World of Warcraft (WoW) is simply a great game without question. The worlds are rich and varied and the graphics are top notch. The game is truly balanced in it's approach to the different character classes and professions which in fact drive one to explore playing as different classes/professions. WoW steers the game very subtly yet effectively this way in allowing one to only have 2 prime professions. Given this, you're better off playing as multiple characters to swap/trade equipment and goods so the characters complement each other. It's also fun to be a mage or rogue and use their special skills rather than play the entire game as single character like a warrior. The quests are easy to follow and very intuitive yet challenging. With over 2000 quests to choose from there is no shortage there. The sound and music are first rate as well with sort of a 'Lord of the Rings' feeling. Very moving and they always set a mood. Combat is fun to watch even after many engagements and which there's always an element of the unknown. And the death animations are varied by enemy character so it's fun to watch each one. And the animations are first rate. The giant spider legs twitch when he flops on his back and dies. The "robot" Harvesters jerk and shudder with sparks flying as you would expect if a machine has been killed. Your player could miss several key hits or the enemy could resist 1-2 attacks and/or another unseen enemy nearby could join the fray and the whole fight could be lost. But the death "penalty" is not tremendous so dying never becomes a really negative event other than the time lost to recover your corpse and repair some armor durability. Still, dying has just enough of an inconvenience that you don't just waltz into combat without a care. The maps are pretty big but WoW has some nice features in place to help you out there such as riding a Gryphon or taking the underground Tram. All these things enrich the Warcraft World. Playing for 3 or 4 hours at a stretch is easy to do. And the added feature of "selling" your goods on an auction is brilliant. My only big negative about the game is the somewhat instability of the servers (they gone down several times a week at least) and how in the main areas like IronForge or riding the gryphons the game becomes very choppy and laggy. And my machine is no slouch. I'm running the game with 512MB RAM on a 2.8Ghz Pentium 4 with a 128MB NVidia video card. In fact, getting around in IronForge it's a chore because of the game delay. But, these problems (as frustrating as they are) are well worth dealing with for the experience of playing WoW. This is a must play game even if you're not a big RPG fan. It's just that good.
I played WoW for much of a year and during that time I didn't do much else. After I emerged from the bottomless void, I realized that the engrossing nature of the game is both its greatest strength and its greatest weakn... Read Full Review
There isn't much to say that hasn't already been said. So I won't say it again - however, WoW is a very overrated game. It's hailed as "innovative" and "revolutionary", but the only way in which it is... Read Full Review
