Thursday, September 1, 2011

Up for Review: World of (you guessed it) Warcraft

   
     Here we have a game that has seen millions of changes throughout the years, some of them good, some of them just terribly bad. In case you're just new to the internet or have just come out of your bomb shelter from 40 years ago, WoW is the worlds most popular, and largest MMO. It is based off of the warcraft series by blizzard, and currently has over 11.1 million subscribers. I used to be a huge WoW fan, but recently the game has lost a lot of it's appeal to me.

  
Dem oranges bro, dem oranges.....

     WoW is pretty much the building block for any new MMO to date. At it's core the gameplay sort of goes like this; You create a new character. you do quests which involve a variety of tasks such as killing creatures or retrieving items for NPC's, and then you level up to move onto higher level areas to quest and gain new items in. That is the main reason for WoW's success; you are constantly rewarded. In the beginning years of the game it wasn't as easy to get great gear (this is what your equipment is called). You had to put a lot of time and effort into something as small as a +5 increase to your agility rating. This has been the main reason as to why i don't play WoW as often anymore, because it's becoming so hard so separate the good players from the bad. In the old WoW you could size someone up just by gear alone and 9 times out of ten they would be a good player and follow the tactics of the boss fights to a tee. Now you can have someone who is in amazing gear, but when it's time to take 2 steps out of the fire, they just stand in it like a Buddhist monk in WW2.


"Oh wow my health is pretty low, this healer must suck."

     The graphics of WoW really haven't stood up to the changing of times either. Most everything uses low-res textures, except for the highest levels of gear, and some character models. This can be in part blamed on the enormous player base, as WoW doesn't want to crank up the graphics too much and make the game unplayable to a lot of the players. All in all though it doesn't look too bad for today's standards but seeing how almost every computer nowadays comes with a decent graphics card, they could stand to crank it up a little bit. I can't complain too much about the sound. The original music that blizzard has crafted for this game, is just about some of the best out there. Although, i don't know what possessed them to make your character say something every time you spam a button. Thankfully this can be turned off.


This is the ABSOLUTE best the graphics are going in this game.

     If you haven't yet picked up on WoW i would suggest staying away from it for a bit. At least until they make the game a bit better than it is at it's current state. You have to buy the original game and all three expansions just to play at the current level, and pay a monthly fee of $15 so it's not exactly the best value for a video game as of right now. If the subscription rate drops though i'm sure Blizzard will do something to get new players in, so if you really want to play this game then just wait it out for a bit. As for people who have already played the game. If you played during Vanilla/BC time frame then i wouldn't suggest going back to it. It's just not the game it used to be. If you played during Wrath/ Early Cata then by all means renew. They have added a lot of new things and you just might like it.

Gameplay: 8
Graphics: 6
Sound: 8
Value: 5

     

11 comments:

  1. I jumped ship on wow for rift and haven't looked back

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  2. I haven't played in a few months now, and other than the friends I made, I don't miss a damn thing. I've even seen some of the up and coming stuff, and it annoys me Blizzard make me rage when I don't even play anymore.

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  3. My brother was seriously addicted to this game...sigh

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  4. I'm addicted to this game. I really like.
    I always play in my spare time

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  5. I'll pass. I don't want to pay $14 a month for a part time job.

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  6. I used to play WoW for a year, but I got stuck at Lineage for like 3 years... It was just somehow better for me.

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  7. Must...resist...
    Seriously, I can't get dragged into that game again :D

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  8. Love WoW. Had to take a break before my wife left me :)

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  9. Never played this game, but it sure seems like fire and glowing shit plays a big part of this game.

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  10. I played it for 4 years, wouldn't have played it for 4 months if it weren't for the people I played WoW with.

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