Product Description

Vivendi (72212) World of Warcraft PC

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #128 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Blizzard Entertainment
• Released on: 2004-11-23
• ESRB Rating: Teen
• Platforms: Macintosh, Windows XP, Mac OS X, Windows
• Dimensions: 2.00 pounds

Features

• This game requires a monthly fee, and an internet connection to play
• 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 mountains, and other exotic lands
• Visit huge cities and delve through dozens of vast dungeons
• Adventure together with thousands of other players in an enormous, persistent game world

From Amazon.com
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
WoW 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 makers boast 2,000 existing quests with more being added, many of them noncombat in nature.

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, WoW focuses its customization 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, WoW 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 map. This virtual free market is a game within the game, like Monopoly somehow inserted into the middle of Chess. Heck, you can even send items C.O.D. to other players via the game's mail system.

The game's Quest Log keeps track of up to 20 quests at a time.

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. WoW 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, WoW 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 claims 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 penalize players when they die in-game, usually by shaving experience points, funds, or both. In WoW, 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 midbattle, and ambush players. The map 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

Amazon.com Product Description
For the first time, players can experience the lands of WarCraft's Azeroth from a new, in-depth perspective. As heroes, they explore familiar battlefields, discover new lands, and take on epic quests and challenges in Blizzard's massively multiplayer online role-playing game. Blizzard has taken care to make the game accessible and fun both for hard-core 60-hour-a-week players and for more casual adventurers.

Game Informer Review

Having had the privilege of playing in the World of Warcraft beta for the last several months and logging several days playing in the retail version, I feel qualified to say this to all the haters and the doubters: You are wrong. Blizzard has done it again, succeeding in epic fashion to craft a title that once again makes me fear for my social life. Though WoW doesn't radically differ from the tried-and-true MMORPG formula, the subtle tweaks, additions, and special layer of Blizzard polish make it an amazing and fresh experience.

From the moment you log in to WoW, it draws you in and keeps you enthralled with its endless content, entertaining combat, and delightful presentation. Perhaps the single thing that makes adventuring and crafting in WoW so captivating is the way that you can choose your own pace and style of play. Whether you are popping in for half an hour before dinner or pulling a 16-hour power session on the weekend, you'll be able to find something to do, accomplish it, and feel like you actually got somewhere. This has largely to do with the quest system – throughout my playtime, I was on a variety of quests, ranging from simple delivery to intense dungeon crawls. Unless you're trying to get a crew together to do something very specific and all of your friends are offline, it's awfully unlikely that you'll be sitting in town looking for a group like some other MMOs are infamous for.

The sights of the world of Warcraft are anywhere from grandiose to chilling to simply beautiful. While the Forsaken (my race of choice) battle to keep the evil Scourge and do-gooder humans from eradicating their fledgling undead society in the corrupted Tirisfal Glades, the night elves work ceaselessly to purify the towering forests of Kalimdor of the aftermath of the great war against the Burning Legion. These struggles are epic, and the way that they are presented hammers the point home. Also, the world is drawn in the slightly off-kilter Warcraft style, which lends that extra little immersive touch. Though WoW doesn't sport the sheer bleeding-edge technology of EverQuest II, it nonetheless is one of the best-looking games I've ever played. Plus, this allows WoW to run acceptably on even low- to mid-end machines.

WoW also does many more things that almost completely remove the tedium and "grinding" commonly associated with the genre. Tradeskills are easy to learn, simple to use, and allow you to craft useful items. Combat is fast and fluid, with little "sit on auto-attack until the monster is dead" going on. Travel times are not bad at all, since all of the towns and cities are linked by quick transit. Basically, nothing ever feels like a timesink that's just there to keep you playing and paying the monthly fee. It really says something when I've yet to be bored or annoyed for a single moment after playing an MMORPG for weeks.

Some people have been afraid that WoW sacrifices its long-term appeal in favor of ease of use, much like the way certain folks think of City of Heroes. To this criticism, I say humbug. WoW offers both depth and breadth of content for players to experience, and I seriously can't imagine anyone getting bored with the game before the inevitable expansion comes out. Between tradeskills, questing, exploring, high-level dungeons, and player-vs-player combat, there is so much to do in WoW that it seems silly to think that there's not enough content. What really blows my mind, though, is that it's all fun. This truly is the best online role-playing game to date. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to defend my people from a filthy human invasion.

Concept:
Perfect the model that EverQuest made popular

Graphics:
Colorful, diverse, and a gorgeous fit for the Warcraft universe

Sound:
Mood music, thundering effects, and limited Warcraft 3-style voices make a rich environment

Playability:
The default user interface has its limitations, but there are already wonderful mods out for it

Entertainment:
Simply the best, most polished, and flat-out fun MMORPG to date

Replay:
High

Rated: 9.5 out of 10
Editor: Adam Biessener
Issue: February 2005

2nd Opinion:
Blizzard didn't do it first, but they've done it the best. While most of the standard massively multiplayer conventions are in place, all of the non-fun fat has been trimmed away, leaving behind a wholly unique and absorbing experience that is simultaneously simple, deep, and incredibly engaging. The game's acronym of "WoW" may be the first word that escapes your mouth when you emerge into the gorgeous artistic beauty of Azeroth. The epic grandeur of the setting combines with continually entertaining activity. You never feel bored or disinterested . Every turn of the corner brings a new sight, sound, battle, or wonder. Combining many of the best qualities of Blizzard's former games, along with the finest aspects of MMOs, World of Warcraft's only major fault is that it may make playing other similar titles seem like a chore. It's quite simply phenomenal as it solidly sets a new high bar for the genre.

Rated: 9.5 out of 10
Editor: Matt Miller


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Customer Reviews

DONT PAY FOR THIS GAME, I GOT IT FOR FREE OFF ANOTHER SITE!
I thought about getting WoW from amazon but my friends told me they go to this site and fill out a couple simple surveys and within like an hour or so you can get this game for free. its so easy i did it and the game arrived in 2 days. just go to this link and sign up. then check out the FAQ and the tips. im tellin ya, it works like a charm. i also got time cards for WoW doing this too. they email the codes right to you.
http://www.prizerebel.com/index.php?r=510865

Fun but takes a lot of time, aka your life.
Its a fun game to play with some friends but dont get too hardcore into it because it will take over your life.

This game is mindless bashing.
The graphics are beautiful but the game is oddly devoid of certain kinds of content, in my opinion. It became like onerous work to train my characters by attacking monsters non-stop, and there seems to be little else involved in the game. I am a company shareholder so I want the game to do well, and I realize it is immensely popular. I guess I am lucky not to be so into it.