World of WarCraft (Windows)

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Description

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.

Screenshots

Promo Images

Trailer

Alternate Titles

• "魔兽世界" -- Chinese spelling (simplified)
• "WoW" -- Common abbreviation

Part of the Following Groups

• Fantasy Creatures: Dragons
• Fantasy Creatures: Dwarves
• Fantasy Creatures: Elves
• Fantasy Creatures: Orcs
• 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: Fishing
• Gameplay feature: Goldsmithing
• Gameplay feature: Horse riding
• Gameplay feature: Hunting
• Gameplay feature: Mining
• Gameplay feature: Survival cooking
• Games made into books
• Games made into comics
• Games referenced in movies
• Scripting language: Lua
• Sound engine: FMOD
• Technology: amBX
• Video games turned into board / card games
• WarCraft universe
• World of WarCraft series

User Reviews

Amazingly simple yet amazingly addictive	Matt Neuteboom (989)
WoWtastic, at least for a while	Marko Poutiainen (1160)
Welcome to World of Grindcraft!	Vaelor (381)
The Definitive MMO experience.	Evan Agresti (7)
Vaelor made some good points, but there are redeeming factors	Asinine (1006)
Taking MMORPGs to a new level	Riamus (8519)
Incredible game balance and FUN	Corey Cole (37)
My most played game ever! (And I've played games for decades)	nullitilium (5)
You'll turn that MOM tattoo to a WOW tattoo...	Lord Dayin (11)

Critic Reviews

Just Adventure	Mar 15, 2005	A+	100
Joystick (French)	Feb, 2005	10 out of 10	100
Cyber Gaming Network (CGN)	Jan 27, 2005	4.75 out of 5	95
PC Powerplay	Jun 28, 2006	95 out of 100	95
PC Games (Germany)	Feb 01, 2005	94 out of 100	94
GameStar (Germany)	Jul, 2005	91 out of 100	91
Game Revolution	Dec, 2004	A-	91
Jeuxvideo.fr	Feb 11, 2005	8 out of 10	80
Game XC (GXC)	Jul 01, 2005	8 out of 10	80
MMORPG.com	Sep 04, 2006	7.9 out of 10	79

Forums

Topic	# Posts	Last Post
WOW Instance Help	2	DJP Mom (11381) Jul 13, 2007

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 (less massively-multiplayer -- 2-6 players instead) 2005 boardgame.

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 - try searching for Chris Metzen on Mobygames and you'll see that he is from the Blizzard staff.

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 the Sony record company helped crackers to avoid detection by The Warden.

Sony's DRM, shipped with tens of thousands of audio CD's, installs a virus-like 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 will be rich soon.

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.

Great Azeroth Plague, The

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. You can read all about it in the Wikipedia article in the related links section.

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 January 16th, 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 Warcraft 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 World of Warcraft: 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 8th 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 4th 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 are 13 different types of cards like Alliance Draenei or Horde Blood Elf. Aside from the art work, 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

Information also contributed by Agent 5, Captain Canuck, h'mik, Itay Shahar, MichaelPalin, PCGamer77, piltdown_man, Pseudo_Intellectual, Sciere, Silverblade, WildKard and Zack Green

Related Web 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))
• 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 internet phenomenon Leeroy Jenkins (A Wikipedia article)
• 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).)
• Toyota Tacoma commercial (A commercial for the Toyota Tacoma, created using the World of Warcraft world (hosted on YouTube).)
• Why World of Warcraft Made It Big (Article on Gamasutra (20th March 2008))
• World of Warcraft (Official Site)
• World of Warcraft Europe (The official European website.)
• 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)
• World of Warcraft Stratics (Large information and news site. )
• World of Warcraft - Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau (Official game website for these regions.)
• World of Warcraft - Wikipedia (The main article about the game on the open encyclopedia website)
• WOW China (Official Chinese game website)