World of Warcraft

"This game loses its luster the longer you play it."

Introduction: World of Warcraft (WoW) is quite possibly the most hyped PC game on the market right now, about 3 years after it's release. I bought this game about 8 months ago but have not played it in awhile. Many people make fun of it saying it is for nerds, but don't let that stop you from trying it. You can download a 10-day free trial with most of the features the full version has to offer. You have nothing to lose by doing it so go ahead. But first, let me tell you why this game ultimately fails to be great.

Graphics-7/10: Yes, they are dated, but they suit a game like this really well. They are pretty cartooney, which I usually don't like, but these ones look pretty good. My only complaints are that the character models are hollow. You can move the camera around and if you look at your character underneath they are hollow which is strange and annoying. Not a big deal, but easily fixable.

Sound-7/10: The sound is decent. Like the rest of this game, you start off liking it, but get bored of hearing the same thing over and over and over again. The music in some areas sounds so slow and dull I want to sleep. Usually I turn it off and play with my own music.

Gameplay-5/10: The controls are very simple, there is a tutorial but you won't really need it. All you have to do is click something to interact with it, whether you are attacking a monster, talking to an NPC, buying/selling items, picking herbs, or a multitude of other things.

The character customization is ok. There are 8 races to choose from, and you can have a male of female 'toon. You can choose your hairstyle, and face, but other then that all the characters from the same race look the same. The big thing is picking your class. There are 9 of them, and they are all very different from one another. It is really personal preference on what you choose, but you can't go wrong.

You begin at level one, and you fight and kill monsters to gain experience and level up. The higher level you get, the longer it takes to level. You can also do various quests to gain experience. This is were Blizzard makes its makes its first mistake. The quests all fall along these lines:

1. Kill X of those things because whocareswhy.
2. Collect X of this item by killing those things.
3. Go get this thing then bring it to me.
4. Go scout this area and come back and tell me it is filled with monsters, then trek back there and kill X of them.
5. Talk to blank.
6. Escort blank to the end of a cave or some dungeon.

Thats it, and there thousands of quests. But, really all they are is one of these 6 types masked with different names and places. It gets boring after awhile. You do get rewards for almost every quest, but they are often useless to you and you can't sell them.

As you play the game you will come across dungeons called instances. You can party up with up to four other players and run through these things. The first time you go through you will have a blast. But, certain quests will demand that you go back until you have done these dungeons 10 times and they become old as well.

There are also things called professions in this game. You can be a miner, herbalist, alchemist, blacksmith, ect. But, you can only have two professions at once, which is nice because it makes everyone more unique. But, in order to level up your professions to make better stuff, you must gather and obscene amount of materials and money to buy those materials, and the reward for doing this is nowhere near worth the trouble you will go through and the hours you will spend. These will become boring as time goes on. Seeing a reoccurring theme here yet?

The gameplay as a whole starts off very fun but gets more and more boring as this very long game continues because if never brings anything new to the table. Possibly the worst part of this game is that until level 40 when you can buy a mount you will spend half of your play time walking from place to place looking at semi-interesting scenery. But you will probably be ready to quit by level 30 anyway. As you level the only new things are more items that are basically identical to your previous ones in every way except they are stronger, but so are the enemies you fight so there is really no difference.

Community-10/10: Despite the many faults of this game, the community is the best I have ever seen for an MMORPG, you any game for that matter. Most people are very helpful and nice. You will have a lot of friends after only a few hours of play.

Price-2/10: This game carries a hefty $15 a month cost plus $30 for the game itself. My recommendation is downloading the trial, where you can easily get to the maximum lvl 15 in the 10 days you get. If you like it, buy the game and pay for a month of play, then take it from there. If you don't it won't get much better from level 15 up so save your money.

Overall-6/10: Everyone owes it to themselves to at least try the trial of this game, chances are you will love it. But, don't expect a game you come back to a year later, it just gets boring the more you play.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 09/04/07

Game Release: World of Warcraft (US, 11/23/04)