the game as a christmas Gift. Never thinking that you could only play the game online and have to pay a fee to do so. I played warcraft in college with some buddies and enjoyed it greatly. But we never had to go online or pay a fee. That is what I thought this was just another cool and newer version of the game. Not a total ripoff of you money that you have to pay to play. I very disappointed with Bilzzard on this one. So unless you are willing to pay out money every month do not waste you time getting this product. I restate it is a total rip off.
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