World of WarCraft
Description official descriptions
World of Warcraft is a MMORPG based in the Warcraft universe. The player creates a character choosing from 8 races and 9 classes. Most races start in their own part of the vast world. As the races move out from their starting locations, they can meet the other races if they choose to move out through the world. Both races and classes have unique abilities, skills, and spells to help them survive in the world.
The game offers professions for players to learn, if they want. You have the choice of 2 major professions, such as Alchemy, Herbalism, Skinning, and Tailoring, as well as the ability to have unlimited minor professions, such as Fishing and Cooking. Progressing in these skills allows you to make more things or have better results from the skills.
The gameplay is similar to most other MMORPG games, where you must go out into the world, complete quests, kill monsters, and level up your character. And, as often is the case, you also will want to find, make, or buy better equipment as you go along. There are multiple levels of equipment from normal to artifact based on rarity. The player can also join various guilds and parties.
You also can move quickly between areas by learning to ride a mount when your level is high enough, or taking another form of transport that you can't control movement for, such as train, griffon, and more.
Though the game has received overhauling updates through multiple expansions and smaller patches since its release in 2004, Blizzard has opened up realms (servers) that mirror the vanilla experience, titled "World of Warcraft Classic". These realms are in a client separate to the live (also called "retail") game. A similar experience is (per August 2023) available for the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, and has previously been available for the Burning Crusade expansion.
Spellings
- 魔兽世界 - Simplified Chinese spelling
Groups +
- Boss Fight Books games
- Fantasy creatures: Dragons
- Fantasy creatures: Dwarves
- Fantasy creatures: Elves
- Fantasy creatures: Gnomes
- Fantasy creatures: Golems
- Fantasy creatures: Griffins
- Fantasy creatures: Minotaurs
- Fantasy creatures: Orcs
- Fantasy creatures: Succubi or incubi
- Fantasy creatures: Trolls
- Fantasy creatures: Unicorns
- Game feature: In-game screenshot capture
- Gameplay feature: Alchemy
- Gameplay feature: Armor / weapon sets
- Gameplay feature: Blacksmithing
- Gameplay feature: Color-blind mode
- Gameplay feature: Controllable pet companions
- Gameplay feature: Fishing
- Gameplay feature: Goldsmithing
- Gameplay feature: Horse riding
- Gameplay feature: Hunting
- Gameplay feature: Mining
- Gameplay feature: Pettable animals
- Gameplay feature: Survival cooking
- Games made into books
- Games made into comics
- Games referenced in movies
- Protagonist: Female (option)
- Protagonist: Visually customizable character
- Retail releases with faction/character-specific cover variants
- Scripting language: Lua
- Sound engine: FMOD
- Technology: amBX
- Video games turned into board / card games
- WarCraft universe
- World of WarCraft series
Screenshots
Promos
Videos
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Credits (Windows version)
790 People (566 developers, 224 thanks) · View all
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[ full credits ] |
Reviews
Critics
Average score: 92% (based on 69 ratings)
Players
Average score: 3.8 out of 5 (based on 166 ratings with 10 reviews)
Incredible game balance and FUN
The Good
Two high points of WoW are the quest system and the overall game balance. I've been told that there is "nothing original" in WoW -- All the major play elements were first seen in other online games, and many are done "better" elsewhere -- but in WoW the sum is much greater than the parts. You can play in your own style -- slowly exploring the lands and quests, racing through levels to experience the level 60 "endgame", farming for game money and items, buying and selling at the auction house, adventuring solo, doing massive 40-player quests with a guild, or just sitting in a tavern role-playing. Hunters travel the world trying to tame exotic rare pets.
You can also spend your time fighting other players either in the regular adventuring areas or in specially-designated battlegrounds. You can choose whether to play on a "PvP" server where you can be attacked at any time or on a "PvE" or "RP" server where player-vs.-player combat only occurs in the battlegrounds.
I have been playing WoW for over a year now and have had to restrict my play so I can do other things (such as my work). Beyond that, your enjoyment will depend heavily on finding other players with whom you enjoy gaming. So far, I've found that pretty easy.
There are many other ways in which WoW is a truly great game -- the lush graphics, wonderful game music tailored to where you are and what you're doing, the variety of races, skills, and areas to explore, etc. Blizzard has once again succeeded in creating a game that makes it unnecessary to get any other game for a very long time.
The Bad
Sometimes play gets too repetitive, killing the same monsters over and over. This is especially true late in the game when you work on building up your "reputation" with various factions.
WoW is (probably inevitably) a serious resource hog. You will want a fast processor, at least 1GB of RAM, and a high-end graphics card to best enjoy the game. Even with all this, WoW is sometimes very laggy. In particular, there seem to be problems with the database systems that handle your inventory and in-game mail. Again, this might be inevitable in a game that now has over 5 million subscribers, but it detracts from an otherwise incredible game.
The Bottom Line
"The game I wish I'd written" works. :-) I think of WoW as playing Dungeons & Dragons with a group of terrific gamemasters and with a game available at any time of day or night.
Windows · by Corey Cole (36) · 2006
WoWtastic, at least for a while
The Good
It would be pointless to list all the cool stuff you can find in WoW in this review. Needless to say, there's plenty. There are things that you will remember for a very long time. The first time I rented a flying "taxi" and whooshed through the countryside is something I will remember for a long while. As do I remember many magnificient locations that I had to stare in awe for a long time. Or some of quests and people I met and had a good time.
But after a while WoW hits a snag. Suddenly you realise that mostly you just do the same things over and over again. I hit this snag after my second character got somewhere around level 25 (first one I got to level 17). There are lots of missions, but they tend to be the same thing every time and involve lots of killing and/or taking something to someone. You also tend to grind a lot just to get to next level and improving your trading (blacksmith, mining, alchemy etc) skills is about as much fun as your day job (at least you get paid for that). And the trouble is it's usually not worth the bother because you usually can't get them to a level allowing you to do anything useful until you already have better equipment, so the whole thing is just about making money. But if you are after maximising profits, the best tactic is to go for gatherer professions. So the whole profession thing tends to get boring quite quickly when you realise you can't quite make it worthwhile, even if it looks that way. The worthwhileness always seems to be just out of your reach.
The best and worst part about WoW are the instants which are tough multi-player levels. The idea is to gather a merry band of adventurers and beat the instant for some very nice rewards. This can be a real blast with a good group. Unfortunately in my experience, unless you play with people you know already, more often than not the group has at least one player who hasn't understood the concept of team work. They just go to the instants to maximise their own loot and in worst case leave the rest of the group in trouble. Not very nice if your healer leaves the party meaning you can't finish the instant after several hours of intense playing. The problem with playing with people you know is that you have to spend roughly as much time in WoW as them, otherwise you will be at such a different level to them that it's not worth being in the same party (because of the way the game distributes experience). The other choice is to get close to the level cap (level 60) as there the characters are roughly as powerful, but that takes months of very intense playing.
Ultimately WoW is just another ego trip. People spend weeks getting that one ultra-powerful item just so they can show everyone they have it. Gaining levels is gaining prestige among other players. As is the whole player-vs-player system. This is the main attraction of the game in the long run, once you have seen all the cool stuff and tried most things. There might be something wrong with me, but ultimately I don't see the point in that. If I want prestige, I get a better return for my time by doing something in the real life. Most people could get quite proficient in some skill, say playing the guitar, if they spent as much time practising it as they do playing WoW. But then again, it's harder to show your guitar playing skills to hundreds or thousands of people.
WoW is succesful because it's simple to play, gorgeously looking and full of that WOW! (pun intented) feeling. It also means it has lots of not-so-serious gamers, people who don't have the experience and so don't understand (or don't care) that they could be destroying someone elses enjoyment through their actions. This is something that exists in most multi-player games (heck, go to any chess server and you see people logging off when they are loosing just to avoid loosing points!) but WoW with it's massive following and easy appeal seems to have more than it's fair share. Mostly you can avoid this, and if you have friends to play with you can mostly disregard this problem. It's also a good idea not to get provoked when some higher level character tries to pick a fight (this happened to me numerous times - the trying to pick a fight part).
The Bad
At least half of your time is spent doing some mundane tasks. It's also hard to find a good group to play with, and the game looses a lot of it's appeal if you always play it solo.
The Bottom Line
WoW is definitely worth trying. It's well worth the money, much better so than most stand-alone games sold at 50 euros or thereabout. So what if you get bored in it after a few months? You still got tens or even hundreds of hours of fun. I still sometimes miss WoW but I just can't justify paying the monthly fee because I know I wouldn't play it enough until I had to have another break.
Windows · by Marko Poutiainen (1151) · 2006
One of the best games of the past 10 years, just not great....
The Good
It was a very well put together rail game. It was smooth and beautiful. Very few bugs and issues. Blizzard really did a good job with quality.
The Bad
It's not an MMO. WOW is a rail game, plain and simple. To put it another way its "The Legend of Zelda", in 3d, with Warcraft characters. With few exceptions you can play this game completely by yourself, without any other players. The online element was completely wasted. Then after dozens (or hundreds) of hours in game you suddenly are required to join up with other players for "optional" quests. Why even bother?
For many gamers there was nothing to this game but hours upon hours of attack keys and grabbing pointless loot. Some people love that, many of us hate it!
The Bottom Line
If you haven't played an action game where you gain levels before, this game will be a very good start. But if you have spent anytime in level gaining games, monster stomping + loot grabbing, or anytime online in a MMO over the past 20 years, then this game will a complete repeat of previous games. Except for very few instances, you do not even need to speak or deal with other players. WOW could and should be a single player game. The online element is a huge waste of resources for both the development and the player.
Macintosh · by Sean Johanson (13) · 2009
Discussion
Subject | By | Date |
---|---|---|
World of Warcraft Classic | Cantillon (85865) | May 5, 2021 |
Trivia
1001 Video Games
World of WarCraft appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.
Board game
This game has been adapted into a 2005 boardgame for 2-6 players.
Christmas events
- For the 2004 Christmas season, Blizzard added easter eggs throughout the game in a patch, which enabled players to find egg nog recipes, snowballs and various other references to Christmas.
- In the 2005 Christmas event, several new NPCs and quests were added for a short period of time. One of the quests requested that you rescued Metzen the Reindeer.
Development (post-release)
Blizzard developed a program called The Warden to fight off cheaters. It's a highly-intrusive watchdog program, some even call it spyware, that scans for active processes while playing World of Warcraft. By accident, a DRM protection from Sony DADC helped crackers to avoid detection by The Warden.
Sony's DRM, shipped with tens of thousands of audio CD's, installs a rootkit that causes processes starting with $sys$ to stay undetected at all times. Malicious users with the DRM installed then simply wrote software with a $sys$ process to cheat in-game. With a booming economy and a gold price on eBay that easily matches the currency of some foreign countries, certain players made a fortune.
In November 2005, Blizzard opened six new realms for the game in North America to give first time players the opportunity to adventure on equal footing with other players.
Gnomeregan
In every punch card you get in Gnomeregan, there is a hidden binary message:
- White Punch Card: Thrall and Jaina sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G
- Yellow Punch Card: If you can read this, you're standing too close
- Blue Punch Card: The gnome king wears night elf underwear
- Red Punch Card: Help! I'm trapped in a binary punch card factory!
- Prismatic Punch Card: Message to Castpipe: your laundry's ready for pickup.
The Great Azeroth Plague (Corrupted Blood incident)
In September 2005, Blizzard added a seemingly innocent instance with unexpected consequences of epic proportions. To a certain extent, it even became one of the most realistic events in a MMORPG to mimic the world and history itself.
The new instance, Zul'Gurub, features the god of blood: Hakkar. When you fight him, he has a debuff called Corrupted Blood, a disease that deals 250-350 damage every two seconds and affects nearby players. Unexpectedly, some players managed to carry the disease, soon dubbed wow aids, hakkar sars and The Great Azeroth Plague, outside the instance and brought it to the towns. It soon became a real plague, affecting thousands of players, of which many did not have the class to constantly protect themselves. Even npcs and pets became affected and low-level players were killed over and over again, as, after respawning, they were immediately struck once more.
The plague became so powerful that major cities became places to avoid. The GMs first tried to quarantine the players, but some kept escaping until it could no longer be controlled. From a small annoyance, it soon became a survival of the fittest where certain players found themselves unable to continue playing under normal circumstances. Ultimately, the plague lasted two days until a rolling restart of all servers.
This was not the first time something unexpected was taken outside an instance, though.
What is not commonly known is that the CDC (Center for Disease Control) in Atlanta contacted Blizzard about the plague in the game. The CDC had read that Blizzard had simulated a plague spreading through the world, and was interested in how they simulated it. They were disappointed when they found out it was a bug.
Leeroy Jenkins
A World of WarCraft gameplay video by the clan PALS FOR LIFE has spawned the Internet phenomenon Leeroy Jenkins. The video shows a guild preparing for a raid. One player, Leeroy Jenkins, is seemingly AFK (away from keyboard) until a moment in which he decides to go into the raid area and shouts his name in a loud, prolonged way, without coordinating with his guildmates.
Money
214,748 gold, 36 silver, 48 copper seems to be the maximum amount of money you can collect per character in WoW. As they informed in WoWInsider, at least two different players, Dorgabas and meth would have reached this limit on 16 January 2008, a limit theorized before. After reaching this limit, your character can no longer receive money from any source in the game.
Novel
A World of WarCcraft novel was published by Pocket Books in 2006: Cycle of Hatred by Keith R. A. DeCandido. It takes place in the period between between WarCraft III: The Frozen Throne and World of WarCraft, filling in blanks and establishing greater continuity.
As of 2012, there are eight novels based on World of WarCraft (plus four based on the expansion Cataclysm).
References
- If you look carefully while playing the game, you may find developers or their families among the NPCs, such as Robert Bridenbecker's family in Goldshire, just outside of Stormwind.
- In Uldaman there are 3 lost dwarves: Olaf, Eric and Baelog. Those 3 dwarves are all from the game The Lost Vikings. And on top of that, The "Staff of Tsol" and the "Medallion of Gni'kiv" (which are both used on another quest in the same dungeon) spelled backwards "Tsol" and "Gni'kiv" are "Lost" and "Viking".
- When playing a Horde character at level 40+ with 225/225 in your First Aid skill, travel to Hammerfall. Go to the Trauma Surgeon in the building to the left of the entrance. He will give you a quest in which you can gain Artisan First Aid. In this quest, you must run around and bandage dying patients. When dying, one of the patients says: "Goodbye cruel world.. I'm leaving you today. Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye". Those are the exact lyrics of the song Goodbye Cruel World of Pink Floyd's The Wall album.
- One of the named opponents for Alliance characters in Westfall is a bandit belonging to the Defias Brotherhood, named Benny Blaanco. His name refers to a gang leader in the well known movie Carlito's Way.
- In Elwynn Forest there is an NPC named Terry Palin. He is a lumberjack and he's OK. His name is a reference to Monty Python comedians Terry Jones and Michael Palin who were responsible for the famous Lumberjack Song.
- One of the quests in Netherstorm, Outland, is called Needs More Cowbell where the player needs to find the cow Bessy using a bell. The quest's title is a reference to the pop culture catchphrase More cowbell, which was launched in a Saturday Night Live comedy sketch on 8 April 2000, about the recording of the song (Don't Fear) The Reaper by Blue Öyster Cult, where a cowbell is featured.
References to the game
- Coca Cola launched a commercial in China inspired by World of WarCraft. Three models stand up to their boss when he asks them "to show more". He transforms into an orc and after drinking a coke the girls fight him. The link to the video can be found in the related links section.
- The porn film series Whorelore was originally to be called Whores of Whorecraft.
- An entire episode of the animated TV series South Park was dedicated to World of WarCraft. The episode, titled Make Love, Not Warcraft, was aired on 4 October 2006 and it was the second half premiere of the tenth season.
- The game makes an appearance in the 2008 movie The Day the Earth Stood Still. Early on, Jacob Benson (Jaden Smith), son of Dr. Helen Benson (Jennifer Connelly), is shown playing the game on his laptop.
- The game is referenced multiple times in Douglas Coupland's 2009 novel Generation A, where the character Julien is addicted to it.
- World of Warcraft was parodied in an episode of "Die Redaktion" (The Editorial Team), a monthly comedy video produced by the German gaming magazine GameStar. It was published on the DVD of issue 06/2005.
Sales
World of WarCraft quickly became the fastest-selling game ever, selling 240,000 copies in 24 hours.
Visa cards
In May 2007, Blizzard announced the availability of World of WarCraft Visa credit cards from the First National Bank of Omaha. There were 13 different types of cards like Alliance Draenei or Horde Blood Elf (introduced in The Burning Crusade expansion). Aside from the artwork, there are other bonuses such as a free month of subscription time with first use and game time at the rate of 1% of every dollar in qualifying purchases.
Awards
- 4Players
- 2005 – Best Online Role-Playing Game of the Year
- Apple Design Awards
- 2005 - Best Mac OS X Entertainment Product
- Computer Games Magazine
- March 2005 - Game of the Year 2004
- Computer Gaming World
- March 2005 (Issue #249) – Game of the Year
- March 2005 (Issue #249) – Special Achievement in Art Direction
- Games for Windows Magazine
- March 2007 - #10 Game of the Year 2006
- GameSpy
- 2004 – #5 Game of the Year
- 2004 – #2 PC Game of the Year
- 2004 – PC MMORPG of the Year
- 2004 – PC RPG / MMORPG of the Year (Readers' Vote)
- 2004 - Special Achievement in Art Direction (together with Myst IV: Revelation)
- 2004 - Best Game Utility of the Year (PC) (for Cosmos)
- 2006 – The Game That Wouldn't Die Award (PC)
- 2011 – #1 Top PC Game of the 2000s
- GameStar (Germany)
- February 23, 2006 - Best PC Game in 2005 (Readers' Vote)
- February 23, 2006 - Best PC RPG in 2005 (Readers' Vote)
- Golden Joystick Awards
- 2005 - Online Game of the Year
- PC Powerplay (Germany)
- Issue 02/2006 - #1 RPG/Adventure in 2005
- Issue 04/2006 - #1 RPG/Adventure in 2005 (Readers' Vote)
- Issue 02/2006 - #4 Best Game in 2005
- Issue 02/2006 - Most Played Game in 2005
- The Strong National Museum of Play
- 2015 – Introduced into the World Video Game Hall of Fame
Information also contributed by Agent 5, Captain Canuck, h'mik, Itay Shahar, MichaelPalin, PCGamer77, piltdown_man, Pseudo_Intellectual, Sciere, Silverblade, WildKard and Zack Green
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Related Sites +
-
10 Moments That Made World of Warcraft
article about 10 defining moments in the MMORPG after five years, on Eurogamer (30th November 2009) -
Beginner's Guide to the World of Warcraft
Inside Mac Games' introductory guide to WoW. -
Blizzard President Comments on WoW Issues (PC)
Mike Morhaime issues a public statement regarding the server problems plaguing the game. (Jan. 21, 2005) -
Blizzard reaches 100M lifetime World of Warcraft accounts
(A Polygon article, January 28, 2014) -
Coca Cola commercial
Video of the Chinese Coca Cola commercial inspired by World of Warcraft. -
Make Love, Not Warcraft
The Wikipedia article on the South Park episode Make Love, Not Warcraft, dedicated to World of Warcraft. -
The Next Chapter in the Battle for Azeroth
An Apple Games article about the Macintosh version of World of Warcraft, written from the eyes of Regwyn, a Human Paladin for the Alliance (November, 2004). -
The internet phenomenon Leeroy Jenkins
A Wikipedia article -
Toyota Tacoma commercial
A commercial for the Toyota Tacoma, created using the World of Warcraft world (hosted on YouTube). -
WOW China
Official Chinese game website -
Why World of Warcraft Made It Big
Article on Gamasutra (20th March 2008) -
World of Warcraft
Official Site -
World of Warcraft - Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau
Official game website for these regions. -
World of Warcraft Europe
The official European website. -
World of Warcraft Stratics
Large information and news site. -
World of Warcraft interview with Bill Amend author of Foxtrot.
In the newspaper comic called Foxtrot, one of the main characters named Jason Fox plays a game named "World of Warquest" which is supposed to be Foxtrot perspective of World of Warcraft. So Allakhazam did an interview with Bill Amend about what he likes about World of Warcraft
Identifiers +
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Contributors to this Entry
Game added by Riamus.
Macintosh added by Terok Nor.
Additional contributors: Unicorn Lynx, Jeanne, Apogee IV, Sciere, Andrew Shepard, Zeppin, Patrick Bregger, Plok, FatherJack, Frozenwaterfall, SoMuchChaotix.
Game added November 27, 2004. Last modified November 29, 2024.