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World of Warcraft
- CD
- Enjoy hundreds of hours of gameplay with new quests, items, and adventures every month
- Adventure together with thousands of other players in an enormous, persistent game world
- 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
The Editors Desk:
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.  | | 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.  | | 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.  | | 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
Avg. Customer Review: 
 Great but needs change or you'll get bored after a bit
Incredible, truely, but they could have made it so much better by not focusing on the quest aspect of the game so much.
The only part of the game that remains entertaining is trading, the AH, and player interactions for things like enchantments and new weapons and armor. Bliz should make it a system where players can buy real estate in the land of azeroth and with large accumulations of money, build castles and defenses for their properties, and then raids and the horde and alliance could be interactive and meaningful, rather then pointless killing of NPCs that respawn in two seconds, honestly, the horde and the alliance need to be able to communicate somehow, maybe a mid level quest where you get to learn orcish or allianceish and then you can send messages, also, the two should be able to choose to fight, or make peace, or backstab their alliance, maybe a throwback from KOTR and Fable where actions cause a shift in the characters looks and standing in the world, this whole system of honor points and un-interactive killing is just boring and not they way business should be done, make the game incredible, Take my Advice, yeah.
WoW is Gorgeous and Grand
I have to admit, when I first saw my friends playing WoW I was skeptical. I'd never played an online only game before, and the $15 a month fee, on top of the $50 for the game seemed a bit steep. I figured that I'de at least give it a chance, I'm an experienced gamer, and let me tell you, this was easily the most fun I'de EVER had with a game. There were several things that separated WoW from any game I'de ever played before, and also sever problems I encountered, here's a list/walk through of things that I noticed when I started playing.
1) Choosing a server is very easy. When you first start it up, it loads a list of 90-something servers. Though the list is large, selecting a server is fairly easy. Beside each server name is the server type (Player vs. Player, which is where an alliance character can attack a hoard character and vice versa, and a normal questing type where you can only attack opposite factions in certain situations) and the server size (small, medium, and large). Personally, I selected a small server because at peak hours on the large servers you will often be forced to wait for people to get off because the server is at capacity. If you have friends that you want to play with, make certain that you select their server, because one a character is made that specific character cannot be switched to another server, though you can simply switch servers and create a character there.
2) Once I had my server selected, I began creating a character. In WoW there are two opposing sides: the alliance, which consists of humans, night elves, dwarfs, and gnomes. And the other side (some might say the evil guys, though its really not true) is The Hoard, made of Orcs, Undead, Trolls, and Tauren. Choosing between the two sides is really just a matter of personal preference, they are equally balanced on most servers, though if you want to play with your friend who's in the alliance, don't pick a hoard character because you will be unable to communicate with each other.
3) After picking a Race, you have to go through a series of customizations. At first I was quite disappointed with the amount of customization, you get all the standard stuff: Gender, hair cut and color, skin tone, and that was all! Honestly I felt a little betrayed, I didn't want my character to look like everyone else's, but once you start playing your equipment is what really makes you unique, and since every weapon and piece of armor is individually drawn, your character soon has a distinct look.
4) The only other thing you have to pick before you start playing is your character class. I'm not going to go into depth, suffice to say that there are 9 total classes, no unique racial classes, and not every race can be every singular class (a night elf, for example, cannot be a warlock).
5) Now the actual game itself. One of the reasons the game is so addictive is that lack of loading bars you'll encounter. With most games, every time you switch from one region to another, you have to load up the next landscape. Though often short it's enough time to check your watch, which often results in a "my gosh, it's been 3 hours, pizza should be done by now." With WoW loading bars are virtually none existent. You have to load up whenever you start, and if you switch from one of the 2 massive continents, and when you enter a dungeon, and that's it! You can run from one side of a continent to another and never stop once. It's for this reason that time tends to slip away from you, a one hour secession turns into a 6 hour spree very easily.
6) One of the things a lot of people will say to deride WoW (EQII fans mostly) is that "the graphics terribly" or "the world is so unrealistic." Unrealistic- yes, terrible- never! For this game, Blizzard choose to emulate the drawing style that they used in the previous warcraft games. Some would say "cartoonish", I prefer "stylish." Do the graphics look like the real world? No, and they aren't trying to make them that way. Though a little bizarre at first, the drawing style is certainly not restrictive or confusing. They work well with the game, and every single area is uniquely drawn, unlike some games where it feels like the developers just copied and pasted the same thing over and over, every single region is distinct, and has it's own flavor
7) One of the big things that I had never experienced before in a game was a player generated economy. Like any RPG, WoW has vendors where you can buy and sell items that you find, but WoW also lets you sell items that you find to other characters (for however much you want to sell it for), or if you can't find someone who wants it, you can put it up for bids in an Auction House for a starting, and buyout price that you determine. For me the Auction House is probably the single greatest thing in the game because if you find a good item, there is almost always someone willing to buy it, and for much more than you would have received from a vendor, so large sums of money can be made very quickly if you can tap the right market. The Alliance and Hoard each have exactly one auction house (in Ironforge for alliance, and Orgrimmar for Hoard) and you can find literally anything in them.
8) The looting system is excellent, if your the first person to attack something, then you get all the experience and loot, so no one can steal your kill.
9) Dyeing is fairly painless. Should you die, your ghost instantly goes to the nearest graveyard (there is at least one in almost every region) where you can either run to your body for no penalty, or revive at the graveyard for a slight penalty.
10) Leveling is fairly simple, after each kill it will flash the amount of experience you received, and there is an xp bar that shows you exactly how much you need to level up. Once you do level up, you will be required to find a specific class trainer (they are usually very easy to find) where you have to buy any new abilities you are eligible for. To me this was one of the stranger aspects of the game, but abilities are very very cheap so it wasn't a big problem
11) You've probably heard nightmare stories about how the servers are never up, how characters get deleted, and how guys 30 levels higher keep killing people. I've had the game for a month now, and the servers have been down all of 2 days. If you only can play a few days a week (like me) then this can lead to much vulgar language, smashed car windows, cursing (in order) blizzard, your parents, your computer, god, your car with it's broken windows, etc. Thankfully blizzard has put most of it's server problems behind them, and for the two days that they were down, I wasn't charged any money for it, so even if I couldn't play this specific day, I wasn't paying for it. Though frustrating, it really is a testament to how excellent the game is, that people almost go through a type of withdrawal when they can't play it. One positive aspect of the down time is that it lets you know who is playing the game, because they generally come to school/work the next day with half their hair torn out. For character deletion, I've never had it happen to me, and I don't know anyone who ever has had it happen to to them, so so much for that. As for guys 5 times your level killing you constantly, with the new patch that just came out the honor system was created. What this does is: whenever you kill an opposite faction member you get a point, enough points gets you some really good free stuff. On the flip side, if your level 60, and you kill someone at level 5, then you lose points, lose enough points and your own faction may cast you out, which is enough to discourage most people from attacking you. Also in my experience, It's enormously uncommon to see an enemy below level 25.
12) I'm pretty much done with my ranting and ravings, but I want to make a note just to make certain no one gets confused. This is an ONLINE ONLY game, you cannot play it off-line. Because of this, if you've got a slow internet connection, then this isn't the game for you. Also it is a graphically intense, so unless you've got a good computer, you probably won't want to play it either.
-Herzman
BUY IT NOW
im a 13 year old girl who is absolutely in love with this game. boys and girls have fun on it and i am attached to the game. you can complete fun quests and talk to other people playin on the game. you can join a guild and parties and help each other with quests. the game isnt very brutal or violent,and it is so fun exploring the places and growing levels. you can choose to be elves, orcs, humans, gnomes and others that are quite cool too. the game may be expensive, but it is 100000% worth it. the graphix are great and very well done 5/5.
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