World of Warcraft review

Europeans have waited patiently (and not so patiently) for the retail version of World of Warcraft for months now. And fans have been devouring every morsel of information on the game from magazines and websites. Many of you have read articles about it, seen the screenshots or even played one of the numerous Betas (which I have).

Did it deserve all the hype and accolades that have been heaped on it the last year? Let me put it this way; in the final days of the beta; despite knowing that a character wipe was imminent I kept playing just for the fun of it. There, now you know that this will be yet another positive review.

World at war

Where to start when talking about a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing Game (MMORPG) like World of Warcraft? The answer is obvious; you start at the beginning: There are eight races in Azeroth, the game world, and they are split into two sides like chess pieces because this is indeed the World of War(craft).

On one side is the Alliance which could be said to be the good guys and on the other is the Horde who look evil (except for the Tauren who looks like a friendly cow) Things arenot always that simple though, as you will discover when investigating the background lore.

The reclusive and aloof Night Elves, the brave and resilient humans, the sturdy and determined dwarves along with the diminutive and resourceful gnomes comprise the Alliance side.

Their foes are the Horde; fierce and unyielding races that view the Alliance as everything they stand against. These are the brutal and battle-hardy orcs, the strong and stoic Tauren (Minotaurs), the ghastly undead and the cunning trolls.

After choosing your race you get to select a class from another set of eight which should be familiar to regular RPG players. But their respective abilities may surprise, at least in comparison with other MMORPGs. Those are the paladin, rogue, priest, hunter, warlock, druid, warrior, mage and the shaman. Obviously some of these classes exist only on one side such as the goody-goody paladins who are members of the Alliance and shamans who are in the Horde.

Mirror, mirror on the wall

The character creation pales a bit in comparison with other MMORPGS that give you more customization. That’s not to say that you don’t have many options but it’s still limited compared to City of Heroes and EQ2, or even Eve Online.

A rough summary of the options are skin colour, face, hair style, hair colour, facial hair (regrettably not for dwarf females) and race-specific features such as tusks, piercing, horn style and features for undead (should he have a jaw or no jaw? Your choice)

Your appearance also goes through many changes throughout the game as the gear upgrades. There are many good looking upgrades along the way and of course you may see a fancy shirt you like. Let’s not forget the number one accessory; a mount. These come in various shapes and sizes, from the gnome-made mechanical ostriches to the magnificent Paladin mounts.

Get the balance right

One of the big challenges of every MMORPG is class balance and I feel that Blizzard has done a great job in terms of PvE (Player versus Environment).

After trying most classes, some for longer than others, it is clear that there are strengths and weaknesses to your class. This makes you adjust your strategy to use those strengths and avoid the weaknesses (duh). Each class brings a wholly different play style which makes it fun to try a few combinations.

Class balance in PvP (Player versus Player) is still a debated issue, a select few classes are frequently picked on as being too good in PvP on the US forums which might be an indication of imbalance (then again those boards have so much whining and flaming that it’s hard to take them seriously).

Incidentally there will be a big focus on PvP with the upcoming so-called Battlegrounds which as I understand are large scale PvP events with bases, defence towers and even associated quests.

Professions

Tradeskills are something every MMORPG needs nowadays and in WoW these are called professions.

Without going too much in detail you can pick a primary profession such as tailoring, leatherworking, blacksmithing or alchemy. Most of those rely on other gathering professions such as skinning, mining or herbalism.

The pace of which you build up skill in these professions is a far cry from the months required in other games and is a welcome relief in that respect.

You are guaranteed a skill up from most newly learned recipes which use a colour system - grey is trivial, green is easy while orange and red are the hardest. All in all a well designed system but might be a little too simple for some hardcore gamers considering the lifetime of MMORPGS.

Which leads us to the essence of World of Warcraft, it’s obvious that the designers have put a lot of thought into what is frustrating about MMORPGs and what is not. This reviewer feels that Blizzard has the balance just right in the time versus reward factor. You are constantly getting the feel of achievement and the game hardly goes into the tedious grinding which has been present in past games.

Old and improved

World of Warcraft is not really an original game; it does not introduce any groundbreaking approaches to the genre, it takes existing concepts and improves on them. Let’s look at a few factors:

Levelling is fast in the first levels and gradually slows down but does not really approach the grinding pace of many other MMORPGs. Levelling is twofold in WoW; you kill creatures for experience and you finish quests for much larger chunks of experience.

Amazingly, getting a decent amount of experience for finishing a quest has never been a forte of past games of this genre but both WoW and EQ2 have those now, which gives you an increased sense of achievement. There are quests to be taken all around you from the moment you start and are surprisingly varied. Although there are the standard quests of collecting and fetching items. You can tell which NPC will give you a quest by an exclamation point over his head (and a question mark if you have done his quest)

An interesting feature is that the longer you are offline the more experience bonus you accumulate, which means that for a few mobs (or many depending on how long you were offline) you get double experience. This is not a game breaking feature but offers a nice incentive to the more casual player.

Along with spells and abilities for classes you can also build up your character’s talents which are somewhat reminiscent of the Skill tree in the Diablo games and makes you able to customize your character somewhat. This is also a well designed feature; an example would be a mage having to select from three talent trees; Arcane, Frost and Fire.

Fire is about pure damage, Frost is more about mob control (slowing them down etc.) and Arcane are general magic abilities. If you want to take someone down real fast you put some points in Fire allowing you eventually to get a huge fireball called Pyroblast and so on.

Unlike EQ2 where you are forced to group at around level 20 (no slight on EQ2 since it’s a self-proclaimed group orientated game) you have an easier time of soloing all the way to level sixty.

This is what I feel is a big plus for World of Warcraft, the freedom to choose whether you want to solo or group throughout. You will gradually get more and more quests that rely on having additional group member and you can see which ones those are in your quest diary because the are marked Elite.

Dying is nicely balanced in terms of failure versus frustration. When you die, you spawn as a ghost at the nearest graveyard. There you have the option of running towards your corpse, waiting for a resurrection from your fellow priestly class (paladin, priest or shaman) or if you died at a difficult location you can get a resurrection at the graveyard but with increased penalty to your gear and negative effects that last some time. Penalties associated with death will become steeper as you raise in levels but never to the point of immense frustration (old time EQ players will know what I mean).

What’s up doc?

Graphics for WoW and its competition have been a popular topic for a long time since the first impressions are usually based on screenshots and trailers. Some feel that WoW graphics are too cartoonish and thus take them out of the gameplay immersion.

Once you get playing and not basing your opinion on screenshots alone it’s hard not to be impressed. The key word is style and World of Warcraft is incredibly stylish and well-designed in terms of graphical direction. A good example of this is checking out all the starting areas of both sides; Alliance and Horde.

Where the Night elves of the Alliance live you see deep colours; the green of the forest and the blue of the waters and sky; the area is dark but you see that it’s a magical land, there are fireflies and an overall magical quality to the lighting. The starting area of the Tauren is however barren, the colour composition makes you think of dust blowing over everything and the colours are matte.

There is however one aspect that is lacking; namely the feeling of vast space. You can never see very far ahead. I remember flying around in my air vehicle in Anarchy Online and enjoying seeing hills and mountains far off in the distance and it gave me the feeling of an expansive gameworld.

It’s a trade-off however; in many games this became very taxing on your computer and it’s just one aspect that makes WoW run very smooth on even low-end computers (but I do miss that grand-scale factor). This is not to say that WoW is completely devoid of impressive scenery; it’s rather a question of scale.

“These go to 11”

Blizzard has definitely done its homework and looked at other MMORPGs; taking something here and there and improved it. It’s not the most original MMORPG around but uses time-tested elements and improves them.

Looking at the game’s history in the US leading up to this European launch, there have been some problems due to them miscalculating just how popular this game has become and as a result some server issues. Blizzard is however a solid game company and has gone to lengths to ensure the game’s improvements; even going as far as to halt copies for sale in the US while improving server stability.

From my own personal experience I’ve yet to encounter any problems after intense playing, be they technical or game-related (while I unfortunately encountered lots of both while playing its main competitor)

After reviewing a few MMORPGs I find myself feeling like Nigel Tufnel in Spinal Tap in the scene where he tells the Martin Dibergi how high the audio controls go, hence the title of this paragraph.

The reason is that I’ve graded admittedly good MMORPGs for 8-9 but this one has gotten more things right. There’s always a hesitation in giving something 10 since you are essentially saying that it’s perfect but as things stand now that’s exactly what World of Warcraft deserves.