Every person who calls themselves a gamer has heard about World of Warcraft and that’s not surprising. After all, with a constant gamer base of over 11 million, it is the most successful massively multi – player online role playing game (that was quite a mouthful, huh?) out there. Since its start in 2004, Blizzard has enhanced their original game with three expansions.
Over the years, several attempts have been made to push the king of MMO’s off of its throne, without any memorable success. Some companies have openly tried to recreate WoW in free to play experiences, yet somehow players keep sticking to World of Warcraft. I was a player myself for a very long time and I know that the reason I haven’t gotten into any WoW rip-offs was simply the fact that something was missing. Blizzard got it incredibly right with their game so let’s take a look at what the fuss is about.
The original game was set in Azeroth which consisted of two continents (Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor), this was later enhanced by Outland and Northrend. There are two major factions standing against each other, namely the Alliance and the Horde, both with their own respective races. These are the Humans, Dwarfs, Gnomes, Night Elves, Draenei and Worgen in the Alliance and the Forsaken, Trolls, Tauren, Orcs, Blood Elves and Goblins in the Horde. Another major choice a player makes when starting the game is picking their class – Paladin, Priest, Shaman, Warrior, Druid, Mage, Warlock, Hunter, Rogue and the only hero class so far, the Death Knight. Each one of these starts at level 1, with the exception of Death Knights who start at level 55. After picking your race and class and changing your appearance to your liking, you are placed into your respective starter zone where you make your first steps toward reaching the final level cap, which at the moment is 85. The game revolves around questing throughout most of its early stages. The only downside to this is that quests become boring after a while, as most of them are based on the classic “kill an x number of this and bring me an x number of that” theme. However, you will also encounter various tasks that break the above stereotype, except maybe not in the beginning.
As you level up you learn new spells and abilities and gain talent points which you may spend on your talent tree, further shaping your character. The game ultimately provides two major elements you will be able to focus on: Player versus Player (PvP) and Player versus Environment (PvE). PvP means taking on other players in battlegrounds or arenas and PvE is all about dungeons and instances, which are special places within the game containing high level elite bosses. In order to slay these, you will need the aid of other players.
Making money in World of Warcraft is easy if you have a profession. Your character may learn two main professions; these are Jewelcrafting, Blacksmithing, Leatherworking, Enchanting, Tailoring, Alchemy and Inscription. Usually players pick their main professions in combination with their respective supporting professions, such as Herbalism, Mining and Skinning. There are also secondary professions: Archeology, First aid, Fishing and Cooking, you may learn all of these. The items you make can be offered for sale in the Auction house. You can store items in your bags which come in various sizes and if these are full, the Bank is at your disposal.
The world itself is so huge that eventually, travelling by foot will become boring. Fortunately, from a very early level you can learn the Riding skill, which enables you to buy mounts that let you travel faster. Flying mounts have been introduced in the first expansion, which unfortunately you could only use in Outland, later Northrend in the second expansion, and the latest expansion finally enabled players to use flying mounts in Azeroth as well.
World of Warcraft has been running for over six years now constantly gaining a bigger and bigger player base. This game has been at least as hated as it’s been loved and there are probably good reasons for both. People who love it do so because it has a massive world full of opportunities and events, or because it is a great way to “meet” people, for some it is a compensation of lack of success in real life (sad but true). There certainly are more aspects which you can fall in love with and it would be hard to name all of them. I always enjoyed games where you could create custom characters and you can do a lot (though not quite enough) of customization in WoW. But what really got me into it was my guild, where I got to know people who I eventually met in real life and that I think is the real thing that keeps people playing.
And well, if it’s not your guild, then it’s the fact that you have paid for a certain amount of game time and you don’t want to feel like you have wasted money. For some people however, even this may be secondary, as the game is incredibly time consuming. If you want to gain better and better equipment (and you probably do as you will most likely fall behind without keeping your gear up-to-date) then you have to kill the high level elite bosses. They can be found in instances and some of those can take several hours to finish.
So here we get to the reason why WoW has been mostly criticized in the past. Some gamers give up most of their social life, ending up annoying their family and friends, who can’t understand how someone can spend so much time in front of the computer. I’ve never been one of those gamers; I have played WoW for about four years with lots of breaks. I haven’t played in a long time but I still love the game, cherish the memories and keep up with updates. Having experienced the game first hand I have to disagree with the above criticism. It is not the game that should be brought down for people becoming computer addicts, it is the people themselves.
Everyone gets to make their own decisions. No matter how “addictive” a game is, it is up to the gamer to find a healthy balance between real life and game.
The bottom line is World of Warcraft deserves the unofficial title of MMO King. From my point of view it is one of the best games I have ever played and depending on how long it will be running I will most likely end up playing again sometime in the future. If you’re a fan of MMOs, this one’s highly recommended.