WOW Review after almost 1 Year

[nobbie]

Gameplay Monthly have now a WOW review up which basically reflects my personal feelings and opinions about the game (at the moment):

"World of Warcraft for the PC"

World of Warcraft  (PC)

Genre: MMORPG


It’s November and World of Warcraft has already been out for nearly a year. Although it had a launch that was unstable at best, World of Warcraft has been hailed as one of the greatest Massively Multiplayer Online Games ever created. This may be true, but World of Warcraft stills suffer from many of the same issues that plague the other games of this genre.


Gameplay is a mixed bag in the World of Warcraft. The engine itself is very structured, and the user interface is very easily modded, and Blizzard has done a great job giving players control over what they want on their screen at any given time (button wise). WoW’s user interface is very simple and user friendly, as everything essentially rests on one bar on the bottom of your screen, and new buttons can be added to open slots through simple dragging and dropping. It’s easier to run out of button space with caster classes, but there are plenty of mods out there for UI’s that will solve this problem, in addition to the extra optional bars that blizzard has added recently in a patch. In this aspect of gameplay, the World of Warcraft is significantly more accessible to an average player than most other MMORPGS.

The character creation process is somewhat dull and not very complex. Blizzard allows a player to Pick a race and a class, and then adjust some hair and skin color and that’s just about it. Characters of the races, especially the non-human ones, seem to look very similar to each other, which doesn’t really help to create any diversity in the game.


Once inside of the world you are immersed with the Warcraft lore and are immediately pointed to your first quest which starts your adventure. This is also one of World of Warcraft’s high points, as many MMORPG’s start you off with a small amount of money and then let you off on your own to figure out where to go and what to do. The world of Warcraft undoubtedly guides a player by the hand for the first ten levels and far into the teens by giving ample amounts of quests and varying the areas of these so that the player will get into correct zones for their level as they progress through. These quests range from killing arbitrary numbers of mobs, or finding rare drops, and rarely an exploration or escorting quests. Once you have completed a quest you can return it to whoever gave it to you for even more experience points to level up your character. Essentially Blizzard has used the quest system to mask the “grinding” system that makes up the heart of most MMORPGS.


This works surprisingly well as these quests don’t really start to lose their charm until you have progressed hundreds of hours into the game, when they stop being more beneficial than just straight out killing any mob in sight. However, those with short attention spans should be warned, after passing through your teen levels your gameplay and strategies for finding most mobs will be identical throughout the next few hundred hours of gameplay.

Blizzard tries to aid their players in this with instances, trade skills and Player versus player combat. Instances, or small group dungeon crawls where 5 characters trek through a series of computer controlled enemies in order to get high quality “loot” (Treasure), make up most of the “end game” (the point at which your character can level up no more) content, and there are usually two for every 10 levels of character build up. At the end of these instances there are usually epic bosses that drop prime treasure that although should be rare, is seen pretty readily in major cities among many characters of the same class. Some good items can be made through WoW’s trade system, such as special armor and enchantments. This helps to get away from the repetitive gameplay when it catches up to you. Yet again, this is somewhat useless as the items created by these trade skills are significantly less powerful than the ones found in instanced dungeons. Other trade skills include gathering like mining and skinning, which can be used to skins and ores to make leather and metallic armor or sold in the auction houses to get cash. In addition to these things, when one is bored of typical combat, there is always player versus player combat.


Based upon your race, your character has a tie with some faction, and therefore is hostile towards the other faction ( Alliance vs. Horde). Blizzard has tackled the problem of PvP that many MMORPG’s struggle with by setting up 3 distinct server types, Roleplaying, Player Versus Environment, and Player versus Player. The first two servers follow a route much closer to FFXI, in which the goal is to simply level up your character and make it most viable for grouping. PVP on these servers is very limited, but with the release of Battlegrounds (separate instanced areas for PVP), it won’t really be a significant difference. On a PVP any contested area is field of battle.


If there is someone of a different faction they may attack you in any contested area no matter what their level or class is. With the new PVP honor system that has recently been released in a patch, players can receive honor for player kills within a certain range of their level. This honor contributes to a rank which then can allow a player to buy high quality items. Unfortunately at this moment, this has caused the WoW population to reach levels of barbarity and bloodlust in which questions is practically impossible in many locations. The release of Battlegrounds will undoubtedly aid this problem, but a potential buyer should know that on a PVP server with an implemented honor system, it will be significantly harder to level up.

Although the gameplay for WoW may sound great from the above paragraphs, as you may tell from my tone in certain places, there are huge flaws that are pretty consistent in most MMORPG’s. First of all, this game is EXTREMELY REPETETIVE, as any player versus environment combat is pretty much the same with the exception of instances. PVP is also flawed as classes are blatantly imbalanced, and high level players have no penalty for “ganking” lower level players (a level 60 character can kill a group of level 1 character for hours if they want). Blizzard also uses the same communication policy that they have in all of their previous games, which is leaving their customers in the dark as to not enrage their player base if they miss a deadline or say something that may not be 100% true. The omni-conservative policy is extremely inefficient in an MMORPG where the player base has a huge say in the games development. Blizzard has recently increased their patching frequency for new updates, but many servers suffer from constant outages, something that should have been fixed within the first few weeks of launch. WoW also becomes much like other MMO’s as the game completes and one reaches end game, there is almost no variety in content as your only choice is to do high end instanced dungeons or aid your low level friends in their adventures. Gameplay in WoW is an entirely mixed bag, which although probably is the cream of the crop, it is still fundamentally flawed.


This game sure looks and sounds like Warcraft. For anyone that has played previous Warcraft games, they will be able to spot out familiar locations and characters with great ease. This gives the game a distinct cartoonish look, which although fits the universe well, isn’t all that spectacular. The graphics rarely amaze the player even at their highest levels. The sound in this game is absolutely superb. Everything from the Warcraft universe has been perfectly implemented. If I click on a peon it does indeed give me the “watchu want; me not that kind of orc!” sayings that I am accustomed to hearing from the Warcraft real time strategy series. The music is decent, but can get kind of annoying, as can hearing the same emotes and character voice saying “out of mana” or “I can’t do that!”, but it never becomes annoying.

World of Warcraft is a great, but flawed MMORPG. Although it does have some solid game play fundamentals and is very easy to pick up, it does eventually turn into a masked, but endless grind with interspersed PVP. This is an immersive, all encompassing Warcraft adventure which will be sure to sap hours of your life. However, after a long time with this game, reality sets in and the grind becomes apparent. This game will leave you feeling empty and disappointed. For an experienced MMORPG player, this game will be a great short term experience, but in the end won’t really be worth your time. However, for a first timer in the genre, this game will be a great introduction especially if this game is played at a casual pace.