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
World of Warcraft 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 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, World of Warcraft focuses
its customisation 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, World of Warcraft
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 . This virtual free market is a game within
the game, like Monopoly somehow inserted into the middle of
Chess. You can even send items C.O.D. to other players via the
game's mail system.
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. World of Warcraft 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, World of
Warcraft 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 cls 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 penalise players when they die in-game,
usually by shaving experience points, funds, or both. In World of
Warcraft, 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 mid-battle, and ambush players. The 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 Athlon XP 1500+
Mac: PowerPC G5 1.6 GHz or Intel Core Duo processor PC:
Dual-core processor, such as Intel Pentium D or AmD Athlon 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.
- 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 ains, and other exotic lands.
- Visit huge cities and delve through dozens of vast dungeons.
- Enjoy hundreds of hours of gameplay with new quests, items, and adventures every month.