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Disregard Initiates' Bias

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 13 / 26
Date: May 15, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I think it's important to be properly acquainted with a game before it is reviewed, but in order to rate it it's necessary to be acquainted with the competition without having been stuck with the product for years developing a bias. Incessantly, World of Warcraft is reviewed, ranked, and revered as having 'charm' and 'fun' that its competitors cannot touch, and that the competitors are only mere clones. But in truth, World of Warcraft is a clone of many MMORPGs that came before it, and other recent games such as Guild Wars and especially Lord of the Rings Online do indeed have charm, beauty, and a level of detail that World of Warcraft cannot even come close to.

There are a few reasons why everyone and his brother, dog, and fish all play World of Warcraft: the game has a name that was already world famous for gameplay (Warcraft, which was a Real-Time Strategy game), the graphics are very, VERY low-end but with enough color and cartoony charm to appeal to an unusually wide range of ages of players, and as such the game targets the broadest common denominator.

That said, World of Warcraft is NOT the game for you if you're looking to push a new 512MB VRAM GeForce 7/8 series video card to its limits. There's nothing graphically spectacular here. Apparently, that's not the point of WoW.

It would seem that WoW is about peer pressure and hanging out with friends and being "cool" and developing biases about a now-archaic game to pre-judge all other viable games, no matter their merit, as "clones". Certainly, WoW has made itself a legend in gaming history. And newer games (such as LOTRO) do indeed reproduce a lot of trivial elements that are seen in WoW. But it's far too easy to forget that WoW itself was a rip-off of 3D MMORPG legends before its own time, including Asheron's Call and EverQuest. In fact, most of the gameplay elements in LOTRO were taken from Turbine's own original legacy Asheron's Call, not WoW. Only a few trivial touches seen in WoW were cloned, all other "cloned" elements derived from other sources.

The gameplay in WoW is decent, but the mechanics can be annoying. WoW has every bit as many grinding as the worst grinding moments of every ther MMORPG out there. The level of sophistication of the initial quests are rediculous: Kill 12 [breed of monster]s. No not those identical twin monsters directly adjacent to them. And wait your turn--everyone else is doing the same thing.

Getting lost in WoW is as boring as in any MMORPG. Given the outdated graphics and obsolete AI, you may find yourself severely uninspired to keep moving. Combat situations in WoW are unoriginal, and actually quite flawed. I don't know about what the other races are like or if you can turn it off, but every time I try to use a skill and don't have enough energy, my character shouts, "I don't have enough energy!" That is extremely annoying to me. I could tolerate a short and simple musical note or something, and would prefer nothing to happen at all. Equally annoying is the fact that visual feedback for this is isolated from the skills toolbar other than the fact that the skills are simply disabled / dimmed; one must monitor the Energy bar at the top of the screen. Most MMORPGs have this wrong; in Guild Wars, I rearranged my user interface so that the "mana" / "magic" (blue bar, whatever it's called) is directly adjacent to the skills bar. If WoW supports UI rearrangements, this would be necessary to me. I haven't checked yet.

I mentioned that the graphics are low-end. This is true; they do push systems of 2004 or so, but this is 2007. To make up for this, theming is very heavy--buildings are lopsided, players are shaped with exaggerated features, and colors are painfully solid (solid green flora, solid blue sky, solid gray brick buildings, etc.) If you dig that or don't care, great. I for one prefer to sink in my chair and inhale the beauty of Lord of the Rings Online, with the incredibly detailed sky, the flock of birds in the sky, the rainbow, the very organic-feeling grass, the beautiful moon, and so on. If I'm going to stare at a character's butt all day, I also prefer to stare at my quaint Hobbit in LOTRO or my beautiful character in Guild Wars over WoW's low-polygon cartoony ogre thug or lopsided human.

I don't doubt that those who have played WoW for a long time are thoroughly enjoying themselves. My frustration is with the fact that most WoW players are first-time players of MMORPGs--a fact proven by numbers alone--and they have no idea of how unfairly prejudiced they are about the game that introduced them to the genre when they judge other very fine games. *Of course* they will look down on them. It doesn't matter that they supercede many or all elements of what makes WoW great (other than sheer quantity of players). People will always be biased for what they have been playing for a long time.

My review of WoW, then, concludes with this: WoW is popular because of viral marketing, not because it's a spectacular game. Is it a good game? Sure. Does it stack up to other MMORPGs? Well, if you forget numbers for a moment, WoW stands on its own but it really does not overcome them all. Do I think it's worthy of 5 stars? Absolutely not, I reserve that for Lord of the Rings Online. 4 stars? No, I was annoyed and frustrated when I tried WoW.

So if your friends or family are playing WoW and they're trying to get you to join them, by all means, sign up and join the party. But if you're on your own and you have a good gaming PC and you just want to enjoy an MMORPG experience, WoW is nothing to be ashamed of, but I would recommend that you consider the alternatives--especially those alternatives that most of the MMORPG newbies (i.e. the bulk of WoW veterans) dismiss as "cheap clones". You might find as I have that the dismissal is with little merit, and that they aren't cheaply implemented at all but very well made iterations of a MMORPG genre that has a decades-old legacy.

a real disappointment

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 15 / 32
Date: January 09, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Good graphics, but you can see the screenshots.
An interesting world, but probably you are already familiar with it, having played the strategy version WIII.
A total disappointment as a mmorg, completely and utterly bad

There are 2 phases in your gaming experience:
A) getting to lv60
B) lv60.

A) Getting to lv60: you can do it, took me 2 months, sometimes fun, sometimes boring, but aoverall i'll give it 3 stars.

B) Lv60: the bad. Really bad, you can't imagine how bad. Nothing you do determines what happens to your character, absolutely nothing.
You have 3 alternatives once you get to lv60:
1]do instance dungeons to get a set of very good items
2]do PvP to get military ranks and with them buy the best items in the game
3]work up your popolarity with some of the factions in the game, to get some enhancements.

1] Instance dungeons: simply put, the drop from the monster are random, so random it took me 15 times doing a dungeon, along with other 9 players (and you need all 9) to get an item. each run about 3 hours. a time sink. they just want you to pay your account subscription and you waste time accomplishing nothing.

2] PvP: you can win battleground battles, slay opposing players and such, you can win and kill as much as you like, your rank is determined by the overall wins and kills of all other players, so whatever you do, is no warranty you achieve what you want to accomplish.

3]Factions: you just gather things and give them to the agents of the faction. sounds easy? well, on an average you have to kill about 3.000 to 5.000 (yup, three thousands) monsters to achieve the needed popularity. hence, see what i said above about the dungeons.

All in all: have some fun getting to lv60, because once you get there the whole game is pointless, and you are not playing with the game, blizzard is playing with your wallet.
Be warned.

WoW = solo AND group friendly

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: October 26, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Not group friendly? Hardly. Grouping is a fun and often necessary part of the game. It will also be required to reach many difficult areas of the game (dungeons, caves, instances).

I played WoW for 1-1/2 weeks during the stress test and loved almost every minute of it. I reached levels 14-16 on a few characters but I played a LOT because the stress test wasn't going to last long.

It sounds like you haven't even played WoW, try the open beta before bashing it. It should start sometime in November.

This really can't be compared to other MMORPGs

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: November 29, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I knew Blizzard would do a good job, but I really didn't expect it to be this good. This game is fun, immersive, beautiful, has variety and challenge, and did I mention fun?

I've played a few MMOs and this one blows the others out of the water. The amount of work that went into this game is unbelievable. Also, it's glitch-free as far as I can tell after 30 hours of play. Launch day had a lot of server resets but that was cleared up by day two and never returned. Compared to the weeks of BS other MMOs make you put up with at launch, that's trouble free.

Many great ideas were thrown into this game. One of the best is the quest system. While levelling you continually do interesting and varied quests. Completion of the quest usually grants as much or more XP than a player gains from killing anything during the quest. Quests also provide great items, and the quest escalation enables the player to learn gradually about the world they're in and how to function in it.

The varied character that the game's NPCs display is great. For example if you start in Deathknell, the Undead starting point, you get used to the dreariness of the Undead world, where NPCs say stuff like "Beware of the living," and "Trust no one." When you reach Oggrimar, the Orc capitol, and hear the Orc NPCs tell you "Strength, honor," or "Be safe," you run into the same cultural variety that makes real life travel interesting. The goblins of course always tell you things like "Time is money, friend!" since they are the banking and trade people.

One example of ease-of-use is when you are about to replace an equipped item with a new item, you can see both item stats displayed before making the change to help you decide.

The only detractions I've heard people talk about is the lack of coordinates. Well, on one hand you have to learn the world intimiately, or at least use direction and map. On the other hand, this forces one to pay attention to the world, which helps one learn it quickly. Also, GPS-style coordinates in a Medieval / Fantasy world are a bit unrealistic.

As far as eye candy, the game has tons. While the images aren't hyper-realistic, they have amazing character and look great. Characters can also sleep (Undead sleep like they're in coffins) dance (Undead females dance like Goth people, males dance like heavy metal guys, Taurens do 'the happy dance,' and Trolls breakdance).

Anyway, rambling on, but it's an awesome game. Best MMORPG so far, and makes me regret ever spending time on ones like SWG or EQ.

Better than expected - absolutely addicting

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: November 30, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This is the best MMORPG I've ever played. It's a good level of complexity without getting too caught up in details, the interface is intuitive and the difficulty level matches up to your character levels quite well.
The big draw for me was the mythology of the world - I've loved the Warcraft games and their storylines, and this fits right in - from being able to meet the major characters from the stories to the nearly-perfect renditions of the places from the other games. Even more importantly, the actions of the characters in the game become a part of the continuing storyline.

There were some quirks, server issues and lag issues on Release Day, but since they took care of them, it's been golden. Problems have been few and their Customer Service has been terrific.

I've been losing sleep and frustrating my girlfriend over this - but I still anticipate playing this a great deal over a long, long time. Well worth the money, time and occasional frustration.

I stand corrected.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: December 07, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I told myself I would never pay money for a monthly subscription for a game especially if I had to fork out my hard earned cash for the game itself and the expansions.

I have been playing Guild Wars since May and have logged in over 1000 hours during that time. And it, as all games eventually become, got old. By-the-way, I enjoyed that game and got my monies worth, lol

So..... I figured I'd try out some of the different trial versions of the online MMO's out in the market. I tried Anarchy online, Star Wars Galaxies, and EQ2. None of these were worth my time and money, IMO. Graphics weren't that good, and gameplay was sluggish. SWG got a major Nurf and now people leave in droves.

So I found I could try WOW for a ten day trial and figured I'd check it out.

I must say that I am very impressed with this game. It has so impressed me that I just ordered my own copy and broke my own rule to not pay to play.

While the graphics are not as realistic to Guild Wars(the best IMHO) and though they are a bit cartoonish, they are nevertheless very well done and beautiful. The screen shots don't do it justice.

The sheer size and customability of the game is enormous! there are so many items, weapons, armor, etc....

The sense of adventure and being a part of a community is awesome. I am a fan of instanced dungeons/missions, however, I think there needs to be a balance to it. Just have instanced quests only if it is a crucial part of the game. WOW does this just wonderfully well. This keeps the critical areas safe and unspoiled so as to keep the experience intact, but lets everyone intermingle everywhere else.

I really enjoyed the real sence of community I got as I went through the game. Sure, there are a few jerks who spout out garbage, but the vast majority of the people are kind and helpful. I found that people would come by and help me defeat a monster, or throw a nice beneficial buff on me to make me better protected and so forth. It really made me want to do the same and throw out a heal, or take a few stabs at a critter and help my fellow adventurer win their struggle.

Sometimes I would party up with another traveler and work together. It was nice to be able to do this in the middle of the adventure, and not just at towns like in GW.

Also the gank-fest has been given a nice solution. If you want to take someone out, you issue a challange, and they can either accept or reject the challenge. This is so much better then the constant camping issues other games in this genre have had in the past.

There is a lot more I could say about this game, but let me end with this: There is a reason this game has such a huge amount of people playing it. It is a solid kickin' adventure that will keep you not just occupied, but entertained for a good while.

Great Fun!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: December 12, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This is my first experience with an online game and I have thoroughly enjoyed it. Reading the negative reviews here gives me a good chuckle; people have such varied (and in many cases, utterly ridiculous) expectations.

I have been playing about a year now and have found this World of Azeroth a thoroughly entertaining place. I will not get into all of the specifics, except to say that I enjoy the quests and find them creative and interesting---yes, I even enjoy the "collection quests".

My only major frustration with World of Warcraft comes once your character reaches level 60. Then, virutally everything worthwhile takes a small group (5 players), a medium-sized raid (10-20 players), or a mega-raid (20 to 40 players together) and also a HUGE chunk of time (3 to 5 hours), which leaves me out, for the most part, as I cannot do that. Only hard-core players can manage something on that scale. Casual players like myself really find that kind of commitment to be a deal-breaker.

However, I have gotten around this problem by starting new characters and playing different classes. One can, essentially, play the game anew four or five different times and it is different each time, depending on where you start and what class you play. Blizzard has a real winner in this game. I am just sad that the structure of the game changes so dramatically once your character reaches the current level cap of 60. Blizzard has an expansion in the works that will raise the level cap, but I doubt whether it will resolve the fundamental tilt in favor of Raid-style play that occurs after level 60 is reached. All the "good stuff" (armor, etc.) is obtainable only through extremely group-intensive and time-intensive playing, and that leaves, oddly, most of the WoW players out in the cold, so to speak.

World of Warcraft: An awesomly new game that rocks

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 11 / 21
Date: June 19, 2004
Author: Amazon User

WOW(world of warcraft) is a game in which you start off by chosing a character of a warcraft race(alliance: human, gnome, dwarves, and night elves)(Horde: orc, troll, undead,and tauren), you can change his/her apperance to the way you want to. Then you chose your weapon and armor and you're off. I love this game because it has many quests and items you can discover. And you can also invite other players to join you on your quest of exploration.Why I like this game is that it has many things you can do(even fishing),the battling(of course)and different types of spells you can use that can heal and damage units. I encourage you to buy this game even if your mom says no because it is realeased near christmas and you could get it. Fans will love this new game when it comes out.

Good Game, but somewhat pricey for a million lines of code.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 21 / 52
Date: July 03, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I have been playing this game for half a year now, and even though I have had fun, I am beggining to question the point of 15 dollars a month.

There are tons of problems with the game that haven't been fixed or are being created. For one, Ironforge is basically unraidable, because the lag is unbearable. Noone wants to raid Ironforge because you can't even move without waiting. Another thing, killing lowbies doesn't give dishonorable kill points. Quite a few times I have seen level 60 alliance players kill a bunch of level 20's at the Morshan Rampart(a place where people can PvP in a specific zone, but as soon as you leave that zone there might be some level 60's waiting to murder you). Blizzard still hasn't fixed the guards yet, so many players stand the chance of being murdered upon exiting the Warsong Gulch.

Even worse, there aren't that many items. After playing so long, you soon start to see the same models in the same armor every day. Everyone looks the same practically, and most higher level players have practically the same armor sets now. I have seen so many people with the Dreadmist Rainment that it is laughable. If you use two-handed swords, I bet you probably have a Destiny.

Worse yet, the community is filled with younger kids who still don't know how to play at level 60. I can't tell you how many times I've seen a level 60 warrior pull 50 monsters and yell at the group when he dies. There are so many little kids. The new thing seems to be farming kills in the Warsong Gulch. What many of these kids don't realize is the fact that after you kill someone a few times in one day, you don't get any more honor from them. So in essence, they are wasting their own time trying to farm kills.

This game is not worth 15 dollars a month. People bash Everquest, but if you pay 10 dollars a month you get EQ and any other SOE game that is online for that same 10 dollars. This game's flaws could be overlooked, but the pricing is just too steep.

Awesome game, a beta tester

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 7 / 11
Date: October 18, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I was in the stress test then the closed beta right after. I have played EQ for around 4 years in one of the top guilds that raided daily. I haven't even ran EQ since I got into beta. Here's my view of WOW.

The game has very little to no time sinks. The game strictly goes by, if it doesn't help the game be more fun then it shouldn't be in it.

In EQ I played a Necromancer and loved it because it's one of the best solo classes. I loved soloing and the challenged it gave me. The reason I love WOW is that you can solo and quest all day no matter what your class! Even Priests can solo (and PVP) very well if you build them for it.

The PVP uses one of the best systems I have seen, I never liked PVP very much until I played WOW. The honor system isn't in yet but it should stop ganking and endlessly killing low levels in one hit. Of course you can still do this if you wish but you must face the consequences. The game also will offer prizes and special items for the highest ranking PVPers.

The game is very immersive and expansive. Every place has its own unique look. A lot of humor and is thrown in, just as the past warcraft games have had.

The graphics really amazes me. The game is extremely scalable and can run well and look awesome on any machine. You can tell a lot of time was put in to make the game run well and it shows. Possibly one of the best looking and smoothest running games I have played.

No classes are boring. Even the simple warrior has many very fun skills and takes strategy rather than just to clink the auto attack button. Rogues have stealth abilities, moves that generate combo points, and finishing moves to release the combo point's power depending on how many you have.

I would have rated it perfect but there are a few draw backs, however these may possibly be addressed by release or in free downloads/patches.

Character customization could have been a bit better, like height/weight. More choices for hair/shin color. Possibly tattoos or something in game would be cool. Not many of these sorts of things at the moment. Also quests with choices would be interesting, right now they are all pretty linier. You go though a quest once and you know everything there is to know about it.

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