A review from a hundred-hour-hardened satisfied player.
The game is so simple to play, and because of this, it's easy to continue playing it as the hours go by in seemingly minutes.
The greatest thing about World of Warcraft is the sheer variety available to all players. You have _9_ different classes to choose from, each with dozens of skills and unique abilities. Then, underneath each class is 1 of 8 races you can choose from in the game. The underlying storyline of all Warcraft games has been Humans vs. Orcs, but in this game, it's broadened out into 2 factions, the "Alliance" vs. "Horde".
The Alliance includes the Humans, Night Elves, Dwarves, and Gnomes, and the Horde consists of the Orcs, Undead, Tauren, and Trolls. Each of these 8 races has 4 Racial-unique abilities. For instance, the Humans have Perception, which grants increased stealth detection for 15 seconds (I.E., let's you see Rogues easier). Another example is the Orcs have 25% increased resistance against stuns.
Moving on to the classes. There are 7 classes available to both factions, and each faction has 1 class unique to it. The Alliance have the Paladin, who's a heavy-armored mix of a minor healer and a holy-damage warrior. The horde have the Shaman, who's specialty is healing, laying Totems, and mêlée combat. The caster classes are the Priest, a heavy healer and/or Shadow damage dealer. The Mage is a pure spell-damage dealer, using Fire, Frost, and Arcane magics. The Warlock is a shadow-fire based caster that has a variety of spell-casting pets. These three caster classes are only allowed to wear Cloth armor. The 2 leather-wearing classes are the Druid, who's a heavy arcane damage dealer, heavy healer, and shape-shifter (Bear mainly, but has cat, and land/sea travel forms). The Rogue, is a stealth-based mêlée damage dealer. The Rogue relies on ambushing it's enemies and has high-damage combo-point finishing moves and powerful stuns. The Mail classes are Shamans and Hunters. Hunters are a bow/gun heavy-ranged attacker class that also has a variety of pet choices and traps. The Plate classes are the Paladin and Warrior. Warriors are heavy tanks that can take a load of damage and deal out very heavy damage themselves with 2-handed strikes.
Another aspect of this magnificent game is the Talents. Each class has a talent tree, which after level 10 they get 1 talent point per level to spend, similar to Diablo 2. But the Talents are secondary to the class' main abilities. Talents are ways to shape your character to your specific needs. For example, a priest will learn all it's shadow and holy abilities, but the talents he invests in are what defines his class as either a shadow priest or a holy priest. Using the Shadow tree would increase the potency of the priests shadow abilities, and likewise the holy tree would better it's holy spells. The talents are spectacular and each class has several varieties that are very efficient in gameplay.
Professions are an integral part of the game, also. There's many professions available to each class. There are 4 basic gathering professions, each with other production-professions branching from them. For example, Skinning (of animals) works in conjunction with Leatherworking, as does Blacksmithing with Mining. Others include Herbalism, Enchanting, Alchemy, Tailoring, and Engineering. Each character can only have 2 professions, so it's a common choice to choose one gathering profession for materials, then a production profession to turn those materials into items that can then be sold. Using 2 gathering professions and just selling the materials is also a valuable money-making choice. Lastly, there are 3 secondary professions, all of which can be learned: Fishing, Cooking, and First Aid. Each of these lead to production of items that restore health. Fish are eaten, food is cooked, and bandages are made with cloth found.
When you die in World of Warcraft, the penalty gets steeper and steeper the higher you level. When you die, you lose 10% durability on equipped items, become a ghost and run back to your corpse to resurrect. The penalty comes in when you choose to resurrect at the graveyard and not bother with running to your body. This resurrection comes with a price: at low levels, it's free, but: at level 60, you get 10 minutes of resurrection sickness (all stats reduced to 25% of normal), and lose an additional 25% durability on all equipped items.
The game is divided into 2 parts: PvP and PvE. Player vs. Player combat is mostly conducted inside Battlegrounds, which are a sort of mini-game. There are currently 3 Battlegrounds: Alterac Valley is a high-level, 40 vs. 40 Deathmatch with an objective of progressing across the map into enemy territory and killing their commanding general. Warsong Gulch is a fast paced, small 10 on 10 game of Capture the flag, 3 captures wins. Arathi Basin is a game of controlling 5 resource points. For each point controlled, you gain resources at an interval. The first side to 2000 resources wins, a 15 on 15 game. PvP is also done all around the world at any time. The Factions can fight at any time on a PVP server provided they're in a PvP-allowed zone (The low level zones are gank-free). Large raids of one faction can invade the cities of the other and annihilate their major leaders.
PvE is the other side of the game, which is conducted during the leveling process and in end-game raids. Leveling up is done fastest by killing enemies and doing quests. Most quests entail killing X number of Y enemy, and/or finding A number of B item, and returning to the quest-giver. Quests reward you with experience, money, and items. In the End-game, there are a ton of dungeons where high-level enemies and hence, high-level and powerful items are found. These are called Instances, and are always tackled by a group of players, sometimes 5, usually 10, sometimes 15 or more. These instances can take anywhere from 30 minutes to 3 hours, depending on the instance and the group of players attempting it. The highest and most powerful items are found in Raid-dungeons, which are virtually level 60-only instances that require 40 players raid groups. There are several of these that yield the highest quality items, but they can take hours and hours to complete.
The items in World of Warcraft are classed into different qualities. Grey items are trash. White items are normal, no bonus stats, nothing. Green items are somewhat uncommon, usually having a few additional stats or abilities on them. Blue items are Rare, and are uncommon. They are commonly found in end-game instances, and drop very rarely around the world. These are high-quality items and usually make up the majority of end-game players equipment. Purple items are Epic, and are extremely rare. These are mostly only found in the before-mentioned Raid-dungeons, from the hardest and strongest enemies.
There are more features in WoW, such as guilds, an Auction house to buy and sell items to/from other players. Mounts can be bought at level 40 and 60, granting a 60% and 100% speed bonus, respectively. Mounts are expensive but are very much worth saving your gold for. The Honor system is an in-game ranking system among players. The ranks go from 1, Private/Grunt, to 14, Grand Marshal/High Warlord. Different items becoming available as you raise in rank. You gain honor from killing the other faction and from competing in Battlegrounds. Attaining the highest ranks is extremely difficult and time-consuming, but the rewards definitely show this. Grand Marshal/High Warlords have the strongest weapons in the game. A big disadvantage of the honor system is Dishonorable kills. You get dishonorable kills from killing enemy faction civilians, which lowers your honor rating and hurts your chances of rising in rank. This greatly discourages people from doing raids on enemy cities, because they are chalk-full of civilians.
That's about all I'm going to write about this game. It costs from 13 to 16$ a month to play, depending on your subscription, but the amount of enjoyment and satisfaction you'll get from playing will more than account for the fee. This game sucks you in and enchants you in it's incredible depth and sheer amount of content. A definite must-own for ANY gamer. There are NO reasons for anyone to NOT like World of Warcraft.