World of Warcraft Review

It seems like such a long time ago that Blizzard gave us our first glimpse of what would take shape as World of Warcraft during its fledgling announcement at ECTS in 2001. Whilst MMORPGâ??s enjoy great success in areas such as Korea and to a lesser extent within certain parts of Europe, it appears to be an entirely different story in the UK where many titles have attempted to crack the market but fallen way short.

Despite offering experiences as diverse as taking on the Empire in Star Wars Galaxies to defeating in â??â?, it appears that the sheer level of time needed to pour into these game, coupled with issues such as broadband penetration and monthly subscriptions have always put off British gamers. However with the rise of broadband, the general acceptance of monthly fees and a strong brand behind it, Blizzard and Vivendi-Universal hope to shake that image off with the long-awaited release of World of Warcraft across Europe.

Beginning the game in a similar fashion to virtually ever RPG in existence, players can select from a number of diverse and interesting races split between the Horde and the Alliance and choose from nine different classes such as Mage or Warrior, before stepping into the beautiful world of Azeroth for the first time. Blizzard fans will appreciate the multitude of touches that constantly remind you of its heritage, and itâ??s impressive just how successful theyâ??ve been in translating an RTS to an RPG; although thatâ??s not to say that WoW is purely for Blizzard fanatics, quite the opposite in fact as the cohesive experience should find it appealing to an entirely new audience of eager fans.

Weâ??ve been fortunate enough to be involved in the closed European beta-test during the last couple of months, and it seems the No.1 question asked upon its unrivalled success within the States is, â??Whatâ??s so different about it?â? Well in a couple of words, not a lot; yes you read that correctly, in-fact WoW lacks many of the features that have made it into rival MMORPG offerings, such as being able to buy your own dwellings and .

What WoW does manage to do is bring together the various elements associated with MMORPGS to stunning effect; the whole package has a sense of continuity and just solidness thatâ??s been sorely lacking from many of the MMORPGâ??s that weâ??ve played through in the past. Youâ??ll find equal doses of combat and exploration, mixed in with a slight puzzles and a heavy dose of socialising â?“ watching characters dance semi-naked on New Yearâ??s Day is just something you donâ??t usually see within videogames.

A lot of the extended development time has obviously been spent on ensuring the experience is streamlined enough for anybody to pick up and play, so you donâ??t have too worry too much about starting off as a beginner or having to wade through page after page in the manual. A large part of this comes down to the interface which weâ??ll talk about later, however itâ??s evident right from the start and throughout the game that Blizzard have poured their heartâ??s and souls into every pore of WoW.

Dependant upon your character selection, youâ??ll start off within Azeroth in different locations, but as an example of just how easy it is to get into the game and the attention paid by Blizzard, you wonâ??t start off as an unknown within a sprawling large city location, instead finding yourself in a hamlet with a couple of characters that will assign you missions to ease you into the game. Thereâ??s no tutorial to wade through, instead opting for a small number of pop-upâ??s to highlight the most important information throughout the game, and within the first hour youâ??ll have learnt enough to begin the true adventure.

As Iâ??ve said before, WoW doesnâ??t necessarily bring any major bold innovations to the genre, instead opting to polish and perfect the ingredients into a stable mixture that youâ??ll find nigh-on-impossible to put down. This is evident mostly in the interface presented to the player, which allows you to easily keep check on important character aspects, items, quests and various other features. Perhaps the most important element to get a grip on is the Action Bar, which allows you to store attack commands, spells and items for easy access. Its simplistic appearance however hides a genuinely brilliant system, providing the chance for players to learn combos and string together various attacks with ease.

Character levelâ??s-up in a similar fashion as laid out in the RPG constitution, with the emphasis being placed squarely on quests and solving the assortment of hundreds throughout the game. However itâ??s not just combat that will earn you experience points, as exploring new locations for the first time will also reward you.

Each district contains a vast number of quests available for the player to undertake, highlighted by characters with an exclamation point above their heads. Quests are broken into categories of difficulty and will only become available once youâ??ve reached a sufficient level of experience to complete them. The quests reveal storyline details and also reward the player with information and items; sadly thereâ??s no innovation in the way that WoW presents the storyline, so thereâ??s no feeling attached to the player as though your actions are influencing the world of Azeroth â?“ an area that weâ??d like to see developed in future MMORPG offerings, why not have a dynamic, continuing storyline that is influenced by the actions and decisions of the gamers playing?

Certain quests dubbed â??Epic Questsâ? usually require substantial effort and the grouping of several players to successfully complete them. These have a habit of appearing when youâ??re coming to the natural conclusion of a particular area, and usually reward the player significantly for completing them.

There is however a sufficient level of variety to the thousand-plus quests featured within the game, from venturing into enemy territory to finding a specific item or character. Some of the quests can be damn frustrating, particularly those that require you to find something specific; but then the social features become more apparent and you realise thereâ??s a world of other players to help and assist you.

Teaming up into groups is straightforward and it seems that Blizzard have thought of everything, such as various mechanics to handle the distribution of loot amongst a party, whether itâ??s assigning items via a round-robin or just merely free-for-all. Disparity between levels of those within your party is handled with care, ensuring that high-level characters receive fewer experience points compared to those at a lower standing.

As youâ??d expect from a MMORPG the world of Azeroth is absolutely gargantuan, however unlike many other MMORPG offerings thereâ??s a sense of continuity between the various areas, thanks largely to the lack of loading involved. Broken down into various different areas, thereâ??s a slight load when you cross between one district to another; but on the whole you do get the feeling that this is one continuous world, albeit a diverse one at that.

A large part of your time to begin with will be spent exploring the local few districts on-foot, which isnâ??t a bad thing given how vibrant the game world is and just how many things there are to catch your attention. However itâ??s not long before youâ??ll gain access to faster transport, such as riding atop the backs of gryphons and wyverns or even acquiring your own steed. Sadly you donâ??t have any direct control of these, although flying through the environment and watching others below is always impressive. Before you can make use of the transport youâ??ll need to discover the various stops on-foot, which in turn open up the routes between various areas.

Thereâ??s a great sense of experience playing through WoW; to begin with youâ??ll have troubles fighting the most insignificant creatures, but with a little time youâ??ll soon find yourself progressing and appreciating the pace of the game, even combat and adventures at high-levels doesnâ??t have the feeling of dragging on way beyond your interest wanes.

The issue of player death within MMORPGâ??s has often been a source of contention, with some poorly executed concepts being enough to cripple some titles; however this is where WoW introduces one of its major innovations and one that will endear it beyond MMORPG fanatics â?“ you simply donâ??t have to worry about it too much. Whereas previous MMORPGâ??s have punished the player harshly for dying, such as severe experience point deductions or even other players looting everything youâ??ve got, none of these issues feature with WoW. Death simply means respawning at the nearest grave-yard as a spirit and youâ??ve simply got to find your corpse to begin playing again, or you can be resurrected on the spot by asking the graveyardâ??s spirit healer to bring you back to life â?“ the punishment for this however is a reduction in your experience and your weapons durability being halved, so given the fact you can run quicker as a ghost itâ??s virtually always wiser to just find your corpse.

If we had one complaint about the system, then itâ??s probably the fact that itâ??s not been developed as far as it could have; when being a ghost why not have quests that are only open to that state, or perhaps in the social nature of the game be able to sneak up on other players and give them a scare!

Another of WoWâ??s innovations comes in the form of how it handles experience, with one subtle feature changing the balance of MMORPGâ??s considerably and helping to ensure you donâ??t have to spend 40+ hours a week to keep afloat within the game. Player characters can be in one of two states, namely â??normalâ? and â??restedâ?. Whilst in the normal state youâ??ll receive the standard experience points during combat, however fighting whilst in a rested state can bring you up to 200% experience points for every kill you make, essentially rewarding those who donâ??t glue themselves to the seat and play endlessly. Without houses or dwellings featured in the game, players are free to log-out wherever they find themselves, however if you log-out whilst in the safety of one of the many inns scattered throughout Azeroth then the rest state will increase at a much quicker pace then if you logged out in the wilderness.

Itâ??s a great system, perhaps the best concept that WoW offers, ensuring that if you spend a few days out of Azeroth and in the real-world then you donâ??t have to feel too bad about it, whilst the hardcore can carry on without feeling too aggrieved by the lack of an experience bonus.

Tied into levelling-up and experience points is the Talent feature which becomes available once your player has passed Level 10. Represented as a multi-tiered system similar to that in Diablo 2, players get a Talent point every time they level up which can be used to improve your characterâ??s abilities. Thereâ??s a great sense of structure to this system, allowing players to work out in great deal how they plan to evolve their character whilst ensuring the game continues to offer a great deal of variation.

As with many RPGâ??s you can also learn various professions throughout your adventure and develop your skills in each of these, although youâ??re restricted to using just two professions at any one time. Broken down into two distinct categories, namely gathering and manufacturing, the professions on offer include the likes of Cooking, Engineering, Blacksmithing, Skinning and Leatherworking to mention but a few. Finding the combination that suits you the most proves to be the most successful outcome, such as Skinning and Leatherwork or Herbalism and Alchemy.

Whatever final product you end up with, youâ??ll be able to sell to other players, shop owners or find the highest bidder in the various Auction Houses scattered throughout Azeroth. Buying and selling can take up a lot of your time within WoW, as it seems thereâ??s always somebody running around trying to find a specific item; much like the real-world, WoW faithfully captures the methodology of â??supply-and-demandâ? and those who actively pursue this will soon discover the benefits.

A particularly strong aspect of WoW is the races and classes available to the player; whilst the offering of 8 races and 9 classes may seem a little shallow compared to other titles, we can honestly say that no other title offers the same feeling of development and variety. There doesnâ??t appear to be one particular race or class that players clamour for, whilst the ability to play as multiple characters to sample them all on multiple realms/servers is actively promoted by the game and Blizzard. Most of the races have individual techniques such as the Warriorâ??s ability to change stances between attack and defence, whilst Druids can shape-shift into various animal forms. The sheer variety on offer ensures that you wonâ??t see clone after clone of the most popular classes throughout the game, whilst groups tend to be balanced affairs encompassing a wide variety of characters.

Despite lavishing praise upon WoW, there are areas that are a little rough around the edges and weâ??d like to see more development to the player side of the game. A large part of your time can be spent on quests alone, negating the concept of it being massively-multiplayer; so why not introduce new story events that require players to co-operate and defend the threat. To a certain extent this is explored in the PvP offered by the game, allowing players to engage in non-lethal duels. Certain realms within the game are actively PvP enabled, with full on battles between Horde and Alliance members. This is definitely an important part of the game but one that needs to be developed, but with the promise of a â??Respectâ? system being introduced soon, granting those who engage in combat with Honour points and punishing those who pick on lower levels with Dishonour, itâ??s hopeful that the game will continue to evolve past the foundations laid with this release.

The game features a robust communication system, allowing you to choose from a huge list of phrases and actions, which leads on to some highly amusing situations (just watch a warrior dance); whilst you can also simply type a message to shout to anybody around or whisper to a specific player. Itâ??s a system that doesnâ??t really try to do anything new, but easily allows you to ask for help or just sit back and socialise with a few other players. During our time we were pleasantly surprised by how social the whole experience is, although we did come across a few incidents of players being decidedly unhelpful and aggressive â?“ probably 8-year old Americans, with nothing better to do then proclaim â??You guys suck!â?... Naturally a large part of the success of a MMORPG is keeping the community happy and developing; weâ??ll have to wait before knowing for sure whether Blizzard can keep the momentum going, but for now itâ??s safe to say that the world of Azeroth is a pleasant experience regardless of what type of gamer you are.

Itâ??s fair to say that given the lengthy development period for WoW, that itâ??s not one of the most impressive looking titles currently available on the PC. Thereâ??s a distinct lack of technological details and effects, although this is more then made up by the highly stylised look created by Blizzardâ??s talented artists. Certainly the rich and diverse world around you impresses both in terms of size and just the sheer vibrancy of the various areas â?“ yet still successfully finding a sense of cohesion to the overall world of Azaroth. One particular visual touch that heightens the sense of immersion is the day/night cycle that runs according to the time in the real-world; if anything it also gives a healthy reminder when youâ??ve been sat at the computer for too long and realise itâ??s 4:00 AM!!!