World of Warcraft Review

Blizzard is the BASF of the gaming world – they make things better. They didn’t invent real-time strategy games, they made them better. They didn’t invent the RPG, but they made it better. And now they’ve taken the MMORPG and made that better too. World of Warcraft is not a quantum leap forward for the genre – instead it takes everything that works well for MMORPG games and fine tunes it even further while alleviating a lot of the tedium and shortcomings as well. If you’ve ever considered getting into an MMORPG then now’s your chance because odds are that if you don’t find yourself enjoying World of Warcraft, then you won’t like any of the other games out there.

If you’ve played these types of games before then you’re familiar with some of their more frustrating aspects – and World of Warcraft has addressed just about every one of them…

What do I do now?: So you’ve spent time creating your character and are then unceremoniously dumped into the world. Now what? Don’t you absolutely hate not knowing where you’re supposed to do next or where you should go? This is not an issue in World of Warcraft. You’re given a quest right from the get-go and will soon find your quest log filled with plenty for you to do. If you’re running low on quests, all that you need to do is look at the local NPCs. Those that have quests to offer have an exclamation point over their heads – if it is faded then you’re level is too low to take on the quest. Simple! No endless conversations with NPCs that are just there for atmosphere – you know at a glance who can help you out. When you accept a quest the exclamation point turns into a faded question mark that turns bright yellow when you’ve satisfied the quest’s goals. You always know where to go because the descriptions in the quest log are excellent and your compass rose will have pointers in the directions of your quest locations.

Long travel times: In most MMORPGs you spend an inordinate amount of time just running around trying to get somewhere else. Quests usually come with double the travel time as they often force you to go somewhere distant, complete the quest, and then return to the location where you received the quest in order to get credit for it. World of Warcraft ensures that you spend more time questing and less time traveling in a couple of ways. First, quests are given near their location so you never have to travel far. Some quests ask you to report to an NPC in a neighboring zone, but this is just a way to let you know that your character is advanced enough to move to more challenging territory. Secondly, there is a high speed transit system of sorts in the game. You can visit stables, griffin aviaries, and the like, pay a small fee, and then be automatically whisked to your desired destination. What’s really impressive about this is that it occurs in real-time. If you’re riding a griffin you’ll be able to watch the land pass quickly beneath you, enjoying the sights and watching players and creatures go about their business below. Sure beats walking!

Exploring the world: One of World of Warcraft’s many nice touches is that it allows you to explore its lands from the very beginning. In most other MMORPGs you’re stuck in a little safe corner of the world and if you venture beyond it before you have spent a nice chunk of time building up your character, then you can expect a swift death at the hands of creatures far beyond your level. As your character’s experience grows you get to see a little bit more and a little bit more of the world in bite-sized chunks, but it will be quite some time before you have a character with enough experience to see most of the world. In World of Warcraft the lands are crisscrossed and connected by a network of roads that provide for safe travel. As long as you stick to the road you are safe from attack by any nearby creatures. Wander off the road and you’re on your own, but if you want to get a look at things in the next zone or two you can do so safely.

Harsh penalties for death: Experience debt, lost loot, long treks to recover your equipment … death can be a real pain in an MMORPG. In World of Warcraft, though, it is more of a minor inconvenience than a major setback. When you die you’re returned to the local graveyard as a ghost and given a choice: you can return to the site of your corpse and resurrect yourself for no penalty, or you can resurrect instantly at the cost of damage to your equipped items. These items can later be repaired for a cost, so in essence you’re paying for the resurrection with some of your cash. Since there are graveyards in every zone, you’re never all that far from your corpse. If you died in a particularly nasty area, you don’t necessarily need to worry about being struck down immediately after you return to life. You do not need to resurrect yourself on the spot where your corpse lies, but within a set radius of it. You also specify when you want to resurrect, so you can pick a relatively safe spot, wait until the coast is clear, and then return to life and make tracks for a safer location.

Slow recovery times: Blizzard realized that players don’t like sitting around waiting and doing nothing while playing games. This simple realization is not universal among MMORPGs, though, because after a fight you’re stuck sitting around and waiting for your health, mana, stamina, or what have you to slowly recover until you’re capable of fighting again. This can be particularly annoying during quests that require you to kill a set number of enemies – you spend more time recovering than you do actually fighting. The recovery times in World of Warcraft are quite fast, giving you a chance to catch your breath before heading into another fight rather than forcing you into dead time during which you can not do much else other then waiting for your health to recover. The recovery time can be accelerated further by eating foods or drinking potions, both of which are quite plentiful in the game.

Load screens: Has this ever happened to you in an MMORPG? You walk over a bridge or through a door and enter a new area and are treated to a long load screen, only to realize that you forgot to do something before leaving the last zone? Isn’t it frustrating to know that you’ll have to sit through that load screen two more times before you can continue on your way? Well this won’t happen to you in World of Warcraft as there are no load screens in the game. You can cross into new areas, enter cities, buildings, and dungeons, and the transition is always completely seamless, without a load screen in sight. Not only does this remove an annoyance factor from the game, it adds to the feeling of immersion you have while playing the game.

Not only are a lot of the annoyances of MMORPG gaming smoothed out, World of Warcraft does an amazing job of crafting its game world. The graphics are straight out of Warcraft III and make use of the same brilliant colors and stylized, comic book-like characters and locations. Each of its zones has a unique color palette and its own feel, but the whole time there is no doubt that you’re in a Warcraft game. There are also plenty of touches that Warcraft fans will appreciate, such as logging camps with human peasants busily chopping wood and bringing it back to a gathering point. Speak to one of them and you’ll hear the familiar unit acknowledgement phrases from the game’s real-time strategy inspiration. The world is packed with details that help bring it alive, water flows in streams and cascades over falls, birds fly through the air, and benign fauna can be seen in the wilderness. While the game’s open spaces are certainly impressive, the cities are simply incredible. They are complete cities, filled with streets, alleyways, parks, shops, and everything that you’d expect to find in a city. The architecture is often remarkable, such as the monument-lined stone bridge that leads to the gates of the human city. When you first enter one of the cities, you’ll feel like a tourist and will want to spend some time walking around and taking in the sights.