World of WarCraft

The Good
I've been an adventure and role-playing game player for nearly three decades. I witnessed the pioneering of graphical gaming and every leap and bound of technology ever since. And almost every great adventure game or RPG in the history of PC gaming has a place of reverence on my shelf. But until June of 2006, I had never played an MMORPG.

When I logged onto World of Warcraft for the first time, I was awed and enthralled. The universe that unfurled before me was overwhelming - a real virtual reality, with 24 hour days, sunrises and sunsets, a calendar with celebrations and events that occur only on certain days of the year... I was convinced I had seen the undeniable future of role-playing gaming as we knew it.

However, mine was a novelty that was soon to fade, and when it did, it faded hard and fast...

The Bad
As I played on over the months, small bothersome things began to come to my attention. Individually, or even in small numbers, these could be seen as the small quirks every game has - no game is ever 100% perfect in every player's eyes, of course. But these flaws began to multiply, and rapidly. And they were issues not just with the game itself, but with the very concept of the game. Too numerous to mention all of them, these little problems ranged from droll terrains, to poor character class balance, to ridiculously unrealistic area transitions. But worse, was the side of humanity that World of Warcraft not only attracted, but amplified and gloried in. Truly, my years in chat rooms, IRC channels, and weblogs never prepared me for the level of pure human stupidity that gravitates to WoW like iron filings to a magnet. Soon enough, 'phrases' like "cn i hav sum gold plz???", "rofl omg u sux0r!!!!1", and the inevitable "cn sum1 plz run me thru rfc PLZZZZ???" soon took their toll on my sanity, to the point where some days, I truly wanted to go on a postal rampage, killing all members of the same species who could manifest that mentality.

But, alas, perhaps that's simply the nature of online gaming. With World of Warcraft being the only MMORPG I had ever played (and because of it, now likely ever will!), I can't say with certainty that this is a failure of this game, or just this genre. But by contrast, the flaw which I found to be the worst failing of World of Warcraft, can most certainly not be blamed on the pathetic mental acuity of its players.

World of Warcraft is - and I state this with great vehemence - the dullest, most boring, most unimaginative, repetitive excuse for a "role playing game" I have experienced in nearly three decades of gaming.

When you play an RPG, one expects there to be puzzles, or quests, and solutions to these. In RPGs like Eye of the Beholder, Baldur's Gate, Fallout, Neverwinter Nights, and so on, one is prompted to use one's creative and logical mind to solve each quest. Some are simple, some are challenging, some are downright complex, some are even funny or clever or ironic.

But in World of Warcraft, though there are literally thousands upon thousands of quests to be completed in the world of Azeroth, there is ultimately only one solution to them all: Kill X monsters, and/or collect Y loot from their corpses.

I need to emphasize this again for clarity - the ENTIRE GAME is comprised of people telling you go somewhere, kill a predetermined number of things, and often bring back a number of things, usually dismembered body parts or items they may be carrying, to the questgiver.

For example: Kill 12 gray bears, and collect 12 bear hearts. Or, collect 15 tail feathers from slain swoop birds. Or, collect 8 tiger's claws, 6 bird's eggs, and 15 spider's legs.

And this is how THE ENTIRE GAME goes on...

To make things even worse, often, the percentage chance that you will find one of the required items on the corpse of your enemy (aka. the "drop rate") is unrealistically and infinitesimally low. And, the further you get into the game, the lower these drop rates get. In the very beginning, you may only have to slay six tigers to get six tiger's claws. But by level 30 or 40, you'll find yourself having to spend three straight hours killing dozens upon dozens of raptors just to make your quota of the 8 lousy raptor eyes you need for the quest. Not only does this repetitive and mind-mushing grinding eventually wear one's soul down to a longing for blessed death, but the lack of realism is vile to witness. I mean, let's face it - granted, in the fury and carnage of battle, it's fair to assume that not every creature that meets your sword, axe, or gun, is going to come away with it's carcass intact. Things like paws or eyes, perhaps even hearts, may just be unsalvageable. But when the quest calls for you to return with the creature's entire head, or even, in several cases, a sample of its blood, and yet still only one in every fifteen kills yields you the rewards, well, that just starts to make me angry.

And that's only the half of it. As you progress to the highest echelons of the character levels, the need for mindless grinding becomes positively unimaginable. For some quests, you have to collect around three thousand pieces of unrefined metal ore to improve your reputation with a particular faction just so that they'll allow to shop in their stores. In others, you have to collect several hundred of a crystal that is only dropped by the end boss of a dungeon, or "instance" - and even then, only dropped sometimes!! - in a dungeon which can only be completed by a 40 man "raid group", which is essentially 40 players working as a team to complete the dungeon. So, IF you and 39 of your friends clear the instance, and IF you kill the boss, and IF he drops the item, and IF, by group consensus or a fair dice roll, you are the one allowed to have it as opposed to the other 39 people who might want it, then you have ONE. Then you only need several dozen more before you can complete the first part of that quest!!

Personally, I would rather be forced at gunpoint to remove my own genitals with a rusty spoon without anesthesia than to even attempt a grind of that magnitude.

The more I played World of Warcraft, the more I felt my will to live slipping away. When I heard on the news about the teenager who committed suicide as a result of the game, I couldn't even muster a glimmer of surprise. Every day, faced with the constant spamming of utterly illiterate children shouting "WTF LOL NO U R TEH NOOB STFU!!!!!" at eachother, while I trudged out the city gates to spend another hour hacking at animals for another few lousy pieces of silver and a small dose of experience, I wondered to myself, "Why am I paying $15 a month to torture myself with what is the equivalent of working in a sweat shop while being forced to watch 40 straight hours of reality television?".

When I discovered no answer to that question, after weeks of soul searching, I canceled my World of Warcraft account.

The Bottom Line
When I came to MobyGames today to post this bleak review of the worst game I've played in over a quarter of a century, I read first a glowing review posted by Corey Cole, a man whom I once positively idolized as the co-creative legend, with wife Lori-Ann Cole, behind the Quest for Glory series, which was the pinnacle of role playing adventure games of its time. When I read that this man, whose inspirational work on computer game development shaped a large part of my life, was now a self-confessed WoW addict, I honestly nearly wept. The notion that he and Lori, the hearts and minds behind Erasmus's Mage's Maze, the shimmering sands of the lands of Shapeir, the mentally and emotionally charging land of Tarna, and so much more, are now grinding day and night in this tiresome game hurts me to my soul. The blurb on the back of the box for Quest for Glory III: Wages of War says, "And if you succeed, it will be because you cut to the core of the mystery with your mind, not because you managed to sort through a series of stats or slashed through a thousand mindless monsters.". But that is precisely how you succeed in World of Warcraft. You slash through some monsters. And then you slash through a thousand more. And then, when you've done that, you move to another region, and slash through a few thousand more. Rinse, repeat.

Oh, and don't forget to pick up their heads, on the off-chance that they drop them. Remember, you'll need to take a few dozen of those back to your questgiver to "solve" the "quest".

I'd rather just withdraw $15 from my bank account each month, and set fire to it.

The Good
This game doesn't really need to be reviewed, its faults and success are visible for most people interested in playing an MMO to see. Yet, I still feel like I have something to say about the game.

I've played quite a few MMO's and this one was the best. Not the most fun, but it was the best. The game is the quickest to get into and has a very stable feel.

Another good thing about the game is how they are pretty delicate with character deaths. A lot of games totally punish you when a character dies in the game which I think is one of the reasons why this game is so easy to pick up.

The graphics and control are also very solid as well as the characters graphics and control. In some MMO's for some reason controlling the character is really awkward. In this game it's not the case. Everything just feels so standard and put together, which makes it easy to play the game.

World of Warcraft reminds me a lot of multiplayer Starcraft. Just like Starcraft the game has a very high learning curve that you may never achieve. And just like Starcraft the game is done to death that it doesn't feel like you're doing anything new, yet the game is so balanced that it still is the definitive experience for its Genre.

The Bad
Overview: The game falls into the problems that any other MMO falls into. It simply engrosses such a large amount of time and for what? A few bits of gear, etc. But, the thing is, that's just how MMO's are right now. And most people are fine with that.

The Bottom Line
The game deserves to be so popular, It really is a good game. However, its an MMO. And because the game is an MMO, it is a really time consuming game that has a huge learning curve at later levels.

What makes the game addicting is that you cannot just stop and pause the game. Many people are very competitive gamers and this game has no pause button. What this does is cause the game to demand giant scores of time. If you don't put in enough time as your peers you will literally fall behind. If you leave the game you're not pissing off some game characters you're pissing off real people. And secondly, the MMO has become so competitive that at the highest levels you must spend gargantuan amounts of time playing. All of this comes together to make a person, susceptible already to playing a game too much, spend an enormous amount of time on the game.

The Good
In my opinion, World or Warcraft (more simply abbreviated WoW for the rest of this review) does not do anything so amazingly revolutionary or new from the rest of its counterparts in the MMORPG genre. It doesn’t do anything totally or completely unexpected from many other MMO’s out there. Most elements can be seen borrowed from other RPG franchises, and as a whole one could possibly label it “generic”. But what WoW so brilliantly does is that it takes what its other brethren have created and made it easier and more fun to play. It has taken its content and made it a perfect form as to create a perfect gaming environment that is both easy and fun to play in, is not vague or confusing, and is addictive as Hell. And that, my friends, makes all the difference.

WoW has a lot of elements borrowed from every other genre. It has a talent system, and two professions from which you can choose. You’ve got a wide variety of classes from rogues to warriors to mages to warlocks. All around, WoW is just plain fun. You can do instances (dungeons and such) with your friends, or enjoy some relaxing fishing alone. You can explore the land or do quests. You can join a group for some amazing PvP, or go to a role-playing server to immerse yourself within the World of Warcraft (I have tried an RP server and the role-players for the game are very enthusiastic). WoW even has one of the biggest maps I have ever seen. To explore the entire map easily takes weeks just walking from place to place. I am still debating which game’s map is bigger, WoW or Guild Wars, and I have yet to come to a conclusion. To tell you what WoW holds in store would take pages upon pages more of a review. However, this is not how WoW differentiates itself among other RPG’s. You can get all of this stuff on other MMO’s, so what’s so special about this one?

What WoW does is it takes the simplicity of console RPG’s and mixes it with expansive environment, controls, character customization, and social abilities of the MMO world. In simpler terms: WoW is easy, it eliminates the frustrations of other MMO’s, and simply makes the game just plain fun. I was once a player of another MMORPG. That was the game Dark Age of Camelot. While I was playing it, I thought it was an okay experience. However, I now realize what a terrible experience it truly was. While games like those are far too hard and required hours of work, WoW is simple, clean, and so easy to use that casual gamers can easily be on the same level as hardcore addicts.

WoW appeals to casual and hardcore gamers alike. New players can begin enjoying the full experience as soon as they start, and it’s a huge and welcoming change for the RPG franchise. It makes it feel like you aren’t too low of a level to get the games full potential. Quests and monsters are just the right level of difficulty, making it easy for a person to just jump right into combat. Epic quests do not require hours of time devoted to playing the game. Even as early players, noobs can enjoy the same features as many players who are 50 levels above them. The fun begins as soon as you log in.

Casual players are rewarded heavily in this game, because soloing is possible, easy, and rewarding. Players who don’t play as often, will become “well-rested” while they are logged out, allowing them to gain double the experience as players who play all the time. It is this welcoming incentive that continues to draw me into WoW, and finally I am no longer penalized for enjoying doing the quests alone and sporadically.

Even early in the game players can enjoy a slew of highly entertaining skills and abilities, and each level you gain significantly adds a number of new abilities at your disposal. This makes combat throughput the game fun and different, as you have tons of skills at your disposal to toy around with. Both items that new players can use and higher experienced ones are distributed pretty much perfectly throughout the game, making finding a weapon perfectly suited for you as easy as walking down to a shop or slaying a beast. Early players have the ability to choose the same professions as later players, which makes getting to the higher levels easier for new players. The game makes noobs feel welcome. As I said before, new and casual players can begin enjoying the full experience as soon as they start, and it’s a huge and welcoming change for me.

I think one of the reasons WoW is so welcoming to casual and new players its how it practically eliminates all of the frustrations of other MMO’s. One of these things that comes to mind for me is grinding. WoW utilizes the simple system that has been a requisite for console RPG’s for years: it allows the player to gain levels while they are adventuring. Simply put: no grinding. Read that again. Eventually it hits you in this game that you never have to stop what you’re doing to bolster your stats. It is easy to gain a level once or even twice per day, even between on and off adventuring and exploring. You may even be able to achieve more levels that, if you really play it that much every day, only trying to level. Most of the time, the leveling is done while your adventuring and on quests, making repetitive monster-slaying trials and experience quests almost non-existent in WoW. Doing simple tasks such as gathering ingredients for a recipe do not require hours of work. Developing skills can be easily done by the most casual or newest of players. These reasons and many more are good reasons to get WoW. It has so many elements that are nice and user-friendly that makes it fun to play without making it a complete chore.

Another one of these features that comes to mind is that death brings no toll to those unfortunate to have to go through it. Your only punishment is that you must bring your dead spirit from a nearby graveyard (there is usually one or two in every region) to your corpse, which is a trivial walk. It does not require you to lose points or skills, or require you to pray at some alter to get your stats to full potential. I cannot being to explain how great this makes the game, being able to actually “play” without having to worry about taking risk. I could sit here for hours iterating stories of how I’ve lost days of experience (from grinding no less) simply by accidentally aggroing some monster that is a couple levels higher than me. This feature is a god-send, and you will praise Blizzard for making such an amazing decision in the game design.

One of the fundamental reasons of the underlying simplified gameplay I mentioned before is the clean character and item management. WoW is not as ambiguous as many other MMO’s. The system of professions, talents, pets, classes and other sorts are semi-self contained. Its easy to use interface contains just a few menus and an action bar, and each menu serves major purposes. All your professions, stats, pets, and other things are all tabbed in one menu for your character, while everything pertaining to social (guilds, friends) are all tabbed under another. It keeps the screen clean of anything that gets in the way and makes it easy to find what you are looking for. Looting is simple, even in massive groups. You can easily discern which professions go with which, and character class limitations are well-defined. Items aren’t vague as to what they are used for or what they add to your stats. Many games I have played include strange numbers and stats that I have no idea what they do. In WoW, almost every item is useful, so if you find something on an item, its usually used for something pertaining to a quest and will tell you so. If its armor, a quest item, and weapon, or just food, it will tell you, which makes item handling much easier, as you feel like your not throwing away something very important when you clean out your inventory. In WoW, what things do are so clearly defined it will make you wonder how the Hell other MMO’s didn’t think of doing this sooner.

And as mentioned before, WoW is incredibly user friendly. All around, WoW makes it easy for new users to gain ranks and earn experience, and still keeps everyone challenged. Socially, the people you meet in game are some of the kindest people on the internet. The role-playing servers can be lots of fun for those looking for a Dungeons and Dragons type of game, while the regular servers have people who are always willing to help out new players or go on raids or quests. The Blizzard Support must also be duly noted. If you seem to have an annoyance within the game, it’s as if Blizzard reads your mind and fixes it the next day. It almost seems as if the Blizzard staff plays the game themselves, and sees what annoys them that must be fixed. Blizzard constantly releases automatic updates that fix small bugs and glitches to make for a better gaming experience. Server crashes are fixed within minutes, and problems with servers are usually fixed within hours to get the servers back up and running. It’s simply amazing how well they treat their players. Blizzard definitely goes to great lengths to make sure you are completely satisfied with your gaming, and you can surely tell.

Aside, the game’s great atmosphere also perks you up. The graphics of the game are astounding and pleasing to the eye. The graphics almost remind me of a fairy-tale: colorful and beautiful landscapes with exaggerated features and rounded textures. The trees in the game can be a host of colors like blue or purple, and the cities are magnificent. The gates of cities are stories tall, and the streets are curvy, twisted, and almost cartoon-like. The cheery yet atmospheric music adds greatly to this. Above all, the atmosphere does something for your brain. When you look out upon a bouncy forest of bright trees that are the size of skyscrapers, it makes you feel warm inside. Even some of the more “evil” environments have vivid palettes and continue to have bouncy textures and exaggerated landscapes that make them feel more alive. Other MMO’s, for some reason, like to include some desolate wasteland with destroyed cities, hopeless people, and an atmosphere that makes everyone seem dead. WoW, however, does just the opposite. The bright, cheery characters and environments do more to bring up your spirits. Instead of drawing on dark, desolate feelings, they inspire feelings of warmth, happiness, and liveliness, almost as if the very air itself is alive. Because of this, WoW is a game that will drawn you in and keep your there for hours on end.

They call this game the “World” of Warcraft for a reason. All around, this game feels like a living, breathing thing. If you let it, WoW can become your second home. The colorful characters and world, the uncountable number of things to do, and the infinite character and profession combos will ensure that WoW has near endless replay value. Hell, all I do is questing and instances, and that still manages to take up all of my day. I’ve barely touched PvP, raids, and end-game quests, and yet I still fill my day with fun-filled questing in the world of Azeroth. Let WoW charm you to death as you discover all of the games little quirks, interesting characters, fun story arcs. No matter where you are or what you’re doing, there are always other people on, doing other things, and there is always something going on. And as you play, you will become part of that rich tapestry which has practically evolved into its own society. Invite yourself into the World of Warcraft, and you may never want to leave.


The Bad
A-D-D-I-C-T
A-D-D-I-C-T
A-D-D-I-C-T
And ADDICT was his name-O!

More and more these days video game addiction is a major problem. People have reported to leave work, school, relationships, and even families over video games. Some have even reportedly committed suicide. The idea of a video game worse than drugs is scary, but it today’s world I find that it is honestly a very real entity. This game does not seem to erode this idea. World or Warcraft is addicting, with a capital ‘A’. For some, it’s because you feel that you have to keep playing hours to get “just one more level”, or you feel that you may miss something. But also, it’s because World of Warcraft is utterly and uncontrollably fun to play. Between quests, raids, dungeon runs and profession training, time slips away at a mind-boggling pace. The first two days after I got this seem nothing but a blur. Yes, the sad truth is that I spent a two full days, over 10 hours each day, playing the game from the time I got up until about midnight. What’s weirder is that I did not actually realize that this time was slipping away. When I emerged from my basement, I wondered where the time had all gotten to. At that point I realized that time consumption was a factor I needed to seriously consider while playing WoW. That’s something very new for me, a person who generally plays video games and socializes in moderation. WoW, however, affects ALL gamers. It has been called names like “World or Warcrack.” It’s something to deeply consider when buying or playing this game. Don’t put a video game in front of family. Consider how much time you have before buying this. Hell, make sure you consider how much time you have when you’re in the middle of playing it! As my friend Pete (a dedicated WoW player and someone I actually played the game with) says, “WoW destroys lives”. And it’s true. Consider what you are going to give up for this game. Many gamers may find it easy to play in moderation, but even those who don’t normally have addictive personalities can exhibit WoW addictions and late-night sessions. People with addictive personalities should avoid the game altogether.

As the game drifts on you may notice that the quests are very much uninspired. Unlike traditional one-player console RPG’s, the quests are pretty mindless. Quests are almost always a “kill-quest”, where you either have to kill a certain number of monsters or a specific one. Occasionally you will get an item collecting quest, which invariably leads to having to kill a number of monsters just to get those items. Traveling quests are a nice and easy change but hardly offer anything fun or interesting. If the game did not make up for itself with good combat, quests would be a nightmare. Perhaps that’s why the game gets so much better when playing with a friend. Related to this is the fact that the game can be very repetitive when played alone or “solo”. Quests are almost always alike, and seem to be big repetitions of each other. As a result, restarting characters is a nightmare since you will invariable be replaying dull missions that you had to do with other characters. Quests are easily the least entertaining part of the game, and while they offer plenty of experience, are only bearable up to about level 30, where they become a terrible pain. An unfortunate factor that must also be taken into account is that all of the game’s story is driven by quests, and that the game really lacks direction without them. Bummer.

The patches are also one of the most major problems. Blizzard frequently releases patches for this game. All around it does much more good than it does bad, however the downloads are incredibly annoying. Of course, for your convenience you do not have to keep track of versions or go to download sites. It’s all done automatically by the in-game updater. However, patches can be released almost once every two weeks. And while the small ones are pretty much an annoyance rather than a pain (15 minutes isn’t all too bad), the larger ones are a nightmare, with up to an hour (or more!) or download times. This only makes it worse for players installing and playing the game for the first time. All of the patches created before that point must be downloaded, meaning 4 or 5 patch downloads (sometimes to avoid lengthy downloads they take older patches and incorporate them into the new ones so they don’t have to be downloaded). Usually one or two of these is the nightmare patch mentioned above. And while load times are swift and painless, prepare for a monstrous install time, and even more waiting just to get the game patched up running…

The Bottom Line
World of Warcraft is a landmark in MMO design. In my honest opinion, MMO’s have too long been bogged down by boring grinding, terrible adventuring, and annoying features and controls. WoW eliminates all of these things, keeping what makes the game fun, and this is what appeals to me and 7 million other gamers so much. It’s the fun a video game should give you, without all the tiresome work that come along with other MMO’s. It’s incredibly friendly, incredibly fun, incredibly imaginative, and incredibly addicting.

And even to mention all of the great content that WoW offers would take a lifetime. Things like professions, talents, all of the classes, a HUGE world to explore and tons of social interactivity make WoW my choice MMORPG. But I could never tell you about everything, so let’s just leave it at that. It’s up to you to discover all the amazing possibilities and the rich gameplay that the World of Warcraft is just waiting to offer.

The Good
World of Warcraft's world is simply gigantic with many different areas. I personally think the game was at it's best before the expansion packs because all the areas feel so great, when I used to walk around in Elwynn Forest it felt so peaceful while the "Undercity" feels very chaotic and aggressive. This gives the world a nice balance, if you ever get sick of the destruction and death of the Badlands you can always go back to Loch Modan to rest for a while.

When you take the title of RPG, I think it's important to live up to the title "Role-playing game" and World of Warcraft does that very well. There are servers where you can make a character and you have to act like him or her. This means talking to people like you're having a real conversation and joining a guild that offers the kind of job you want your character to have. I decided to have my character join the Stormwind city-guard and I had a great time patrolling the city and following orders.

Fighting the monsters in instances and raids was really awesome and succeeding felt like a real achievement. I always loved it when we had a group of forty people and managed to take down a monster, it just made us look so organized and skilled. I did dislike it when the expansions decreased the number of player in a raid to twenty-five, but in the end I did agree that the raids were way too hard sometimes and keeping a total of forty people alive was nearly impossible.

World of Warcraft is full of wonderful experiences that I count among some of the best I have ever had in a video game. My days as a role-player are still very dear to me and stand-out between the rest, but there was also a guild called "The Brotherhood of Wisdom" which I created myself and which grew to become the biggest guild on the server. We had a lot of fun and some of the most stupid events ever (like a snowball-war or races). I still have contact with a few people that were in our guild and we love nothing better than to talk about "the days of the Brotherhood".

The music is very good and often even awesome. While most songs are not that great, there are a few that still manage to make me feel like the hero the game wants me to be. One of my favorite examples is the Stormwind theme which I swear has to be one of the best songs in video game history. The title screen music is also pretty nice and the music in the Night-Elf lands are pretty sweet as well (they mix nicely with the forest). It's too bad that they couldn't have every song be as awesome, but there is still not enough to complain about.

The story is amazing and that is mostly due to the army of RTS-games that preceded this game. The "Warcraft" series form the background for this game and some characters even make appearances (The Night Elf priest and Thrall for example). I have to give Blizzard credit for taking a very popular franchise and taking such a massive risk with it, in the end they created every Warcraft-fan's dream and I am sure a lot of people love Blizzard for this.

The game is very easy to control and gradually builds-up the difficulty. It's unlikely that you will die at the start of the game and there are barely any enemies that attack you on sight, but soon there will be more enemies that do and you will have to pay attention to your surroundings. The game also starts with a very limited library of spells and attacks, but nearing level thirty you already got a few pages full of them and you have to decide which ones you want to bind to to the keys.

The Bad
Like Vaelor pointed-out already: World of Warcraft has one of the worst communities ever. Take the Halo 3 community, multiply that by the youtube trolls and then multiply that by the people who make jokes about disasters and you're almost close. The worst thing is probably that Blizzard doesn't take any action whatsoever, there is literally an entire city where everybody acts like assholes on roleplay servers, but nobody ever even tried to ban people there. It would take five minutes! The worst memory is when my cat died and I told my guild about it and someone actually started making fun of me and laughing. Blizzard's advice?, just ignore him...

There isn't a lot of roleplay to be found on the servers that are made specifically for that kind of playing. Unless you join a guild or always check the forums for events, there is a good chance you won't ever find any roleplay. This makes it very hard for new people to join these servers and since the first city they run into is the earlier mentioned place where all the assholes hang-out... If the new people don't fall prey to that city, they mostly end up joining the huge army guilds which have as much soul as bricks, this always causes smaller guilds with more daring themes to die due to the lack of members.

The quests used to be a big grindfest, but now that has been partially fixed. There is still a gigantic barrel of grinding, but there are also other quests which require you to perform tasks that actually change the world around you. The quests that didn't get this treatment are as boring as ever and make you feel like a factory machine. The worst thing is that it's incredibly addictive and that is NOT a good thing, in fact it's terrible because the game charges you fifteen dollars a month for this. This is a problem I have with a lot of services, I bought the game, so why does it still charge me to play it. Xbox Live comes to mind, but at least you can offline for free, here you can only play offline and there is no 1-man option for dungeons.

The Bottom Line
World of Warcraft is a great game, but it has some terrible problems that are mostly the fault of Blizzard. The story is great, the game has a nice difficulty curve, you can have a lot of amazing experiences and the roleplaying in this game in unmatched, but Blizzard is just way too passive when it comes to helping the players.

The roleplay servers are overrun with douchebags who ruin it for everybody, a large part of the community is acting like the absolute lowest a human being can sink and they take massive advantage of people's addictions. After so many years and with so many active players, the least they could do is give the people more. If you buy the game you only get one free month which is barely enough to get you going. I would suggest asking five dollars a month or giving two months for the same fifteen dollars.

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.

The Good
I have more positive things to say about World of Warcraft than any other game made. Here are some reasons why:

It empowers players to successfully solo or group to complete quests.

Roleplay lives in RP guilds and has designated RP servers.

Finding quests is not difficult, completing them are reasonable.

PvP rewards are worthwhile. Battlegrounds can be fun and challenging.

Character creation is flexible.

Mods are encouraged.

Graphics are good, lag is minimal.

Tradeskills can be helpful.

There seems to always be something to do.

The Bad
It'd be nice to have a graphics update in the game and perhaps more variation on types of quest. Most of the time it is either killing, gathering or courier but is the case with most MMORPG's.

The Bottom Line
This is the best video game ever made. If you don't like it, then maybe video games is not the past-time for you.

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.

The Good
I loved absolutely everything. The environments were wonderfully rendered and the combat system,purely and simply fun. You will literally say good-bye to everyone you love and go play this game. The massive amounts of campaigns and side quests are just mind blowing. Blizzard has succeeded with all of the Warcraft series. This is a must have for any lover of MMOs and any hater if them, because after you've tried it, you just can't stop. And also I love the fact that after you die you can run around the spirit world and find you're body. But I messed around for a while and found some really cool things. Don't pass that up. And the skills and abilities you can learn just make the game all the more sweeter. I've always dreamed of an MMO where you could craft armor and World Of Warcraft has pleased me most. The monsters are one of the best things about this game. Blizzard will often put you up against an unstoppable foe and see what you can do.

The Bad
The only thing I didn't like is....wait. I loved it all. There is nothing bad about this game.

The Bottom Line
A masterpiece composed by the geniuses at Blizzard. WARNING:If you play this game even once, you will be addicted.

The Good
This is, by far, the best MMORPG currently out there and you hear many in the game saying the same when comparing to all other MMORPGs they have played. Although the graphics may not compare with ones like FFIX, they fit the game universe perfectly. The somewhat cartoony look to various creatures and characters is what you would expect in a Warcraft game.

The game is set up in such a way that quests will build your character up to a good level, then move you on to the next area, and so on. You have the choice of not doing all of the quests, but doing so reveals the story and plot in the game as well as helping to keep your level where it should be for the area you are in.

Professions in the game are great, though not perfect. Depending on your character's class, you pick from the various professions to select 2 that are going to be useful either to you or to your guild members... or just so you can make money off them. The professions can help you to have better equipment than you usually can find for your character, though not always. If you keep your professions' skills increasing, you can make some powerful items. And the minor professions -- fishing, cooking, and first aid -- help to give you some more to do. Fishing, in particular, can be very useful. Besides getting fish that can be used for health, feeding pets, or cooking to make even better, you can also catch equipment. Sometimes this can gain you some excellent equipment.

The enemies and varied considerably in the game. No matter how long you play the game, as long as you aren't staying in the same area, you will find many new enemies to fight that look vastly different from previous ones. Granted, spiders look similar, wolves look similar, etc... but you also find many enemies that look completely different.

Each race and class have special abilities and skills that define them. These help you to create your own unique character that is different from everyone else's characters. And the vast amount of equipment available also help to change how your character looks compared to everyone else. Once you're out of the beginner areas, you don't usually see two characters who look the same.

The emotes included with the game are fun to mess around with when you want a break from killing. The best of which is dancing. Each race and gender have their own unique dancing style... from the human female doing the macarena, to the undead male appearing to be a hard rock star. Getting many races and genders together to dance can make for a very interesting display.

The world is absolutely huge. It would take a very long time to see the entire world, if you wanted to try and do so. It can be deceiving when you look at the default map, because it seems small. However, when you zoom it out all the way, you notice how huge it really is. I have no idea really how big the world is, but I would estimate it to be over 500 miles x 500 miles (or 250,000 square miles)... and it may be even larger than that. For a game world, that is ridiculously huge! And that size helps keep areas from being too filled up with people.

Because of the number of classes and races available and because people want to try them all out and also be on multiple servers, the game allows you to have 10 characters on any one server, with a maximum of 50 characters. For most people, this basically allows you to have as many as you want, since most don't want more than 50 characters.

The Bad
If you have a problem, GMs take a very long time to respond. This is perhaps the worst issue with the game as it is still new and problems can happen more frequently now than they will in months to come.

Some quests require you to loot, or kill, a specific enemy, and when you have 20 people trying to complete the quest, this can take forever before you manage to get the kill so you can loot it. You can group with others and that can help, but it still can become troublesome.

Lag is an issue in the game, but usually not a huge problem most of the time. When it DOES hit, however, it can be severe. Blizzard is working to correct that and may have it taken care of soon.

The Bottom Line
If you like MMORPGs and don't mind paying some money for monthly access, this game is the best one you'll find. I don't usually play games with monthly fees because it's not worth the cost to keep playing the game. However, this game is so great that, for under $0.50 per day, it's worth the cost. I can actually sit and play the game for 6-8 hours a night, every night... and many play much more than that!