"A masterpiece, but I think most people just want items."

World of Warcraft seeks to do two things: lure players in, and then keep them in.

I originally purchased the Collector's Edition the day the game launched, but hadn't paid a speck of attention to the development of the game. Trying to stay connected to servers was mostly futile that first night, but at least I was able to load up the character creator and play around with the character models.

I finally made it onto a server as a human male, and was fairly amazed by a few things. The first was that the abbey at the start of the human zone looked pretty good. It wasn't rich with detail, but its design (much like everything in WoW) was effective, pronounced, and fit very well with all the designs I'm used to from Warcraft games. It seems like such a simple structure, but it felt like a nice introductory home for the start of the game. The second thing I noticed was that everyone had made a human female, removed the clothes, and were doing the macarena on the fence. Every thing people could stand on was occupied with women in their skivvies, dancing, and trying to talk about the server problems. And lastly, I was amazed at how quickly the server went down.

It was a dubious start, and indeed server problems continued to be part of the World of Warcraft experience for my 20 months in the game. After making a few more characters and deciding my main would be a horde character, I waited until I heard good word about the servers. A lot of new servers went up very soon, so that weekend I decided to try my hand as an undead warrior on a PvE server. PvP sounded great, but I wasn't sure how the game worked and after trying my hand at UO (and having that hand cut off, stolen, all my other stuff stolen, and called many names), I didn't want to just be fodder for people to kick around.

That weekend kicked, without much to do, I sat down Saturday just before noon, cracked open a coke, and logged in to my PvE undead warrior. The game took me through a narrated introduction with a slow moving camera moving through the starting zone. I was finally put in control of my character, and greeted by an undead NPC. I ran up the stairs out of the starting crypt, and explored this new world.

As I explored, I met undead townsfolk that would explain the situation we were in, describe the issues with the town, and sent me out on quests. This starting zone was fairly safe in terms of figuring out the basics of combat, using the talk channels, inventory management, and most important, jumping up and down, over and over again. The first few days seemed like you could tell easily who had played the beta and who hadn't, by who kept jumping.

Checking out the map, it seemed like the world of Azeroth was absolutely huge. It had taken me a couple of hours to clean out every little inch of the starting zone, and it was only a very small portion of the current zone, Tirisfal Glades. And Tirisfal Glades was only a small fragment of the continent. And there were two continents. Keep in mind, I hadn't followed the game's development one bit, so I had no clue how there was in the game. I can't think of another game with so much in the way of environment, not in 2004. I didn't really know where to go, so I just followed the road to... whoa, an NPC abomination stomping around! I took his quest and finished it before heading to a little farm outside of Brill, learning tailoring and finally getting into Brill.

The NPCs here were interesting, giving me plenty of quests to make poisons, clear out ghosts, take on small groups of the Scarlet Crusade. I also saw the zeppelin tower, but wasn't sure where it went or if it cost anything, so I avoided it for a bit. I really dug all the little nooks and crannies of the zone - it had a neat gloomy atmosphere, little bumps and hills, trees everywhere, good placement of enemies, structures, quests, and so on. I really appreciated a lot of the little details in the game, and there are a lot. And I loved the big stuff, like my first time in the huge Undercity. The passage through the Ruins of Lordaeron was almost stunning the first time through, and the Undercity just kept me underground for a while, talking to all the NPCs, checking out all the crazy stuff going on, and taking a minute to smell the flowers and bath in the goo. Really impressive, I was in awe the whole time.

Back outside, I continued with my quests, and started forming parties to get through some of the tougher ones. I also engaged in banter in the general discussion channel. I was hooked on multiple levels - exploring, leveling up my guy, enjoying the little storylines the game offered, killing obnoxious Murlocs, chatting with people, working with people, seeing different classes running around with their various skills, seeing a warlock and his voidwalker for the first time, and so on.

I also saw death in the game, which brings you back at a graveyard, either as a spirit that can reclaim his body, or resurrected with a negative temporary buff. I thought this was a pretty good system, but other people complained that there's no penalty for death. It takes me time to get back to my body and it's simply not fun to die, that's penalty enough for me. I didn't see the problem. After clearing pretty much all of Tirisfal Glades, I found the lack of death penalty to be a reason to see how far into the Plaguelands I could get. A bunch of the other newbies and I had a little competition to see who get in the furthest.

And that highlights one of the best attributes of WoW - the community. Some people are annoying, some people are selfish, some people are funny, some are awesome... it's like anywhere you go. You'll make your friends, have fun with them, and be stuck interacting with people you don't necessarily like. It keeps the game interesting, and you're sure to find people with the same mindset as you. So if you and a handful of other goofballs want to die to level 50 spiders, have at it.

My next step was to finally get on the zeppelin and check out Orgrimmar. The 'ambient' drums to start the zone are awesome and I still have fond memories of the first time running in to the collection of huts and other horde members. I ran back to the zeppelin, and made my way down into Silverpine. Here I progressed to the Sepulcher, which just seemed like it could get overrun at any time. Silverpine was spooky, haunted and grim. Tirisfal seemed delightful in comparison, and I certainly didn't feel like I was in some safe haven anymore. Especially with the Son of Arugal ran over and destroyed me. I plowed through a ton of quests here, exploring the zone, but I didn't find a lot of allies. Everyone was in The Barrens, so I went back over to the other continent and did a few quests there. Eventually I found a party of players that wanted to finish some tougher quests at Ambermill in Silverpine, so we headed over. After we cleared most of the place out, I think I was roughly level 17. Suddenly on the general channel, someone had said a human was in the zone. Whoa. whooooa!! Everyone pretty much ran to the border of Hillsbrad and Silverpine, and a human female mage was hanging around, unflagged for PvP. Everyone wanted to fight, it was exciting for some reason. I hearth-stoned back to the Crossroads Inn in the Barrens, and never played the character again. That concluded a 17 hour day of figuring out the game and having a blast in many different ways.

I switched to a PvP character, this time a warlock due to all the positive things I had heard. It was nice to start over while having some basic knowledge of the game and the surroundings. I formed my own guild, I did instance dungeons, was invited to a decent guild. Perhaps the most fun in the game was when certain guilds would attack towns, and the whole zone would rally to engage in some good world PvP. World PvP was everywhere and early on when no one was really a level 60, you could always call for reinforcements in a zone to turn the tide.

Exploring new zones remained a great joy. Maybe other people could care less about it, but I still appreciated the geography of the game. Discovering other capitals was a joy, and I would log into alliance alts to discover their main cities. Stormwind just screams HEROIC.

I also made some decent friends, some of which I still talk with, more than two years after my last login. It's hard to replace all the goofing off and competing and cooperation. If there was anything that kept me in the game longer than I would have otherwise wanted to be, it was the good people I met. With the world somewhat of a giant sandbox, you can often make your own fun, whether it's stupid stuff like jumping on the bank in Orgrimmar, jumping on the pillars in Lordaeron, taking down enemy NPCs, whatever.

The instance dungeons were often the focal point of many quest lines, and required some good party play. They were mostly well crafted and provided challenge and lore. Later dungeons would be very expansive and require more than just 5 people. Like many people, I slugged through the growing pains of getting through Blackrock Spire and getting a proper 40 man raid together for the Molten Core/Onyxia. WoW did a pretty good job of having some tough bosses to look forward to, as well as reasonably fun dungeons and bosses to farm. A lot of planning, politics and giving up real life for hours of dungeon crawling went into this. I'm glad I was out of college when this game came out.

PvP in the world was fun, as I mentioned. Soon, the honor system came, and it lead to focused world PvP. It was fun, but it missed that organic rivalry that world PvP had previously. Battlegrounds dropped soon after, and while these were often fun, structured PvP events, there was a lot of complaining, exploiting, and so on. It was canned PvP, meant to funnel people into grinds for faction and items.

Getting to level 60 was terrific, with new zones to explore every step of the way, new quests and NPCs to uncover, and an instance dungeon (usually) to wrap up all the issues in a zone. Along the way there was plenty of good PvP to deal with, whether it was trying to get to the mailbox in Gadgetzan alive, the bloodbath otherwise known as Nesingwary's Camp, or simple chance encounters here and there. Sometimes you'd want to go back and regulate that alliance rogue causing trouble in Hillsbrad, and so on. But once you got to level 60, it seemed the game felt confident it had you trapped, and it wanted to keep you trapped.

The major trap at level 60 is the grind for items. People want new items, cool items, they want to be improved. The way random drops work is not unlike the way slot machines work, and plays into some strange primitive parts of your brain. The game is certainly very fun, and offers plenty of stuff to work for and accomplish, but it certainly becomes less of a game and more of a routine. Sure, romping through dungeons and trying to figure out bosses can be actively fun, but you do need to put effort into being ready for such things. And the game is designed to funnel people into instance dungeons trying to get more gear and get more faction.

I personally find grinding to be somewhat relaxing. World of Warcraft is a perfect game to use a voice server program, so you can play the game while chatting with other players. Such a thing helped add to the enjoyment of the game - it's not just text chat. So while peacefully smashing one enemy after another, or mining node after node, or picking Dreamfoil after Dreamfoil, you can just yuck it up with your online pals. And like I said, I found that stuff to be relaxing.

The second you need to farm X amount of Dreamfoil, it stops becoming something you choose to do and something you have to do. Such a change wipes out much of the enjoyment of the game, at least for me.

Eventually I just ran out of things I enjoyed doing, many of my friends stopped playing, and everyone was overly concerned with getting purple items instead of just being pals and having fun. The politics and the nature of the end game final wore out the game, but after about 70 days of time actually played, it's hard to say "bad game". No, it was a magical game and a great way to spend my time.

Originally, World of Warcraft used an effective lure, allowing anyone to log in and advance their character by dropping in only small amounts of time. The MMORPG experience that seemed to eat up peoples' lives was toppled! But once the endgame level cap is hit, the experience changes. People are hooked, the trap is set. It can be hard to balance real life and the game, and I saw many people get wrapped up in WoW such that it hurt their ability to do their jobs, interact with real life friends, and even worse, people were flunking college for fake purple items that would be obsolete in a year.

The game from level 1-60 offered so much and was so fun, it might be the best game I've ever played. After level 60, the game slowed down and simply wasn't as fun, though it still offered a fairly ridiculous amount of content to chew through. Of course you can tell I never saw what Burning Crusade has to offer, nor do I know what it's like to level up from 1 to 60 (or 70.. or 80...) in an Azeroth where most people are at the endgame already. With the Lick King expansion coming in less than two months, advertisements are everywhere and it reminds me that World of Warcraft was a special game, and even at it's worst, it occupied much of my time and gave me tons and tons of enjoyment, easily worth it's monthly fee.

Breaking the game down:

Graphics
World of Warcraft looks blocky and goofy at times, but the design is possibly more effective than a more realistic approach, both in terms of performance and getting the point across. Exaggeration is the key, though the graphics aren't horrible at all. The implementations vary from boring to awesome, while some zones are barren and desolate, others are chock full of vegetation and landscape. Enemies are well done and some bosses are simply giant and imposing. Gear can look standard, but most people will end up with outfits that look pretty sweet. WoW has it's own unique sense of style that works perfectly.

Story/characters
The game is full of interesting goblins, humans, orcs, and so on. Each guy has his own personality, though rarely is anything truly deep explored. The storylines can be very enjoyable, though some people worry about the treading on lore the game seems to do. I for one think it's awesome that *your* character can be part of the force that drives significant evil and major characters from the world. Possibly more important than the characters in the game, are the settings and environments. Every little place is absolutely jam packed with personality and character.

Gameplay/controls
The game is a MMORPG, so you will spend a lot of time killing monsters on fetch quests. The game does a good job giving each quest it's own little purpose so it sometimes feels like you're doing more than just killing enemies to get items over and over. Instance dungeons provide a major departure and the battles take the form of party play, which ends up being the primary gameplay mode in the end, though it becomes a grind for items, ultimately.

The actual controls can be complicated or simple, and various add-ons assist the player in making the best usage of the controls that he or she can. There's an action speed for magic and melee and other actions, so nothing is done truly in real time. Once you gain a few skills and levels in the game, you should have enough to work with that battles aren't the boring "exchange blows with enemy" occasions they are at the start. Working with a lot of shortcuts and macros is handled well by the game. Control is never really an issue in the game, and you certainly can use it to your advantage.

Sound/music
There are ambient bits for each zone, some are fairly memorable (Ashenvale comes to mind) but they don't play a big part in the game. Other sound effects and voices in the game are really good. It's a great game for voice chat or just listening to your own music, as the sounds are very good but there isn't a soundtrack that takes over. Of course I can't imagine any music that wouldn't get old after being looped for several days played. And Murlocs sound delightfully horrible.

Overall
World of Warcraft offers so much to do. You can really pour countless hours into the game and enjoy it and continue to look forward to playing the game, even after you've played it more than all other previous games combined. But at the same time, the content at the end of the game becomes stretched out, and while you feel you're accomplishing epic things and getting really cool rewards, it's not as awesome on an hour-to-hour basis like the initial leveling process can feel, but I'm not so sure that the game will ever be as good as it was when everyone was still making their way to 60 and PvP rewards weren't established yet.

It's hard to give this game anything less than a 10/10 for the sheer scope involved and how much I enjoyed it. It lured me in and kept me there for 20 months, a job well done. There's so much to the game that it's somewhat of a shame that it pretty much boils down to grinding for epic items, and people regard it's addictive qualities as negative such that they ignore the cast amount of quality content the game offers.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 09/25/08

Game Release: World of Warcraft Collector's Edition (US, 11/23/04)