World of Warcraft
I know, I know, World of Warcraft is a game everyone’s heard
of and pretty much played once or twice in their gaming lives, but I still get
questions from people asking me if the game is worth trying, what made it so
big, and what not. So why not toss in a review of a game I’m very familiar with
to start my reviews off with?
World of Warcraft is an MMORPG developed by Blizzard
Entertainment released on November 23, 2004. It’s the 4th
installment (and only MMORPG) of the ‘Warcraft universe’ which was first
introduced in 1994 with the release of Warcraft: Orcs & Humans. World of
Warcraft was released on the 10th anniversary of the Warcraft
franchise.
Anyway, introduction and background aside, here’s what you
came for. The review.
Gameplay
WoW’s gameplay is rather unique, not because it has a hell
load of spells per class, but because –and I’m writing this review from the
point of view of an ex-hardcore raider who rarely ever PvP’ed- of its end-game
content. To be honest, that was the only reason WoW only appealed to me.
The game, when this
review was written, has 12 playable races (Draenei, Dwarf, Gnome, Human,
Night Elf, Worgen, Blood Elf, Orc, Undead, Goblin, Tauren and Troll) and 10
classes (Death Knights, Druids, Hunters, Mages, Paladins, Priests, Rogues,
Shamans, Warlocks and Warriors). So that gives you a rather wide variety of
things to try out and kill things with. Not only that, but each of the classes
has 3 talent trees, that allow the classes to either; DPS, Tank or Heal.
As you level through you’ll be able to do a wide range of
things, other than sitting in a city and socializing with people that is,
you’ll be able to learn different skills such as Leatherworking, First Aid,
Blacksmithing and so on, you’ll be able to queue for PvP and plenty of dungeons
, you’ll be able to learn riding skills to ride mounts in land, water and air,
yes you’ve got the freedom to fly wherever/whenever once you get your license.
End game (meaning once you’ve reached the max character
level) you’ll be able to do two major things, you will be able to do PvE
content, aka Raiding, and/or you will be able to PvP.
Raiding is probably the best experience I’ve ever had with
any MMORPGs, and was the reason I began playing WoW. Raiding is very similar to
going through dungeons, but you do it with 10 or 25 people, in either normal
mode or hard mode. The biggest difference, aside from the group size, between
dungeons and raids is the difficulty of the encounters, and I’ve got to say, if
you like fighting monsters in fights that aren’t killed as simply as “stand
there, and shoot that thing until it stops moving” then you will love Raiding.
Now, I’m not saying all bosses in the raids are holyshit hard to kill, but it
will take several tries before you get to kill a boss without being on the edge
of your seat every time.
PvP wise I can’t really say much, because like I said
earlier, I’ve never really done PvP to the point where I can sit here and talk
about it for hours. I can tell you for sure though, that PvP in World of
Warcraft is serious business as well, I think it might even have a bigger
player base compared to raiding, and I can tell you that it’s fun, and takes a
lot of brains as well just like raiding does.
Graphics
I’ve got to say that I really like the graphics in WoW, the
environment detail it goes into is spectacular. The game gives you a wide array
of customization when it comes to the graphic settings, it allows you to set
the graphics to look like your average game in order to run smoothly on your
everyday computer – I had to run my game on the lowest graphic settings to be
able to raid on my laptop and the game still looked amazing- as well as
allowing you to set them on a high detail setting to run on those monster
computers y’all game in these days, and believe me, the game on low graphics
looks nothing like it does on Ultra, the detail in the shadows, the water, the
armor, everything, goes beyond any game you’ve played before.
User Interface wise nothing compares to WoW. World of
Warcraft allows you to install 3rd party add-ons to the game that
allow you to change the look of things, and the freedom to play around with
your Action Bars, mini maps, scrolling text, health bars, etc. is unbelievable.
Sound
Now, I’ve never worried too much about the sounds in a game
because at some point in time I always end up muting it and play my own music,
but WoW’s soundtracks are very nice, the orchestra sounds very very impressive.
Whoever it was that wrote the music for it deserves a medal. Now, for some
reason I never knew the game had background music until I decided to scan
through the game settings to see what it allowed me to play around with and I
ran into the tick box to enable background music , so be sure to check your
audio settings in-game to have the music play.
Overall and score.
All in all, I have to say that World of Warcraft is one of a
kind, it’s a game that you’ve got to seriously sit down and try sometime, there
is really no way to put the game in words for you, you have to get it and
experience it first hand to understand what it is that makes the game so bloody
addictive. I say YES, get World of Warcraft.
And I will be more than happy to give World of Warcraft a
rating of 9.6/10.
Extras
Thought I'd add a couple of links to show PvP, and Raids
I do NOT own either of the videos.
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