World of Warcraft -
Ganking the Competition
 I
know, you look at yet another Massive Multi-player On-line
Role-Playing Game, and think, $15 a month, that's a lot
of coke, is it really worth it? Well, let me put it this
way. Your Significant Other, your non-gaming roommates,
friends, and co-workers, they're going to HATE World of
Warcraft. When you're not playing it, you're talking about
it.
This is because the World of Warcraft captures your imagination,
not because the game is a Time Bandit. Blizzard may not
be the most innovative gaming company around, but they learn
from other people's mistakes, or 'design philosophies',
or whatever you want to call them. One thing they seem to
have worked out is that people hate sitting around watching
their "hard-earned" cash evaporate watching load screens
or waiting for combat damage to heal. Almost every process
you can think of has been streamlined time-wise in World
of Warcraft. Even if you only have an hour or so at a go
to play, you can feel like you've achieved something in
a session.
 WoW
is really easy to get into, as well. Those of you who've
loved the earlier Warcraft games will find most of the graphical
style, races, and sound effects familiar (yes, NPCs still
talk trash when you click on them), and the interface and
talent trees will be familiar to anyone who's played Diablo.
You can't mess with your character's appearance quite so
much as in some other games, but by the time you're fully
equipped it doesn't matter anyway. (Though do bear in mind,
like most third person games, you'll be spending a lot of
time looking at your own butt.)
 Warcraft's
distinctive cartoonish graphical style really works in their
favour as an on-line role-playing game. Fewer polygons means
servers actually serving up action rather than ultra-detailed
realism with hideous lag and load screens, and means you'll
have to find another excuse to buy that new graphics card.
Despite this, WoW features some of the most realistically-rendered
breasts I've ever seen in an on-line RPG. Some are actually
ROUND, like real-girl breasts, if you've ever seen any of
those.
 In
an attempt to keep everyone happy, Blizzard runs their on-line
RPG on two different kinds of servers, PvP, and Carebear.
On Player-vs-Player servers, combat between players is pretty
much a free for all. People sick of being whacked in the
head by pschopaths while questing can stick to the Carebear
servers, where you have to declare yourself available for
PvP. I don't need to tell you which are more popular, right?
Class balance seems to be pretty good. You're probably
not going to spend your whole game thinking, 'man, I should
have made a necromancer'. You can play different characters
on different servers anyway, so you get to try a range of
options if you want. The race you choose determines your
starting point, and the world is big enough that it's going
to change a lot of what you do, at least at first.
Basically, you're going to spend your time questing, crafting,
and trading. WoW provides an on-line 'mail service' that
not only allows you to send messages and organise parties,
but also allows you to 'post' equipment to other players.
Probably not just because people have died playing MMORPGs,
Blizzard have also included the 'rest' feature, which will
keep you in your relationship and gainfully employed, if
that's what you want. Basically, if your character's out
of the game for a while, you earn double experience points
for killing monsters when you come back. The longer you've
been away, the longer this lasts.
Blizzard's distinctive humour is everywhere, just one
of the reasons WoW is such a blast to play. I'll let you
find out for yourself whether you can still explode sheep,
but you HAVE to make a troll dance at least once.
Overall Rating: 9.2/10
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